The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dumas' Complete Celebrated Crimes
#29 in our series by Alexander Dumas, Pere

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other
Project Gutenberg file.

We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your
own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future
readers.  Please do not remove this.

This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to
view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission.
The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the
information they need to understand what they may and may not
do with the etext.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and
further information, is included below.  We need your donations.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541



Title: The Complete Celebrated Crimes

Author: Alexander Dumas, Pere

Release Date: August, 2001  [Etext #2760]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[Most recently updated: December 10, 2001]

Edition: 11

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dumas' Complete Celebrated Crimes
******This file should be named dcrim11.txt or dcrim11.zip******

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, dcrim12.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, dcrim11a.txt

This etext was prepared by David Widger,  <widger@cecomet.net>

Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our sites at:
http://gutenberg.net or
http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
etexts, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).


Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03

Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2001 as we release over 50 new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 4000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts.  We need
funding, as well as continued efforts by volunteers, to maintain
or increase our production and reach our goals.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of November, 2001, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin,
and Wyoming.

*In Progress

We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.

All donations should be made to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fundraising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fundraising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word
     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
     let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
software or any other related product without express permission.]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*





This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>





[NOTE: The individual sections of this large etext file have all
been published previously by The Gutenberg Project under the
titles in this table of contents.  Etexts #2741 to #2758  D.W.]




                      CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE

                        BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

                            IN EIGHT VOLUMES



CONTENTS:

     THE BORGIAS
     THE CENCI
     MASSACRES OF THE SOUTH
     MARY STUART
     KARL-LUDWIG SAND
     URBAIN GRANDIER
     NISIDA
     DERUES
     LA CONSTANTIN
     JOAN OF NAPLES
     THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (The Essay, not the Novel)
     MARTIN GUERRE
     ALI PACHA
     THE COUNTESS DE SAINT GERAN
     MURAT
     THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS
     VANINKA
     THE MARQUISE DE GANGES






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 1(of 8), Part 1

BY ALEXANDER DUMAS, PERE




NOTE:

Dumas's 'Celebrated Crimes' was not written for children.  The
novelist has spared no language--has minced no words--to describe the
violent scenes of a violent time.

In some instances facts appear distorted out of their true
perspective, and in others the author makes unwarranted charges.  It
is not within our province to edit the historical side of Dumas, any
more than it would be to correct the obvious errors in Dickens's
Child's History of England.  The careful, mature reader, for whom the
books are intended, will recognize, and allow for, this fact.





INTRODUCTION

The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as the
motives which led to their inception, are unique.  They are a series
of stories based upon historical records, from the pen of Alexandre
Dumas, pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author of
D'Artagnan or Monte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and a
lion in the literary set and world of fashion.

Dumas, in fact, wrote his 'Crimes Celebres' just prior to launching
upon his wonderful series of historical novels, and they may
therefore be considered as source books, whence he was to draw so
much of that far-reaching and intimate knowledge of inner history
which has perennially astonished his readers.  The Crimes were
published in Paris, in 1839-40, in eight volumes, comprising eighteen
titles--all of which now appear in the present carefully translated
text.  The success of the original work was instantaneous.  Dumas
laughingly said that he thought he had exhausted the subject of
famous crimes, until the work was off the press, when he immediately
became deluged with letters from every province in France, supplying
him with material upon other deeds of violence!  The subjects which
he has chosen, however, are of both historic and dramatic importance,
and they have the added value of giving the modern reader a clear
picture of the state of semi-lawlessness which existed in Europe,
during the middle ages.  "The Borgias, the Cenci, Urbain Grandier,
the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, the Marchioness of Ganges, and the
rest--what subjects for the pen of Dumas!" exclaims Garnett.

Space does not permit us to consider in detail the material here
collected, although each title will be found to present points of
special interest.  The first volume comprises the annals of the
Borgias and the Cenci.  The name of the noted and notorious
Florentine family has become a synonym for intrigue and violence, and
yet the Borgias have not been without stanch defenders in history.

Another famous Italian story is that of the Cenci.  The beautiful
Beatrice Cenci--celebrated in the painting of Guido, the sixteenth
century romance of Guerrazi, and the poetic tragedy of Shelley, not
to mention numerous succeeding works inspired by her hapless fate--
will always remain a shadowy figure and one of infinite pathos.

The second volume chronicles the sanguinary deeds in the south of
France, carried on in the name of religion, but drenching in blood
the fair country round about Avignon, for a long period of years.

The third volume is devoted to the story of Mary Queen of Scots,
another woman who suffered a violent death, and around whose name an
endless controversy has waged.  Dumas goes carefully into the dubious
episodes of her stormy career, but does not allow these to blind his
sympathy for her fate.  Mary, it should be remembered, was closely
allied to France by education and marriage, and the French never
forgave Elizabeth the part she played in the tragedy.

The fourth volume comprises three widely dissimilar tales.  One of
the strangest stories is that of Urbain Grandier, the innocent victim
of a cunning and relentless religious plot.  His story was dramatised
by Dumas, in 1850.  A famous German crime is that of Karl-Ludwig
Sand, whose murder of Kotzebue, Councillor of the Russian Legation,
caused an international upheaval which was not to subside for many
years.

An especially interesting volume is number six, containing, among
other material, the famous "Man in the Iron Mask."  This unsolved
puzzle of history was later incorporated by Dumas in one of the
D'Artagnan Romances a section of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, to which
it gave its name.  But in this later form, the true story of this
singular man doomed to wear an iron vizor over his features during
his entire lifetime could only be treated episodically.  While as a
special subject in the Crimes, Dumas indulges his curiosity, and that
of his reader, to the full.  Hugo's unfinished tragedy,'Les Jumeaux',
is on the same subject; as also are others by Fournier, in French,
and Zschokke, in German.

Other stories can be given only passing mention.  The beautiful
poisoner, Marquise de Brinvilliers, must have suggested to Dumas his
later portrait of Miladi, in the Three Musketeers, the mast
celebrated of his woman characters.  The incredible cruelties of Ali
Pacha, the Turkish despot, should not be charged entirely to Dumas,
as he is said to have been largely aided in this by one of his
"ghosts," Mallefille.

"Not a mere artist"--writes M. de Villemessant, founder of the
Figaro,--"he has nevertheless been able to seize on those dramatic
effects which have so much distinguished his theatrical career, and
to give those sharp and distinct reproductions of character which
alone can present to the reader the mind and spirit of an age.  Not a
mere historian, he has nevertheless carefully consulted the original
sources of information, has weighed testimonies, elicited theories,
and .  .  .  has interpolated the poetry of history with its most
thorough prose."






THE BORGIAS

PROLOGUE

On the 8th of April, 1492, in a bedroom of the Carneggi Palace, about
three miles from Florence, were three men grouped about a bed whereon
a fourth lay dying.

The first of these three men, sitting at the foot of the bed, and
half hidden, that he might conceal his tears, in the gold-brocaded
curtains, was Ermolao Barbaro, author of the treatise 'On Celibacy',
and of 'Studies in Pliny': the year before, when he was at Rome in
the capacity of ambassador of the Florentine Republic, he had been
appointed Patriarch of Aquileia by Innocent VIII.

The second, who was kneeling and holding one hand of the dying man
between his own, was Angelo Poliziano, the Catullus of the fifteenth
century, a classic of the lighter sort, who in his Latin verses might
have been mistaken for a poet of the Augustan age.

The third, who was standing up and leaning against one of the twisted
columns of the bed-head, following with profound sadness the progress
of the malady which he read in the face of his departing friend, was
the famous Pico della Mirandola, who at the age of twenty could speak
twenty-two languages, and who had offered to reply in each of these
languages to any seven hundred questions that might be put to him by
the twenty most learned men in the whole world, if they could be
assembled at Florence.

The man on the bed was Lorenzo the Magnificent, who at the beginning
of the year had been attacked by a severe and deep-seated fever, to
which was added the gout, a hereditary ailment in his family.  He had
found at last that the draughts containing dissolved pearls which the
quack doctor, Leoni di Spoleto, prescribed for him (as if he desired
to adapt his remedies rather to the riches of his patient than to his
necessities) were useless and unavailing, and so he had come to
understand that he must part from those gentle-tongued women of his,
those sweet-voiced poets, his palaces and their rich hangings;
therefore he had summoned to give him absolution for his sins--in a
man of less high place they might perhaps have been called crimes--
the Dominican, Giralamo Francesco Savonarola.

It was not, however, without an inward fear, against which the
praises of his friends availed nothing, that the pleasure-seeker and
usurper awaited that severe and gloomy preacher by whose word's all
Florence was stirred, and on whose pardon henceforth depended all his
hope far another world.

Indeed, Savonarola was one of those men of stone, coming, like the
statue of the Commandante, to knock at the door of a Don Giovanni,
and in the midst of feast and orgy to announce that it is even now
the moment to begin to think of Heaven.  He had been barn at Ferrara,
whither his family, one of the most illustrious of Padua, had been
called by Niccolo, Marchese d'Este, and at the age of twenty-three,
summoned by an irresistible vocation, had fled from his father's
house, and had taken the vows in the cloister of Dominican monks at
Florence.  There, where he was appointed by his superiors to give
lessons in philosophy, the young novice had from the first to battle
against the defects of a voice that was both harsh and weak, a
defective pronunciation, and above all, the depression of his
physical powers, exhausted as they were by too severe abstinence.

Savonarala from that time condemned himself to the most absolute
seclusion, and disappeared in the depths of his convent, as if the
slab of his tomb had already fallen over him.  There, kneeling on the
flags, praying unceasingly before a wooden crucifix, fevered by
vigils and penances, he soon passed out of contemplation into
ecstasy, and began to feel in himself that inward prophetic impulse
which summoned him to preach the reformation of the Church.

Nevertheless, the reformation of Savonarola, more reverential than
Luther's, which followed about five-and-twenty years later, respected
the thing while attacking the man, and had as its aim the altering of
teaching that was human, not faith that was of God.  He did not work,
like the German monk, by reasoning, but by enthusiasm.  With him
logic always gave way before inspiration: he was not a theologian,
but a prophet.  Yet, although hitherto he had bowed his head before
the authority of the Church, he had already raised it against the
temporal power.  To him religion and liberty appeared as two virgins
equally sacred; so that, in his view, Lorenzo in subjugating the one
was as culpable as Pope Innocent VIII in dishonouring the other.  The
result of this was that, so long as Lorenzo lived in riches,
happiness, and magnificence, Savonarola had never been willing,
whatever entreaties were made, to sanction by his presence a power
which he considered illegitimate.  But Lorenzo on his deathbed sent
for him, and that was another matter.  The austere preacher set forth
at once, bareheaded and barefoot, hoping to save not only the soul of
the dying man but also the liberty of the republic.

Lorenzo, as we have said, was awaiting the arrival of Savonarola with
an impatience mixed with uneasiness; so that, when he heard the sound
of his steps, his pale face took a yet more deathlike tinge, while at
the same time he raised himself on his elbow and ordered his three
friends to go away.  They obeyed at once, and scarcely had they left
by one door than the curtain of the other was raised, and the monk,
pale, immovable, solemn, appeared on the threshold.  When he
perceived him, Lorenzo dei Medici, reading in his marble brow the
inflexibility of a statue, fell back on his bed, breathing a sigh so
profound that one might have supposed it was his last.

The monk glanced round the room as though to assure himself that he
was really alone with the dying man; then he advanced with a slow and
solemn step towards the bed.  Lorenzo watched his approach with
terror; then, when he was close beside him, he cried:

"O my father, I have been a very great sinner!"

"The mercy of God is infinite," replied the monk; "and I come into
your presence laden with the divine mercy."

"You believe, then, that God will forgive my sins?" cried the dying
man, renewing his hope as he heard from the lips of the monk such
unexpected words.

"Your sins and also your crimes, God will forgive them all," replied
Savonarola.  "God will forgive your vanities, your adulterous
pleasures, your obscene festivals; so much for your sins.  God will
forgive you for promising two thousand florins reward to the man who
should bring you the head of Dietisalvi, Nerone Nigi, Angelo
Antinori, Niccalo Soderini, and twice the money if they were handed
over alive; God will forgive you for dooming to the scaffold or the
gibbet the son of Papi Orlandi, Francesco di Brisighella, Bernardo
Nardi, Jacopo Frescobaldi, Amoretto Baldovinetti, Pietro Balducci,
Bernardo di Banding, Francesco Frescobaldi, and more than three
hundred others whose names were none the less dear to Florence
because they were less renowned; so much far your crimes."  And at
each of these names which Savonarala pronounced slowly, his eyes
fixed on the dying man, he replied with a groan which proved the
monk's memory to be only too true.  Then at last, when he had
finished, Lorenzo asked in a doubtful tone:

"Then do you believe, my father, that God will forgive me everything,
both my sins and my crimes?"

"Everything," said Savonarola, "but on three conditions."

"What are they?" asked the dying man.

"The first," said Savonarola, "is that you feel a complete faith in
the power and the mercy of God."

"My father," replied Lorenzo eagerly, "I feel this faith in the very
depths of my heart."

"The second," said Savonarola, "is that you give back the property of
others which you have unjustly confiscated and kept."

"My father, shall I have time?" asked the dying man.

"God will give it to you," replied the monk.

Lorenzo shut his eyes, as though to reflect more at his ease; then,
after a moment's silence, he replied:

"Yes, my father, I will do it."

"The third," resumed Savonarola, "is that you restore to the republic
her ancient independence end her farmer liberty."

Lorenzo sat up on his bed, shaken by a convulsive movement, and
questioned with his eyes the eyes of the Dominican, as though he
would find out if he had deceived himself and not heard aright.
Savonarola repeated the same words.

"Never! never!" exclaimed Lorenzo, falling back on his bed and
shaking his head,--"never!"

The monk, without replying a single word, made a step to withdraw.

"My father, my father," said the dying man, "do not leave me thus:
have pity on me!"

"Have pity on Florence," said the monk.

"But, my father," cried Lorenzo, "Florence is free, Florence is
happy."

"Florence is a slave, Florence is poor," cried Savonarola, "poor in
genius, poor in money, and poor in courage; poor in genius, because
after you, Lorenzo, will come your son Piero; poor in money, because
from the funds of the republic you have kept up the magnificence of
your family and the credit of your business houses; poor in courage,
because you have robbed the rightful magistrates of the authority
which was constitutionally theirs, and diverted the citizens from the
double path of military and civil life, wherein, before they were
enervated by your luxuries, they had displayed the virtues of the
ancients; and therefore, when the day shall dawn which is not far
distant," continued the mark, his eyes fixed and glowing as if he
were reading in the future, "whereon the barbarians shall descend
from the mountains, the walls of our towns, like those of Jericho,
shall fall at the blast of their trumpets."

"And do you desire that I should yield up on my deathbed the power
that has made the glory of my whole life?" cried Lorenzo dei Medici.

"It is not I who desire it; it is the Lord," replied Savonarola
coldly.

"Impossible, impossible!" murmured Lorenzo.

"Very well; then die as you have lived!" cried the monk, "in the
midst of your courtiers and flatterers; let them ruin your soul as
they have ruined your body!  "And at these words, the austere
Dominican, without listening to the cries of the dying man, left the
room as he had entered it, with face and step unaltered; far above
human things he seemed to soar, a spirit already detached from the
earth.

At the cry which broke from Lorenzo dei Medici when he saw him
disappear, Ermolao, Poliziano, and Pico delta Mirandola, who had
heard all, returned into the room, and found their friend
convulsively clutching in his arms a magnificent crucifix which he
had just taken dawn from the bed-head.  In vain did they try to
reassure him with friendly words.  Lorenzo the Magnificent only
replied with sobs; and one hour after the scene which we have just
related, his lips clinging to the feet of the Christ, he breathed his
last in the arms of these three men, of whom the most fortunate--
though all three were young--was not destined to survive him more
than two years.  "Since his death was to bring about many
calamities," says Niccolo Macchiavelli, "it was the will of Heaven to
show this by omens only too certain: the dome of the church of Santa
Regarata was struck by lightning, and Roderigo Borgia was elected
pope."




CHAPTER I

Towards the end of the fifteenth century--that is to say, at the
epoch when our history opens the Piazza of St. Peter's at Rome was
far from presenting so noble an aspect as that which is offered in
our own day to anyone who approaches it by the Piazza dei Rusticucci.

In fact, the Basilica of Constantine existed no longer, while that of
Michael Angelo, the masterpiece of thirty popes, which cost the
labour of three centuries and the expense of two hundred and sixty
millions, existed not yet.  The ancient edifice, which had lasted for
eleven hundred and forty-five years, had been threatening to fall in
about 1440, and Nicholas V, artistic forerunner of Julius II and Leo
X, had had it pulled down, together with the temple of Probus Anicius
which adjoined it.  In their place he had had the foundations of a
new temple laid by the architects Rossellini and Battista Alberti;
but some years later, after the death of Nicholas V, Paul II, the
Venetian, had not been able to give more than five thousand crowns to
continue the project of his predecessor, and thus the building was
arrested when it had scarcely risen above the ground, and presented
the appearance of a still-born edifice, even sadder than that of a
ruin.

As to the piazza itself, it had not yet, as the reader will
understand from the foregoing explanation, either the fine colonnade
of Bernini, or the dancing fountains, or that Egyptian obelisk which,
according to Pliny, was set up by the Pharaoh at Heliopolis, and
transferred to Rome by Caligula, who set it up in Nero's Circus,
where it remained till 1586.  Now, as Nero's Circus was situate on
the very ground where St.  Peter's now stands, and the base of this
obelisk covered the actual site where the vestry now is, it looked
like a gigantic needle shooting up from the middle of truncated
columns, walls of unequal height, and half-carved stones.

On the right of this building, a ruin from its cradle, arose the
Vatican, a splendid Tower of Babel, to which all the celebrated
architects of the Roman school contributed their work for a thousand
years: at this epoch the two magnificent chapels did not exist, nor
the twelve great halls, the two-and-twenty courts, the thirty
staircases, and the two thousand bedchambers; for Pope Sixtus V, the
sublime swineherd, who did so many things in a five years' reign, had
not yet been able to add the immense building which on the eastern
side towers above the court of St. Damasius; still, it was truly the
old sacred edifice, with its venerable associations, in which
Charlemagne received hospitality when he was crowned emperor by Pope
Leo III.

All the same, on the 9th of August, 1492, the whole of Rome, from the
People's Gate to the Coliseum and from the Baths of Diocletian to the
castle of Sant' Angelo, seemed to have made an appointment on this
piazza: the multitude thronging it was so great as to overflow into
all the neighbouring streets, which started from this centre like the
rays of a star.  The crowds of people, looking like a motley moving
carpet, were climbing up into the basilica, grouping themselves upon
the stones, hanging on the columns, standing up against the walls;
they entered by the doors of houses and reappeared at the windows, so
numerous and so densely packed that one might have said each window
was walled up with heads.  Now all this multitude had its eyes fixed
on one single point in the Vatican; for in the Vatican was the
Conclave, and as Innocent VIII had been dead for sixteen days, the
Conclave was in the act of electing a pope.

Rome is the town of elections: since her foundation down to our own
day--that is to say, in the course of nearly twenty-six centuries--
she has constantly elected her kings, consuls, tribunes, emperors,
and popes: thus Rome during the days of Conclave appears to be
attacked by a strange fever which drives everyone to the Vatican or
to Monte Cavallo, according as the scarlet-robed assembly is held in
one or the other of these two palaces: it is, in fact, because the
raising up of a new pontiff is a great event far everybody; for,
according to the average established in the period between St. Peter
and Gregory XVI, every pope lasts about eight years, and these eight
years, according to the character of the man who is elected, are a
period either of tranquillity or of disorder, of justice or of
venality, of peace or of war.

Never perhaps since the day when the first successor of St. Peter
took his seat on the, pontifical throne until the interregnum which
now occurred, had so great an agitation been shown as there was at
this moment, when, as we have shown, all these people were thronging
on the Piazza of St. Peter and in the streets which led to it.  It is
true that this was not without reason; for Innocent VIII--who was
called the father of his people because he had added to his subjects
eight sons and the same number of daughters--had, as we have said,
after living a life of self-indulgence, just died, after a death-
struggle during which, if the journal of Stefano Infessura may be
believed, two hundred and twenty murders were committed in the
streets of Rome.  The authority had then devolved in the customary
way upon the Cardinal Camerlengo, who during the interregnum had
sovereign powers; but as he had been obliged to fulfil all the duties
of his office--that is, to get money coined in his name and bearing
his arms, to take the fisherman's ring from the finger of the dead
pope, to dress, shave and paint him, to have the corpse embalmed, to
lower the coffin after nine days' obsequies into the provisional
niche where the last deceased pope has to remain until his successor
comes to take his place and consign him to his final tomb; lastly, as
he had been obliged to wall up the door of the Conclave and the
window of the balcony from which the pontifical election is
proclaimed, he had not had a single moment for busying himself with
the police; so that the assassinations had continued in goodly
fashion, and there were loud cries for an energetic hand which should
make all these swords and all these daggers retire into their
sheaths.

Now the eyes of this multitude were fixed, as we have said, upon the
Vatican, and particularly upon one chimney, from which would come the
first signal, when suddenly, at the moment of the 'Ave Maria'--that
is to say, at the hour when the day begins to decline--great cries
went up from all the crowd mixed with bursts of laughter, a
discordant murmur of threats and raillery, the cause being that they
had just perceived at the top of the chimney a thin smoke, which
seemed like a light cloud to go up perpendicularly into the sky.
This smoke announced that Rome was still without a master, and that
the world still had no pope; for this was the smoke of the voting
tickets which were being burned, a proof that the cardinals had not
yet come to an agreement.

Scarcely had this smoke appeared, to vanish almost immediately, when
all the innumerable crowd, knowing well that there was nothing else
to wait for, and that all was said and done until ten o'clock the
next morning, the time when the cardinals had their first voting,
went off in a tumult of noisy joking, just as they would after the
last rocket of a firework display; so that at the end of one minute
nobody was there where a quarter of an hour before there had been an
excited crowd, except a few curious laggards, who, living in the
neighbourhood or on the very piazza itself; were less in a hurry than
the rest to get back to their homes; again, little by little, these
last groups insensibly diminished; for half-past nine had just
struck, and at this hour the streets of Rome began already to be far
from safe; then after these groups followed some solitary passer-by,
hurrying his steps; one after another the doors were closed, one
after another the windows were darkened; at last, when ten o'clock
struck, with the single exception of one window in the Vatican where
a lamp might be seen keeping obstinate vigil, all the houses,
piazzas, and streets were plunged in the deepest obscurity.

At this moment a man wrapped in a cloak stood up like a ghost against
one of the columns of the uncompleted basilica, and gliding slowly
and carefully among the stones which were lying about round the
foundations of the new church, advanced as far as the fountain which,
formed the centre of the piazza, erected in the very place where the
obelisk is now set up of which we have spoken already; when he
reached this spot he stopped, doubly concealed by the darkness of the
night and by the shade of the monument, and after looking around him
to see if he were really alone, drew his sword, and with its point
rapping three times on the pavement of the piazza, each time made the
sparks fly.  This signal, for signal it was, was not lost: the last
lamp which still kept vigil in the Vatican went out, and at the same
instant an object thrown out of the window fell a few paces off from
the young man in the cloak: he, guided by the silvery sound it had
made in touching the flags, lost no time in laying his hands upon it
in spite of the darkness, and when he had it in his possession
hurried quickly away.

Thus the unknown walked without turning round half-way along the
Borgo Vecchio; but there he turned to the right and took a street at
the other end of which was set up a Madonna with a lamp: he
approached the light, and drew from his pocket the object he had
picked up, which was nothing else than a Roman crown piece; but this
crown unscrewed, and in a cavity hollowed in its thickness enclosed a
letter, which the man to whom it was addressed began to read at the
risk of being recognised, so great was his haste to know what it
contained.

We say at the risk of being recognised, for in his eagerness the
recipient of this nocturnal missive had thrown back the hood of his
cloak; and as his head was wholly within the luminous circle cast by
the lamp, it was easy to distinguish in the light the head of a
handsome young man of about five or six and twenty, dressed in a
purple doublet slashed at the shoulder and elbow to let the shirt
come through, and wearing on his head a cap of the same colour with a
long black feather falling to his shoulder.  It is true that he did
not stand there long; for scarcely had he finished the letter, or
rather the note, which he had just received in so strange and
mysterious a manner, when he replaced it in its silver receptacle,
and readjusting his cloak so as to hide all the lower part of his
face, resumed his walk with a rapid step, crossed Borgo San Spirito,
and took the street of the Longara, which he followed as far as the
church of Regina Coeli.  When he arrived at this place, he gave three
rapid knocks on the door of a house of good appearance, which
immediately opened; then slowly mounting the stairs he entered a room
where two women were awaiting him with an impatience so unconcealed
that both as they saw him exclaimed together:

"Well, Francesco, what news?"

"Good news, my mother; good, my sister," replied the young man,
kissing the one and giving his hand to the other.  "Our father has
gained three votes to-day, but he still needs six to have the
majority."

"Then is there no means of buying them?" cried the elder of the two
women, while the younger, instead of speaking, asked him with a look.

"Certainly, my mother, certainly," replied the young man; "and it is
just about that that my father has been thinking.  He is giving
Cardinal Orsini his palace at Rome and his two castles of Monticello
and Soriano; to Cardinal Colanna his abbey of Subiaca; he gives
Cardinal Sant' Angelo the bishopric of Porto, with the furniture and
cellar; to the Cardinal of Parma the town of Nepi; to the Cardinal of
Genoa the church of Santa Maria-in-Via-Lata; and lastly, to Cardinal
Savelli the church of Santa Maria Maggiore and the town of Civita
Castellana; as to Cardinal Ascanio-Sforza, he knows already that the
day before yesterday we sent to his house four mules laden with
silver and plate, and out of this treasure he has engaged to give
five thousand ducats to the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice."

"But how shall we get the others to know the intentions of Roderigo?"
asked the elder of the two women.

"My father has provided for everything, and proposes an easy method;
you know, my mother, with what sort of ceremonial the cardinals'
dinner is carried in."

"Yes, on a litter, in a large basket with the arms of the cardinal
far whom the meal is prepared."

"My father has bribed the bishop who examines it: to-morrow is a
feast-day; to the Cardinals Orsini, Colonna, Savelli, Sant' Angelo,
and the Cardinals of Parma and of Genoa, chickens will be sent for
hot meat, and each chicken will contain a deed of gift duly drawn up,
made by me in my father's name, of the houses, palaces, or churches
which are destined for each."

"Capital!" said the elder of the two women; "now, I am certain, all
will go well."

"And by the grace of God," added the younger, with a strangely
mocking smile, "our father will be pope."

"Oh, it will be a fine day for us!" cried Francesco.

"And for Christendom," replied his sister, with a still more ironical
expression.

"Lucrezia, Lucrezia," said the mother, "you do not deserve the
happiness which is coming to us."

"What does that matter, if it comes all the same?  Besides, you know
the proverb; mother: 'Large families are blessed of the Lord'; and
still more so our family, which is so patriarchal."

At the same time she cast on her brother a look so wanton that the
young man blushed under it: but as at the moment he had to think of
other things than his illicit loves, he ordered that four servants
should be awakened; and while they were getting armed to accompany
him, he drew up and signed the six deeds of gift which were to be
carried the next day to the cardinals; for, not wishing to be seen at
their houses, he thought he would profit by the night-time to carry
them himself to certain persons in his confidence who would have them
passed in, as had been arranged, at the dinner-hour.  Then, when the
deeds were quite ready and the servants also, Francesco went out with
them, leaving the two women to dream golden dreams of their future
greatness.

From the first dawn of day the people hurried anew, as ardent and
interested as on the evening before, to the Piazza of the Vatican,
where; at the ordinary time, that is, at ten o'clock in the morning,
--the smoke rose again as usual, evoking laughter and murmuring, as
it announced that none of the cardinals had secured the majority.  A
report, however, began to be spread about that the chances were
divided between three candidates, who were Roderigo Borgia, Giuliano
delta Rovera, and Ascanio Sforza; for the people as yet knew nothing
of the four mules laden with plate and silver which had been led to
Sforza's house, by reason of which he had given up his own votes to
his rival.  In the midst of the agitation excited in the crowd by
this new report a solemn chanting was heard; it proceeded from a
procession, led by the Cardinal Camerlengo, with the object of
obtaining from Heaven the speedy election of a pope: this procession,
starting from the church of Ara Coeli at the Capitol, was to make
stations before the principal Madannas and the most frequented
churches.  As soon as the silver crucifix was perceived which went in
front, the most profound silence prevailed, and everyone fell on his
knees; thus a supreme calm followed the tumult and uproar which had
been heard a few minutes before, and which at each appearance of the
smoke had assumed a more threatening character: there was a shrewd
suspicion that the procession, as well as having a religious end in
view, had a political object also, and that its influence was
intended to be as great on earth as in heaven.  In any case, if such
had been the design of the Cardinal Camerlengo, he had not deceived
himself, and the effect was what he desired: when the procession had
gone past, the laughing and joking continued, but the cries and
threats had completely ceased.

The whole day passed thus; for in Rome nobody works.  You are either
a cardinal or a lacquey, and you live, nobody knows how.  The crowd
was still extremely numerous, when, towards two o'clock in the
afternoon, another procession, which had quite as much power of
provoking noise as the first of imposing silence, traversed in its
turn the Piazza of St. Peter's: this was the dinner procession.  The
people received it with the usual bursts of laughter, without
suspecting, for all their irreverence, that this procession, more
efficacious than the former, had just settled the election of the new
pope.

The hour of the Ave Maria came as on the evening before; but, as on
the evening before, the waiting of the whole day was lost; for, as
half-past eight struck, the daily smoke reappeared at the top of the
chimney.  But when at the same moment rumours which came from the
inside of the Vatican were spread abroad, announcing that, in all
probability, the election would take place the next day, the good
people preserved their patience.  Besides, it had been very hot that
day, and they were so broken with fatigue and roasted by the sun,
these dwellers in shade and idleness, that they had no strength left
to complain.

The morning of the next day, which was the 11th of August, 1492,
arose stormy and dark; this did not hinder the multitude from
thronging the piazzas, streets, doors, houses, churches.  Moreover,
this disposition of the weather was a real blessing from Heaven; for
if there were heat, at least there would be no sun.  Towards nine
o'clock threatening storm-clouds were heaped up over all the
Trastevere; but to this crowd what mattered rain, lightning, or
thunder?  They were preoccupied with a concern of a very different
nature; they were waiting for their pope: a promise had been made
them for to-day, and it could be seen by the manner of all, that if
the day should pass without any election taking place, the end of it
might very well be a riot; therefore, in proportion as the time
advanced, the agitation grew greater.  Nine o'clock, half-past nine,
a quarter to ten struck, without anything happening to confirm or
destroy their hopes.  At last the first stroke of ten was heard; all
eyes turned towards the chimney: ten o'clock struck slowly, each
stroke vibrating in the heart of the multitude.  At last the tenth
stroke trembled, then vanished shuddering into space, and, a great
cry breaking simultaneously frog a hundred thousand breasts followed
the silence "Non v'e fumo!  There is no smoke!" In other words, "We
have a pope."

At this moment the rain began to fall; but no one paid any attention
to it, so great were the transports of joy and impatience among all
the people.  At last a little stone was detached from the walled
window which gave on the balcony and upon which all eyes were fixed:
a general shout saluted its fall; little by little the aperture grew
larger, and in a few minutes it was large enough to allow a man to
come out on the balcony.

The Cardinal Ascanio Sforza appeared; but at the moment when he was
on the point of coming out, frightened by the rain and the lightning,
he hesitated an instant, and finally drew back: immediately the
multitude in their turn broke out like a tempest into cries, curses,
howls, threatening to tear down the Vatican and to go and seek their
pope themselves.  At this noise Cardinal Sforza, more terrified by
the popular storm than by the storm in the heavens, advanced on the
balcony, and between two thunderclaps, in a moment of silence
astonishing to anyone who had just heard the clamour that went
before, made the following proclamation:

"I announce to you a great joy: the most Eminent and most Reverend
Signor Roderigo Lenzuolo Borgia, Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal-
Deacon of San Nicolao-in-Carcere, Vice-Chancellor of the Church, has
now been elected Page, and has assumed the name of Alexander VI."

The news of this nomination was received with strange joy.  Roderigo
Borgia had the reputation of a dissolute man, it is true, but
libertinism had mounted the throne with Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII,
so that for the Romans there was nothing new in the singular
situation of a pope with a mistress and five children.  The great
thing for the moment was that the power fell into strong hands; and
it was more important for the tranquillity of Rome that the new pope
inherited the sword of St. Paul than that he inherited the keys of
St. Peter.

And so, in the feasts that were given on this occasion, the dominant
character was much more warlike than religious, and would have
appeared rather to suit with the election of some young conqueror
than the exaltation of an old pontiff: there was no limit to the
pleasantries and prophetic epigrams on the name of Alexander, which
for the second time seemed to promise the Romans the empire of the
world; and the same evening, in the midst of brilliant illuminations
and bonfires, which seemed to turn the town into a lake of flame, the
following epigram was read, amid the acclamation of the people:

    "Rome under Caesar's rule in ancient story
     At home and o'er the world victorious trod;
     But Alexander still extends his glory:
     Caesar was man, but Alexander God."

As to the new pope, scarcely had he completed the formalities of
etiquette which his exaltation imposed upon him, and paid to each man
the price of his simony, when from the height of the Vatican he cast
his eyes upon Europe, a vast political game of chess, which he
cherished the hope of directing at the will of his own genius.




CHAPTER II

The world had now arrived at one of those supreme moments of history
when every thing is transformed between the end of one period and the
beginning of another: in the East Turkey, in the South Spain, in the
West France, and in the North German, all were going to assume,
together with the title of great Powers, that influence which they
were destined to exert in the future over the secondary States.
Accordingly we too, with Alexander VI, will cast a rapid glance over
them, and see what were their respective situations in regard to
Italy, which they all coveted as a prize.

Constantine, Palaeologos Dragozes, besieged by three hundred thousand
Turks, after having appealed in vain for aid to the whole of
Christendom, had not been willing to survive the loss of his empire,
and had been found in the midst of the dead, close to the Tophana
Gate; and on the 30th of May, 1453, Mahomet II had made his entry
into Constantinople, where, after a reign which had earned for him
the surname of 'Fatile', or the Conqueror, he had died leaving two
sons, the elder of whom had ascended the throne under the name of
Bajazet II.

The accession of the new sultan, however, had not taken place with
the tranquillity which his right as elder brother and his father's
choice of him should have promised.  His younger brother, D'jem,
better known under the name of Zizimeh, had argued that whereas he
was born in the purple--that is, born during the reign of Mahomet--
Bajazet was born prior to his epoch, and was therefore the son of a
private individual.  This was rather a poor trick; but where force is
all and right is naught, it was good enough to stir up a war.  The
two brothers, each at the head of an army, met accordingly in Asia in
1482.  D'jem was defeated after a seven hours' fight, and pursued by
his brother, who gave him no time to rally his army: he was obliged
to embark from Cilicia, and took refuge in Rhodes, where he implored
the protection of the Knights of St. John.  They, not daring to give
him an asylum in their island so near to Asia, sent him to France,
where they had him carefully guarded in one of their commanderies, in
spite of the urgency of Cait Bey, Sultan of Egypt, who, having
revolted against Bajazet, desired to have the young prince in his
army to give his rebellion the appearance of legitimate warfare.  The
same demand, moreover, with the same political object, had been made
successively by Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, by Ferdinand, King
of Aragon and Sicily, and by Ferdinand, King of Naples.

On his side Bajazet, who knew all the importance of such a rival, if
he once allied himself with any one of the princes with whom he was
at war, had sent ambassadors to Charles VIII, offering, if he would
consent to keep D'jem with him, to give him a considerable pension,
and to give to France the sovereignty of the Holy Land, so soon as
Jerusalem should be conquered by the Sultan of Egypt.  The King of
France had accepted these terms.

But then Innocent VIII had intervened, and in his turn had claimed
D'jem, ostensibly to give support by the claims of the refugee to a
crusade which he was preaching against the Turks, but in reality to
appropriate the pension of 40,000 ducats to be given by Bajazet to
any one of the Christian princes who would undertake to be his
brother's gaoler.  Charles VIII had not dared to refuse to the
spiritual head of Christendom a request supported by such holy
reasons; and therefore D'jem had quitted France, accompanied by the
Grand Master d'Aubusson, under whose direct charge he was; but his
guardian had consented, for the sake of a cardinal's hat, to yield up
his prisoner.  Thus, on the 13th of March, 1489, the unhappy young
man, cynosure of so many interested eyes, made his solemn entry into
Rome, mounted on a superb horse, clothed in a magnificent oriental
costume, between the Prior of Auvergne, nephew of the Grand Master
d'Aubusson, and Francesco Cibo, the son of the pope.

After this he had remained there, and Bajazet, faithful to promises
which it was so much his interest to fulfil, had punctually paid to
the sovereign pontiff a pension of 40,000 ducats.

So much for Turkey.

Ferdinand and Isabella were reigning in Spain, and were laying the
foundations of that vast power which was destined, five-and-twenty
years later, to make Charles V declare that the sun never set on his
dominions.  In fact, these two sovereigns, on whom history has
bestowed the name of Catholic, had reconquered in succession nearly
all Spain, and driven the Moors out of Granada, their last
entrenchment; while two men of genius, Bartolome Diaz and Christopher
Columbus, had succeeded, much to the profit of Spain, the one in
recovering a lost world, the other in conquering a world yet unknown.
They had accordingly, thanks to their victories in the ancient world
and their discoveries in the new, acquired an influence at the court
of Rome which had never been enjoyed by any of their predecessors.

So much for Spain.

In France, Charles VIII had succeeded his father, Louis XI, on the
30th of August, 1483.  Louis by dint of executions, had tranquillised
his kingdom and smoothed the way for a child who ascended the throne
under the regency of a woman.  And the regency had been a glorious
one, and had put down the pretensions of princes of the blood, put an
end to civil wars, and united to the crown all that yet remained of
the great independent fiefs.  The result was that at the epoch where
we now are, here was Charles VIII, about twenty-two years of age, a
prince (if we are to believe La Tremouille) little of body but great
of heart; a child (if we are to believe Commines) only now making his
first flight from the nest, destitute of both sense and money, feeble
in person, full of self-will, and consorting rather with fools than
with the wise; lastly, if we are to believe Guicciardini, who was an
Italian, might well have brought a somewhat partial judgment to bear
upon the subject, a young man of little wit concerning the actions of
men, but carried away by an ardent desire for rule and the
acquisition of glory, a desire based far more on his shallow
character and impetuosity than on any consciousness of genius: he was
an enemy to all fatigue and all business, and when he tried to give
his attention to it he showed himself always totally wanting in
prudence and judgment.  If anything in him appeared at first sight to
be worthy of praise, on a closer inspection it was found to be
something nearer akin to vice than to virtue.  He was liberal, it is
true, but without thought, with no measure and no discrimination.  He
was sometimes inflexible in will; but this was through obstinacy
rather than a constant mind; and what his flatterers called goodness
deserved far more the name of insensibility to injuries or poverty of
spirit.

As to his physical appearance, if we are to believe the same author,
it was still less admirable, and answered marvellously to his
weakness of mind and character.  He was small, with a large head, a
short thick neck, broad chest, and high shoulders; his thighs and
legs were long and thin; and as his face also was ugly--and was only
redeemed by the dignity and force of his glance--and all his limbs
were disproportionate with one another, he had rather the appearance
of a monster than a man.  Such was he whom Fortune was destined to
make a conqueror, for whom Heaven was reserving more glory than he
had power to carry.

So much for France.

The Imperial throne was occupied by Frederic III, who had been
rightly named the Peaceful, not for the reason that he had always
maintained peace, but because, having constantly been beaten, he had
always been forced to make it.  The first proof he had given of this
very philosophical forbearance was during his journey to Rome,
whither he betook himself to be consecrated.  In crossing the
Apennines he was attacked by brigands.  They robbed him, but he made
no pursuit.  And so, encouraged by example and by the impunity of
lesser thieves, the greater ones soon took part in the robberies.
Amurath seized part of Hungary.  Mathias Corvinus took Lower Austria,
and Frederic consoled himself for these usurpations by repeating the
maxim, Forgetfulness is the best cure for the losses we suffer.  At
the time we have now reached, he had just, after a reign of fifty-
three years, affianced his son Maximilian to Marie of Burgundy and
had put under the ban of the Empire his son-in-law, Albert of
Bavaria, who laid claim to the ownership of the Tyrol.  He was
therefore too full of his family affairs to be troubled about Italy.
Besides, he was busy looking for a motto for the house of Austria, an
occupation of the highest importance for a man of the character of
Frederic III.  This motto, which Charles V was destined almost to
render true, was at last discovered, to the great joy of the old
emperor, who, judging that he had nothing more to do on earth after
he had given this last proof of sagacity, died on the 19th of August,
1493; leaving the empire to his son Maximilian.

This motto was simply founded on the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, the
initial letters of these five words

          "AUSTRIAE EST IMPERARE ORBI UNIVERSO."

This means

"It is the destiny of Austria to rule over the whole world."

So much for Germany.

Now that we have cast a glance over the four nations which were on
the way, as we said before, to become European Powers, let us turn
our attention to those secondary States which formed a circle more
contiguous to Rome, and whose business it was to serve as armour, so
to speak, to the spiritual queen of the world, should it please any
of these political giants whom we have described to make
encroachments with a view to an attack, on the seas or the mountains,
the Adriatic Gulf or the Alps, the Mediterranean or the Apennines.

These were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the magnificent
republic of Florence, and the most serene republic of Venice.

The kingdom of Naples was in the hands of the old Ferdinand, whose
birth was not only illegitimate, but probably also well within the
prohibited degrees.  His father, Alfonso of Aragon, received his
crown from Giovanna of Naples, who had adopted him as her successor.
But since, in the fear of having no heir, the queen on her deathbed
had named two instead of one, Alfonso had to sustain his rights
against Rene.  The two aspirants for some time disputed the crown.
At last the house of Aragon carried the day over the house of Anjou,
and in the course of the year 1442, Alfonso definitely secured his
seat on the throne.  Of this sort were the claims of the defeated
rival which we shall see Charles VIII maintaining later on.
Ferdinand had neither the courage nor the genius of his father, and
yet he triumphed over his enemies, one after another he had two
rivals, both far superior in merit to him self.  The one was his
nephew, the Count of Viana, who, basing his claim on his uncle's
shameful birth, commanded the whole Aragonese party; the other was
Duke John of Calabria, who commanded the whole Angevin party.  Still
he managed to hold the two apart, and to keep himself on the throne
by dint of his prudence, which often verged upon duplicity.  He had a
cultivated mind, and had studied the sciences--above all, law.  He
was of middle height, with a large handsome head, his brow open and
admirably framed in beautiful white hair, which fell nearly down to
his shoulders.  Moreover, though he had rarely exercised his physical
strength in arms, this strength was so great that one day, when he
happened to be on the square of the Mercato Nuovo at Naples, he
seized by the horns a bull that had escaped and stopped him short, in
spite of all the efforts the animal made to escape from his hands.
Now the election of Alexander had caused him great uneasiness, and in
spite of his usual prudence he had not been able to restrain himself
from saying before the bearer of the news that not only did he fail
to rejoice in this election, but also that he did not think that any
Christian could rejoice in it, seeing that Borgia, having always been
a bad man, would certainly make a bad pope.  To this he added that,
even were the choice an excellent one and such as would please
everybody else, it would be none the less fatal to the house of
Aragon, although Roderigo was born her subject and owed to her the
origin and progress of his fortunes; for wherever reasons of state
come in, the ties of blood and parentage are soon forgotten, and,
'a fortiori', relations arising from the obligations of nationality.

Thus, one may see that Ferdinand judged Alexander VI with his usual
perspicacity; this, however, did not hinder him, as we shall soon
perceive, from being the first to contract an alliance with him.

The duchy of Milan belonged nominally to John Galeazzo, grandson of
Francesco Sforza, who had seized it by violence on the 26th of
February, 1450, and bequeathed it to his son, Galeazzo Maria, father
of the young prince now reigning; we say nominally, because the real
master of the Milanese was at this period not the legitimate heir who
was supposed to possess it, but his uncle Ludovico, surnamed
'il Moro', because of the mulberry tree which he bore in his arms.
After being exiled with his two brothers, Philip who died of poison
in 1479, and Ascanio who became the cardinal, he returned to Milan
some days after the assassination of Galeazzo Maria, which took place
on the 26th of December 1476, in St.  Stephen's Church, and assumed
the regency for the young duke, who at that time was only eight years
old.  From now onward, even after his nephew had reached the age of
two-and-twenty, Ludovico continued to rule, and according to all
probabilities was destined to rule a long time yet; for, some days
after the poor young man had shown a desire to take the reins
himself, he had fallen sick, and it was said, and not in a whisper,
that he had taken one of those slow but mortal poisons of which
princes made so frequent a use at this period, that, even when a
malady was natural, a cause was always sought connected with some
great man's interests.  However it may have been, Ludovico had
relegated his nephew, now too weak to busy himself henceforward with
the affairs of his duchy, to the castle of Pavia, where he lay and
languished under the eyes of his wife Isabella, daughter of King
Ferdinand of Naples.

As to Ludovico, he was an ambitious man, full of courage and
astuteness, familiar with the sword and with poison, which he used
alternately, according to the occasion, without feeling any
repugnance or any predilection for either of them; but quite decided
to be his nephew's heir whether he died or lived.

Florence, although she had preserved the name of a republic, had
little by little lost all her liberties, and belonged in fact, if not
by right, to Piero dei Medici, to whom she had been bequeathed as a
paternal legacy by Lorenzo, as we have seen, at the risk of his
soul's salvation.

The son, unfortunately, was far from having the genius of his father:
he was handsome, it is true, whereas Lorenzo, on the contrary, was
remarkably ugly; he had an agreeable, musical voice, whereas Lorenzo
had always spoken through his nose; he was instructed in Latin and
Greek, his conversation was pleasant and easy, and he improvised
verses almost as well as the so-called Magnificent; but he was both
ignorant of political affairs and haughtily insolent in his behaviour
to those who had made them their study.  Added to this, he was an
ardent lover of pleasure, passionately addicted to women, incessantly
occupied with bodily exercises that should make him shine in their
eyes, above all with tennis, a game at which he very highly excelled:
he promised himself that, when the period of mourning was fast, he
would occupy the attention not only of Florence but of the whole of
Italy, by the splendour of his courts and the renown of his fetes.
Piero dei Medici had at any rate formed this plan; but Heaven decreed
otherwise.

As to the most serene republic of Venice, whose doge was Agostino
Barbarigo, she had attained, at the time we have reached, to her
highest degree of power and splendour.  From Cadiz to the Palus
Maeotis, there was no port that was not open to her thousand ships;
she possessed in Italy, beyond the coastline of the canals and the
ancient duchy of Venice, the provinces of Bergamo, Brescia, Crema,
Verona, Vicenza, and Padua; she owned the marches of Treviso, which
comprehend the districts of Feltre, Belluno, Cadore, Polesella of
Rovigo, and the principality of Ravenna; she also owned the Friuli,
except Aquileia; Istria, except Trieste; she owned, on the east side
of the Gulf, Zara, Spalatra, and the shore of Albania; in the Ionian
Sea, the islands of Zante and Corfu; in Greece, Lepanto and Patras;
in the Morea, Morone, Corone, Neapolis, and Argos; lastly, in the
Archipelago, besides several little towns and stations on the coast,
she owned Candia and the kingdom of Cyprus.

Thus from the mouth of the Po to the eastern extremity of the
Mediterranean, the most serene republic was mistress of the whole
coastline, and Italy and Greece seemed to be mere suburbs of Venice.

In the intervals of space left free between Naples, Milan, Florence,
and Venice, petty tyrants had arisen who exercised an absolute
sovereignty over their territories: thus the Colonnas were at Ostia
and at Nettuna, the Montefeltri at Urbino, the Manfredi at Faenza,
the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Malatesta family at Rimini, the
Vitelli at Citta di Castello, the Baglioni at Perugia, the Orsini at
Vicovaro, and the princes of Este at Ferrara.

Finally, in the centre of this immense circle, composed of great
Powers, of secondary States, and of little tyrannies, Rome was set on
high, the most exalted, yet the weakest of all, without influence,
without lands, without an army, without gold.  It was the concern of
the new pope to secure all this: let us see, therefore, what manner
of man was this Alexander VI, for undertaking and accomplishing such
a project.




CHAPTER III

RODERIGO LENZUOLO was barn at Valencia, in Spain, in 1430 or 1431,
and on his mother's side was descended, as some writers declare, of a
family of royal blood, which had cast its eyes on the tiara only
after cherishing hopes of the crowns of Aragon and Valencia.
Roderigo from his infancy had shown signs of a marvellous quickness
of mind, and as he grew older he exhibited an intelligence extremely
apt far the study of sciences, especially law and jurisprudence: the
result was that his first distinctions were gained in the law, a
profession wherein he soon made a great reputation by his ability in
the discussion of the most thorny cases.  All the same, he was not
slow to leave this career, and abandoned it quite suddenly far the
military profession, which his father had followed; but after various
actions which served to display his presence of mind and courage, he
was as much disgusted with this profession as with the other; and
since it happened that at the very time he began to feel this disgust
his father died, leaving a considerable fortune, he resolved to do no
more work, but to live according to his own fancies and caprices.
About this time he became the lover of a widow who had two daughters.
The widow dying, Roderigo took the girls under his protection, put
one into a convent, and as the other was one of the loveliest women
imaginable, made her his mistress.  This was the notorious Rosa
Vanozza, by whom he had five children--Francesco, Caesar, Lucrezia,
and Goffredo; the name of the fifth is unknown.

Roderigo, retired from public affairs, was given up entirely to the
affections of a lover and a father, when he heard that his uncle, who
loved him like a son, had been elected pope under the name of
Calixtus III.  But the young man was at this time so much a lover
that love imposed silence on ambition; and indeed he was almost
terrified at the exaltation of his uncle, which was no doubt destined
to force him once more into public life.  Consequently, instead of
hurrying to Rome, as anyone else in his place would have done, he was
content to indite to His Holiness a letter in which he begged for the
continuation of his favours, and wished him a long and happy reign.

This reserve on the part of one of his relatives, contrasted with the
ambitious schemes which beset the new pope at every step, struck
Calixtus III in a singular way: he knew the stuff that was in young
Roderigo, and at a time when he was besieged on all sides by
mediocrities, this powerful nature holding modestly aside gained new
grandeur in his eyes so he replied instantly to Roderigo that on the
receipt of his letter he must quit Spain for Italy, Valencia for
Rome.

This letter uprooted Roderigo from the centre of happiness he had
created for himself, and where he might perhaps have slumbered on
like an ordinary man, if fortune had not thus interposed to drag him
forcibly away.  Roderigo was happy, Roderigo was rich; the evil
passions which were natural to him had been, if not extinguished,--at
least lulled; he was frightened himself at the idea of changing the
quiet life he was leading for the ambitious, agitated career that was
promised him; and instead of obeying his uncle, he delayed the
preparations for departure, hoping that Calixtus would forget him.
It was not so: two months after he received the letter from the pope,
there arrived at Valencia a prelate from Rome, the bearer of
Roderigo's nomination to a benefice worth 20,000 ducats a year, and
also a positive order to the holder of the post to come and take
possession of his charge as soon as possible.

Holding back was no longer feasible: so Roderigo obeyed; but as he
did not wish to be separated from the source whence had sprung eight
years of happiness, Rosa Vanozza also left Spain, and while he was
going to Rome, she betook herself to Venice, accompanied by two
confidential servants, and under the protection of a Spanish
gentleman named Manuel Melchior.

Fortune kept the promises she had made to Roderigo: the pope received
him as a son, and made him successively Archbishop of Valencia,
Cardinal-Deacon, and Vice-Chancellor.  To all these favours Calixtus
added a revenue of 20,000 ducats, so that at the age of scarcely
thirty-five Roderigo found himself the equal of a prince in riches
and power.

Roderigo had had some reluctance about accepting the cardinalship,
which kept him fast at Rome, and would have preferred to be General
of the Church, a position which would have allowed him more liberty
for seeing his mistress and his family; but his uncle Calixtus made
him reckon with the possibility of being his successor some day, and
from that moment the idea of being the supreme head of kings and
nations took such hold of Roderigo, that he no longer had any end in
view but that which his uncle had made him entertain.

From that day forward, there began to grow up in the young cardinal
that talent for hypocrisy which made of him the most perfect
incarnation of the devil that has perhaps ever existed; and Roderigo
was no longer the same man: with words of repentance and humility on
his lips, his head bowed as though he were bearing the weight of his
past sins, disparaging the riches which he had acquired and which,
according to him, were the wealth of the poor and ought to return to
the poor, he passed his life in churches, monasteries, and hospitals,
acquiring, his historian tells us, even in the eyes of his enemies,
the reputation of a Solomon for wisdom, of a Job for patience, and of
a very Moses for his promulgation of the word of God: Rosa Vanozza
was the only person in the world who could appreciate the value of
this pious cardinal's conversion.

It proved a lucky thing for Roderiga that he had assumed this pious
attitude, for his protector died after a reign of three years three
months and nineteen days, and he was now sustained by his own merit
alone against the numerous enemies he had made by his rapid rise to
fortune: so during the whole of the reign of Pius II he lived always
apart from public affairs, and only reappeared in the days of Sixtus
IV, who made him the gift of the abbacy of Subiaco, and sent him in
the capacity of ambassador to the kings of Aragon and Portugal.  On
his return, which took place during the pontificate of Innocent VIII,
he decided to fetch his family at last to Rome: thither they came,
escorted by Don Manuel Melchior, who from that moment passed as the
husband of Rosa Vanozza, and took the name of Count Ferdinand of
Castile.  The Cardinal Roderigo received the noble Spaniard as a
countryman and a friend; and he, who expected to lead a most retired
life, engaged a house in the street of the Lungara, near the church
of Regina Coeli, on the banks of the Tiber.  There it was that, after
passing the day in prayers and pious works, Cardinal Roderigo used to
repair each evening and lay aside his mask.  And it was said, though
nobody could prove it, that in this house infamous scenes passed:
Report said the dissipations were of so dissolute a character that
their equals had never been seen in Rome.  With a view to checking
the rumours that began to spread abroad, Roderigo sent Caesar to
study at Pisa, and married Lucrezia to a young gentleman of Aragon;
thus there only remained at home Rosa Vanozza and her two sons: such
was the state of things when Innocent VIII died and Roderigo Borgia
was proclaimed pope.

We have seen by what means the nomination was effected; and so the
five cardinals who had taken no part in this simony--namely, the
Cardinals of Naples, Sierra, Portugal, Santa Maria-in-Porticu, and
St. Peter-in-Vinculis--protested loudly against this election, which
they treated as a piece of jobbery; but Roderigo had none the less,
however it was done, secured his majority; Roderigo was none the less
the two hundred and sixtieth successor of St. Peter.

Alexander VI, however, though he had arrived at his object, did not
dare throw off at first the mask which the Cardinal Bargia had worn
so long, although when he was apprised of his election he could not
dissimulate his joy; indeed, on hearing the favourable result of the
scrutiny, he lifted his hands to heaven and cried, in the accents of
satisfied ambition, "Am I then pope?  Am I then Christ's vicar?  Am I
then the keystone of the Christian world?"

"Yes, holy father," replied Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the same who had
sold to Roderigo the nine votes that were at his disposal at the
Conclave for four mules laden with silver; "and we hope by your
election to give glory to God, repose to the Church, and joy to
Christendom, seeing that you have been chosen by the Almighty Himself
as the most worthy among all your brethren."

But in the short interval occupied by this reply, the new pope had
already assumed the papal authority, and in a humble voice and with
hands crossed upon his breast, he spoke:

"We hope that God will grant us His powerful aid, in spite of our
weakness, and that He will do for us that which He did for the
apostle when aforetime He put into his hands the keys of heaven and
entrusted to him the government of the Church, a government which
without the aid of God would prove too heavy a burden for mortal man;
but God promised that His Spirit should direct him; God will do the
same, I trust, for us; and for your part we fear not lest any of you
fail in that holy obedience which is due unto the head of the Church,
even as the flock of Christ was bidden to follow the prince of the
apostles."

Having spoken these words, Alexander donned the pontifical robes, and
through the windows of the Vatican had strips of paper thrown out on
which his name was written in Latin.  These, blown by the wind,
seemed to convey to the whole world the news of the great event which
was about to change the face of Italy.  The same day couriers started
far all the courts of Europe.

Caesar Borgia learned the news of his father's election at the
University of Pisa, where he was a student.  His ambition had
sometimes dreamed of such good fortune, yet his joy was little short
of madness.  He was then a young man, about twenty-two or twenty-four
years of age, skilful in all bodily exercises, and especially in
fencing; he could ride barebacked the most fiery steeds, could cut
off the head of a bull at a single sword-stroke; moreover, he was
arrogant, jealous, and insincere.  According to Tammasi, he was great
among the godless, as his brother Francesco was good among the great.
As to his face, even contemporary authors have left utterly different
descriptions; for same have painted him as a monster of ugliness,
while others, on the contrary, extol his beauty.  This contradiction
is due to the fact that at certain times of the year, and especially
in the spring, his face was covered with an eruption which, so long
as it lasted, made him an object of horror and disgust, while all the
rest of the year he was the sombre, black-haired cavalier with pale
skin and tawny beard whom Raphael shows us in the fine portrait he
made of him.  And historians, both chroniclers and painters, agree as
to his fixed and powerful gaze, behind which burned a ceaseless
flame, giving to his face something infernal and superhuman.  Such
was the man whose fortune was to fulfil all his desires.  He had
taken for his motto, 'Aut Caesar, aut nihil': Caesar or nothing.

Caesar posted to Rome with certain of his friends, and scarcely was
he recognised at the gates of the city when the deference shown to
him gave instant proof of the change in his fortunes: at the Vatican
the respect was twice as great; mighty men bowed down before him as
before one mightier than themselves.  And so, in his impatience, he
stayed not to visit his mother or any other member of his family, but
went straight to the pope to kiss his feet; and as the pope had been
forewarned of his coming, he awaited him in the midst of a brilliant
and numerous assemblage of cardinals, with the three other brothers
standing behind him.  His Holiness received Caesar with a gracious
countenance; still, he did not allow himself any demonstration of his
paternal love, but, bending towards him, kissed him an the forehead,
and inquired how he was and how he had fared on his journey.  Caesar
replied that he was wonderfully well, and altogether at the service
of His Holiness: that, as to the journey, the trifling inconveniences
and short fatigue had been compensated, and far mare than
compensated, by the joy which he felt in being able to adore upon the
papal throne a pope who was so worthy.  At these words, leaving
Caesar still on his knees, and reseating himself--for he had risen
from his seat to embrace him--the pope assumed a grave and composed
expression of face, and spoke as follows, loud enough to be heard by
all, and slowly enough far everyone present to be able to ponder and
retain in his memory even the least of his words:

"We are convinced, Caesar, that you are peculiarly rejoiced in
beholding us on this sublime height, so far above our deserts,
whereto it has pleased the Divine goodness to exalt us.  This joy of
yours is first of all our due because of the love we have always
borne you and which we bear you still, and in the second place is
prompted by your own personal interest, since henceforth you may feel
sure of receiving from our pontifical hand those benefits which your
own good works shall deserve.  But if your joy--and this we say to
you as we have even now said to your brothers--if your joy is founded
on ought else than this, you are very greatly mistaken, Caesar, and
you will find yourself sadly deceived. Perhaps we have been
ambitious--we confess this humbly before the face of all men--
passionately and immoderately ambitious to attain to the dignity of
sovereign pontiff, and to reach this end we have followed every path
that is open to human industry; but we have acted thus, vowing an
inward vow that when once we had reached our goal, we would follow no
other path but that which conduces best to the service of God and to
the advancement of the Holy See, so that the glorious memory of the
deeds that we shall do may efface the shameful recollection of the
deeds we have already done.  Thus shall we, let us hope, leave to
those who follow us a track where upon if they find not the footsteps
of a saint, they may at least tread in the path of a true pontiff.
God, who has furthered the means, claims at our hands the fruits, and
we desire to discharge to the full this mighty debt that we have
incurred to Him; and accordingly we refuse to arouse by any deceit
the stern rigour of His judgments.  One sole hindrance could have
power to shake our good intentions, and that might happen should we
feel too keen an interest in your fortunes.  Therefore are we armed
beforehand against our love, and therefore have we prayed to God
beforehand that we stumble not because of you; for in the path of
favouritism a pope cannot slip without a fall, and cannot fall
without injury and dishonour to the Holy See.  Even to the end of our
life we shall deplore the faults which have brought this experience
home to us; and may it please Gad that our uncle Calixtus of blessed
memory bear not this day in purgatory the burden of our sins, more
heavy, alas, than his own!  Ah, he was rich in every virtue, he was
full of good intentions; but he loved too much his own people, and
among them he loved me chief.  And so he suffered this love to lead
him blindly astray, all this love that he bore to his kindred, who to
him were too truly flesh of his flesh, so that he heaped upon the
heads of a few persons only, and those perhaps the least worthy,
benefits which would more fittingly have rewarded the deserts of
many.  In truth, he bestowed upon our house treasures that should
never have been amassed at the expense of the poor, or else should
have been turned to a better purpose.  He severed from the
ecclesiastical State, already weak and poor, the duchy of Spoleto and
other wealthy properties, that he might make them fiefs to us; he
confided to our weak hands the vice-chancellorship, the vice-
prefecture of Rome, the generalship of the Church, and all the other
most important offices, which, instead of being monopolised by us,
should have been conferred on those who were most meritorious.
Moreover, there were persons who were raised on our recommendation to
posts of great dignity, although they had no claims but such as our
undue partiality accorded them; others were left out with no reason
for their failure except the jealousy excited in us by their virtues.
To rob Ferdinand of Aragon of the kingdom of Naples, Calixtus kindled
a terrible war, which by a happy issue only served to increase our
fortune, and by an unfortunate issue must have brought shame and
disaster upon the Holy See.  Lastly, by allowing himself to be
governed by men who sacrificed public good to their private
interests, he inflicted an injury, not only upon the pontifical
throne and his own reputation, but what is far worse, far more
deadly, upon his own conscience.  And yet, O wise judgments of God!
hard and incessantly though he toiled to establish our fortunes,
scarcely had he left empty that supreme seat which we occupy to-day,
when we were cast down from the pinnacle whereon we had climbed,
abandoned to the fury of the rabble and the vindictive hatred of the
Roman barons, who chose to feel offended by our goodness to their
enemies.  Thus, not only, we tell you, Caesar, not only did we plunge
headlong from the summit of our grandeur, losing the worldly goods
and dignities which our uncle had heaped at our feet, but for very
peril of our life we were condemned to a voluntary exile, we and our
friends, and in this way only did we contrive to escape the storm
which our too good fortune had stirred up against us.  Now this is a
plain proof that God mocks at men's designs when they are bad ones.
How great an error is it for any pope to devote more care to the
welfare of a house, which cannot last more than a few years, than to
the glory of the Church, which will last for ever!  What utter folly
for any public man whose position is not inherited and cannot be
bequeathed to his posterity, to support the edifice of his grandeur
on any other basis than the noblest virtue practised for the general
good, and to suppose that he can ensure the continuance of his own
fortune otherwise than by taking all precautions against sudden
whirlwinds which are want to arise in the midst of a calm, and to
blow up the storm-clouds I mean the host of enemies.  Now any one of
these enemies who does his worst can cause injuries far more powerful
than any help that is at all likely to come from a hundred friends
and their lying promises.  If you and your brothers walk in the path
of virtue which we shall now open for you, every wish of your heart
shall be instantly accomplished; but if you take the other path, if
you have ever hoped that our affection will wink at disorderly life,
then you will very soon find out that we are truly pope, Father of
the Church, not father of the family; that, vicar of Christ as we
are, we shall act as we deem best for Christendom, and not as you
deem best for your own private good.  And now that we have come to a
thorough understanding, Caesar, receive our pontifical blessing."
And with these words, Alexander VI rose up, laid his hands upon his
son's head, for Caesar was still kneeling, and then retired into his
apartments, without inviting him to follow.

The young man remained awhile stupefied at this discourse, so utterly
unexpected, so utterly destructive at one fell blow to his most
cherished hopes.  He rose giddy and staggering like a drunken man,
and at once leaving the Vatican, hurried to his mother, whom he had
forgotten before, but sought now in his despair.  Rosa Vanozza
possessed all the vices and all the virtues of a Spanish courtesan;
her devotion to the Virgin amounted to superstition, her fondness for
her children to weakness, and her love for Roderigo to sensuality.
In the depth of her heart she relied on the influence she had been
able to exercise over him for nearly thirty years; and like a snake,
she knew haw to envelop him in her coils when the fascination of her
glance had lost its power.  Rosa knew of old the profound hypocrisy
of her lover, and thus she was in no difficulty about reassuring
Caesar.

Lucrezia was with her mother when Caesar arrived; the two young
people exchanged a lover-like kiss beneath her very eyes: and before
he left Caesar had made an appointment for the same evening with
Lucrezia, who was now living apart from her husband, to whom Roderigo
paid a pension in her palace of the Via del Pelegrino, opposite the
Campo dei Fiori, and there enjoying perfect liberty.

In the evening, at the hour fixed, Caesar appeared at Lucrezia's; but
he found there his brother Francesco.  The two young men had never
been friends.  Still, as their tastes were very different, hatred
with Francesco was only the fear of the deer for the hunter; but with
Caesar it was the desire for vengeance and that lust for blood which
lurks perpetually in the heart of a tiger.  The two brothers none the
less embraced, one from general kindly feeling, the other from
hypocrisy; but at first sight of one another the sentiment of a
double rivalry, first in their father's and then in their sister's
good graces, had sent the blood mantling to the cheek of Francesco,
and called a deadly pallor into Caesar's.  So the two young men sat
on, each resolved not to be the first to leave, when all at once
there was a knock at the door, and a rival was announced before whom
both of them were bound to give way: it was their father.

Rosa Vanazza was quite right in comforting Caesar.  Indeed, although
Alexander VI had repudiated the abuses of nepotism, he understood
very well the part that was to be played for his benefit by his sons
and his daughter; for he knew he could always count on Lucrezia and
Caesar, if not on Francesco and Goffredo.  In these matters the
sister was quite worthy of her brother.  Lucrezia was wanton in
imagination, godless by nature, ambitious and designing: she had a
craving for pleasure, admiration, honours, money, jewels, gorgeous
stuffs, and magnificent mansions.  A true Spaniard beneath her golden
tresses, a courtesan beneath her frank looks, she carried the head of
a Raphael Madonna, and concealed the heart of a Messalina.  She was
dear to Roderigo both as daughter and as mistress, and he saw himself
reflected in her as in a magic mirror, every passion and every vice.
Lucrezia and Caesar were accordingly the best beloved of his heart,
and the three composed that diabolical trio which for eleven years
occupied the pontifical throne, like a mocking parody of the heavenly
Trinity.

Nothing occurred at first to give the lie to Alexander's professions
of principle in the discourse he addressed to Caesar, and the first
year of his pontificate exceeded all the hopes of Rome at the time of
his election.  He arranged for the provision of stores in the public
granaries with such liberality, that within the memory of man there
had never been such astonishing abundance; and with a view to
extending the general prosperity to the lowest class, he organised
numerous doles to be paid out of his private fortune, which made it
possible for the very poor to participate in the general banquet from
which they had been excluded for long enough.  The safety of the city
was secured, from the very first days of his accession, by the
establishment of a strong and vigilant police force, and a tribunal
consisting of four magistrates of irreproachable character, empowered
to prosecute all nocturnal crimes, which during the last pontificate
had been so common that their very numbers made impunity certain:
these judges from the first showed a severity which neither the rank
nor the purse of the culprit could modify.  This presented such a
great contrast to the corruption of the last reign,--in the course of
which the vice-chamberlain one day remarked in public, when certain
people were complaining of the venality of justice, "God wills not
that a sinner die, but that he live and pay,"--that the capital of
the Christian world felt for one brief moment restored to the happy
days of the papacy.  So, at the end of a year, Alexander VI had
reconquered that spiritual credit, so to speak, which his
predecessors lost.  His political credit was still to be established,
if he was to carry out the first part of his gigantic scheme.  To
arrive at this, he must employ two agencies--alliances and conquests.
His plan was to begin with alliances.  The gentleman of Aragon who
had married Lucrezia when she was only the daughter of Cardinal
Roderigo Borgia was not a man powerful enough, either by birth and
fortune or by intellect, to enter with any sort of effect into the
plots and plans of Alexander VI; the separation was therefore changed
into a divorce, and Lucrezia Borgia was now free to remarry.
Alexander opened up two negotiations at the same time: he needed an
ally to keep a watch on the policy of the neighbouring States.  John
Sforza, grandson of Alexander Sforza, brother of the great Francis I,
Duke of Milan, was lord of Pesaro; the geographical situation of this
place, an the coast, on the way between Florence and Venice, was
wonderfully convenient for his purpose; so Alexander first cast an
eye upon him, and as the interest of both parties was evidently the
same, it came about that John Sforza was very soon Lucrezia's second
husband.

At the same time overtures had been made to Alfonso of Aragon, heir
presumptive to the crown of Naples, to arrange a marriage between
Dana Sancia, his illegitimate daughter, and Goffreda, the pope's
third son; but as the old Ferdinand wanted to make the best bargain
he could out of it; he dragged on the negotiations as long as
possible, urging that the two children were not of marriageable age,
and so, highly honoured as he felt in such a prospective alliance,
there was no hurry about the engagement.  Matters stopped at this
point, to the great annoyance of Alexander VI, who saw through this
excuse, and understood that the postponement was nothing more or less
than a refusal.  Accordingly Alexander and Ferdinand remained in
statu quo, equals in the political game, both on the watch till
events should declare for one or other.  The turn of fortune was for
Alexander.

Italy, though tranquil, was instinctively conscious that her calm was
nothing but the lull which goes before a storm.  She was too rich and
too happy to escape the envy of other nations.  As yet the plains of
Pisa had not been reduced to marsh-lands by the combined negligence
and jealousy of the Florentine Republic, neither had the rich country
that lay around Rome been converted into a barren desert by the wars
of the Colonna and Orsini families; not yet had the Marquis of
Marignan razed to the ground a hundred and twenty villages in the
republic of Siena alone; and though the Maremma was unhealthy, it was
not yet a poisonous marsh: it is a fact that Flavio Blando, writing
in 1450, describes Ostia as being merely less flourishing than in the
days of the Romans, when she had numbered 50,000 inhabitants, whereas
now in our own day there are barely 30 in all.

The Italian peasants were perhaps the most blest on the face of the
earth: instead of living scattered about the country in solitary
fashion, they lived in villages that were enclosed by walls as a
protection for their harvests, animals, and farm implements; their
houses--at any rate those that yet stand--prove that they lived in
much more comfortable and beautiful surroundings than the ordinary
townsman of our day.  Further, there was a community of interests,
and many people collected together in the fortified villages, with
the result that little by little they attained to an importance never
acquired by the boorish French peasants or the German serfs; they
bore arms, they had a common treasury, they elected their own
magistrates, and whenever they went out to fight, it was to save
their common country.

Also commerce was no less flourishing than agriculture; Italy at this
period was rich in industries--silk, wool, hemp, fur, alum, sulphur,
bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth
were imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from
France, and often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by
labour and fine workmanship.  The rich man brought his merchandise,
the poor his industry: the one was sure of finding workmen, the other
was sure of finding work.

Art also was by no means behindhand: Dante, Giotto, Brunelleschi,
and Donatello were dead, but Ariosto, Raphael, Bramante, and Michael
Angelo were now living.  Rome, Florence, and Naples had inherited the
masterpieces of antiquity; and the manuscripts of AEschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides had come (thanks to the conquest of Mahomet
II) to rejoin the statue of Xanthippus and the works of Phidias and
Praxiteles.  The principal sovereigns of Italy had come to
understand, when they let their eyes dwell upon the fat harvests, the
wealthy villages, the flourishing manufactories, and the marvellous
churches, and then compared with them the poor and rude nations of
fighting men who surrounded them on all sides, that some day or other
they were destined to become for other countries what America was for
Spain, a vast gold-mine for them to work.  In consequence of this, a
league offensive and defensive had been signed, about 1480, by
Naples, Milan, Florence, and Ferrara, prepared to take a stand
against enemies within or without, in Italy or outside.  Ludovico
Sforza, who was more than anyone else interested in maintaining this
league, because he was nearest to France, whence the storm seemed to
threaten, saw in the new pope's election means not only of
strengthening the league, but of making its power and unity
conspicuous in the sight of Europe.




CHAPTER IV

On the occasion of each new election to the papacy, it is the custom
for all the Christian States to send a solemn embassy to Rome, to
renew their oath of allegiance to the Holy Father.  Ludovico Sforza
conceived the idea that the ambassadors of the four Powers should
unite and make their entry into Rome on the same day, appointing one
of their envoy, viz. the representative of the King of Naples, to be
spokesman for all four.  Unluckily, this plan did not agree with the
magnificent projects of Piero dei Medici.  That proud youth, who had
been appointed ambassador of the Florentine Republic, had seen in the
mission entrusted to him by his fellow-citizens the means of making a
brilliant display of his own wealth.  From the day of his nomination
onwards, his palace was constantly filled with tailors, jewellers,
and merchants of priceless stuffs; magnificent clothes had been made
for him, embroidered with precious stones which he had selected from
the family treasures.  All his jewels, perhaps the richest in Italy,
were distributed about the liveries of his pages, and one of them,
his favourite, was to wear a collar of pearls valued by itself at
100,000 ducats, or almost, a million of our francs.  In his party the
Bishop of Arezzo, Gentile, who had once been Lorenzo dei Medici's
tutor, was elected as second ambassador, and it was his duty to
speak.  Now Gentile, who had prepared his speech, counted on his
eloquence to charm the ear quite as much as Piero counted on his
riches to dazzle the eye.  But the eloquence of Gentile would be lost
completely if nobody was to speak but the ambassador of the King of
Naples; and the magnificence of Piero dei Medici would never be
noticed at all if he went to Rome mixed up with all the other
ambassadors.  These two important interests, compromised by the Duke
of Milan's proposition, changed the whole face of Italy.

Ludovico Sforza had already made sure of Ferdinand's promise to
conform to the plan he had invented, when the old king, at the
solicitation of Piero, suddenly drew back.  Sforza found out how this
change had come about, and learned that it was Piero's influence that
had overmastered his own.  He could not disentangle the real motives
that had promised the change, and imagined there was some secret
league against himself: he attributed the changed political programme
to the death of Lorenzo dei Medici.  But whatever its cause might be,
it was evidently prejudicial to his own interests: Florence, Milan's
old ally, was abandoning her for Naples.  He resolved to throw a
counter weight into the scales; so, betraying to Alexander the policy
of Piero and Ferdinand, he proposed to form a defensive and offensive
alliance with him and admit the republic of Venice; Duke Hercules III
of Ferrara was also to be summoned to pronounce for one or other of
the two leagues.  Alexander VI, wounded by Ferdinand's treatment of
himself, accepted Ludovico Sforza's proposition, and an Act of
Confederation was signed on the 22nd of April, 1493, by which the new
allies pledged themselves to set on foot for the maintenance of the
public peace an army of 20,000 horse and 6,000 infantry.

Ferdinand was frightened when he beheld the formation of this league;
but he thought he could neutralise its effects by depriving Ludovico
Sforza of his regency, which he had already kept beyond the proper
time, though as yet he was not strictly an usurper.  Although the
young Galeazzo, his nephew, had reached the age of two-and-twenty,
Ludovico Sforza none the less continued regent.  Now Ferdinand
definitely proposed to the Duke of Milan that he should resign the
sovereign power into the hands of his nephew, on pain of being
declared an usurper.

This was a bold stroke; but there was a risk of inciting Ludovico
Sforza to start one of those political plots that he was so familiar
with, never recoiling from any situation, however dangerous it might
be.  This was exactly what happened: Sforza, uneasy about his duchy,
resolved to threaten Ferdinand's kingdom.

Nothing could be easier: he knew the warlike nations of Charles VIII,
and the pretensions of the house of France to the kingdom of Naples.
He sent two ambassadors to invite the young king to claim the rights
of Anjou usurped by Aragon; and with a view to reconciling Charles to
so distant and hazardous an expedition, offered him a free and
friendly passage through his own States.

Such a proposition was welcome to Charles VIII, as we might suppose
from our knowledge of his character; a magnificent prospect was
opened to him as by an enchanter: what Ludovica Sforza was offering
him was virtually the command of the Mediterranean, the protectorship
of the whole of Italy; it was an open road, through Naples and
Venice, that well might lead to the conquest of Turkey or the Holy
Land, if he ever had the fancy to avenge the disasters of Nicapolis
and Mansourah.  So the proposition was accepted, and a secret
alliance was signed, with Count Charles di Belgiojasa and the Count
of Cajazza acting for Ludovica Sforza, and the Bishop of St. Malo and
Seneschal de Beaucaire far Charles VIII.  By this treaty it was
agreed:--

That the King of France should attempt the conquest of the kingdom of
Naples;

That the Duke of Milan should grant a passage to the King of France
through his territories, and accompany him with five hundred lances;

That the Duke of Milan should permit the King of France to send out
as many ships of war as he pleased from Genoa;

Lastly, that the Duke of Milan should lend the King of France 200,000
ducats, payable when he started.

On his side, Charles VIII agreed:--

To defend the personal authority of Ludowico Sforza over the duchy of
Milan against anyone who might attempt to turn him out;

To keep two hundred French lances always in readiness to help the
house of Sforza, at Asti, a town belonging to the Duke of Orleans by
the inheritance of his mother, Valentina Visconti;

Lastly, to hand over to his ally the principality of Tarentum
immediately after the conquest of Naples was effected.

This treaty was scarcely concluded when Charles VIII, who exaggerated
its advantages, began to dream of freeing himself from every let or
hindrance to the expedition.  Precautions were necessary; for his
relations with the great Powers were far from being what he could
have wished.

Indeed, Henry VII had disembarked at Calais with a formidable army,
and was threatening France with another invasion.

Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, if they had not assisted at the fall
of the house of Anjou, had at any rate helped the Aragon party with
men and money.

Lastly, the war with the emperor acquired a fresh impetus when
Charles VIII sent back Margaret of Burgundy to her father Maximilian,
and contracted a marriage with Anne of Brittany.

By the treaty of Etaples, on the 3rd of November, 1492, Henry VII
cancelled the alliance with the King of the Romans, and pledged
himself not to follow his conquests.

This cost Charles VIII 745,000 gold crowns and the expenses of the
war with England.

By the treaty of Barcelona, dated the 19th of January, 1493,
Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella agreed never to grant aid to
their cousin, Ferdinand of Naples, and never to put obstacles in the
way of the French king in Italy.

This cost Charles VIII Perpignan, Roussillon, and the Cerdagne, which
had all been given to Louis XI as a hostage for the sum of 300,000
ducats by John of Aragon; but at the time agreed upon, Louis XI would
not give them up for the money, for the old fox knew very well how
important were these doors to the Pyrenees, and proposed in case of
war to keep them shut.

Lastly, by the treaty of Senlis, dated the 23rd of May, 1493,
Maximilian granted a gracious pardon to France for the insult her
king had offered him.

It cost Charles VIII the counties of Burgundy, Artois, Charalais, and
the seigniory of Noyers, which had come to him as Margaret's dowry,
and also the towns of Aire, Hesdin, and Bethune, which he promised to
deliver up to Philip of Austria on the day he came of age.

By dint of all these sacrifices the young king made peace with his
neighbours, and could set on foot the enterprise that Ludavico Sforza
had proposed.  We have already explained that the project came into
Sforza's mind when his plan about the deputation was refused, and
that the refusal was due to Piero dei Medici's desire to make an
exhibition of his magnificent jewels, and Gentile's desire to make
his speech.

Thus the vanity of a tutor and the pride of his scholar together
combined to agitate the civilized world from the Gulf of Tarentum to
the Pyrenees.

Alexander VI was in the very centre of the impending earthquake, and
before Italy had any idea that the earliest shocks were at hand he
had profited by the perturbed preoccupation of other people to give
the lie to that famous speech we have reported.  He created cardinal
John Borgia, a nephew, who during the last pontificate had been
elected Archbishop of Montreal and Governor of Rome.  This promotion
caused no discontent, because of John's antecedents; and Alexander,
encouraged by the success of this, promised to Caesar Borgia the
archbishopric of Valencia, a benefice he had himself enjoyed before
his elevation to the papacy.  But here the difficulty arose an the
side of the recipient.  The young man, full-blooded, with all the
vices and natural instincts of a captain of condottieri, had very
great trouble in assuming even the appearance of a Churchman's
virtue; but as he knew from his own father's mouth that the highest
secular dignities were reserved far his elder brother, he decided to
take what he could get, for fear of getting nothing; but his hatred
for Francesco grew stronger, for from henceforth he was doubly his
rival, both in love and ambition.

Suddenly Alexander beheld the old King Ferdinand returning to his
side, and at the very moment when he least expected it.  The pope was
too clever a politician to accept a reconciliation without finding
out the cause of it; he soon learned what plots were hatching at the
French court against the kingdom of Naples, and the whole situation
was explained.

Now it was his turn to impose conditions.

He demanded the completion of a marriage between Goffreda, his third
son, and Dada Sancia, Alfonso's illegitimate daughter.

He demanded that she should bring her husband as dowry the
principality of Squillace and the county of Cariati, with an income
of 10,000 ducats and the office of protonotary, one of the seven
great crown offices which are independent of royal control.

He demanded for his eldest son, whom Ferdinand the Catholic had just
made Duke of Gandia, the principality of Tricarico, the counties of
Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Carinola, an income of 12,000 ducats, and
the first of the seven great offices which should fall vacant.

He demanded that Virginio Orsini, his ambassador at the Neapolitan
court, should be given a third great office, viz.  that of Constable,
the most important of them all.

Lastly, he demanded that Giuliano delta Rovere, one of the five
cardinals who had opposed his election and was now taking refuge at
Ostia, where the oak whence he took his name and bearings is still to
be seen carved on all the walls, should be driven out of that town,
and the town itself given over to him.

In exchange, he merely pledged himself never to withdraw from the
house of Aragon the investiture of the kingdom of Naples accorded by
his predecessors.  Ferdinand was paying somewhat dearly for a simple
promise; but on the keeping of this promise the legitimacy of his
power wholly depended.  For the kingdom of Naples was a fief of the
Holy See; and to the pope alone belonged the right of pronouncing on
the justice of each competitor's pretensions; the continuance of this
investiture was therefore of the highest conceivable importance to
Aragon just at the time when Anjou was rising up with an army at her
back to dispossess her.

For a year after he mounted the papal throne, Alexander VI had made
great strides, as we see, in the extension of his temporal power.  In
his own hands he held, to be sure, only the least in size of the
Italian territories; but by the marriage of his daughter Lucrezia
with the lord of Pesaro he was stretching out one hand as far as
Venice, while by the marriage of the Prince of Squillace with Dona
Sancia, and the territories conceded to the Duke of Sandia, he was
touching with the other hand the boundary of Calabria.

When this treaty, so advantageous for himself, was duly signed, he
made Caesar Cardinal of Santa Maria Novella, for Caesar was always
complaining of being left out in the distribution of his father's
favours.

Only, as there was as yet no precedent in Church history for a
bastard's donning the scarlet, the pope hunted up four false
witnesses who declared that Caesar was the son of Count Ferdinand of
Castile; who was, as we know, that valuable person Don Manuel
Melchior, and who played the father's part with just as much
solemnity as he had played the husband's.

The wedding of the two bastards was most splendid, rich with the
double pomp of Church and King.  As the pope had settled that the
young bridal pair should live near him, Caesar Borgia, the new
cardinal, undertook to manage the ceremony of their entry into Rome
and the reception, and Lucrezia, who enjoyed at her father's side an
amount of favour hitherto unheard of at the papal court, desired on
her part to contribute all the splendour she had it in her power to
add.  He therefore went to receive the young people with a stately
and magnificent escort of lords and cardinals, while she awaited them
attended by the loveliest and noblest ladies of Rome, in one of the
halls of the Vatican.  A throne was there prepared for the pope, and
at his feet were cushions far Lucrezia and Dona Sancia.  "Thus,"
writes Tommaso Tommasi, "by the look of the assembly and the sort of
conversation that went on for hours, you would suppose you were
present at some magnificent and voluptuous royal audience of ancient
Assyria, rather than at the severe consistory of a Roman pontiff,
whose solemn duty it is to exhibit in every act the sanctity of the
name he bears.  But," continues the same historian, "if the Eve of
Pentecost was spent in such worthy functions, the celebrations of the
coming of the Holy Ghost on the following day were no less decorous
and becoming to the spirit of the Church; for thus writes the master
of the ceremonies in his journal:

"'The pope made his entry into the Church of the Holy Apostles, and
beside him on the marble steps of the pulpit where the canons of St.
Peter are wont to chant the Epistle and Gospel, sat Lucrezia his
daughter and Sancia his son's wife: round about them, a disgrace to
the Church and a public scandal, were grouped a number of other Roman
ladies far more fit to dwell in Messalina's city than in St.
Peter's.'"

So at Rome and Naples did men slumber while ruin was at hand; so did
they waste their time and squander their money in a vain display of
pride; and this was going on while the French, thoroughly alive, were
busy laying hands upon the torches with which they would presently
set Italy on fire.

Indeed, the designs of Charles VIII for conquest were no longer for
anybody a matter of doubt.  The young king had sent an embassy to the
various Italian States, composed of Perrone dei Baschi, Brigonnet,
d'Aubigny, and the president of the Provencal Parliament.  The
mission of this embassy was to demand from the Italian princes their
co-operation in recovering the rights of the crown of Naples for the
house of Anjou.

The embassy first approached the Venetians, demanding aid and counsel
for the king their master.  But the Venetians, faithful to their
political tradition, which had gained for them the sobriquet of "the
Jews of Christendom," replied that they were not in a position to
give any aid to the young king, so long as they had to keep
ceaselessly on guard against the Turks; that, as to advice, it would
be too great a presumption in them to give advice to a prince who was
surrounded by such experienced generals and such able ministers.

Perrone dei Baschi, when he found he could get no other answer, next
made for Florence.  Piero dei Medici received him at a grand council,
for he summoned on this occasion not only the seventy, but also the
gonfalonieri who had sat for the last thirty-four years in the
Signoria.  The French ambassador put forward his proposal, that the
republic should permit their army to pass through her States, and
pledge herself in that case to supply for ready money all the
necessary victual and fodder.  The magnificent republic replied that
if Charles VIII had been marching against the Turks instead of
against Ferdinand, she would be only too ready to grant everything he
wished; but being bound to the house of Aragon by a treaty, she could
not betray her ally by yielding to the demands of the King of France.

The ambassadors next turned their steps to Siena.  The poor little
republic, terrified by the honour of being considered at all, replied
that it was her desire to preserve a strict neutrality, that she was
too weak to declare beforehand either for or against such mighty
rivals, for she would naturally be obliged to join the stronger
party.  Furnished with this reply, which had at least the merit of
frankness, the French envoys proceeded to Rome, and were conducted
into the pope's presence, where they demanded the investiture of the
kingdom of Naples for their king.

Alexander VI replied that, as his predecessors had granted this
investiture to the house of Aragon, he could not take it away, unless
it were first established that the house of Anjou had a better claim
than the house that was to be dispossessed.  Then he represented to
Perrone dei Baschi that, as Naples was a fief of the Holy See, to the
pope alone the choice of her sovereign properly belonged, and that in
consequence to attack the reigning sovereign was to attack the Church
itself.

The result of the embassy, we see, was not very promising for Charles
VIII; so he resolved to rely on his ally Ludovico Sforza alone, and
to relegate all other questions to the fortunes of war.

A piece of news that reached him about this time strengthened him in
this resolution: this was the death of Ferdinand.  The old king had
caught a severe cold and cough on his return from the hunting field,
and in two days he was at his last gasp.  On the 25th of January,
1494, he passed away, at the age of seventy, after a thirty-six
years' reign, leaving the throne to his elder son, Alfonso, who was
immediately chosen as his successor.

Ferdinand never belied his title of "the happy ruler."  His death
occurred at the very moment when the fortune of his family was
changing.

The new king, Alfonso, was not a novice in arms: he had already
fought successfully against Florence and Venice, and had driven the
Turks out of Otranto; besides, he had the name of being as cunning as
his father in the tortuous game of politics so much in vogue at the
Italian courts.  He did not despair of counting among his allies the
very enemy he was at war with when Charles VIII first put forward his
pretensions, we mean Bajazet II.  So he despatched to Bajazet one of
his confidential ministers, Camillo Pandone, to give the Turkish
emperor to understand that the expedition to Italy was to the King of
France nothing but a blind for approaching the scene of Mahomedan
conquests, and that if Charles VIII were once at the Adriatic it
would only take him a day or two to get across and attack Macedonia;
from there he could easily go by land to Constantinople.
Consequently he suggested that Bajazet for the maintenance of their
common interests should supply six thousand horse and six thousand
infantry; he himself would furnish their pay so long as they were in
Italy.  It was settled that Pandone should be joined at Tarentum by
Giorgia Bucciarda, Alexander VI's envoy, who was commissioned by the
pope to engage the Turks to help him against the Christians.  But
while he was waiting for Bajazet's reply, which might involve a delay
of several months, Alfonso requested that a meeting might take place
between Piero dei Medici, the pope, and himself, to take counsel
together about important affairs.  This meeting was arranged at
Vicovaro, near Tivoli, and the three interested parties duly met on
the appointed day.

The intention of Alfonso, who before leaving Naples had settled the
disposition of his naval forces, and given his brother Frederic the
command of a fleet that consisted of thirty-six galleys, eighteen
large and twelve small vessels, with injunctions to wait at Livorno
and keep a watch on the fleet Charles VIII was getting ready at the
port of Genoa, was above all things to check with the aid of his
allies the progress of operations on land.  Without counting the
contingent he expected his allies to furnish, he had at his immediate
disposal a hundred squadrons of heavy cavalry, twenty men in each,
and three thousand bowmen and light horse.  He proposed, therefore,
to advance at once into Lombardy, to get up a revolution in favour of
his nephew Galeazzo, and to drive Ludovico Sforza out of Milan before
he could get help from France; so that Charles VIII, at the very time
of crossing the Alps, would find an enemy to fight instead of a
friend who had promised him a safe passage, men, and money.

This was the scheme of a great politician and a bold commander; but
as everybody had came in pursuit of his own interests, regardless of
the common this plan was very coldly received by Piero dei Medici,
who was afraid lest in the war he should play only the same poor part
he had been threatened with in the affair of the embassy; by
Alexander VI it was rejected, because he reckoned on employing the
troops of Alfonso an his own account.  He reminded the King of Naples
of one of the conditions of the investiture he had promised him, viz.
that he should drive out the Cardinal Giuliano delta Rovere from the
town of Ostia, and give up the town to him, according to the
stipulation already agreed upon.  Besides, the advantages that had
accrued to Virginio Orsini, Alexander's favourite, from his embassy
to Naples had brought upon him the ill-will of Prospero and Fabrizio
Colonna, who owned nearly all the villages round about Rome.  Now the
pope could not endure to live in the midst of such powerful enemies,
and the most important matter was to deliver him from all of them,
seeing that it was really of moment that he should be at peace who
was the head and soul of the league whereof the others were only the
body and limbs.

Although Alfonso had clearly seen through the motives of Piero's
coldness, and Alexander had not even given him the trouble of seeking
his, he was none the less obliged to bow to the will of his allies,
leaving the one to defend the Apennines against the French, and
helping the other to shake himself free of his neighbours in the
Romagna.  Consequently he, pressed on the siege of Ostia, and added
to Virginio's forces, which already amounted to two hundred men of
the papal army, a body of his own light horse; this little army was
to be stationed round about Rome, and was to enforce obedience from
the Colonnas.  The rest of his troops Alfonso divided into two
parties: one he left in the hands of his son Ferdinand, with orders
to scour the Romagna and worry, the petty princes into levying and
supporting the contingent they had promised, while with the other he
himself defended the defiles of the Abruzzi.

On the 23rd of April, at three o'clock in the morning, Alexander VI
was freed from the first and fiercest of his foes; Giuliano delta
Rovere, seeing the impossibility of holding out any longer against
Alfonso's troops, embarked on a brigantine which was to carry him to
Savona.

From that day forward Virginio Orsini began that famous partisan
warfare which reduced the country about Rome to the most pathetic
desolation the world has ever seen.  During all this time Charles
VIII was at Lyons, not only uncertain as to the route he ought to
take for getting into Italy, but even beginning to reflect a little
on the chances and risks of such an expedition.  He had found no
sympathy anywhere except with Ludovico Sforza; so it appeared not
unlikely that he would have to fight not the kingdom of Naples alone,
but the whole of Italy to boot.  In his preparations for war he had
spent almost all the money at his disposal; the Lady of Beaujeu and
the Duke of Bourbon both condemned his enterprise; Briconnet, who had
advised it, did not venture to support it now; at last Charles, more
irresolute than ever, had recalled several regiments that had
actually started, when Cardinal Giuliano delta Rovere, driven out of
Italy by the pope, arrived at Lyons, and presented himself before the
king.

The cardinal, full of hatred, full of hope, hastened to Charles, and
found him on the point of abandoning that enterprise on which, as
Alexander's enemy, delta Rovere rested his whole expectation of
vengeance.  He informed Charles of the quarrelling among his enemies;
he showed him that each of them was seeking his own ends--Piero dei
Medici the gratification of his pride, the pope the aggrandisement of
his house.  He pointed out that armed fleets were in the ports of
Villefranche, Marseilles, and Genoa, and that these armaments would
be lost; he reminded him that he had sent Pierre d'Urfe, his grand
equerry, on in advance, to have splendid accommodation prepared in
the Spinola and Doria palaces.  Lastly, he urged that ridicule and
disgrace would fall on him from every side if he renounced an
enterprise so loudly vaunted beforehand, for whose successful
execution, moreover, he had been obliged to sign three treaties of
peace that were all vexatious enough, viz. with Henry VII, with
Maximilian, and with Ferdinand the Catholic.  Giuliano della Rovere
had exercised true insight in probing the vanity of the young king,
and Charles did not hesitate for a single moment.  He ordered his
cousin, the Duke of Orleans (who later on became Louis XII) to take
command of the French fleet and bring it to Genoa; he despatched a
courier to Antoine de Bessay, Baron de Tricastel, bidding him take to
Asti the 2000 Swiss foot-soldiers he had levied in the cantons;
lastly, he started himself from Vienne, in Dauphine, on the 23rd of
August, 1494, crossed the Alps by Mont Genevre, without encountering
a single body of troops to dispute his passage, descended into
Piedmont and Monferrato, both just then governed by women regents,
the sovereigns of both principalities being children, Charles John
Aime and William John, aged respectively six and eight.

The two regents appeared before Charles VIII, one at Turin, one at
Casale, each at the head of a numerous and brilliant court, and both
glittering with jewels and precious stones.  Charles, although he
quite well knew that for all these friendly demonstrations they were
both bound by treaty to his enemy, Alfonso of Naples, treated them
all the same with the greatest politeness, and when they made
protestations of friendship, asked them to let him have a proof of
it, suggesting that they should lend him the diamonds they were
covered with.  The two regents could do no less than obey the
invitation which was really a command.  They took off necklaces,
rings, and earrings.  Charles VIII gave them a receipt accurately
drawn up, and pledged the jewels for 20,000 ducats.  Then, enriched
by this money, he resumed his journey and made his way towards Asti.
The Duke of Orleans held the sovereignty of Asti, as we said before,
and hither came to meet Charles both Ludovico Sforza and his father-
in-law, Hercules d'Este, Duke of Ferrara.  They brought with them not
only the promised troops and money, but also a court composed of the
loveliest women in Italy.

The balls, fetes, and tourneys began with a magnificence surpassing
anything that Italy had ever seen before.  But suddenly they were
interrupted by the king's illness.  This was the first example in
Italy of the disease brought by Christopher Columbus from the New
World, and was called by Italians the French, by Frenchmen the
Italian disease.  The probability is that some of Columbus's crew who
were at Genoa or thereabouts had already brought over this strange
and cruel complaint that counter balanced the gains of the American
gold-mines.

The king's indisposition, however, did not prove so grave as was at
first supposed.  He was cured by the end of a few weeks, and
proceeded on his way towards Pavia, where the young Duke John
Galeazzo lay dying.  He and the King of France were first cousins,
sons of two sisters of the house of Savoy.  So Charles VIII was
obliged to see him, and went to visit him in the castle where he
lived more like prisoner than lord.  He found him half reclining on a
couch, pale and emaciated, some said in consequence of luxurious
living, others from the effects of a slow but deadly poison.  But
whether or not the poor young man was desirous of pouring out a
complaint to Charles, he did not dare say a word; for his uncle,
Ludovico Sforza, never left the King of France for an instant.  But
at the very moment when Charles VIII was getting up to go, the door
opened, and a young woman appeared and threw herself at the king's
feet; she was the wife of the unlucky John Galeazzo, and came to
entreat his cousin to do nothing against her father Alfonso, nor
against her brother Ferdinand.  At sight of her; Sforza scowled with
an anxious and threatening aspect, far he knew not what impression
might be produced on his ally by this scene.  But he was soon
reassured; far Charles replied that he had advanced too far to draw
back now, and that the glory of his name was at stake as well as the
interests of his kingdom, and that these two motives were far too
important to be sacrificed to any sentiment of pity he might feel,
however real and deep it might be and was.  The poor young woman,
who had based her last hope an this appeal, then rose from her knees
and threw herself sobbing into her husband's arms.  Charles VIII and
Ludavico Sforza, took their leave: John Galeazzo was doomed.

Two days after, Charles VIII left for Florence, accompanied by his
ally; but scarcely had they reached Parma when a messenger caught
them up, and announced to Ludovico that his nephew was just dead:
Ludovico at once begged Charles to excuse his leaving him to finish
the journey alone; the interests which called him back to Milan were
so important, he said, that he could not under the circumstances stay
away a single day longer.  As a fact he had to make sure of
succeeding the man he had assassinated.

But Charles VIII continued his road not without some uneasiness.  The
sight of the young prince on his deathbed had moved him deeply, for
at the bottom of his heart he was convinced that Ludovico Sforza was
his murderer; and a murderer might very well be a traitor.  He was
going forward into an unfamiliar country, with a declared enemy in
front of him and a doubtful friend behind: he was now at the entrance
to the mountains, and as his army had no store of provisions and only
lived from hand to mouth, a forced delay, however short, would mean
famine.  In front of him was Fivizzano, nothing, it is true, but a
village surrounded by walls, but beyond Fivizzano lay Sarzano and
Pietra Santa, both of them considered impregnable fortresses; worse
than this, they were coming into a part of the country that was
especially unhealthy in October, had no natural product except oil,
and even procured its own corn from neighbouring provinces; it was
plain that a whole army might perish there in a few days either from
scarcity of food or from the unwholesome air, both of which were more
disastrous than the impediments offered at every step by the nature
of the ground.  The situation was grave; but the pride of Piero dei
Medici came once more to the rescue of the fortunes of Charles VIII.




CHAPTER V

PIERO DEI MEDICI had, as we may remember, undertaken to hold the
entrance to Tuscany against the French; when, however, he saw his
enemy coming dawn from the Alps, he felt less confident about his own
strength, and demanded help from the pope; but scarcely had the
rumour of foreign invasion began to spread in the Romagna, than the
Colonna family declared themselves the French king's men, and
collecting all their forces seized Ostia, and there awaited the
coming of the French fleet to offer a passage through Rome.  The
pope, therefore, instead of sending troops to Florence, was obliged
to recall all his soldiers to be near the capital; the only promise
he made to Piero was that if Bajazet should send him the troops that
he had been asking for, he would despatch that army for him to make
use of.  Piero dei Medici had not yet taken any resolution or formed
any plan, when he suddenly heard two startling pieces of news.  A
jealous neighbour of his, the Marquis of Torderiovo, had betrayed to
the French the weak side of Fivizzano, so that they had taken it by
storm, and had put its soldiers and inhabitants to the edge of the
sword; on another side, Gilbert of Montpensier, who had been lighting
up the sea-coast so as to keep open the communications between the
French army and their fleet, had met with a detachment sent by Paolo
Orsini to Sarzano, to reinforce the garrison there, and after an
hour's fighting had cut it to pieces.  No quarter had been granted to
any of the prisoners; every man the French could get hold of they had
massacred.

This was the first occasion on which the Italians, accustomed as they
were to the chivalrous contests of the fifteenth century, found
themselves in contact with savage foreigners who, less advanced in
civilisation, had not yet come to consider war as a clever game, but
looked upon it as simply a mortal conflict.  So the news of these two
butcheries produced a tremendous sensation at Florence, the richest
city in Italy, and the most prosperous in commerce and in art.  Every
Florentine imagined the French to be like an army of those ancient
barbarians who were wont to extinguish fire with blood.  The
prophecies of Savonarola, who had predicted the foreign invasion and
the destruction that should follow it, were recalled to the minds of
all; and so much perturbation was evinced that Piero dei Medici, bent
on getting peace at any price, forced a decree upon the republic
whereby she was to send an embassy to the conqueror; and obtained
leave, resolved as he was to deliver himself in person into the hands
of the French monarch, to act as one of the ambassadors.  He
accordingly quitted Florence, accompanied by four other messengers,
and an his arrival at Pietra Santa, sent to ask from Charles VIII a
safe-conduct for himself alone.  The day after he made this request,
Brigonnet and de Piennes came to fetch him, and led him into the
presence of Charles VIII.

Piero dei Medici, in spite of his name and influence, was in the eyes
of the French nobility, who considered it a dishonourable thing to
concern oneself with art or industry, nothing more than a rich
merchant, with whom it would be absurd to stand upon any very strict
ceremony.  So Charles VIII received him on horseback, and addressing
him with a haughty air, as a master might address a servant, demanded
whence came this pride of his that made him dispute his entrance into
Tuscany.  Piero dei Medici replied, that, with the actual consent of
Louis XI, his father Lorenzo had concluded a treaty of alliance with
Ferdinand of Naples; that accordingly he had acted in obedience to
prior obligations, but as he did, not wish to push too far his
devotion to the house of Aragon or his opposition to France, he was
ready to do whatever Charles VIII might demand of him.  The king, who
had never looked for such humility in his enemy, demanded that
Sarzano should be given up to him: to this Piero dei Medici at once
consented.  Then the conqueror, wishing to see how far the ambassador
of the magnificent republic would extend his politeness, replied that
this concession was far from satisfying him, and that he still must
have the keys of Pietra Santa, Pisa, Librafatta, and Livorno.  Piero
saw no more difficulty about these than about Sarzano, and consented
on Charles's mere promise by word of mouth to restore the town when
he had achieved the conquest of Naples.  At last Charles VIII, seeing
that this man who had been sent out to negotiate with him was very
easy to manage, exacted as a final condition, a 'sine qua non',
however, of his royal protection, that the magnificent republic
should lend him the sum of 200,000 florins.  Piero found it no harder
to dispose of money than of fortresses, and replied that his fellow-
citizens would be happy to render this service to their new ally.
Then Charles VIII set him on horseback, and ordered him to go on in
front, so as to begin to carry out his promises by yielding up the
four fortresses he had insisted on having.  Piero obeyed, and the
French army, led by the grandson of Cosimo the Great and the son of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, continued its triumphal march through
Tuscany.

On his arrival at Lucca, Piero dei Medici learnt that his concessions
to the King of France were making a terrible commotion at Florence.
The magnificent republic had supposed that what Charles VIII wanted
was simply a passage through her territory, so when the news came
there was a general feeling of discontent, which was augmented by the
return of the other ambassadors, whom Piero had not even consulted
when he took action as he did.  Piero considered it necessary that he
should return, so he asked Charles's permission to precede him to the
capital.  As he had fulfilled all his promises, except the matter of
the loan, which could not be settled anywhere but at Florence, the
king saw no objection, and the very evening after he quitted the
French army Piero returned incognito to his palace in the Via Largo.

The next day he proposed to present himself before the Signoria, but
when he arrived at the Piazza del Palazzo Vecchio, he perceived the
gonfaloniere Jacopo de Nerli coming towards him, signalling to him
that it was useless to attempt to go farther, and pointing out to him
the figure of Luca Corsini standing at the gate, sword in hand:
behind him stood guards, ordered, if need-were, to dispute his
passage.  Piero dei Medici, amazed by an opposition that he was
experiencing for the first time in his life, did not attempt
resistance.  He went home, and wrote to his brother-in-law, Paolo
Orsini, to come and help him with his gendarmes.  Unluckily for him,
his letter was intercepted.  The Signoria considered that it was an
attempt at rebellion.  They summoned the citizens to their aid; they
armed hastily, sallied forth in crowds, and thronged about the piazza
of the palace.  Meanwhile Cardinal Gian dei Medici had mounted on
horseback, and under the impression that the Orsini were coming to
the rescue, was riding about the streets of Florence, accompanied by
his servants and uttering his battle cry, "Palle, Palle."  But times
had changed: there was no echo to the cry, and when the cardinal
reached the Via dei Calizaioli, a threatening murmur was the only
response, and he understood that instead of trying to arouse Florence
he had much better get away before the excitement ran too high.  He
promptly retired to his own palace, expecting to find there his two
brothers, Piero and Giuliano.  But they, under the protection of
Orsini and his gendarmes, had made their escape by the Porto San
Gallo.  The peril was imminent, and Gian dei Medici wished to follow
their example; but wherever he went he was met by a clamour that grew
more and more threatening.  At last, as he saw that the danger was
constantly increasing, he dismounted from his horse and ran into a
house that he found standing open.  This house by a lucky chance
communicated with a convent of Franciscans; one of the friars lent
the fugitive his dress, and the cardinal, under the protection of
this humble incognito, contrived at last to get outside Florence, and
joined his two brothers in the Apennines.

The same day the Medici were declared traitors and rebels, and
ambassadors were sent to the King of France.  They found him at Pisa,
where he was granting independence to the town which eighty-seven
years ago had fallen under the rule of the Florentines.  Charles VIII
made no reply to the envoys, but merely announced that he was going
to march on Florence.

Such a reply, one may easily understand, terrified the republic.
Florence, had no time to prepare a defence, and no strength in her
present state to make one.  But all the powerful houses assembled and
armed their own servants and retainers, and awaited the issue,
intending not to begin hostilities, but to defend themselves should
the French make an attack.  It was agreed that if any necessity
should arise for taking up arms, the bells of the various churches in
the town should ring a peal and so serve as a general signal.  Such a
resolution was perhaps of more significant moment in Florence than it
could have been in any other town.  For the palaces that still remain
from that period are virtually fortresses and the eternal fights
between Guelphs and Ghibellines had familiarised the Tuscan people
with street warfare.

The king appeared, an the 17th of November, in the evening, at the
gate of San Friano.  He found there the nobles of Florence clad in
their most magnificent apparel, accompanied by priests chanting
hymns, and by a mob who were full of joy at any prospect of change,
and hoped for a return of liberty after the fall of the Medici.
Charles VIII stopped for a moment under a sort of gilded canopy that
had been prepared for him, and replied in a few evasive words to the
welcoming speeches which were addressed to him by the Signoria; then
he asked for his lance, he set it in rest, and gave the order to
enter the town, the whole of which he paraded with his army following
him with arms erect, and then went down to the palace of the Medici,
which had been prepared for him.

The next day negotiations commenced; but everyone was out of his
reckoning.  The Florentines had received Charles VIII as a guest, but
he had entered the city as a conqueror.  So when the deputies of the
Signoria spoke of ratifying the treaty of Piero dei Medici, the king
replied that such a treaty no longer existed, as they had banished
the man who made it; that he had conquered Florence, as he proved the
night before, when he entered lance in hand; that he should retain
the sovereignty, and would make any further decision whenever it
pleased him to do so; further, he would let them know later on
whether he would reinstate the Medici or whether he would delegate
his authority to the Signoria: all they had to do was to come back
the next day, and he would give them his ultimatum in writing.

This reply threw Florence into a great state of consternation; but
the Florentines were confirmed in their resolution of making a stand.
Charles, for his part, had been astonished by the great number of the
inhabitants; not only was every street he had passed through thickly
lined with people, but every house from garret to basement seemed
overflowing with human beings.  Florence indeed, thanks to her rapid
increase in population, could muster nearly 150,000 souls.

The next day, at the appointed hour, the deputies made their
appearance to meet the king.  They were again introduced into his
presence, and the discussion was reopened.  At last, as they were
coming to no sort of understanding, the royal secretary, standing at
the foot of the throne upon which Charles viii sat with covered head,
unfolded a paper and began to read, article by article, the
conditions imposed by the King of France.  But scarcely had he read a
third of the document when the discussion began more hotly than ever
before.  Then Charles VIII said that thus it should be, or he would
order his trumpets to be sounded.  Hereupon Piero Capponi, secretary
to the republic, commonly called the Scipio of Florence, snatched
from the royal secretary's hand the shameful proposal of
capitulation, and tearing it to pieces, exclaimed:--

"Very good, sire; blow your trumpets, and we will ring our bells."

He threw the pieces in the face of the amazed reader, and dashed out
of the room to give the terrible order that would convert the street
of Florence into a battlefield.

Still, against all probabilities, this bold answer saved the town.
The French supposed, from such audacious words, addressed as they
were to men who so far had encountered no single obstacle, that the
Florentines were possessed of sure resources, to them unknown: the
few prudent men who retained any influence over the king advised him
accordingly to abate his pretensions; the result was that Charles
VIII offered new and more reasonable conditions, which were accepted,
signed by both parties, and proclaimed on the 26th of November during
mass in the cathedral of Santa Maria Del Fiore.

These were the conditions:

The Signoria were to pay to Charles VIII, as subsidy, the sum of
120,000 florins, in three instalments;

The Signoria were to remove the sequestration imposed upon the
property of the Medici, and to recall the decree that set a price on
their heads;

The Signoria were to engage to pardon the Pisans, on condition of
their again submitting to the rule of Florence;

Lastly, the Signoria were to recognise the claims of the Duke of
Milan over Sarzano and Pietra Santa, and these claims thus
recognised, were to be settled by arbitration.

In exchange for this, the King of France pledged himself to restore
the fortresses that had been given up to him, either after he had
made himself master of the town of Naples, or when this war should be
ended by a peace or a two years' truce, or else when, for any reason
whatsoever, he should have quitted Italy.

Two days after this proclamation, Charles VIII, much to the joy of
the Signoria, left Florence, and advanced towards Rome by the route
of Poggibondi and Siena.

The pope began to be affected by the general terror: he had heard of
the massacres of Fivizzano, of Lunigiane, and of Imola; he knew that
Piero dei Medici had handed over the Tuscan fortresses, that Florence
had succumbed, and that Catherine Sforza had made terms with the
conqueror; he saw the broken remnants of the Neapolitan troops pass
disheartened through Rome, to rally their strength in the Abruzzi,
and thus he found himself exposed to an enemy who was advancing upon
him with the whole of the Romagna under his control from one sea to
the other, in a line of march extending from Piombina to Ancona.

It was at this juncture that Alexander VI received his answer from
Bajazet II: the reason of so long a delay was that the pope's envoy
and the Neapolitan ambassador had been stopped by Gian della Rovere,
the Cardinal Giuliano's brother, just as they were disembarking at
Sinigaglia.  They were charged with a verbal answer, which was that
the sultan at this moment was busied with a triple war, first with
the Sultan of Egypt, secondly with the King of Hungary, and thirdly
with the Greeks of Macedonia and Epirus; and therefore he could not,
with all the will in the world, help His Holiness with armed men.
But the envoys were accompanied by a favourite of the sultan's
bearing a private letter to Alexander VI, in which Bajazet offered on
certain conditions to help him with money.  Although, as we see, the
messengers had been stopped on the way, the Turkish envoy had all the
same found a means of getting his despatch sent to the pope: we give
it here in all its naivete.

"Bajazet the Sultan, son of the Sultan Mahomet II, by the grace of
God Emperor of Asia and Europe, to the Father and Lord of all the
Christians, Alexander VI, Roman pontiff and pope by the will of
heavenly Providence, first, greetings that we owe him and bestow with
all our heart.  We make known to your Highness, by the envoy of your
Mightiness, Giorgio Bucciarda, that we have been apprised of your
convalescence, and received the news thereof with great joy and
comfort.  Among other matters, the said Bucciarda has brought us word
that the King of France, now marching against your Highness, has
shown a desire to take under his protection our brother D'jem, who is
now under yours--a thing which is not only against our will, but
which would also be the cause of great injury to your Highness and to
all Christendom.  In turning the matter over with your envoy Giorgio
we have devised a scheme most conducive to peace and most
advantageous and honourable for your Highness; at the same time
satisfactory to ourselves personally; it would be well if our
aforesaid brother D'jem, who being a man is liable to death, and who
is now in the hands of your Highness, should quit this world as soon
as possible, seeing that his departure, a real good to him in his
position, would be of great use to your Highness, and very conducive
to your peace, while at the same time it would be very agreeable to
us, your friend.  If this proposition is favourably received, as we
hope, by your Highness, in your desire to be friendly towards us, it
would be advisable both in the interests of your Highness and for our
own satisfaction that it should occur rather sooner than later, and
by the surest means you might be pleased to employ; so that our said
brother D'jem might pass from the pains of this world into a better
and more peaceful life, where at last he may find repose.  If your
Highness should adapt this plan and send us the body of our brother,
We, the above-named Sultan Bajazet, pledge ourselves to send to your
Highness, wheresoever and by whatsoever hands you please, the sum of
300,000 ducats, With which sum you could purchase some fair domain
for your children.  In order to facilitate this purchase, we would be
willing, while awaiting the issue, to place the 300,000 ducats in the
hands of a third party, so that your Highness might be quite certain
of receiving the money on an appointed day, in return for the
despatch of our brother's body.  Moreover, we promise your Highness
herewith, for your greater satisfaction, that never, so long as you
shall remain on the pontifical throne, shall there be any hurt done
to the Christians, neither by us, nor by our servants, nor by any of
our compatriots, of whatsoever kind or condition they may be, neither
on sea nor on land.  And for the still further satisfaction of your
Highness, and in order that no doubt whatever may remain concerning
the fulfilment of our promises, we have sworn and affirmed in the
presence of Bucciarda, your envoy, by the true God whom we adore and
by our holy Gospels, that they shall be faithfully kept from the
first point unto the last.  And now for the final and complete
assurance of your Highness, in order that no doubt may still remain
in your heart, and that you may be once again and profoundly
convinced of our good faith, we the aforesaid Sultan Bajazet do swear
by the true God, who has created the heavens and the earth and all
that therein is, that we will religiously observe all that has been
above said and declared, and in the future will do nothing and
undertake nothing that may be contrary to the interests of your
Highness.

"Given at Constantinople, in our palace, on the 12th of September
A.D.  1494."


This letter was the cause of great joy to the Holy Father: the aid of
four or five thousand Turks would be insufficient under the present
circumstances, and would only serve to compromise the head of
Christendom, while the sum of 300,000 ducats--that is, nearly a
million francs--was good to get in any sort of circumstances.  It is
true that, so long as D'jem lived, Alexander was drawing an income of
180,000 livres, which as a life annuity represented a capital of
nearly two millions; but when one needs ready mangy, one ought to be
able to make a sacrifice in the wav of discount.  All the same,
Alexander formed no definite plan, resolved on acting as
circumstances should indicate.

But it was a more pressing business to decide how he should behave to
the King of France: he had never anticipated the success of the
French in Italy, and we have seen that he laid all the foundations of
his family's future grandeur upon his alliance with the house of
Aragon.  But here was this house tattering, and a volcano more
terrible than her own Vesuvius was threatening to swallow up Naples.
He must therefore change his policy, and attach himself to the
victor,--no easy matter, for Charles VIII was bitterly annoyed with
the pope for having refused him the investiture and given it to
Aragon.

In consequence, he sent Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini as an envoy to
the king.  This choice looked like a mistake at first, seeing that
the ambassador was a nephew of Pius II, who had vigorously opposed
the house of Anjou; but Alexander in acting thus had a second design,
which could not be discerned by those around him.  In fact, he had
divined that Charles would not be quick to receive his envoy, and
that, in the parleyings to which his unwillingness must give rise,
Piccolomini would necessarily be brought into contact with the young
king's advisers.  Now, besides his ostensible mission to the king,
Piccalamini had also secret instructions for the more influential
among his counsellors.  These were Briconnet and Philippe de
Luxembourg; and Piccolomini was authorised to promise a cardinal's
hat to each of them.  The result was just what Alexander had
foreseen: his envoy could not gain admission to Charles, and was
obliged to confer with the people about him.  This was what the pope
wished.  Piccolomini returned to Rome with the king's refusal, but
with a promise from Briconnet and Philippe de Luxembourg that they
would use all their influence with Charles in favour of the Holy
Father, and prepare him to receive a fresh embassy.

But the French all this time were advancing, and never stopped more
than forty-eight hours in any town, so that it became more and more
urgent to get something settled with Charles.  The king had entered
Siena and Viterbo without striking a blow; Yves d' Alegre and Louis
de Ligny had taken over Ostia from the hands of the Colonnas; Civita
Vecchia and Corneto had opened their gates; the Orsini had submitted;
even Gian Sforza, the pope's son-in-law, had retired from the
alliance with Aragon.  Alexander accordingly judged that the moment
had came to abandon his ally, and sent to Charles the Bishops of
Concordia and Terni, and his confessor, Mansignore Graziano.  They
were charged to renew to Briconnet and Philippe de Luxembourg the
promise of the cardinalship, and had full powers of negotiation in
the name of their master, both in case Charles should wish to include
Alfonso II in the treaty, and in case he should refuse to sign an
agreement with any other but the pope alone.  They found the mind of
Charles influenced now by the insinuation of Giuliano della Ravere,
who, himself a witness of the pope's simony, pressed the king to
summon a council and depose the head of the Church, and now by the
secret support given him by the Bishops of Mans and St. Malo.  The
end of it was that the king decided to form his own opinion about the
matter and settle nothing beforehand, and continued this route,
sending the ambassadors back to the pope, with the addition of the
Marechal de Gie, the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and Jean de Gannay,
first president of the Paris Parliament.  They were ordered to say to
the pope--

(1) That the king wished above all things to be admitted into Rome
without resistance; that, an condition of a voluntary, frank, and
loyal admission, he would respect the authority of the Holy Father
and the privileges of the Church;

(2) That the king desired that D'jem should be given up to him, in
order that he might make use of him against the sultan when he should
carry the war into Macedonia or Turkey or the Holy Land;

(3) That the remaining conditions were so unimportant that they could
be brought forward at the first conference.

The ambassadors added that the French army was now only two days
distant from Rome, and that in the evening of the day after next
Charles would probably arrive in person to demand an answer from His
Holiness.

It was useless to think of parleying with a prince who acted in such
expeditious fashion as this.  Alexander accordingly warned Ferdinand
to quit Rome as soon as possible, in the interests of his own
personal safety.  But Ferdinand refused to listen to a word, and
declared that he would not go out at one gate while Charles VIII came
in at another.  His sojourn was not long.  Two days later, about
eleven o'clock in the morning, a sentinel placed on a watch-tower at
the top of the Castle S. Angelo, whither the pope had retired, cried
out that the vanguard of the enemy was visible on the horizon.  At
once Alexander and the Duke of Calabria went up an the terrace which
tops the fortress, and assured themselves with their own eyes that
what the soldier said was true.  Then, and not till then, did the
duke of Calabria mount an horseback, and, to use his own words, went
out at the gate of San Sebastiana, at the same moment that the French
vanguard halted five hundred feet from the Gate of the People.  This
was on the 31st of December 1494.

At three in the afternoon the whole army had arrived, and the
vanguard began their march, drums beating, ensigns unfurled.  It was
composed, says Paolo Giove, an eye-witness (book ii, p. 41 of his
History), of Swiss and German soldiers, with short tight coats of
various colours: they were armed with short swords, with steel edges
like those of the ancient Romans, and carried ashen lances ten feet
long, with straight and sharp iron spikes: only one-fourth of their
number bore halberts instead of lances, the spikes cut into the form
of an axe and surmounted by a four-cornered spike, to be used both
for cutting like an axe and piercing like a bayonet: the first row of
each battalion wore helmets and cuirasses which protected the head
and chest, and when the men were drawn up for battle they presented
to the enemy a triple array of iron spikes, which they could raise or
lower like the spines of a porcupine.  To each thousand of the
soldiery were attached a hundred fusiliers: their officers, to
distinguish them from the men, wore lofty plumes on their helmets.

After the Swiss infantry came the archers of Gascony: there were five
thousand of them, wearing a very simple dress, that contrasted with
the rich costume of the Swiss soldiers, the shortest of whom would
have been a head higher than the tallest of the Gascons.  But they
were excellent soldiers, full of courage, very light, and with a
special reputation for quickness in stringing and drawing their iron
bows.

Behind them rode the cavalry, the flower of the French nobility, with
their gilded helmets and neck bands, their velvet and silk surcoats,
their swords each of which had its own name, their shields each
telling of territorial estates, and their colours each telling of a
lady-love.  Besides defensive arms, each man bore a lance in his
hand, like an Italian gendarme, with a solid grooved end, and on his
saddle bow a quantity of weapons, some for cutting and same for
thrusting.  Their horses were large and strong, but they had their
tails and ears cropped according to the French custom.  These horses,
unlike those of the Italian gendarmes, wore no caparisons of dressed
leather, which made them more exposed to attack.  Every knight was
followed by three horses--the first ridden by a page in armour like
his own, the two others by equerries who were called lateral
auxiliaries, because in a fray they fought to right and left of their
chief.  This troop was not only the most magnificent, but the most
considerable in the whole army; for as there were 2500 knights, they
formed each with their three followers a total of 10,000 men.  Five
thousand light horse rode next, who carried huge wooden bows, and
shot long arrows from a distance like English archers.  They were a
great help in battle, for moving rapidly wherever aid was required,
they could fly in a moment from one wing to another, from the rear to
the van, then when their quivers were empty could go off at so swift
a gallop that neither infantry or heavy cavalry could pursue them.
Their defensive armour consisted of a helmet and half-cuirass; some
of them carried a short lance as well, with which to pin their
stricken foe to the ground; they all wore long cloaks adorned with
shoulder-knots, and plates of silver whereon the arms of their chief
were emblazoned.

At last came the young king's escort; there were four hundred
archers, among whom a hundred Scots formed a line on each side, while
two hundred of the most illustrious knights marched on foot beside
the prince, carrying heavy arms on their shoulders.  In the midst of
this magnificent escort advanced Charles VIII, both he and his horse
covered with splendid armour; an his right and left marched Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza, the Duke of Milan's brother, and Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere, of whom we have spoken so often, who was afterwards
Pope Julius II.  The Cardinals Colonna and Savelli followed
immediately after, and behind them came Prospero and Fabrizia
Colonna, and all the Italian princes and generals who had thrown in
their lot with the conqueror, and were marching intermingled with the
great French lords.

For a long time the crowd that had collected to see all these foreign
soldiers go by, a sight so new and strange, listened uneasily to a
dull sound which got nearer and nearer.  The earth visibly trembled,
the glass shook in the windows, and behind the king's escort thirty-
six bronze cannons were seen to advance, bumping along as they lay on
their gun-carriages.  These cannons were eight feet in length; and as
their mouths were large enough to hold a man's head, it was supposed
that each of these terrible machines, scarcely known as yet to the
Italians, weighed nearly six thousand pounds.  After the cannons came
culverins sixteen feet long, and then falconets, the smallest of
which shot balls the size of a grenade.  This formidable artillery
brought up the rear of the procession, and formed the hindmost guard
of the French army.

It was six hours since the front guard entered the town; and as it
was now night and for every six artillery-men there was a torch-
bearer, this illumination gave to the objects around a more gloomy
character than they would have shown in the sunlight.  The young king
was to take up his quarters in the Palazzo di Venezia, and all the
artillery was directed towards the plaza and the neighbouring
streets.  The remainder of the army was dispersed about the town.
The same evening, they brought to the king, less to do honour to him
than to assure him of his safety, the keys of Rome and the keys of
the Belvedere Garden just the same thing had been done for the Duke
of Calabria.

The pope, as we said, had retired to the Castle S. Angelo with only
six cardinals, so from the day after his arrival the young king had
around him a court of very different brilliance from that of the head
of the Church.  Then arose anew the question of a convocation to
prove Alexander's simony and proceed to depose him; but the king's
chief counsellors, gained over, as we know, pointed out that this was
a bad moment to excite a new schism in the Church, just when
preparations were being made for war against the infidels.  As this
was also the king's private opinion, there was not much trouble in
persuading him, and he made up his mind to treat with His Holiness.

But the negotiations had scarcely begun when they had to be broken
off; for the first thing Charles VIII demanded was the surrender of
the Castle S. Angelo, and as the pope saw in this castle his only
refuge, it was the last thing he chose to give up.  Twice, in his
youthful impatience, Charles wanted to take by force what he could
not get by goodwill, and had his cannons directed towards the Holy
Father's dwelling-place; but the pope was unmoved by these
demonstrations; and obstinate as he was, this time it was the French
king who gave way.

This article, therefore, was set aside, and the following conditions
were agreed upon:

That there should be from this day forward between His Majesty the
King of France and the Holy Father a sincere friendship and a firm
alliance;

Before the completion of the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the
King of France should occupy, for the advantage and accommodation of
his army, the fortresses of Civita Vecchia, Terracina, and Spoleto;

Lastly, the Cardinal Valentino (this was now the name of Caesar
Borgia, after his archbishopric of Valencia) should accompany the
king in the capacity of apostolic ambassador, really as a hostage.

These conditions fixed, the ceremonial of an interview was arranged.
The king left the Palazzo di Venezia and went to live in the Vatican.
At the appointed time he entered by the door of a garden that
adjoined the palace, while the pope, who had not had to quit the
Castle S. Angelo, thanks to a corridor communicating between the two
palaces, came down into the same garden by another gate.  The result
of this arrangement was that the king the next moment perceived the
pope, and knelt down, but the pope pretended not to see him, and the
king advancing a few paces, knelt a second time; as His Holiness was
at that moment screened by some masonry, this supplied him with
another excuse, and the king went on with the performance, got up
again, once mare advanced several steps, and was on the point of
kneeling down the third time face to face, when the Holy Father at
last perceived him, and, walking towards him as though he would
prevent him from kneeling, took off his own hat, and pressing him to
his heart, raised him up and tenderly kissed his forehead, refusing
to cover until the king had put his cap upon his head, with the aid
of the pope's own hands.  Then, after they had stood for a moment,
exchanging polite and friendly speeches, the king lost no time in
praying His Holiness to be so good as to receive into the Sacred
College William Bricannet, the Bishop of St. Malo.  As this matter
had been agreed upon beforehand by that prelate and His Holiness,
though the king was not aware of it, Alexander was pleased to get
credit by promptly granting the request; and he instantly ordered one
of his attendants to go to the house of his son, Cardinal Valentino,
and fetch a cape and hat.  Then taking the king by the hand, he
conducted him into the hall of Papagalli, where the ceremony was to
take place of the admission of the new cardinal.  The solemn oath of
obedience which was to be taken by Charles to His Holiness as supreme
head of the Christian Church was postponed till the following day.

When that solemn day arrived, every person important in Rome, noble,
cleric, or soldier, assembled around His Holiness.  Charles, on his
side, made his approach to the Vatican with a splendid following of
princes, prelates, and captains.  At the threshold of the palace he
found four cardinals who had arrived before him: two of them placed.
themselves one on each side of him, the two others behind him, and
all his retinue following, they traversed a long line of apartments
full of guards and servants, and at last arrived in the reception-
room, where the pope was seated on his throne, with his son, Caesar
Borgia; behind him.  On his arrival at the door, the King of France
began the usual ceremonial, and when he had gone on from genuflexions
to kissing the feet, the hand, and the forehead, he stood up, while
the first president of the Parliament of Paris, in his turn stepping
forward, said in a loud voice:

"Very Holy Father, behold my king ready to offer to your Holiness
that oath of obedience that he owes to you; but in France it is
customary that he who offers himself as vassal to his lord shall
receive in exchange therefor such boons as he may demand.  His
Majesty, therefore, while he pledges himself for his own part to
behave unto your Holiness with a munificence even greater than that
wherewith your Holiness shall behave unto him, is here to beg
urgently that you accord him three favours.  These favours are:
first, the confirmation of privleges already granted to the king, to
the queen his wife, and to the dauphin his son; secondly, the
investiture, for himself and his successors, of the kingdom of
Naples; lastly, the surrender to him of the person of the sultan
D'jem, brother of the Turkish emperor."

At this address the pope was for a moment stupefied, for he did not
expect these three demands, which were moreover made so publicly by
Charles that no manner of refusal was possible.  But quickly
recovering his presence of mind, he replied to the king that he would
willingly confirm the privileges that had been accorded to the house
of France by his predecessors; that he might therefore consider his
first demand granted; that the investiture of the kingdom was an
affair that required deliberation in a council of cardinals, but he
would do all he possibly could to induce them to accede to the king's
desire; lastly, he must defer the affair of the sultan's brother till
a time more opportune for discussing it with the Sacred College, but
would venture to say that, as this surrender could not fail to be for
the good of Christendom, as it was demanded for the purpose of
assuring further the success of a crusade, it would not be his fault
if on this point also the king should not be satisfied.

At this reply, Charles bowed his head in sign of satisfaction, and
the first president stood up, uncovered, and resumed his discourse as
follows.

"Very Holy Father, it is an ancient custom among Christian kings,
especially the Most Christian kings of France, to signify, through
their ambassadors, the respect they feel for the Holy See and the
sovereign pontiffs whom Divine Providence places thereon; but the
Most Christian king, having felt a desire to visit the tombs of the
holy apostles, has been pleased to pay this religious debt, which he
regards as a sacred duty, not by ambassadors or by delegates, but in
his own person.  This is why, Very Holy Father, His Majesty the King
of France is here to acknowledge you as the true vicar of Christ, the
legitimate successor of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and with
promise and vow renders you that filial and respectful devotion which
the kings his predecessors have been accustomed to promise and vow,
devoting himself and all his strength to the service of your Holiness
and the interests of the Holy See."

The pope arose with a joyful heart; for this oath, so publicly made,
removed all his fears about a council; so inclined from this moment
to yield to the King of France anything he might choose to ask, he
took him by his left hand and made him a short and friendly reply,
dubbing him the Church's eldest son.  The ceremony over, they left
the hall, the pope always holding the king's hand in his, and in this
way they walked as far as the room where the sacred vestments are put
off; the pope feigned a wish to conduct the king to his own
apartments, but the king would not suffer this, and, embracing once
more, they separated, each to retire to his own domicile.

The king remained eight days longer at the Vatican, then returned to
the Palazzo San Marco.  During these eight days all his demands were
debated and settled to his satisfaction.  The Bishop of Mans was made
cardinal; the investiture of the kingdom of Naples was promised to
the conqueror; lastly, it was agreed that on his departure the King
of France should receive from the pope's hand the brother of the
Emperor of Constantinople, for a sum of 120,000 livres.  But--the
pope, desiring to extend to the utmost the hospitality he had been
bestowing, invited D'jem to dinner on the very day that he was to
leave Rome with his new protector.

When the moment of departure arrived, Charles mounted his horse in
full armour, and with a numerous and brilliant following made his way
to the Vatican; arrived at the door, he dismounted, and leaving his
escort at the Piazza of St. Peter, went up with a few gentlemen only.
He found His Holiness waiting for him, with Cardinal Valentino on his
right, and on his left D'jem, who, as we said before, was dining with
him, and round the table thirteen cardinals.  The king at once,
bending on his knee, demanded the pope's benediction, and stooped to
kiss his feet.  But this Alexander would not suffer; he took him in
his arms, and with the lips of a father and heart of an enemy, kissed
him tenderly on his forehead.  Then the pope introduced the son of
Mahomet II, who was a fine young man, with something noble and regal
in his air, presenting in his magnificent oriental costume a great
contrast in its fashion and amplitude to the narrow, severe cut of
the Christian apparel.  D'jem advanced to Charles without humility
and without pride, and, like an emperor's son treating with a king,
kissed his hand and then his shoulder; then, turning towards the Holy
Father, he said in Italian, which he spoke very well, that he
entreated he would recommend him to the young king, who was prepared
to take him under his protection, assuring the pontiff that he should
never have to repent giving him his liberty, and telling Charles that
he hoped he might some day be proud of him, if after taking Naples he
carried out his intention of going on to Greece.  These words were
spoken with so much dignity and at the same time with such
gentleness, that the King of France loyally and frankly grasped the
young sultan's hand, as though he were his companion-in-arms.  Then
Charles took a final farewell of the pope, and went down to the
piazza.  There he was awaited by Cardinal Valentino, who was about to
accompany him, as we know, as a hostage, and who had remained behind
to exchange a few words with his father.  In a moment Caesar Borgia
appeared, riding on a splendidly harnessed mule, and behind him were
led six magnificent horses, a present from the Holy Father to the
King of France.  Charles at once mounted one of these, to do honour
to the gift.  The pope had just conferred on him, and leaving Rome
with the rest of his troops, pursued his way towards Marino, where he
arrived the same evening.

He learned there that Alfonso, belying his reputation as a clever
politician and great general, had just embarked with all his
treasures in a flotilla of four galleys, leaving the care of the war
and the management of his kingdom to his son Ferdinand.  Thus
everything went well for the triumphant march of Charles: the gates
of towns opened of themselves at his approach, his enemies fled
without waiting for his coming, and before he had fought a single
battle he had won for himself the surname of Conqueror.

The day after at dawn the army started once more, and after marching
the whole day, stopped in the evening at Velletri.  There the king,
who had been on horseback since the morning, with Cardinal Valentine
and D'jem, left the former at his lodging, and taking D'jem with him,
went on to his own.  Then Caesar Borgia, who among the army baggage
had twenty very heavy waggons of his own, had one of these opened,
took out a splendid cabinet with the silver necessary for his table,
and gave orders for his supper to be prepared, as he had done the
night before.  Meanwhile, night had come on, and he shut himself up
in a private chamber, where, stripping off his cardinal's costume, he
put on a groom's dress.  Thanks to this disguise, he issued from the
house that had been assigned for his accommodation without being
recognised, traversed the streets, passed through the gates, and
gained the open country.  Nearly half a league outside the town, a
servant awaited him with two swift horses.  Caesar, who was an
excellent rider, sprang to the saddle, and he and his companion at
full gallop retraced the road to Rome, where they arrived at break of
day.  Caesar got down at the house of one Flores, auditor of the
rota, where he procured a fresh horse and suitable clothes; then he
flew at once to his mother, who gave a cry of joy when she saw him;
for so silent and mysterious was the cardinal for all the world
beside, and even for her, that he had not said a word of his early
return to Rome.  The cry of joy uttered by Rosa Vanozza when she
beheld her son was far mare a cry of vengeance than of love.  One
evening, while everybody was at the rejoicings in the Vatican, when
Charles VIII and Alexander VI were swearing a friendship which
neither of them felt, and exchanging oaths that were broken
beforehand, a messenger from Rosa Vanozza had arrived with a letter
to Caesar, in which she begged him to come at once to her house in
the Via delta Longara.  Caesar questioned the messenger, but he only
replied that he could tell him nothing, that he would learn all he
cared to know from his mother's own lips.  So, as soon as he was at
liberty, Caesar, in layman's dress and wrapped in a large cloak,
quitted the Vatican and made his way towards the church of Regina
Coeli, in the neighbourhood of which, it will be remembered, was the
house where the pope's mistress lived.

As he approached his mother's house, Caesar began to observe the
signs of strange devastation.  The street was scattered with the
wreck of furniture and strips of precious stuffs.  As he arrived at
the foot of the little flight of steps that led to the entrance gate,
he saw that the windows were broken and the remains of torn curtains
were fluttering in front of them.  Not understanding what this
disorder could mean, he rushed into the house and through several
deserted and wrecked apartments.  At last, seeing light in one of the
rooms, he went in, and there found his mother sitting on the remains
of a chest made of ebony all inlaid with ivory and silver.  When she
saw Caesar, she rose, pale and dishevelled, and pointing to the
desolation around her, exclaimed:

"Look, Caesar; behold the work of your new friends."

"But what does it mean, mother?" asked the cardinal.  "Whence comes
all this disorder?"

"From the serpent," replied Rosa Vanozza, gnashing her teeth,--"from
the serpent you have warmed in your bosom.  He has bitten me, fearing
no doubt that his teeth would be broken on you."

"Who has done this?" cried Caesar.  "Tell me, and, by Heaven, mother,
he shall pay, and pay indeed!"

"Who?" replied Rosa.  "King Charles VIII has done it, by the hands of
his faithful allies, the Swiss.  It was well known that Melchior was
away, and that I was living alone with a few wretched servants; so
they came and broke in the doors, as though they were taking Rome by
storm, and while Cardinal Valentino was making holiday with their
master, they pillaged his mother's house, loading her with insults
and outrages which no Turks or Saracens could possibly have improved
upon."

"Very good, very good, mother," said Caesar; "be calm; blood shall
wash out disgrace.  Consider a moment; what we have lost is nothing
compared with what we might lose; and my father and I, you may be
quite sure, will give you back more than they have stolen from you."

"I ask for no promises," cried Rosa; "I ask for revenge."

"My mother," said the cardinal, "you shall be avenged, or I will lose
the name of son."

Having by these words reassured his mother, he took her to Lucrezia's
palace, which in consequence of her marriage with Pesaro was
unoccupied, and himself returned to the Vatican, giving orders that
his mother's house should be refurnished more magnificently than
before the disaster.  These orders were punctually executed, and it
was among her new luxurious surroundings, but with the same hatred in
her heart, that Caesar on this occasion found his mother.  This
feeling prompted her cry of joy when she saw him once more.

The mother and son exchanged a very few words; then Caesar, mounting
on horseback, went to the Vatican, whence as a hostage he had
departed two days before.  Alexander, who knew of the flight
beforehand, and not only approved, but as sovereign pontiff had
previously absolved his son of the perjury he was about to commit,
received him joyfully, but all the same advised him to lie concealed,
as Charles in all probability would not be slow to reclaim his
hostage:

Indeed, the next day, when the king got up, the absence of Cardinal
Valentino was observed, and as Charles was uneasy at not seeing him,
he sent to inquire what had prevented his appearance.  When the
messenger arrived at the house that Caesar had left the evening
before, he learned that he had gone out at nine o'clock in the
evening and not returned since.  He went back with this news to the
king, who at once suspected that he had fled, and in the first flush
of his anger let the whole army know of his perjury.  The soldiers
then remembered the twenty waggons, so heavily laden, from one of
which the cardinal, in the sight of all, had produced such
magnificent gold and silver plate; and never doubting that the cargo
of the others was equally precious, they fetched them down and broke
them to pieces; but inside they found nothing but stones and sand,
which proved to the king that the flight had been planned a long time
back, and incensed him doubly against the pope.  So without loss of
time he despatched to Rome Philippe de Bresse, afterwards Duke of
Savoy, with orders to intimate to the Holy Father his displeasure at
this conduct.  But the pope replied that he knew nothing whatever
about his son's flight, and expressed the sincerest regret to His
Majesty, declaring that he knew nothing of his whereabouts, but was
certain that he was not in Rome.  As a fact, the pope was speaking
the truth this time, for Caesar had gone with Cardinal Orsino to one
of his estates, and was temporarily in hiding there.  This reply was
conveyed to Charles by two messengers from the pope, the Bishops of
Nepi and of Sutri, and the people also sent an ambassador in their
own behalf.  He was Monsignore Porcari, dean of the rota, who was
charged to communicate to the king the displeasure of the Romans when
they learned of the cardinal's breach of faith.  Little as Charles
was disposed to content himself with empty words, he had to turn his
attention to mare serious affairs; so he continued his march to
Naples without stopping, arriving there on Sunday, the 22nd of
February, 1495.

Four days later, the unlucky D'jem, who had fallen sick at Capua died
at Castel Nuovo.  When he was leaving, at the farewell banquet,
Alexander had tried on his guest the poison he intended to use so
often later on upon his cardinals, and whose effects he was destined
to feel himself,--such is poetical justice.  In this way the pope had
secured a double haul; for, in his twofold speculation in this
wretched young man, he had sold him alive to Charles for 120,000
livres and sold him dead to Bajazet for 300,00 ducats....

But there was a certain delay about the second payment; for the
Turkish emperor, as we remember, was not bound to pay the price of
fratricide till he received the corpse, and by Charles's order the
corpse had been buried at Gaeta.

When Caesar Borgia learned the news, he rightly supposed that the
king would be so busy settling himself in his new capital that he
would have too much to think of to be worrying about him; so he went
to Rome again, and, anxious to keep his promise to his mother, he
signalised his return by a terrible vengeance.

Cardinal Valentino had in his service a certain Spaniard whom he had
made the chief of his bravoes; he was a man of five-and-thirty or
forty, whose whole life had been one long rebellion against society's
laws; he recoiled from no action, provided only he could get his
price.  This Don Michele Correglia, who earned his celebrity for
bloody deeds under the name of Michelotto, was just the man Caesar
wanted; and whereas Michelotto felt an unbounded admiration for
Caesar, Caesar had unlimited confidence in Michelotto.  It was to him
the cardinal entrusted the execution of one part of his vengeance;
the other he kept for himself.

Don Michele received orders to scour the Campagna and cut every
French throat he could find.  He began his work at once; and very few
days elapsed before he had obtained most satisfactory results: more
than a hundred persons were robbed or assassinated, and among the
last the son of Cardinal de St. Malo, who was en his way back to
France, and on whom Michelotto found a sum of 3000 crowns.

For himself, Caesar reserved the Swiss; for it was the Swiss in
particular who had despoiled his mother's house.  The pope had in his
service about a hundred and fifty soldiers belonging to their nation,
who had settled their families in Rome, and had grown rich partly by
their pay and partly in the exercise of various industries.  The
cardinal had every one of them dismissed, with orders to quit Rome
within twenty-four hours and the Roman territories within three days.
The poor wretches had all collected together to obey the order, with
their wives and children and baggage, on the Piazza of St. Peter,
when suddenly, by Cardinal Valentino's orders, they were hemmed in on
all sides by two thousand Spaniards, who began to fire on them with
their guns and charge them with their sabres, while Caesar and his
mother looked down upon the carnage from a window.  In this way they
killed fifty or perhaps sixty; but the rest coming up, made a charge
at the assassins, and then, without suffering any loss, managed to
beat a retreat to a house, where they stood a siege, and made so
valiant a defense that they gave the pope time--he knew nothing of
the author of this butchery--to send the captain of his guard to the
rescue, who, with a strong detachment, succeeded in getting nearly
forty of them safely out of the town: the rest had been massacred on
the piazza or killed in the house.

But this was no real and adequate revenge; for it did not touch
Charles himself, the sole author of all the troubles that the pope
and his family had experienced during the last year.  So Caesar soon
abandoned vulgar schemes of this kind and busied himself with loftier
concerns, bending all the force of his genius to restore the league
of Italian princes that had been broken by the defection of Sforza,
the exile of Piero dei Medici, and the defeat of Alfonso.  The
enterprise was more easily accomplished than the pope could have
anticipated.  The Venetians were very uneasy when Charles passed so
near, and they trembled lest, when he was once master of Naples, he
might conceive the idea of conquering the rest of Italy.  Ludovico
Sforza, on his side, was beginning to tremble, seeing the rapidity
with which the King of France had dethroned the house of Aragon, lest
he might not make much difference between his allies and his enemies.
Maximilian, for his part, was only seeking an occasion to break the
temporary peace which he had granted for the sake of the concession
made to him.  Lastly, Ferdinand and Isabella were allies of the
dethroned house.  And so it came about that all of them, for
different reasons, felt a common fear, and were soon in agreement as
to the necessity of driving out Charles VIII, not only from Naples,
but from Italy, and pledged themselves to work together to this end,
by every means in their power, by negotiations, by trickery, or by
actual force.  The Florentines alone refused to take part in this
general levy of arms, and remained faithful to their promises.

According to the articles of the treaty agreed upon by the
confederates, the alliance was to last for five-and-twenty years, and
had for ostensible object the upholding of the majority of the pope,
and the interests of Christendom; and these preparations might well
have been taken for such as would precede a crusade against the
Turks, if Bajazet's ambassador had not always been present at the
deliberations, although the Christian princes could not have dared
for very shame to admit the, sultan by name into their league.  Now
the confederates had to set on foot an army of 30,000 horse and
20,000 infantry, and each of them was taxed for a contingent; thus
the pope was to furnish 4000 horse, Maximilian 6000, the King of
Spain, the Duke of Milan, and the republic of Venice, 8000 each.
Every confederate was, in addition to this, to levy and equip 4000
infantry in the six weeks following the signature of the treaty.  The
fleets were to be equipped by the Maritime States; but any expenses
they should incur later on were to be defrayed by all in equal
shares.

The formation of this league was made public on the 12th of April,
1495, Palm Sunday, and in all the Italian States, especially at Rome,
was made the occasion of fetes and immense rejoicings.  Almost as
soon as the publicly known articles were announced the secret ones
were put into execution.  These obliged Ferdinand and Isabella to
send a fleet of sixty galleys to Ischia, where Alfonso's son had
retired, with six hundred horsemen on board and five thousand
infantry, to help him to ascend the throne once more.  Those troops
were to be put under the command of Gonzalvo of Cordova, who had
gained the reputation of the greatest general in Europe after the
taking of Granada.  The Venetians with a fleet of forty galleys under
the command of Antonio Grimani, were to attack all the French
stations on the coast of Calabria and Naples.  The Duke of Milan
promised for his part to check all reinforcements as they should
arrive from France, and to drive the Duke of Orleans out of Asti.

Lastly, there was Maximilian, who had promised to make invasions on
the frontiers, and Bajazet, who was to help with money, ships, and
soldiers either the Venetians or the Spaniards, according as he might
be appealed to by Barberigo or by Ferdinand the Catholic.

This league was all the more disconcerting for Charles, because of
the speedy abatement of the enthusiasm that had hailed his first
appearance.  What had happened to him was what generally happens to a
conqueror who has more good luck than talent; instead of making
himself a party among the great Neapolitan and Calabrian vassals,
whose roots would be embedded in the very soil, by confirming their
privileges and augmenting their power, he had wounded their feelings
by bestowing all the titles, offices, and fiefs on those alone who
had followed him from France, so that all the important positions in
the kingdom were filled by strangers.

The result was that just when the league was made known, Tropea and
Amantea, which had been presented by Charles to the Seigneur de
Precy, rose in revolt and hoisted the banner of Aragon; and the
Spanish fleet had only to present itself at Reggio, in Calabria, for
the town to throw open its gates, being more discontented with the
new rule than the old; and Don Federiga, Alfonso's brother and
Ferdinand's uncle, who had hitherto never quitted Brindisi, had only
to appear at Tarentum to be received there as a liberator.




CHAPTER VI

Charles learned all this news at Naples, and, tired of his late
conquests, which necessitated a labour in organisation for which he
was quite unfitted, turned his eyes towards France, where victorious
fetes and rejoicings were awaiting the victor's return.  So he
yielded at the first breath of his advisers, and retraced his road to
his kingdom, threatened, as was said, by the Germans on the north and
the Spaniards on the south.  Consequently, he appointed Gilbert de
Montpensier, of the house of Bourbon, viceroy; d'Aubigny, of the
Scotch Stuart family, lieutenant in Calabria; Etienne de Vese,
commander at Gaeta; and Don Juliano, Gabriel de Montfaucon, Guillaume
de Villeneuve, George de Lilly, the bailiff of Vitry, and Graziano
Guerra respectively governors of Sant' Angelo, Manfredonia, Trani,
Catanzaro, Aquila, and Sulmone; then leaving behind in evidence of
his claims the half of his Swiss, a party of his Gascons, eight
hundred French lances, and about five hundred Italian men-at-arms,
the last under the command of the prefect of Rome, Prospero and
Fabrizio Colonna, and Antonio Savelli, he left Naples on the 20th of
May at two o'clock in the afternoon, to traverse the whole of the
Italian peninsula with the rest of his army, consisting of eight
hundred French lances, two hundred gentlemen of his guard, one
hundred Italian men-at-arms, three thousand Swiss infantry, one
thousand French and one thousand Gascon.  He also expected to be
joined by Camillo Vitelli and his brothers in Tuscany, who were to
contribute two hundred and fifty men-at-arms.

A week before he left Naples, Charles had sent to Rome Monseigneur de
Saint-Paul, brother of Cardinal de Luxembourg; and just as he was
starting he despatched thither the new Archbishop of Lyons.  They
both were commissioned to assure Alexander that the King of France
had the most sincere desire and the very best intention of remaining
his friend.  In truth, Charles wished for nothing so much as to
separate the pope from the league, so as to secure him as a spiritual
and temporal support; but a young king, full of fire, ambition, and
courage, was not the neighbour to suit Alexander; so the latter would
listen to nothing, and as the troops he had demanded from the doge
and Ludavico Sforza had not been sent in sufficient number for the
defense of Rome, he was content with provisioning the castle of S.
Angelo, putting in a formidable garrison, and leaving Cardinal Sant'
Anastasio to receive Charles while he himself withdrew with Caesar to
Orvieto.  Charles only stayed in Rome three days, utterly depressed
because the pope had refused to receive him in spite of his
entreaties.  And in these three days, instead of listening to
Giuliano delta Rovere, who was advising him once more to call a
council and depose the pope, he rather hoped to bring the pope round
to his side by the virtuous act of restoring the citadels of
Terracina and Civita Vecchia to the authorities of the Romagna, only
keeping for himself Ostia, which he had promised Giuliano to give
back to him.  At last, when the three days had elapsed, he left Rome,
and resumed his march in three columns towards Tuscany, crossed the
States of the Church, and on the 13th reached Siena, where he was
joined by Philippe de Commines, who had gone as ambassador
extraordinary to the Venetian Republic, and now announced that the
enemy had forty thousand men under arms and were preparing for
battle.  This news produced no other effect an the king and the
gentlemen of his army than to excite their amusement beyond measure;
for they had conceived such a contempt for their enemy by their easy
conquest, that they could not believe that any army, however
numerous, would venture to oppose their passage.

Charles, however, was forced to give way in the face of facts, when
he heard at San Teranza that his vanguard, commanded by Marechal de
Gie, and composed of six hundred lances and fifteen hundred Swiss,
when it arrived at Fornova had come face to face with the
confederates, who had encamped at Guiarole.  The marechal had ordered
an instant halt, and he too had pitched his tents, utilising for his
defence the natural advantages of the hilly ground.  When these first
measures had been taken, he sent out, first, a herald to the enemy's
camp to ask from Francesco di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua,
generalissimo of the confederate troops, a passage for his king's
army and provisions at a reasonable price; and secondly, he
despatched a courier to Charles VIII, pressing him to hurry on his
march with the artillery and rearguard.  The confederates had given
an evasive answer, for they were pondering whether they ought to
jeopardise the whole Italian force in a single combat, and, putting
all to the hazard, attempt to annihilate the King of France and his
army together, so overwhelming the conqueror in the ruins of his
ambition.  The messenger found Charles busy superintending the
passage of the last of his cannon over the mountain of Pontremoli.
This was no easy matter, seeing that there was no sort of track, and
the guns had to be lifted up and lowered by main farce, and each
piece needed the arms of as many as two hundred men.  At last, when
all the artillery had arrived without accident on the other side of
the Apennines, Charles started in hot haste for Fornovd, where he
arrived with all his following on the morning of the next day.

From the top of the mountain where the Marechai de Gie had pitched
his tents, the king beheld both his own camp and the enemy's.  Both
were on the right bank of the Taro, and were at either end of a
semicircular chain of hills resembling an amphitheatre; and the space
between the two camps, a vast basin filled during the winter floods
by the torrent which now only marked its boundary, was nothing but a
plain covered with gravel, where all manoeuvres must be equally
difficult for horse and infantry.  Besides, on the western slope of
the hills there was a little wood which extended from the enemy's
army to the French, and was in the possession of the Stradiotes, who,
by help of its cover, had already engaged in several skirmishes with
the French troops during the two days of halt while they were waiting
for the king.

The situation was not reassuring.  From the top of the mountain which
overlooked Fornovo, one could get a view, as we said before, of the
two camps, and could easily calculate the numerical difference
between them.  The French army, weakened by the establishment of
garrisons in the various towns and fortresses they had won in Italy,
were scarcely eight thousand strong, while the combined forces of
Milan and Venice exceeded a total of thirty-five thousand.  So
Charles decided to try once more the methods of conciliation, and
sent Commines, who, as we know, had joined him in Tuscany, to the
Venetian 'proveditori', whose acquaintance he had made when on his
embassy; he having made a great impression on these men, thanks to a
general high opinion of his merits.  He was commissioned to tell the
enemy's generals, in the name of the King of France, that his master
only desired to continue his road without doing or receiving any
harm; that therefore he asked to be allowed a free passage across the
fair plains of Lombardy, which he could see from the heights where he
now stood, stretching as far as the eye could reach, away to the foot
of the Alps.  Commines found the confederate army deep in discussion:
the wish of the Milanese and Venetian party being to let the king go
by, and not attack him; they said they were only too happy that he
should leave Italy in this way, without causing any further harm; but
the ambassadors of Spain and Germany took quite another view.  As
their masters had no troops in the army, and as all the money they
had promised was already paid, they must be the gainer in either case
from a battle, whichever way it went: if they won the day they would
gather the fruits of victory, and if they lost they would experience
nothing of the evils of defeat.  This want of unanimity was the
reason why the answer to Commines was deferred until the following
day, and why it was settled that on the next day he should hold
another conference with a plenipotentiary to be appointed in the
course of that night.  The place of this conference was to be between
the two armies.

The king passed the night in great uneasiness.  All day the weather
had threatened to turn to rain, and we have already said how rapidly
the Taro could swell; the river, fordable to-day, might from tomorrow
onwards prove an insurmountable obstacle; and possibly the delay had
only been asked for with a view to putting the French army in a worse
position.  As a fact the night had scarcely come when a terrible
storm arose, and so long as darkness lasted, great rumblings were
heard in the Apennines, and the sky was brilliant with lightning.  At
break of day, however, it seemed to be getting a little calmer,
though the Taro, only a streamlet the day before, had become a
torrent by this time, and was rapidly rising.  So at six in the
morning, the king, ready armed and on horseback, summoned Commines
and bade him make his way to the rendezvous that the Venetian
'proveditori' had assigned.  But scarcely had he contrived to give
the order when loud cries were heard coming from the extreme right of
the French army.  The Stradiotes, under cover of the wood stretching
between the two camps, had surprised an outpost, and first cutting
the soldiers' throats, were carrying off their heads in their usual
way at the saddle-bow.  A detachment of cavalry was sent in pursuit;
but, like wild animals, they had retreated to their lair in the
woods, and there disappeared.

This unexpected engagement, in all probability arranged beforehand by
the Spanish and German envoys, produced on the whole army the effect
of a spark applied to a train of gunpowder.  Commines and the
Venetian 'proveditori' each tried in vain to arrest the combat an
either side.  Light troops, eager for a skirmish, and, in the usual
fashion of those days, prompted only by that personal courage which
led them on to danger, had already come to blows, rushing down into
the plain as though it were an amphitheatre where they might make a
fine display of arms.  Far a moment the young king, drawn on by
example, was an the point of forgetting the responsibility of a
general in his zeal as a soldier; but this first impulse was checked
by Marechal de Gie, Messire Claude de la Chatre de Guise, and M. de
la Trimauille, who persuaded Charles to adopt the wiser plan, and to
cross the Taro without seeking a battle,--at the same time without
trying to avoid it, should the enemy cross the river from their camp
and attempt to block his passage.  The king accordingly, following
the advice of his wisest and bravest captains, thus arranged his
divisions.

The first comprised the van and a body of troops whose duty it was to
support them.  The van consisted of three hundred and fifty men-at-
arms, the best and bravest of the army, under the command of Marechal
de Gie and Jacques Trivulce; the corps following them consisted of
three thousand Swiss, under the command of Engelbert der Cleves and
de Larnay, the queen's grand equerry; next came three hundred archers
of the guard, whom the king had sent to help the cavalry by fighting
in the spaces between them.

The second division, commanded by the king in person and forming the
middle of the army, was composed of the artillery, under Jean de
Lagrange, a hundred gentlemen of the guard with Gilles Carrone far
standard-bearer, pensioners of the king's household under Aymar de
Prie, some Scots, and two hundred cross-bowmen an horseback, with
French archers besides, led by M. de Crussol.

Lastly, the third division, i.e. the rear, preceded by six thousand
beasts of burden bearing the baggage, was composed of only three
hundred men-at-arms, commanded by de Guise and by de la Trimouille:
this was the weakest part of the army.

When this arrangement was settled, Charles ordered the van to cross
the river, just at the little town of Fornovo.  This was done at
once, the riders getting wet up to their knees, and the footmen
holding to the horses' tails.  As soon as he saw the last soldiers of
his first division on the opposite bank, he started himself to follow
the same road and cross at the same ford, giving orders to de Guise
and de la Trimouille to regulate the march of the rear guard by that
of the centre, just as he had regulated their march by that of the
van.  His orders were punctually carried out; and about ten o'clock
in the morning the whole French army was on the left bank of the
Taro: at the same time, when it seemed certain from the enemy's
arrangements that battle was imminent, the baggage, led by the
captain, Odet de Reberac, was separated from the rear guard, and
retired to the extreme left.

Now, Francisco de Gonzaga, general-in-chief of the confederate
troops, had modelled his plans on those of the King of France; by his
orders, Count de Cajazzo, with four hundred men-at-arms and two
thousand infantry, had crossed the Taro where the Venetian camp lay,
and was to attack the French van; while Gonzaga himself, following
the right bank as far as Fornovo, would go over the river by the same
ford that Charles had used, with a view to attacking his rear.
Lastly, he had placed the Stradiotes between these two fords, with
orders to cross the river in their turn, so soon as they saw the
French army attacked both in van and in the rear, and to fall upon
its flank.  Not content with offensive measures, Gonzaga had also
made provision for retreat by leaving three reserve corps on the
right bank, one to guard the camp under the instruction of the
Venetian 'provveditori', and the other two arranged in echelon to
support each other, the first commanded by Antonio di Montefeltro,
the second by Annibale Bentivoglio.

Charles had observed all these arrangements, and had recognised the
cunning Italian strategy which made his opponents the finest generals
in the world; but as there was no means of avoiding the danger, he
had decided to take a sideway course, and had given orders to
continue the match; but in a minute the French army was caught
between Count di Cajazzo, barring the way with his four hundred men-
at-arms and his two thousand infantry, and Gonzaga in pursuit of the
rear, as we said before; leading six hundred men-at-arms, the flower
of his army, a squadron of Stradiotes, and more than five thousand
infantry: this division alone was stronger than the whole of the
French army.

When, however, M. de Guise and M.  de la Trimouille found themselves
pressed in this way, they ordered their two hundred men-at-arms to
turn right about face, while at the opposite end--that is, at the
head of the army-Marechal de Gie and Trivulce ordered a halt and
lances in rest.  Meanwhile, according to custom, the king, who, as we
said, was in the centre, was conferring knighthood on those gentlemen
who had earned the favour either by virtue of their personal powers
or the king's special friendship.

Suddenly there was heard a terrible clash behind it was the French
rearguard coming to blows with the Marquis of Mantua.  In this
encounter, where each man had singled out his own foe as though it
were a tournament, very many lances were broken, especially those of
the Italian knights; for their lances were hollowed so as to be less
heavy, and in consequence had less solidity.  Those who were thus
disarmed at once seized their swords.  As they were far more numerous
than the French, the king saw them suddenly outflanking his right
wing and apparently prepared to surround it; at the same moment loud
cries were heard from a direction facing the centre: this meant that
the Stradiotes were crossing the river to make their attack.

The king at once ordered his division into two detachments, and
giving one to Bourbon the bastard, to make head against the
Stradiotes, he hurried with the second to the rescue of the van,
flinging himself into the very midst of the melee, striking out like
a king, and doing as steady work as the lowest in rank of his
captains.  Aided by the reinforcement, the rearguard made a good
stand, though the enemy were five against one, and the combat in this
part continued to rage with wonderful fury.

Obeying his orders, Bourbon had thrown himself upon the Stradiotes;
but unfortunately, carried off by his horse, he had penetrated so far
into the enemy's ranks that he was lost to sight: the disappearance
of their chief, the strange dress of their new antagonists, and the
peculiar method of their fighting produced a considerable effect on
those who were to attack them; and for the moment disorder was the
consequence in the centre, and the horse men scattered instead of
serrying their ranks and fighting in a body.  This false move would
have done them serious harm, had not most of the Stradiotes, seeing
the baggage alone and undefended, rushed after that in hope of booty,
instead of following up their advantage.  A great part of the troop
nevertheless stayed behind to fight, pressing on the French cavalry
and smashing their lances with their fearful scimitars.  Happily the
king, who had just repulsed the Marquis of Mantua's attack, perceived
what was going on behind him, and riding back at all possible speed
to the succour of the centre, together with the gentlemen of his
household fell upon the Stradiotes, no longer armed with a lance, for
that he had just broken, but brandishing his long sword, which blazed
about him like lightning, and--either because he was whirled away
like Bourbon by his own horse, or because he had allowed his courage
to take him too far--he suddenly found himself in the thickest ranks
of the Stradiotes, accompanied only by eight of the knights he had
just now created, one equerry called Antoine des Ambus, and his
standard-bearer.  "France, France!" he cried aloud, to rally round
him all the others who had scattered; they, seeing at last that the
danger was less than they had supposed, began to take their revenge
and to pay back with interest the blows they had received from the
Stradiotes.  Things were going still better, for the van, which the
Marquis de Cajazzo was to attack; for although he had at first
appeared to be animated with a terrible purpose, he stopped short
about ten or twelve feet from the French line and turned right about
face without breaking a single lance.  The French wanted to pursue,
but the Marechal de Gie, fearing that this flight might be only a
trick to draw off the vanguard from the centre, ordered every man to
stay in his place.  But the Swiss, who were German, and did not
understand the order, or thought it was not meant for them, followed
upon their heels, and although on foot caught them up and killed a
hundred of them.  This was quite enough to throw them into disorder,
so that some were scattered about the plain, and others made a rush
for the water, so as to cross the river and rejoin their camp.


When the Marechal de Gie saw this, he detached a hundred of his own
men to go to the aid of the king, who was continuing to fight with
unheard-of courage and running the greatest risks, constantly
separated as he was from his gentlemen, who could not follow him; for
wherever there was danger, thither he rushed, with his cry of
"France," little troubling himself as to whether he was followed or
not.  And it was no longer with his sword that he fought; that he had
long ago broken, like his lance, but with a heavy battle-axe, whose
every blow was mortal whether cut or pierced.  Thus the Stradiotes,
already hard pressed by the king's household and his pensioners, soon
changed attack for defence and defence for flight.  It was at this
moment that the king was really in the greatest danger; for he had
let himself be carried away in pursuit of the fugitives, and
presently found himself all alone, surrounded by these men, who, had
they not been struck with a mighty terror, would have had nothing to
do but unite and crush him and his horse together; but, as Commines
remarks, "He whom God guards is well guarded, and God was guarding
the King of France."

All the same, at this moment the French were sorely pressed in the
rear; and although de Guise and de la Trimouille held out as firmly
as it was possible to hold, they would probably have been compelled
to yield to superior numbers had not a double aid arrived in time:
first the indefatigable Charles, who, having nothing more to do among
the fugitives, once again dashed into the midst of the fight, next
the servants of the army, who, now that they were set free from the
Stradiotes and saw their enemies put to flight, ran up armed with the
axes they habitually used to cut down wood for building their huts:
they burst into the middle of the fray, slashing at the horses' legs
and dealing heavy blows that smashed in the visors of the dismounted
horsemen.

The Italians could not hold out against this double attack; the
'furia francese' rendered all their strategy and all their
calculations useless, especially as for more than a century they had
abandoned their fights of blood and fury for a kind of tournament
they chose to regard as warfare; so, in spite of all Gonzaga's
efforts, they turned their backs upon the French rear and took to
flight; in the greatest haste and with much difficulty they recrossed
the torrent, which was swollen even more now by the rain that had
been falling during the whole time of the battle.

Some thought fit to pursue the vanquished, for there was now such
disorder in their ranks that they were fleeing in all directions from
the battlefield where the French had gained so glorious a victory,
blocking up the roads to Parma and Bercetto.  But Marechal de Gie and
de Guise and de la Trimouille, who had done quite enough to save them
from the suspicion of quailing before imaginary dangers, put a stop
to this enthusiasm, by pointing out that it would only be risking the
loss of their present advantage if they tried to push it farther with
men and horses so worn out.  This view was adopted in spite of the
opinion of Trivulce, Camillo Vitelli, and Francesco Secco, who were
all eager to follow up the victory.

The king retired to a little village an the left bank of the Taro,
and took shelter in a poor house.  There he disarmed, being perhaps
among all the captains and all the soldiers the man who had fought
best.

During the night the torrent swelled so high that the Italian army
could not have pursued, even if they had laid aside their fears.  The
king did not propose to give the appearance of flight after a
victory, and therefore kept his army drawn up all day, and at night
went on to sleep at Medesano, a little village only a mile lower down
than the hamlet where he rested after the fight.  But in the course
of the night he reflected that he had done enough for the honour of
his arms in fighting an army four times as great as his own and
killing three thousand men, and then waiting a day and a half to give
them time to take their revenge; so two hours before daybreak he had
the fires lighted, that the enemy might suppose he was remaining in
camp; and every man mounting noiselessly, the whole French army,
almost out of danger by this time, proceeded on their march to Borgo
San Donnino.

While this was going on, the pope returned to Rome, where news highly
favourable to his schemes was not slow to reach his ears.  He learned
that Ferdinand had crossed from Sicily into Calabria with six
thousand volunteers and a considerable number of Spanish horse and
foot, led, at the command of Ferdinand and Isabella, by the famous
Gonzalva de Cordova, who arrived in Italy with a great reputation,
destined to suffer somewhat from the defeat at Seminara.  At almost
the same time the French fleet had been beaten by the Aragonese;
moreover, the battle of the Taro, though a complete defeat for the
confederates, was another victory for the pope, because its result
was to open a return to France for that man whom he regarded as his
deadliest foe.  So, feeling that he had nothing more to fear from
Charles, he sent him a brief at Turin, where he had stopped for a
short time to give aid to Novara, therein commanding him, by virtue
of his pontifical authority, to depart out of Italy with his army,
and to recall within ten days those of his troops that still remained
in the kingdom of Naples, on pain of excommunication, and a summons
to appear before him in person.

Charles VIII replied:

(1) That he did not understand how the pope, the chief of the league,
ordered him to leave Italy, whereas the confederates had not only
refused him a passage, but had even attempted, though unsuccessfully,
as perhaps His Holiness knew, to cut off his return into France;

(2) That, as to recalling his troops from Naples, he was not so
irreligious as to do that, since they had not entered the kingdom
without the consent and blessing of His Holiness;

(3) That he was exceedingly surprised that the pope should require
his presence in person at the capital of the Christian world just at
the present time, when six weeks previously, at the time of his
return from Naples, although he ardently desired an interview with
His Holiness, that he might offer proofs of his respect and
obedience, His Holiness, instead of according this favour, had
quitted Rome so hastily on his approach that he had not been able to
come up with him by any efforts whatsoever.  On this point, however,
he promised to give His Holiness the satisfaction he desired, if he
would engage this time to wait for him: he would therefore return to
Rome so soon as the affairs that brought him back to his own kingdom
had been satisfactorily, settled.

Although in this reply there was a touch of mockery and defiance,
Charles was none the less compelled by the circumstances of the case
to obey the pope's strange brief.  His presence was so much needed in
France that, in spite of the arrival of a Swiss reinforcement, he was
compelled to conclude a peace with Ludovico Sforza, whereby he
yielded Novara to him; while Gilbert de Montpensier and d'Aubigny,
after defending, inch by inch, Calabria, the Basilicate, and Naples,
were obliged to sign the capitulation of Atella, after a siege of
thirty-two days, on the 20th of July, 1496.  This involved giving
back to Ferdinand II, King of Naples, all the palaces and fortresses
of his kingdom; which indeed he did but enjoy for three months, dying
of exhaustion on the 7th of September following, at the Castello
della Somma, at the foot of Vesuvius; all the attentions lavished
upon him by his young wife could not repair the evil that her beauty
had wrought.

His uncle Frederic succeeded; and so, in the three years of his
papacy, Alexander VI had seen five kings upon the throne of Naples,
while he was establishing himself more firmly upon his own pontifical
seat--Ferdinand I, Alfonso I, Charles VIII, Ferdinand II, and
Frederic.  All this agitation about his throne, this rapid succession
of sovereigns, was the best thing possible for Alexander; for each
new monarch became actually king only on condition of his receiving
the pontifical investiture.  The consequence was that Alexander was
the only gainer in power and credit by these changes; for the Duke of
Milan and the republics of Florence and Venice had successively
recognised him as supreme head of the Church, in spite of his simony;
moreover, the five kings of Naples had in turn paid him homage.  So
he thought the time had now come for founding a mighty family; and
for this he relied upon the Duke of Gandia, who was to hold all the
highest temporal dignities; and upon Caesar Borgia, who was to be
appointed to all the great ecclesiastical offices.  The pope made
sure of the success of these new projects by electing four Spanish
cardinals, who brought up the number of his compatriots in the Sacred
College to twenty-two, thus assuring him a constant and certain
majority.

The first requirement of the pope's policy was to clear away from the
neighbourhood of Rome all those petty lords whom most people call
vicars of the Church, but whom Alexander called the shackles of the
papacy.  We saw that he had already begun this work by rousing the
Orsini against the Colonna family, when Charles VIII's enterprise
compelled him to concentrate all his mental resources, and also the
forces of his States, so as to secure his own personal safety.

It had come about through their own imprudent action that the Orsini,
the pope's old friends, were now in the pay of the French, and had
entered the kingdom of Naples with them, where one of them, Virginio,
a very important member of their powerful house, had been taken
prisoner during the war, and was Ferdinand II's captive.  Alexander
could not let this opportunity escape him; so, first ordering the
King of Naples not to release a man who, ever since the 1st of June,
1496, had been a declared rebel, he pronounced a sentence of
confiscation against Virginio Orsini and his whole family in a secret
consistory, which sat on the 26th of October following--that is to
say, in the early days of the reign of Frederic, whom he knew to be
entirely at his command, owing to the King's great desire of getting
the investiture from him; then, as it was not enough to declare the
goods confiscated, without also dispossessing the owners, he made
overtures to the Colonna family, saying he would commission them, in
proof of their new bond of friendship, to execute the order given
against their old enemies under the direction of his son Francesco,
Duke of Gandia.  In this fashion he contrived to weaken his
neighbours each by means of the other, till such time as he could
safely attack and put an end to conquered and conqueror alike.

The Colonna family accepted this proposition, and the Duke of Gandia
was named General of the Church: his father in his pontifical robes
bestowed on him the insignia of this office in the church of St.
Peter's at Rome.




CHAPTER VII

Matters went forward as Alexander had wished, and before the end of
the year the pontifical army had, seized a great number of castles
and fortresses that belonged to the Orsini, who thought themselves
already lost when Charles VIII came to the rescue.  They had
addressed themselves to him without much hope that he could be of
real use to there, with his want of armed troops and his
preoccupation with his own affairs.  He, however, sent Carlo Orsini,
son of Virginio, the prisoner, and Vitellozzo Vitelli, brother of
Camillo Vitelli, one of the three valiant Italian condottieri who had
joined him and fought for him at the crossing of the Taro: These two
captains, whose courage and skill were well known, brought with them
a considerable sum of money from the liberal coffers of Charles VIII.
Now, scarcely had they arrived at Citta di Castello, the centre of
their little sovereignty, and expressed their intention of raising a
band of soldiers, when men presented themselves from all sides to
fight under their banner; so they very soon assembled a small army,
and as they had been able during their stay among the French to study
those matters of military organisation in which France excelled, they
now applied the result of their learning to their own troops: the
improvements were mainly certain changes in the artillery which made
their manoeuvres easier, and the substitution for their ordinary
weapons of pikes similar in form to the Swiss pikes, but two feet
longer.  These changes effected, Vitellozzo Vitelli spent three or
four months in exercising his men in the management of their new
weapons; then, when he thought them fit to make good use of these,
and when he had collected more or less help from the towns of
Perugia, Todi, and Narni, where the inhabitants trembled lest their
turn should come after the Orsini's, as the Orsini's had followed on
the Colonnas', he marched towards Braccianno, which was being
besieged by the Duke of Urbino, who had been lent to the pope by the
Venetians, in virtue of the treaty quoted above.

The Venetian general, when he heard of Vitelli's approach, thought he
might as well spare him half his journey, and marched out to confront
him: the two armies met in the Soriano road, and the battle
straightway began.  The pontifical army had a body of eight hundred
Germans, on which the Dukes of Urbino and Gandia chiefly relied, as
well they might, for they were the best troops in the world; but
Vitelli attacked these picked men with his infantry, who, armed with
their formidable pikes, ran them through, while they with arms four
feet shorter had no chance even of returning the blows they received;
at the same time Vitelli's light troops wheeled upon the flank,
following their most rapid movements, and silencing the enemy's
artillery by the swiftness and accuracy of their attack.  The
pontifical troops were put to flight, though after a longer
resistance than might have been expected when they had to sustain the
attack of an army so much better equipped than their own; with them
they bore to Ronciglione the Duke of Gandia, wounded in the face by a
pike-thrust, Fabrizia Calonna, and the envoy; the Duke of Urbino, who
was fighting in the rear to aid the retreat, was taken prisoner with
all his artillery and the baggage of the conquered army.  But this
success, great as it was, did not so swell the pride of Vitellozza
Vitelli as to make him oblivious of his position.  He knew that he
and the Orsini together were too weak to sustain a war of such
magnitude; that the little store of money to which he owed the
existence of his army would very soon be expended and his army would
disappear with it.  So he hastened to get pardoned far the victory by
making propositions which he would very likely have refused had he
been the vanquished party; and the pope accepted his conditions
without demur; during the interval having heard that Trivulce had
just recrossed the Alps and re-entered Italy with three thousand
Swiss, and fearing lest the Italian general might only be the advance
guard of the King of France.  So it was settled that the Orsini
should pay 70,000 florins for the expenses of the war, and that all
the prisoners on both sides should be exchanged without ransom with
the single exception of the Duke of Urbino.  As a pledge for the
future payment of the 70,000 florins, the Orsini handed over to the
Cardinals Sforza and San Severino the fortresses of Anguillara and
Cervetri; then, when the day came and they had not the necessary
money, they gave up their prisoner, the Duke of Urbino, estimating
his worth at 40,000 ducats--nearly all the sum required--and handed
him over to Alexander on account; he, a rigid observer of
engagements, made his own general, taken prisoner in his service,
pay, to himself the ransom he owed to the enemy.

Then the pope had the corpse of Virginio sent to Carlo Orsini and
Vitellozzo Vitelli, as he could not send him alive.  By a strange
fatality the prisoner had died, eight days before the treaty was
signed, of the same malady--at least, if we may judge by analogy--
that had carried off Bajazet's brother.

As soon as the peace was signed, Prospero Calonna and Gonzalvo de
Cordova, whom the Pope had demanded from Frederic, arrived at Rome
with an army of Spanish and Neapolitan troops.  Alexander, as he
could not utilise these against the Orsini, set them the work of
recapturing Ostia, not desiring to incur the reproach of bringing
them to Rome far nothing.  Gonzalvo was rewarded for this feat by
receiving the Rose of Gold from the pope's hand--that being the
highest honour His Holiness can grant.  He shared this distinction
with the Emperor Maximilian, the King of France, the Doge of Venice,
and the Marquis of Mantua.

In the midst of all this occurred the solemn festival of the
Assumption; in which Ganzalvo was invited to take part.  He
accordingly left his palace, proceeded in great pomp in the front of
the pontifical cavalry, and took his place on the Duke of Gandia's
left hand.  The duke attracted all eyes by his personal beauty, set
off as it was by all the luxury he thought fit to display at this
festival.  He had a retinue of pages and servants, clad in sumptuous
liveries, incomparable for richness with anything heretofore seen in
Rome, that city of religious pomp.  All these pages and servants rode
magnificent horses, caparisoned in velvet trimmed with silver fringe,
and bells of silver hanging down every here and there.  He himself
was in a robe of gold brocade, and wore at his neck a string of
Eastern pearls, perhaps the finest and largest that ever belonged to
a Christian prince, while on his cap was a gold chain studded with
diamonds of which the smallest was worth more than 20,000 ducats.
This magnificence was all the more conspicuous by the contrast it
presented to Caesar's dress, whose scarlet robe admitted of no
ornaments.  The result was that Caesar, doubly jealous of his
brother, felt a new hatred rise up within him when he heard all along
the way the praises of his fine appearance and noble equipment.  From
this moment Cardinal Valentino decided in his own mind the fate of
this man, this constant obstacle in the path of his pride, his love,
and his ambition.  Very good reason, says Tommaso, the historian, had
the Duke of Gandia to leave behind him an impression on the public
mind of his beauty and his grandeur at this fete, for this last
display was soon to be followed by the obsequies of the unhappy young
man.

Lucrezia also had come to Rome, on the pretext of taking part in the
solemnity, but really, as we shall see later, with the view of
serving as a new instrument for her father's ambition.  As the pope
was not satisfied with an empty triumph of vanity and display for his
son, and as his war with the Orsini had failed to produce the
anticipated results, he decided to increase the fortune of his
firstborn by doing the very thing which he had accused Calixtus in
his speech of doing for him, viz., alienating from the States of the
Church the cities of Benevento, Terracino, and Pontecorvo to form, a
duchy as an appanage to his son's house.  Accordingly this
proposition was put forward in a full consistory, and as the college
of cardinals was entirely Alexander's, there was no difficulty about
carrying his point.  This new favour to his elder brother exasperated
Caesar, although he was himself getting a share of the paternal
gifts; for he had just been named envoy 'a latere' at Frederic's
court, and was appointed to crown him with his own hands as the papal
representative.  But Lucrezia, when she had spent a few days of
pleasure with her father and brothers, had gone into retreat at the
convent of San Sisto.  No one knew the real motive of her seclusion,
and no entreaties of Caesar, whose love for her was strange and
unnatural, had induced her to defer this departure from the world
even until the day after he left for Naples.  His sister's obstinacy
wounded him deeply, for ever since the day when the Duke of Gandia
had appeared in the procession so magnificently attired, he fancied
he had observed a coldness in the mistress of his illicit affection,
and so far did this increase his hatred of his rival that he resolved
to be rid of him at all costs.  So he ordered the chief of his sbirri
to come and see him the same night.

Michelotto was accustomed to these mysterious messages, which almost
always meant his help was wanted in some love affair or some act of
revenge.  As in either case his reward was generally a large one, he
was careful to keep his engagement, and at the appointed hour was
brought into the presence of his patron.

Caesar received him leaning against a tall chimney-piece, no longer
wearing his cardinal's robe and hat, but a doublet of black velvet
slashed with satin of the same colour.  One hand toyed mechanically
with his gloves, while the other rested an the handle of a poisoned
dagger which never left his side.  This was the dress he kept for his
nocturnal expeditions, so Michelotto felt no surprise at that; but
his eyes burned with a flame more gloomy than their want, and his
cheeks, generally pale, were now livid.  Michelotto had but to cast
one look upon his master to see that Caesar and he were about to
share some terrible enterprise.

He signed to him to shut the door.  Michelotto obeyed.  Then, after a
moment's silence, during which the eyes of Borgia seemed to burn into
the soul of the bravo, who with a careless air stood bareheaded
before ham, he said, in a voice whose slightly mocking tone gave the
only sign of his emotion.

"Michelotto, how do you think this dress suits me?"

Accustomed as he was to his master's tricks of circumlocution, the
bravo was so far from expecting this question, that at first he stood
mute, and only after a few moments' pause was able to say

"Admirably, monsignore; thanks to the dress, your Excellency has the
appearance as well as the true spirit of a captain."

"I am glad you think so," replied Caesar.  "And now let me ask you,
do you know who is the cause that, instead of wearing this dress,
which I can only put an at night, I am forced to disguise myself in
the daytime in a cardinal's robe and hat, and pass my time trotting
about from church to church, from consistory to consistory, when I
ought properly to be leading a magnificent army in the battlefield,
where you would enjoy a captain's rank, instead of being the chief of
a few miserable sbirri?"

"Yes, monsignore," replied Michelotto, who had divined Caesar's
meaning at his first word; "the man who is the cause of this is
Francesco, Duke of Gandia, and Benevento, your elder brother."

"Do you know," Caesar resumed, giving no sign of assent but a nod and
a bitter smile,--"do you know who has all the money and none of the
genius, who has the helmet and none of the brains, who has the sword
and no hand to wield it?"

"That too is the Duke of Gandia," said Michelotto.

"Do you know; continued Caesar, "who is the man whom I find
continually blocking the path of my ambition, my fortune, and my
love?"

"It is the same, the Duke of Gandia," said Michelotto.

"And what do you think of it?" asked Caesar.

"I think he must die," replied the man coldly.

"That is my opinion also, Michelotto," said Caesar, stepping towards
him and grasping his hand; "and my only regret is that I did not
think of it sooner; for if I had carried a sword at my side in stead
of a crosier in my hand when the King of France was marching through
Italy, I should now have been master of a fine domain.  The pope is
obviously anxious to aggrandise his family, but he is mistaken in the
means he adopts: it is I who ought to have been made duke, and my
brother a cardinal.  There is no doubt at all that, had he made me
duke, I should have contributed a daring and courage to his service
that would have made his power far weightier than it is.  The man who
would make his way to vast dominions and a kingdom ought to trample
under foot all the obstacles in his path, and boldly grasp the very
sharpest thorns, whatever reluctance his weak flesh may feel; such a
man, if he would open out his path to fortune, should seize his
dagger or his sword and strike out with his eyes shut; he should not
shrink from bathing his hands in the blood of his kindred; he should
follow the example offered him by every founder of empire from
Romulus to Bajazet, both of whom climbed to the throne by the
ladder of fratracide.  Yes, Michelotto, as you say, such is my
condition, and I am resolved I will not shrink.  Now you know why I
sent for you: am I wrong in counting upon you?"

As might have been expected, Michelotto, seeing his own fortune in
this crime, replied that he was entirely at Caesar's service, and
that he had nothing to do but to give his orders as to time, place,
and manner of execution.  Caesar replied that the time must needs be
very soon, since he was on the point of leaving Rome for Naples; as
to the place and the mode of execution, they would depend on
circumstances, and each of them must look out for an opportunity, and
seize the first that seemed favourable.

Two days after this resolution had been taken, Caesar learned that
the day of his departure was fixed for Thursday the 15th of June: at
the same time he received an invitation from his mother to come to
supper with her on the 14th.  This was a farewell repast given in his
honour.  Michelotto received orders to be in readiness at eleven
o'clock at night.

The table was set in the open air in a magnificent vineyard, a
property of Rosa Vanozza's in the neighbourhood of San Piero-in-
Vinculis: the guests were Caesar Borgia, the hero of the occasion;
the Duke of Gandia; Prince of Squillace; Dona Sancha, his wife; the
Cardinal of Monte Reale, Francesco Borgia, son of Calixtus III; Don
Roderigo Borgia, captain of the apostolic palace; Don Goffredo,
brother of the cardinal; Gian Borgia, at that time ambassador at
Perugia; and lastly, Don Alfonso Borgia, the pope's nephew: the whole
family therefore was present, except Lucrezia, who was still in
retreat, and would not come.

The repast was magnificent: Caesar was quite as cheerful as usual,
and the Duke of Gandia seemed more joyous than he had ever been
before.

In the middle of supper a man in a mask brought him a letter.  The
duke unfastened it, colouring up with pleasure; and when he had read
it answered in these words, "I will come": then he quickly hid the
letter in the pocket of his doublet; but quick as he was to conceal
it from every eye, Caesar had had time to cast a glance that way, and
he fancied he recognised the handwriting of his sister Lucrezia.
Meanwhile the messenger had gone off with his answer, no one but
Caesar paying the slightest attention to him, for at that period it
was the custom for have messages to be conveyed by men in domino or
by women whose faces were concealed by a veil.

At ten o'clock they rose from the table, and as the air was sweet and
mild they walked about a while under the magnificent pine trees that
shaded the house of Rosa Vanozza, while Caesar never for an instant
let his brother out of his sight.  At eleven o'clock the Duke of
Gandia bade good-night to his mother.  Caesar at once followed suit,
alleging his desire to go to the Vatican to bid farewell to the pope,
as he would not be able to fulfil this duty an the morrow, his
departure being fixed at daybreak.  This pretext was all the more
plausible since the pope was in the habit of sitting up every night
till two or three o'clock in the morning.

The two brothers went out together, mounted their horses, which were
waiting for them at the door, and rode side by side as far as the
Palazzo Borgia, the present home of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who had
taken it as a gift from Alexander the night before his election to
the papacy.  There the Duke of Gandia separated from his brother,
saying with a smile that he was not intending to go home, as he had
several hours to spend first with a fair lady who was expecting him.
Caesar replied that he was no doubt free to make any use he liked
best of his opportunities, and wished him a very good night.  The
duke turned to the right, and Caesar to the left; but Caesar observed
that the street the duke had taken led in the direction of the
convent of San Sisto, where, as we said, Lucrezia was in retreat; his
suspicions were confirmed by this observation, and he directed his
horse's steps to the Vatican, found the pope, took his leave of him,
and received his benediction.

From this moment all is wrapped in mystery and darkness, like that in
which the terrible deed was done that we are now to relate.

This, however, is what is believed.

The Duke of Gandia, when he quitted Caesar, sent away his servants,
and in the company of one confidential valet alone pursued his course
towards the Piazza della Giudecca.  There he found the same man in a
mask who had come to speak to him at supper, and forbidding his valet
to follow any farther, he bade him wait on the piazza where they then
stood, promising to be on his way back in two hours' time at latest,
and to take him up as he passed.  And at the appointed hour the duke
reappeared, took leave this time of the man in the mask, and retraced
his steps towards his palace.  But scarcely had he turned the corner
of the Jewish Ghetto, when four men on foot, led by a fifth who was
on horseback, flung themselves upon him.  Thinking they were thieves,
or else that he was the victim of some mistake, the Duke of Gandia
mentioned his name; but instead of the name checking the murderers'
daggers, their strokes were redoubled, and the duke very soon fell
dead, his valet dying beside him.

Then the man on horseback, who had watched the assassination with no
sign of emotion, backed his horse towards the dead body: the four
murderers lifted the corpse across the crupper, and walking by the
side to support it, then made their way down the lane that leads to
the Church of Santa Maria-in-Monticelli.  The wretched valet they
left for dead upon the pavement.  But he, after the lapse of a few
seconds, regained some small strength, and his groans were heard by
the inhabitants of a poor little house hard by; they came and picked
him up, and laid him upon a bed, where he died almost at once, unable
to give any evidence as to the assassins or any details of the
murder.

All night the duke was expected home, and all the next morning; then
expectation was turned into fear, and fear at last into deadly
terror.  The pope was approached, and told that the Duke of Gandia
had never come back to his palace since he left his mother's house.
But Alexander tried to deceive himself all through the rest of the
day, hoping that his son might have been surprised by the coming of
daylight in the midst of an amorous adventure, and was waiting till
the next night to get away in that darkness which had aided his
coming thither.  But the night, like the day, passed and brought no
news.  On the morrow, the pope, tormented by the gloomiest
presentiments and by the raven's croak of the 'vox populi', let
himself fall into the depths of despair: amid sighs and sobs of
grief, all he could say to any one who came to him was but these
words, repeated a thousand times: "Search, search; let us know how my
unhappy son has died."

Then everybody joined in the search; for, as we have said, the Duke
of Gandia was beloved by all; but nothing could be discovered from
scouring the town, except the body of the murdered man, who was
recognised as the duke's valet; of his master there was no trace
whatever: it was then thought, not without reason, that he had
probably been thrown into the Tiber, and they began to follow along
its banks, beginning from the Via della Ripetta, questioning every
boatman and fisherman who might possibly have seen, either from their
houses or from their boats, what had happened on the river banks
during the two preceding nights.  At first all inquiries were in
vain; but when they had gone up as high as the Via del Fantanone,
they found a man at last who said he had seen something happen on the
night of the 14th which might very possibly have some bearing on the
subject of inquiry.  He was a Slav named George, who was taking up
the river a boat laden with wood to Ripetta.  The following are his
own words:

"Gentlemen," he said, "last Wednesday evening, when I had set down my
load of wood on the bank, I remained in my boat, resting in the cool
night air, and watching lest other men should come and take away what
I had just unloaded, when, about two o'clock in the morning, I saw
coming out of the lane on the left of San Girolamo's Church two men
on foot, who came forward into the middle of the street, and looked
so carefully all around that they seemed to have come to find out if
anybody was going along the street.  When they felt sure that it was
deserted, they went back along the same lane, whence issued presently
two other men, who used similar precautions to make sure that there
was nothing fresh; they, when they found all as they wished, gave a
sign to their companions to come and join them; next appeared one man
on a dapple-grey horse, which was carrying on the crupper the body of
a dead man, his head and arms hanging over on one side and his feet
on the other.  The two fellows I had first seen exploring were
holding him up by the arms and legs.  The other three at once went up
to the river, while the first two kept a watch on the street, and
advancing to the part of the bank where the sewers of the town are
discharged into the Tiber, the horseman turned his horse, backing on
the river; then the two who were at either side taking the corpse,
one by the hands, the other by the feet, swung it three times, and
the third time threw it out into the river with all their strength;
then at the noise made when the body splashed into the water, the
horseman asked, 'Is it done?' and the others answered, 'Yes, sir,'
and he at once turned right about face; but seeing the dead man's
cloak floating, he asked what was that black thing swimming about.
'Sir,' said one of the men, 'it is his cloak'; and then another man
picked up some stones, and running to the place where it was still
floating, threw them so as to make it sink under; as soon, as it had
quite disappeared, they went off, and after walking a little way
along the main road, they went into the lane that leads to San
Giacomo.  That was all I saw, gentlemen, and so it is all I can
answer to the questions you have asked me."

At these words, which robbed of all hope any who might yet entertain
it, one of the pope's servants asked the Slav why, when he was
witness of such a deed, he had not gone to denounce it to the
governor.  But the Slav replied that, since he had exercised his
present trade on the riverside, he had seen dead men thrown into the
Tiber in the same way a hundred times, and had never heard that
anybody had been troubled about them; so he supposed it would be the
same with this corpse as the others, and had never imagined it was
his duty to speak of it, not thinking it would be any more important
than it had been before.

Acting on this intelligence, the servants of His Holiness summoned at
once all the boatmen and fishermen who were accustomed to go up and
down the river, and as a large reward was promised to anyone who
should find the duke's body, there were soon mare than a hundred
ready for the job; so that before the evening of the same day, which
was Friday, two men were drawn out of the water, of whom one was
instantly recognised as the hapless duke.  At the very first glance
at the body there could be no doubt as to the cause of death.  It was
pierced with nine wounds, the chief one in the throat, whose artery
was cut.  The clothing had not been touched: his doublet and cloak
were there, his gloves in his waistband, gold in his purse; the duke
then must have been assassinated not for gain but for revenge.

The ship which carried the corpse went up the Tiber to the Castello
Sant' Angelo, where it was set down.  At once the magnificent dress
was fetched from the duke's palace which he had worn on the day of
the procession, and he was clothed in it once more: beside him were
placed the insignia of the generalship of the Church.  Thus he lay in
state all day, but his father in his despair had not the courage to
came and look at him.  At last, when night had fallen, his most
trusty and honoured servants carried the body to the church of the
Madonna del Papala, with all the pomp and ceremony that Church and
State combined could devise for the funeral of the son of the pope.

Meantime the bloodstained hands of Caesar Borgia were placing a royal
crown upon the head of Frederic of Aragon.

This blow had pierced Alexander's heart very deeply.  As at first he
did not know on whom his suspicions should fall, he gave the
strictest orders for the pursuit of the murderers; but little by
little the infamous truth was forced upon him.  He saw that the blow
which struck at his house came from that very house itself and then
his despair was changed to madness: he ran through the rooms of the
Vatican like a maniac, and entering the consistory with torn garments
and ashes on his head, he sobbingly avowed all the errors of his past
life, owning that the disaster that struck his offspring through his
offspring was a just chastisement from God; then he retired to a
secret dark chamber of the palace, and there shut himself up,
declaring his resolve to die of starvation.  And indeed for more than
sixty hours he took no nourishment by day nor rest by night, making
no answer to those who knocked at his door to bring him food except
with the wailings of a woman or a roar as of a wounded lion; even the
beautiful Giulia Farnese, his new mistress, could not move him at
all, and was obliged to go and seek Lucrezia, that daughter doubly
loved to conquer his deadly resolve.  Lucrezia came out from the
retreat were she was weeping for the Duke of Gandia, that she might
console her father.  At her voice the door did really open, and it
was only then that the Duke of Segovia, who had been kneeling almost
a whole day at the threshold, begging His Holiness to take heart,
could enter with servants bearing wine and food.

The pope remained alone with Lucrezia for three days and nights; then
he reappeared in public, outwardly calm, if not resigned; for
Guicciardini assures us that his daughter had made him understand how
dangerous it would be to himself to show too openly before the
assassin, who was coming home, the immoderate love he felt for his
victim.




CHAPTER VIII

Caesar remained at Naples, partly to give time to the paternal grief
to cool down, and partly to get on with another business he had
lately been charged with, nothing else than a proposition of marriage
between Lucrezia and Don Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Bicelli and
Prince of Salerno, natural son of Alfonso II and brother of Dona
Sancha.  It was true that Lucrezia was already married to the lord of
Pesaro, but she was the daughter  of an father who had received from
heaven the right of uniting and disuniting.  There was no need to
trouble about so trifling a matter: when the two were ready to marry,
the divorce would be effected.  Alexander was too good a tactician to
leave his daughter married to a son-in-law who was becoming useless
to him.

Towards the end of August it was announced that the ambassador was
coming back to Rome, having accomplished his mission to the new king
to his great satisfaction.  And thither he returned an the 5th of
September,--that is, nearly three months after the Duke of Gandia's
death,--and on the next day, the 6th, from the church of Santa Maria
Novella, where, according to custom, the cardinals and the Spanish
and Venetian ambassadors were awaiting him on horseback at the door,
he proceeded to the Vatican, where His Holiness was sitting; there he
entered the consistory, was admitted by the pope, and in accordance
with the usual ceremonial received his benediction and kiss; then,
accompanied once more in the same fashion by the ambassadors and
cardinals, he was escorted to his own apartments.  Thence he
proceeded to, the pope's, as soon as he was left alone; for at the
consistory they had had no speech with one another, and the father
and son had a hundred things to talk about, but of these the Duke of
Gandia was not one, as might have been expected.  His name was not
once spoken, and neither on that day nor afterwards was there ever
again any mention of the unhappy young man: it was as though he had
never existed.

It was the fact that Caesar brought good news, King Frederic gave his
consent to the proposed union; so the marriage of Sforza and Lucrezia
was dissolved on a pretext of nullity.  Then Frederic authorised the
exhumation of D'jem's body, which, it will be remembered, was worth
300,000 ducats.

After this, all came about as Caesar had desired; he became the man
who was all-powerful after the pope; but when he was second in
command it was soon evident to the Roman people that their city was
making a new stride in the direction of ruin.  There was nothing but
balls, fetes, masquerades; there were magnificent hunting parties,
when Caesar--who had begun to cast off is cardinal's robe,--weary
perhaps of the colour, appeared in a French dress, followed, like a
king by cardinals, envoys.  and bodyguard.  The whole pontifical
town, given up like a courtesan to orgies and debauchery, had never
been more the home of sedition, luxury, and carnage, according to the
Cardinal of Viterba, not even in the days of Nero and Heliogabalus.
Never had she fallen upon days more evil; never had more traitors
done her dishonour or sbirri stained her streets with blood.  The
number of thieves was so great, and their audacity such, that no one
could with safety pass the gates of the town; soon it was not even
safe within them.  No house, no castle, availed for defence.  Right
and justice no longer existed.  Money, farce, pleasure, ruled
supreme.

Still, the gold was melting as in a furnace at these Fetes; and, by
Heaven's just punishment, Alexander and Caesar were beginning to
covet the fortunes of those very men who had risen through their
simony to their present elevation.  The first attempt at a new method
of coining money was tried upon the Cardinal Cosenza.  The occasion
was as follows.  A certain dispensation had been granted some time
before to a nun who had taken the vows: she was the only surviving
heir to the throne of Portugal, and by means of the dispensation she
had been wedded to the natural son of the last king.  This marriage
was more prejudicial than can easily be imagined to the interests of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain; so they sent ambassadors to
Alexander to lodge a complaint against a proceeding of this nature,
especially as it happened at the very moment when an alliance was to
be formed between the house of Aragon and the Holy See.  Alexander
understood the complaint, and resolved that all should be set right.
So he denied all knowledge of the papal brief though he had as a fact
received 60,000 ducats for signing it--and accused the Archbishop of
Cosenza, secretary for apostolic briefs, of having granted a false
dispensation.  By reason of this accusation, the archbishop was taken
to the castle of Sant' Angelo, and a suit was begun.

But as it was no easy task to prove an accusation of this nature,
especially if the archbishop should persist in maintaining that the
dispensation was really granted by the pope, it was resolved to
employ a trick with him which could not fail to succeed.  One evening
the Archbishop of Cosenza saw Cardinal Valentino come into his
prison; with that frank air of affability which he knew well how to
assume when it could serve his purpose, he explained to the prisoner
the embarrassing situation in which the pope was placed, from which
the archbishop alone, whom His Holiness looked upon as his best
friend, could save him.

The archbishop replied that he was entirely at the service of His
Holiness.

Caesar, on his entrance, found the captive seated, leaning his elbows
on a table, and he took a seat opposite him and explained the pope's
position: it was an embarrassing one.  At the very time of
contracting so important an alliance with the house of Aragon as that
of Lucrezia and Alfonso, His Holiness could not avow to Ferdinand and
Isabella that, for the sake of a few miserable ducats, he had signed
a dispensation which would unite in the husband and wife together all
the legitimate claims to a throne to which Ferdinand and Isabella had
no right at all but that of conquest.  This avowal would necessarily
put an end to all negotiations, and the pontifical house would fall
by the overthrow of that very pedestal which was to have heightened
its grandeur.  Accordingly the archbishop would understand what the
pope expected of his devotion and friendship: it was a simple and
straight avowal that he had supposed he might take it upon himself to
accord the dispensation.  Then, as the sentence to be passed on such
an error would be the business of Alexander, the accused could easily
imagine beforehand how truly paternal such a sentence would be.
Besides, the reward was in the same hands, and if the sentence was
that of a father, the recompense would be that of a king.  In fact,
this recompense would be no less than the honour of assisting as
envoy, with the title of cardinal, at the marriage of Lucrezia and
Alfonso--a favour which would be very appropriate, since it would be
thanks to his devotion that the marriage could take place.

The Archbishop of Cosenza knew the men he was dealing with; he knew
that to save their own ends they would hesitate at nothing; he knew
they had a poison like sugar to the taste and to the smell,
impossible to discover in food--a poison that would kill slowly or
quickly as the poisoner willed and would leave no trace behind; he
knew the secret of the poisoned key that lay always on the pope's
mantelpiece, so that when His Holiness wished to destroy some one of
his intimates, he bade him open a certain cupboard: on the handle of
the key there was a little spike, and as the lock of the cupboard
turned stiffly the hand would naturally press, the lock would yield,
and nothing would have come of it but a trifling scratch: the scratch
was mortal.  He knew, too, that Caesar wore a ring made like two
lions' heads, and that he would turn the stone on the inside when he
was shaking hands with a friend.  Then the lions' teeth became the
teeth of a viper, and the friend died cursing Borgia.  So he yielded,
partly through fear, partly blinded by the thought of the reward; and
Caesar returned to the Vatican armed with a precious paper, in which
the Archbishop of Cosenza admitted that he was the only person
responsible for the dispensation granted to the royal nun.

Two days later, by means of the proofs kindly furnished by the
archbishop, the pope; in the presence of the governor of Rome, the
auditor of the apostolic chamber, the advocate, and the fiscal
attorney, pronounced sentence, condemning the archbishop to the loss
of all his benefices and ecclesiastical offices, degradation from his
orders, and confiscation of his goods; his person was to be handed
over to the civil arm.  Two days later the civil magistrate entered
the prison to fulfil his office as received from the pope, and
appeared before the archbishop, accompanied by a clerk, two servants,
and four guards.  The clerk unrolled the paper he carried and read
out the sentence; the two servants untied a packet, and, stripping
the prisoner of his ecclesiastical garments, they reclothed him in a
dress of coarse white cloth which only reached down to his knees,
breeches of the same, and a pair of clumsy shoes.  Lastly, the
guards took him, and led him into one of the deepest dungeons of the
castle of Sant' Angelo, where for furniture he found nothing but a
wooden crucifix, a table, a chair, and a bed; for occupation, a Bible
and a breviary, with a lamp to read by; for nourishment, two pounds
of bread and a little cask of water, which were to be renewed every
three days, together with a bottle of oil for burning in his lamp.

At the end of a year the poor archbishop died of despair, not before
he had gnawed his own arms in his agony.

The very same day that he was taken into the dungeon, Caesar Borgia,
who had managed the affair so ably, was presented by the pope with
all the belongings of the condemned prisoner.

But the hunting parties, balls, and masquerades were not the only
pleasures enjoyed by the pope and his family: from time to time
strange spectacles were exhibited.  We will only describe two--one of
them a case of punishment, the other no more nor less than a matter
of the stud farm.  But as both of these give details with which we
would not have our readers credit our imagination, we will first say
that they are literally translated from Burchard's Latin journal.

"About the same time--that is, about the beginning of 1499--a certain
courtesan named La Corsetta was in prison, and had a lover who came
to visit her in woman's clothes, a Spanish Moor, called from his
disguise 'the Spanish lady from Barbary!'  As a punishment, both of
them were led through the town, the woman without petticoat or skirt,
but wearing only the Moor's dress unbuttoned in front; the man wore
his woman's garb; his hands were tied behind his back, and the skirt
fastened up to his middle, with a view to complete exposure before
the eyes of all.  When in this attire they had made the circuit of
the town, the Corsetta was sent back to the prison with the Moor.
But on the 7th of April following, the Moor was again taken out and
escorted in the company of two thieves towards the Campo dei Fiori.
The three condemned men were preceded by a constable, who rode
backwards on an ass, and held in his hand a long pole, on the end of
which were hung, still bleeding, the amputated limbs of a poor Jew
who had suffered torture and death for some trifling crime.  When the
procession reached the place of execution, the thieves were hanged,
and the unfortunate Moor was tied to a stake piled round with wood,
where he was to have been burnt to death, had not rain fallen in such
torrents that the fire would not burn, in spite of all the efforts of
the executioner."

This unlooked for accident, taken as a miracle by the people, robbed
Lucrezia of the most exciting part of the execution; but her father
was holding in reserve another kind of spectacle to console her with
later.  We inform the reader once more that a few lines we are about
to set before him are a translation from the journal of the worthy
German Burchard, who saw nothing in the bloodiest or most wanton
performances but facts for his journal, which he duly registered with
the impassibility of a scribe, appending no remark or moral
reflection.

"On the 11th of November a certain peasant was entering Rome with two
stallions laden with wood, when the servants of His Holiness, just as
he passed the Piazza of St. Peter's, cut their girths, so that their
loads fell on the ground with the pack-saddles, and led off the
horses to a court between the palace and the gate; then the stable
doors were opened, and four stallions, quite free and unbridled,
rushed out and in an instant all six animals began kicking, biting
and fighting each other until several were killed.  Roderigo and
Madame Lucrezia, who sat at the window just over the palace gate,
took the greatest delight in the struggle and called their courtiers
to witness the gallant battle that was being fought below them."

Now Caesar's trick in the matter of the Archbishop of Cosenza had had
the desired result, and Isabella and Ferdinand could no longer impute
to Alexander the signature of the brief they had complained of: so
nothing was now in the way of the marriage of Lucrezia and Alfonso;
this certainty gave the pope great joy, for he attached all the more
importance to this marriage because he was already cogitating a
second, between Caesar and Dona Carlota, Frederic's daughter.

Caesar had shown in all his actions since his brother's death his
want of vocation for the ecclesiastical life; so no one was
astonished when, a consistory having been summoned one morning by
Alexander, Caesar entered, and addressing the pope, began by saying
that from his earliest years he had been drawn towards secular
pursuits both by natural inclination and ability, and it had only
been in obedience to the absolute commands of His Holiness that he
entered the Church, accepted the cardinal's scarlet, other dignities,
and finally the sacred order of the diaconate; but feeling that in
his situation it was improper to follow his passions, and at his age
impossible to resist them, he humbly entreated His Holiness
graciously to yield to the desire he had failed to overcome, and to
permit him to lay aside the dress and dignities of the Church, and
enter once more into the world, thereto contract a lawful marriage;
also he entreated the lord cardinals to intercede for him with His
Holiness, to whom he would freely resign all his churches, abbeys,
and benefices, as well as every other ecclesiastical dignity and
preferment that had been accorded him.  The cardinals, deferring to
Caesar's wishes, gave a unanimous vote, and the pope, as we may
suppose, like a good father, not wishing to force his son's
inclinations, accepted his resignation, and yielded to the petition;
thus Caesar put off the scarlet robe, which was suited to him, says
his historian Tommaso Tommasi, in one particular only--that it was
the colour of blood.

In truth, the resignation was a pressing necessity, and there was no
time to lose.  Charles VIII one day after he had came home late and
tired from the hunting-field, had bathed his head in cold water; and
going straight to table, had been struck dawn by an apoplectic
seizure directly after his supper; and was dead, leaving the throne
to the good Louis XII, a man of two conspicuous weaknesses, one as
deplorable as the other: the first was the wish to make conquests;
the second was the desire to have children.  Alexander, who was on
the watch far all political changes, had seen in a moment what he
could get from Louis XII's accession to the throne, and was prepared
to profit by the fact that the new king of France needed his help for
the accomplishment of his twofold desire.  Louis needed, first, his
temporal aid in an expedition against the duchy of Milan, on which,
as we explained before, he had inherited claims from Valentina
Visconti, his grandmother; and, secondly, his spiritual aid to
dissolve his marriage with Jeanne, the daughter of Louis XI; a
childless and hideously deformed woman, whom he had only married by
reason of the great fear he entertained far her father.  Now
Alexander was willing to do all this far Louis XII and to give in
addition a cardinal's hat to his friend George d'Amboise, provided
only that the King of France would use his influence in persuading
the young Dona Carlota, who was at his court, to marry his son
Caesar.

So, as this business was already far advanced on the day when Caesar
doffed his scarlet and donned a secular garb, thus fulfilling the
ambition so long cherished, when the lord of Villeneuve, sent by
Louis and commissioned to bring Caesar to France, presented himself
before the ex-cardinal on his arrival at Rome, the latter, with his
usual extravagance of luxury and the kindness he knew well how to
bestow on those he needed, entertained his guest for a month, and did
all the honours of Rome.  After that, they departed, preceded by one
of the pope's couriers, who gave orders that every town they passed
through was to receive them with marks of honour and respect.  The
same order had been sent throughout the whole of France, where the
illustrious visitors received so numerous a guard, and were welcomed
by a populace so eager to behold them, that after they passed through
Paris, Caesar's gentlemen-in-waiting wrote to Rome that they had not
seen any trees in France, or houses, or walls, but only men, women
and sunshine.

The king, on the pretext of going out hunting, went to meet his guest
two leagues outside the town.  As he knew Caesar was very fond of the
name of Valentine, which he had used as cardinal, and still continued
to employ with the title of Count, although he had resigned the
archbishopric which gave him the name, he there and then bestowed an
him the investiture of Valence, in Dauphine, with the title of Duke
and a pension of 20,000 francs; then, when he had made this
magnificent gift and talked with him for nearly a couple of hours, he
took his leave, to enable him to prepare the splendid entry he was
proposing to make.

It was Wednesday, the 18th of December 1498, when Caesar Borgia
entered the town of Chinon, with pomp worthy of the son of a pope who
is about to marry the daughter of a king.  The procession began with
four-and-twenty mules, caparisoned in red, adorned with escutcheons
bearing the duke's arms, laden with carved trunks and chests inlaid
with ivory and silver; after them came four-and-twenty mare, also
caparisoned, this time in the livery of the King of France, yellow
and red; next after these came ten other mules, covered in yellow
satin with red crossbars; and lastly another ten, covered with
striped cloth of gold, the stripes alternately raised and flat gold.

Behind the seventy mules which led the procession there pranced
sixteen handsome battle-horses, led by equerries who marched
alongside; these were followed by eighteen hunters ridden by eighteen
pages, who were about fourteen or fifteen years of age; sixteen of
them were dressed in crimson velvet, and two in raised gold cloth; so
elegantly dressed were these two children, who were also the best
looking of the little band, that the sight of them gave rise to
strange suspicions as to the reason for this preference, if one may
believe what Brantome says.  Finally, behind these eighteen horses
came six beautiful mules, all harnessed with red velvet, and led by
six valets, also in velvet to match.

The third group consisted of, first, two mules quite covered with
cloth of gold, each carrying two chests in which it was said that the
duke's treasure was stored, the precious stones he was bringing to
his fiancee, and the relics and papal bulls that his father had
charged him to convey for him to Louis XII.  These were followed by
twenty gentlemen dressed in cloth of gold and silver, among whom rode
Paul Giordano Orsino and several barons and knights among the chiefs
of the state ecclesiastic.

Next came two drums, one rebeck, and four soldiers blowing trumpets
and silver clarions; then, in the midst of a party of four-and-twenty
lacqueys, dressed half in crimson velvet and half in yellow silk,
rode Messire George d'Amboise and Monseigneur the Duke of
Valentinois.  Caesar was mounted on a handsome tall courser, very
richly harnessed, in a robe half red satin and half cloth of gold,
embroidered all over with pearls and precious stones; in his cap were
two rows of rubies, the size of beans, which reflected so brilliant a
light that one might have fancied they were the famous carbuncles of
the Arabian Nights; he also wore on his neck a collar worth at least
200,000 livres; indeed, there was no part of him, even down to his
boots, that was not laced with gold and edged with pearls.  His horse
was covered with a cuirass in a pattern of golden foliage of
wonderful workmanship, among which there appeared to grow, like
flowers, nosegays of pearls and clusters of rubies.

Lastly, bringing up the rear of the magnificent cortege, behind the
duke came twenty-four mules with red caparisons bearing his arms,
carrying his silver plate, tents, and baggage.

What gave to all the cavalcade an air of most wonderful luxury and
extravagance was that the horses and mules were shod with golden
shoes, and these were so badly nailed on that more than three-
quarters of their number, were lost on the road For this extravagance
Caesar was greatly blamed, for it was thought an audacious thing to
put on his horses' feet a metal of which king's crowns are made.

But all this pomp had no effect on the lady for whose sake it had
been displayed; for when Dona Carlota was told that Caesar Bargia had
come to France in the hope of becoming her husband, she replied
simply that she would never take a priest far her husband, and,
moreover, the son of a priest; a man who was not only an assassin,
but a fratricide; not only a man of infamous birth, but still more
infamous in his morals and his actions.

But, in default of the haughty lady of Aragon, Caesar soon found
another princess of noble blood who consented to be his wife: this
was Mademoiselle d'Albret, daughter of the King of Navarre.  The
marriage, arranged on condition that the pope should pay 200,000
ducats dowry to the bride, and should make her brother cardinal, was
celebrated on the 10th of May; and on the Whitsunday following the
Duke of Valentois received the order of St. Michael, an order founded
by Louis XI, and esteemed at this period as the highest in the gift
of the kings of France.  The news of this marriage, which made an
alliance with Louis XII certain, was received with great joy by the
pope, who at once gave orders far bonfires and illuminations all over
the town.

Louis XII was not only grateful to the pope for dissolving his
marriage with Jeanne of France and authorizing his union with Anne of
Brittany, but he considered it indispensable to his designs in Italy
to have the pope as his ally.  So he promised the Duke of Valentinois
to put three hundred lances at his disposal, as soon as he had made
an entry into Milan, to be used to further his own private interests,
and against whomsoever he pleased except only the allies of France.
The conquest of Milan should be undertaken so soon as Louis felt
assured of the support of the Venetians, or at least of their
neutrality, and he had sent them ambassadors authorised to promise in
his name the restoration of Cremona and Ghiera d'Adda when he had
completed the conquest of Lombardy.



CHAPTER IX

Everything from without was favouring Alexander's encroaching policy,
when he was compelled to turn his eyes from France towards the centre
of Italy: in Florence dwelt a man, neither duke, nor king, nor
soldier, a man whose power was in his genius, whose armour was his
purity, who owned no offensive weapon but his tongue, and who yet
began to grow more dangerous for him than all the kings, dukes,
princes, in the whole world could ever be; this man was the poor
Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, the same who had refused
absolution to Lorenzo dei Medici because he would not restore the
liberty of Florence.

Girolamo Savonarola had prophesied the invasion of a force from
beyond the Alps, and Charles VIII had conquered Naples; Girolamo
Savonarola had prophesied to Charles VIII that because he had failed
to fulfil the mission of liberator entrusted to him by God, he was
threatened with a great misfortune as a punishment, and Charles was
dead; lastly, Savonarola had prophesied his own fall like the man who
paced around the holy city for eight days, crying, "Woe to
Jerusalem!" and on the ninth day, "Woe be on my own head!"  None the
less, the Florentine reformer, who could not recoil from any danger,
was determined to attack the colossal abomination that was seated on
St. Peter's holy throne; each debauch, each fresh crime that lifted
up its brazen face to the light of day or tried to hide its shameful
head beneath the veil of night, he had never failed to paint out to
the people, denouncing it as the off spring of the pope's luxurious
living and lust of power.  Thus had he stigmatised Alexander's new
amour with the beautiful Giulia Farnese, who in the preceding April a
added another son to the pope's family; thus had he cursed the Duke
of Gandia's murderer, the lustful, jealous fratricide; lastly, he had
pointed out to the Florentines, who were excluded from the league
then forming, what sort of future was in store far them when the
Borgias should have made themselves masters of the small
principalities and should come to attack the duchies and republics.
It was clear that in Savonarola, the pope had an enemy at once
temporal and spiritual, whose importunate and threatening voice must
be silenced at any cost.


But mighty as the pope's power was, to accomplish a design like this
was no easy matter.  Savonarola, preaching the stern principles of
liberty, had united to his cause, even in the midst of rich,
pleasure-loving Florence, a party of some size, known as the
'Piagnoni', or the Penitents: this band was composed of citizens who
were anxious for reform in Church and State, who accused the Medici
of enslaving the fatherland and the Borgias of upsetting the faith,
who demanded two things, that the republic should return to her
democratic principles, and religion to a primitive simplicity.
Towards the first of these projects considerable progress had been
made, since they had successively obtained, first, an amnesty for all
crimes and delinquencies committed under other governments; secondly,
the abolition of the 'balia', which was an aristocratic magistracy;
thirdly, the establishment of a sovereign council, composed of 1800
citizens; and lastly, the substitution of popular elections for
drawing by lot and for oligarchical nominations: these changes had
been effected in spite of two other factions, the 'Arrabiati', or
Madmen, who, consisting of the richest and noblest youths of the
Florentine patrician families, desired to have an oligarchical
government; and the 'Bigi', or Greys, so called because they always
held their meetings in the shade, who desired the return of the
Medici.

The first measure Alexander used against the growing power of
Savonarola was to declare him heretic, and as such banished from the
pulpit; but Savonarola had eluded this prohibition by making his
pupil and friend, Domenico Bonvicini di Pescia, preach in his stead.
The result was that the master's teachings were issued from other
lips, and that was all; the seed, though scattered by another hand,
fell none the less on fertile soil, where it would soon burst into
flower.  Moreover, Savonarola now set an example that was followed to
good purpose by Luther, when, twenty-two years later, he burned
Leo X's bull of excommunication at Wittenberg; he was weary of silence,
so he declared, on the authority of Pope Pelagius, that an unjust
excommunication had no efficacy, and that the person excommunicated
unjustly did not even need to get absolution.  So on Christmas Day,
1497, he declared that by the inspiration of God he renounced his
obedience to a corrupt master; and he began to preach once more in
the cathedral, with a success that was all the greater for the
interruption, and an influence far more formidable than before,
because it was strengthened by that sympathy of the masses which an
unjust persecution always inspires.

Then Alexander made overtures to Leonardo dei Medici, vicar of the
archbishopric of Florence, to obtain the punishment of the rebel:
Leonardo, in obedience to the orders he received, from Rome, issued a
mandate forbidding the faithful to attend at Savonarola's sermons.
After this mandate, any who should hear the discourses of the
excommunicated monk would be refused communion and confession; and
as when they died they would be contaminated with heresy, in
consequence of their spiritual intercourse with a heretic, their dead
bodies would be dragged on a hurdle and deprived of the rights of
sepulture.  Savonarola appealed from the mandate of his superior both
to the people and to the Signoria, and the two together gave orders
to the episcopal vicar to leave Florence within two hours: this
happened at the beginning of the year 1498.

The expulsion of Leonard's dei Medici was a new triumph for
Savonarola, so, wishing to turn to good moral account his growing
influence, he resolved to convert the last day of the carnival,
hitherto given up to worldly pleasures, into a day of religious
sacrifice.  So actually on Shrove Tuesday a considerable number of
boys were collected in front of the cathedral, and there divided into
bands, which traversed the whole town, making a house-to-house
visitation, claiming all profane books, licentious paintings, lutes,
harps, cards and dice, cosmetics and perfumes--in a word, all the
hundreds of products of a corrupt society and civilisation, by the
aid of which Satan at times makes victorious war on God.  The
inhabitants of Florence obeyed, and came forth to the Piazza of the
Duoma, bringing these works of perdition, which were soon piled up in
a huge stack, which the youthful reformers set on fire, singing
religious psalms and hymns the while.  On this pile were burned many
copies of Boccaccio and of Margante Maggiore, and pictures by Fro
Bartalommeo, who from that day forward renounced the art of this
world to consecrate his brush utterly and entirely to the
reproduction of religious scenes.

A reform such as this was terrifying to Alexander; so he resolved on
fighting Savonarola with his own weapons--that is, by the force of
eloquence.  He chose as the Dominican's opponent a preacher of
recognised talent, called Fra Francesco di Paglia; and he sent him to
Florence, where he began to preach in Santa Croce, accusing
Savonarola of heresy and impiety.  At the same time the pope, in a
new brief, announced to the Signaria that unless they forbade the
arch-heretic to preach, all the goods of Florentine merchants who
lived on the papal territory would be confiscated, and the republic
laid under an interdict and declared the spiritual and temporal enemy
of the Church.  The Signoria, abandoned by France, and aware that the
material power of Rome was increasing in a frightful manner, was
forced this time to yield, and to issue to Savonarola an order to
leave off preaching.  He obeyed, and bade farewell to his
congregation in a sermon full of strength and eloquence.

But the withdrawal of Savonarola, so far from calming the ferment,
had increased it: there was talk about his prophecies being
fulfilled; and some zealots, more ardent than their mastery added
miracle to inspiration, and loudly proclaimed that Savonarola had
offered to go down into the vaults of the cathedral with his
antagonist, and there bring a dead man to life again, to prove that
his doctrine was true, promising to declare himself vanquished if the
miracle were performed by his adversary.  These rumours reached the
ears of Fra Francesco, and as he was a man of warm blood, who counted
his own life as nothing if it might be spent to help his cause, he
declared in all humility that he felt he was too great a sinner for
God to work a miracle in his behalf; but he proposed another
challenge: he would try with Savonarola the ordeal of fire.  He knew,
he said, that he must perish, but at least he should perish avenging
the cause of religion, since he was certain to involve in his
destruction the tempter who plunged so many souls beside his own into
eternal damnation.

The proposition made by Fra Francesco was taken to Savanarola; but
as he had never proposed the earlier challenge, he hesitated to
accept the second; hereupon his disciple, Fra Domenico Bonvicini,
more confident than his master in his own power, declared himself
ready to accept the trial by fire in his stead; so certain was he
that God would perform a miracle by the intercession of Savonarola,
His prophet.

Instantly the report spread through Florence that the mortal
challenge was accepted; Savonarola's partisans, all men of the
strongest convictions, felt no doubt as to the success of their
cause.  His enemies were enchanted at the thought of the heretic
giving himself to the flames; and the indifferent saw in the ordeal a
spectacle of real and terrible interest.

But the devotion of Fra Bonvicini of Pescia was not what Fra
Francesco was reckoning with.  He was willing, no doubt, to die a
terrible death, but on condition that Savanarola died with him.  What
mattered to him the death of an obscure disciple like Fra Bonvicini?
It was the master he would strike, the great teacher who must be
involved in his own ruin.  So he refused to enter the fire except
with Savonarola himself, and, playing this terrible game in his own
person, would not allow his adversary to play it by proxy.

Then a thing happened which certainly no one could have anticipated.
In the place of Fra Francesco, who would not tilt with any but the
master, two Franciscan monks appeared to tilt with the disciple.
These were Fra Nicholas de Pilly and Fra Andrea Rondinelli.
Immediately the partisans of Savonarala, seeing this arrival of
reinforcements for their antagonist, came forward in a crowd to try
the ordeal.  The Franciscans were unwilling to be behindhand, and
everybody took sides with equal ardour for one or other party.  All
Florence was like a den of madmen; everyone wanted the ordeal,
everyone wanted to go into the fire; not only did men challenge one
another, but women and even children were clamouring to be allowed to
try.  At last the Signoria, reserving this privilege for the first
applicants, ordered that the strange duel should take place only
between Fra Domenico Bonvicini and Fra Andrea Rondinelli; ten of the
citizens were to arrange all details; the day was fixed for the 7th
of April, 1498, and the place the Piazza del Palazzo.

The judges of the field made their arrangements conscientiously.  By
their orders scaffolding was erected at the appointed place, five
feet in height, ten in width, and eighty feet long.  This scaffolding
was covered with faggots and heath, supported by cross-bars of the
very driest wood that could be found.  Two narrow paths were made,
two feet wide at most, their entrance giving an the Loggia dei Lanzi,
their exit exactly opposite.  The loggia was itself divided into two
by a partition, so that each champion had a kind of room to make his
preparations in, just as in the theatre every actor has his dressing-
room; but in this instance the tragedy that was about to be played
was not a fictitious one.

The Franciscans arrived on the piazza and entered the compartment
reserved for them without making any religious demonstration; while
Savonarola, on the contrary, advanced to his own place in the
procession, wearing the sacerdotal robes in which he had just
celebrated the Holy Eucharist, and holding in his hand the sacred
host for all the world to see, as it was enclosed in a crystal
tabernacle.  Fra Domenico di Pescia, the hero of the occasion,
followed, bearing a crucifix, and all the Dominican monks, their red
crosses in their hands, marched behind singing a psalm; while behind
them again followed the most considerable of the citizens of their
party, bearing torches, for, sure as they were of the triumph of
their cause, they wished to fire the faggots themselves.  The piazza
was so crowded that the people overflowed into all the streets
around.  In every door and window there was nothing to be seen but
heads ranged one above the other; the terraces were covered with
people, and curious spectators were observed an the roof of the Duomo
and on the tap of the Campanile.

But, brought face to face with the ordeal, the Franciscans raised
such difficulties that it was very plain the heart of their champion
was failing him.  The first fear they expressed was that Fra
Bonvicini was an enchanter, and so carried about him some talisman or
charm which would save him from the fire.  So they insisted that he
should be stripped of all has clothes and put on others to be
inspected by witnesses.  Fra Bonvicini made no objection, though the
suspicion was humiliating; he changed shirt, dress, and cowl.  Then,
when the Franciscans observed that Savanarola was placing the
tabernacle in his hands, they protested that it was profanation to
expose the sacred host to the risk of burning, that this was not in
the bond, and if Bonvicini would not give up this supernatural aid,
they far their part would give up the trial altogether.  Savonarola
replied that it was not astonishing that the champion of religion who
put his faith in God should bear in his hands that very God to whom
he entrusted his salvation.  But this reply did not satisfy the
Franciscans, who were unwilling to let go their contention.
Savonarola remained inflexible, supporting his own right, and thus
nearly four hours passed in the discussion of points which neither
party would give up, and affairs remained in 'statu quo'.  Meanwhile
the people, jammed together in the streets, on the terraces, on the
roofs, since break of day, were suffering from hunger and thirst and
beginning to get impatient: their impatience soon developed into loud
murmurs, which reached even the champions' ears, so that the
partisans of Savonarala, who felt such faith in him that they were
confident of a miracle, entreated him to yield to all the conditions
suggested.  To this Savonarola replied that if it were himself making
the trial he would be less inexorable; but since another man was
incurring the danger; he could not take too many precautions.  Two
more hours passed, while his partisans tried in vain to combat his
refusals.  At last, as night was coming on and the people grew ever
more and more impatient and their murmurs began to assume a
threatening tone, Bonvicini declared that he was ready to walk
through the fire, holding nothing in his hand but a crucifix.  No one
could refuse him this; so Fra Rondinelli was compelled to accept his
proposition.  The announcement was made to the populace that the
champions had come to terms and the trial was about to take place.
At this news the people calmed down, in the hope of being compensated
at last for their long wait; but at that very moment a storm which
had long been threatening brake over Florence with such fury that the
faggots which had just been lighted were extinguished by the rain,
leaving no possibility of their rekindling.  From the moment when the
people suspected that they had been fooled, their enthusiasm was
changed into derision.  They were ignorant from which side the
difficulties had arisen that had hindered the trial, so they laid the
responsibility on both champions without distinction.  The Signoria,
foreseeing the disorder that was now imminent, ordered the assembly
to retire; but the assembly thought otherwise, and stayed on the
piazza, waiting for the departure of the two champions, in spite of
the fearful rain that still fell in torrents.  Rondinelli was taken
back amid shouts and hootings, and pursued with showers of stones.
Savonarola, thanks to his sacred garments and the host which he still
carried, passed calmly enough through the midst of the mob--a miracle
quite as remarkable as if he had passed through the fire unscathed.

But it was only the sacred majesty of the host that had protected
this man, who was indeed from this moment regarded as a false
prophet: the crowd allowed Savonarola to return to his convent, but
they regretted the necessity, so excited were they by the Arrabbiati
party, who had always denounced him as a liar and a hypocrite.  So
when the next morning, Palm Sunday, he stood up in the pulpit to
explain his conduct, he could not obtain a moment's silence for
insults, hooting, and loud laughter.  Then the outcry, at first
derisive, became menacing: Savonarola, whose voice was too weak to
subdue the tumult, descended from his pulpit, retired into the
sacristy, and thence to his convent, where he shut himself up in his
cell.  At that moment a cry was heard, and was repeated by everybody
present:

"To San Marco, to San Marco!"  The rioters, few at first, were
recruited by all the populace as they swept along the streets, and at
last reached the convent, dashing like an angry sea against the wall.

The doors, closed on Savonarala's entrance, soon crashed before the
vehement onset of the powerful multitude, which struck down on the
instant every obstacle it met: the whole convent was quickly flooded
with people, and Savonarola, with his two confederates, Domenico
Bonvicini and Silvestro Maruffi, was arrested in his cell, and
conducted to prison amid the insults of the crowd, who, always in
extremes, whether of enthusiasm or hatred, would have liked to tear
them to pieces, and would not be quieted till they had exacted a
promise that the prisoners should be forcibly compelled to make the
trial of fire which they had refused to make of their own free will.

Alexander VI, as we may suppose, had not been without influence in
bringing about this sudden and astonishing reaction, although he was
not present in person; and had scarcely learned the news of
Savonarola's fall and arrest when he claimed him as subject to
ecclesiastical jurisdiction.  But in spite of the grant of
indulgences wherewith this demand was accompanied, the Signoria
insisted that Savonarola's trial should take place at Florence,
adding a request so as not to appear to withdraw the accused
completely from the pontifical authority--that the pope would send
two ecclesiastical judges to sit in the Florentine tribunal.
Alexander, seeing that he would get nothing better from the
magnificent republic, sent as deputies Gioacchino Turriano of Venice,
General of the Dominicans, and Francesco Ramolini, doctor in law:
they practically brought the sentence with them, declaring Savonarola
and his accomplices heretics, schismatics, persecutors of the Church
and seducers of the people.

The firmness shown by the Florentines in claiming their rights of
jurisdiction were nothing but an empty show to save appearances; the
tribunal, as a fact, was composed of eight members, all known to be
fervent haters of Savonarola, whose trial began with the torture.
The result was that, feeble in body constitutionally nervous and
irritable, he had not been able to endure the rack, and, overcome by
agony just at the moment when the executioner had lifted him up by
the wrists and then dropped him a distance of two feet to the ground,
he had confessed, in order to get some respite, that his prophecies
were nothing mare than conjectures.  If is true that, so soon as he
went back to prison, he protested against the confession, saying that
it was the weakness of his bodily organs and his want of firmness
that had wrested the lie from him, but that the truth really was that
the Lord had several times appeared to him in his ecstasies and
revealed the things that he had spoken.  This protestation led to a
new application of the torture, during which Savonarola succumbed
once more to the dreadful pain, and once more retracted.  But
scarcely was he unbound, and was still lying on the bed of torture,
when he declared that his confessions were the fault of his
torturers, and the vengeance would recoil upon their heads; and he
protested yet once mare against all he had confessed and might
confess again.  A third time the torture produced the same avowals,
and the relief that followed it the same retractions.  The judges
therefore, when they condemned him and his two disciples to the
flames, decided that his confession should not be read aloud at the
stake, according to custom, feeling certain that an this occasion
also he would give it the lie, and that publicly, which, as anyone
must see who knew the versatile spirit of the public, would be a most
dangerous proceeding.

On the 23rd of May, the fire which had been promised to the people
before was a second time prepared on the Piazza del Palazzo, and this
time the crowd assembled quite certain that they would not be
disappointed of a spectacle so long anticipated.  And towards eleven
o'clock in the morning, Girolamo Savonarola, Domenico Bonvicini, and
Silvestro Maruffi were led to the place of execution, degraded of
their orders by the ecclesiastical judges, and bound all three to the
same stake in the centre of an immense pile of wood.  Then the bishop
Pagnanoli told the condemned men that he cut them off from the
Church.  "Ay, from the Church militant," said Savonarola, who from
that very hour, thanks to his martyrdom, was entering into the Church
triumphant.  No other words were spoken by the condemned men, for at
this moment one of the Arrabbiati, a personal enemy of Savonarola,
breaking through the hedge of guards around the scaffold, snatched
the torch from the executioner's hand and himself set fire to the
four corners of the pile.  Savonarola and his disciples, from the
moment when they saw the smoke arise, began to sing a psalm, and the
flames enwrapped them on all sides with a glowing veil, while their
religious song was yet heard mounting upward to the gates of heaven.

Pope Alexander VI was thus set free from perhaps the most formidable
enemy who had ever risen against him, and the pontifical vengeance
pursued the victims even after their death: the Signoria, yielding to
his wishes, gave orders that the ashes of the prophet and his
disciples should be thrown into the Arno.  But certain half-burned
fragments were picked up by the very soldiers whose business it was
to keep the people back from approaching the fire, and the holy
relics are even now shown, blackened by the flames, to the faithful,
who if they no longer regard Savonarola as a prophet, revere him none
the less as a martyr.




CHAPTER X

The French army was now preparing to cross the Alps a second time,
under the command of Trivulce.  Louis XII had come as far as Lyons in
the company of Caesar Borgia and Giuliano della Rovere, on whom he
had forced a reconciliation, and towards the beginning of the month
of May had sent his vanguard before him, soon to be followed by the
main body of the army.  The forces he was employing in this second
campaign of conquest were 1600, lances, 5000 Swiss, 9000 Gascons, and
3500 infantry, raised from all parts of France.  On the 13th of
August this whole body, amounting to nearly 15,000 men, who were to
combine their forces with the Venetians, arrived beneath the walls of
Arezzo, and immediately laid siege to the town.

Ludovico Sforza's position was a terrible one: he was now suffering
from his imprudence in calling the French into Italy; all the allies
he had thought he might count upon were abandoning him at the same
moment, either because they were busy about their own affairs, or
because they were afraid of the powerful enemy that the Duke of Milan
had made for himself.  Maximilian, who had promised him a
contribution of 400 lances, to make up for not renewing the
hostilities with Louis XII that had been interrupted, had just made a
league with the circle of Swabia to war against the Swiss, whom he
had declared rebels against the Empire.  The Florentines, who had
engaged to furnish him with 300 men-at-arms and 2000 infantry, if he
would help them to retake Pisa, had just retracted their promise
because of Louis XII's threats, and had undertaken to remain neutral.
Frederic, who was holding back his troops for the defence of his own
States, because he supposed, not without reason, that, Milan once
conquered, he would again have to defend Naples, sent him no help, no
men, no money, in spite of his promises.  Ludovico Sforza was
therefore reduced to his own proper forces.

But as he was a man powerful in arms and clever in artifice, he did
not allow himself to succumb at the first blow, and in all haste
fortified Annona, Novarro, and Alessandria, sent off Cajazzo with
troops to that part of the Milanese territory which borders on the
states of Venice, and collected on the Po as many troops as he could.
But these precautions availed him nothing against the impetuous
onslaught of the French, who in a few days had taken Annona, Arezzo,
Novarro, Voghiera, Castelnuovo, Ponte Corona, Tartone, and
Alessandria, while Trivulce was on the march to Milan.

Seeing the rapidity of this conquest and their numerous victories,
Ludovico Sforza, despairing of holding out in his capital, resolved
to retire to Germany, with his children, his brother, Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza, and his treasure, which had been reduced in the
course of eight years from 1,500,000 to 200,000 ducats. But before he
went he left Bernardino da Carte in charge of the castle of Milan.
In vain did his friends warn him to distrust this man, in vain did
his brother Ascanio offer to hold the fortress himself, and offer to
hold it to the very last; Ludovico refused to make any change in his
arrangements, and started on the 2nd of September, leaving in the
citadel three thousand foot and enough provisions, ammunition, and
money to sustain a siege of several months.

Two days after Ludovico's departure, the French entered Milan.  Ten
days later Bernardino da Come gave up the castle before a single gun
had been fired.  Twenty-one days had sufficed for the French to get
possession of the various towns, the capital, and all the territories
of their enemy.

Louis XII received the news of this success while he was at Lyons,
and he at once started for Milan, where he was received with
demonstrations of joy that were really sincere.  Citizens of every
rank had come out three miles' distance from the gates to receive
him, and forty boys, dressed in cloth of gold and silk, marched
before him singing hymns of victory composed by poets of the period,
in which the king was styled their liberator and the envoy of
freedom.  The great joy of the Milanese people was due to the fact
that friends of Louis had been spreading reports beforehand that the
King of France was rich enough to abolish all taxes.  And so soon as
the second day from his arrival at Milan the conqueror made some
slight reduction, granted important favours to certain Milanese
gentlemen, and bestowed the town of Vigavano on Trivulce as a reward
for his swift and glorious campaign.  But Caesar Borgia, who had
followed Louis XII with a view to playing his part in the great
hunting-ground of Italy, scarcely waited for him to attain his end
when he claimed the fulfilment of his promise, which the king with
his accustomed loyalty hastened to perform.  He instantly put at the
disposal of Caesar three hundred lances under the command of Yves
d'Alegre, and four thousand Swiss under the command of the bailiff of
Dijon, as a help in his work of reducing the Vicars of the Church.

We must now explain to our readers who these new personages were whom
we introduce upon the scene by the above name.

During the eternal wars of Guelphs and Ghibelines and the long exile
of the popes at Avignon, most of the towns and fortresses of the
Romagna had been usurped by petty tyrants, who for the most part hard
received from the Empire the investiture of their new possessions;
but ever since German influence had retired beyond the Alps, and the
popes had again made Rome the centre of the Christian world, all the
small princes, robbed of their original protector, had rallied round
the papal see, and received at the hands of the pope a new
investiture, and now they paid annual dues, for which they received
the particular title of duke, count, or lord, and the general name of
Vicar of the Church.

It had been no difficult matter for Alexander, scrupulously examining
the actions and behaviour of these gentlemen during the seven years
that had elapsed since he was exalted to St. Peter's throne, to find
in the conduct of each one of them something that could be called an
infraction of the treaty made between vassals and suzerain;
accordingly he brought forward his complaints at a tribunal
established for the purpose, and obtained sentence from the judges to
the effect that the vicars of the Church, having failed to fulfil the
conditions of their investiture, were despoiled of their domains,
which would again become the property of the Holy See.  As the pope
was now dealing with men against whom it was easier to pass a
sentence than to get it carried out, he had nominated as captain-
general the new Duke of Valentinois, who was commissioned to recover
the territories for his own benefit.  The lords in question were the
Malatesti of Rimini, the Sforza of Pesaro, the Manfredi of Faenza,
the Riarii of Imola and Farli, the Variani of Camerina, the
Montefeltri of Urbino, and the Caetani of Sermoneta.

But the Duke of Valentinois, eager to keep as warm as possible his
great friendship with his ally and relative Louis XII, was, as we
know, staying with him at Milan so long as he remained there, where,
after a month's occupation, the king retraced his steps to his own
capital, the Duke of Valentinois ordered his men-at-arms and his
Swiss to await him between Parma and Modena, and departed posthaste
for Rome, to explain his plans to his father viva voce and to receive
his final instructions.  When he arrived, he found that the fortune
of his sister Lucrezia had been greatly augmented in his absence, not
from the side of her husband Alfonso, whose future was very uncertain
now in consequence of Louis's successes, which had caused some
coolness between Alfonso and the pope, but from her father's side,
upon whom at this time she exercised an influence mare astonishing
than ever.  The pope had declared Lucrezia Borgia of Aragon life-
governor of Spoleto and its duchy, with all emoluments, rights, and
revenues accruing thereunto.  This had so greatly increased her power
and improved her position, that in these days she never showed
herself in public without a company of two hundred horses ridden by
the most illustrious ladies and noblest knights of Rome.  Moreover,
as the twofold affection of her father was a secret to nobody, the
first prelates in the Church, the frequenters of the Vatican, the
friends of His Holiness, were all her most humble servants; cardinals
gave her their hands when she stepped from her litter or her horse,
archbishops disputed the honour of celebrating mass in her private
apartments.

But Lucrezia had been obliged to quit Rome in order to take
possession of her new estates; and as her father could not spend much
time away from his beloved daughter, he resolved to take into his
hands the town of Nepi, which on a former occasion, as the reader
will doubtless remember, he had bestowed on Ascanio Sforza in
exchange for his suffrage.  Ascanio had naturally lost this town when
he attached himself to the fortunes of the Duke of Milan, his
brother; and when the pope was about to take it again, he invited his
daughter Lucrezia to join him there and be present at the rejoicings
held in honour of his resuming its possession.

Lucrezia's readiness in giving way to her father's wishes brought her
a new gift from him: this was the town and territory of Sermoneta,
which belonged to the Caetani.  Of course the gift was as yet a
secret, because the two owners of the seigneury, had first to be
disposed of, one being Monsignore Giacomo Caetano, apostolic
protonotary, the other Prospero Caetano, a young cavalier of great
promise; but as both lived at Rome, and entertained no suspicion, but
indeed supposed themselves to be in high favour with His Holiness,
the one by virtue of his position, the other of his courage, the
matter seemed to present no great difficulty.  So directly after the
return of Alexander to Rome, Giacomo Caetano was arrested, on what
pretext we know not, was taken to the castle of Sant' Angelo, and
there died shortly after, of poison: Prospero Caetano was strangled
in his own house.  After these two deaths, which both occurred so
suddenly as to give no time for either to make a will, the pope
declared that Sermoneta and all of her property appertaining to the
Caetani devolved upon the apostolic chamber; and they were sold to
Lucrezia for the cum of 80,000 crowns, which her father refunded to
her the day after.  Though Caesar hurried to Rome, he found when he
arrived that his father had been beforehand with him, and had made a
beginning of his conquests.

Another fortune also had been making prodigious strides during
Caesar's stay in France, viz. the fortune of Gian Borgia, the pope's
nephew, who had been one of the most devoted friends of the Duke of
Gandia up to the time of his death.  It was said in Rome, and not in
a whisper, that the young cardinal owed the favours heaped upon him
by His Holiness less to the memory of the brother than to the
protection of the sister.  Both these reasons made Gian Borgia a
special object of suspicion to Caesar, and it was with an inward vow
that he should not enjoy his new dignities very long that the Duke of
Valentinois heard that his cousin Gian had just been nominated
cardinal 'a latere' of all the Christian world, and had quitted Rome
to make a circuit through all the pontifical states with a suite of
archbishops, bishops, prelates, and gentlemen, such as would have
done honour to the pope himself.

Caesar had only come to Rome to get news; so he only stayed three
days, and then, with all the troops His Holiness could supply,
rejoined his forces on the borders of the Euza, and marched at once
to Imola.  This town, abandoned by its chiefs, who had retired to
Forli, was forced to capitulate.  Imola taken, Caesar marched
straight upon Forli.  There he met with a serious check; a check,
moreover, which came from a woman.  Caterina Sforza, widow of
Girolamo and mother of Ottaviano Riario, had retired to this town,
and stirred up the courage of the garrison by putting herself, her
goods and her person, under their protection.  Caesar saw that it was
no longer a question of a sudden capture, but of a regular siege; so
he began to make all his arrangements with a view to it, and placing
a battery of cannon in front of the place where the walls seemed to
him weakest, he ordered an uninterrupted fire, to be continued until
the breach was practicable.

When he returned to the camp after giving this order, he found there
Gian Borgia, who had gone to Rome from Ferrara and was unwilling to
be so near Caesar without paying him a visit: he was received with
effusion and apparently the greatest joy, and stayed three days; on
the fourth day all the officers and members of the court were invited
to a grand farewell supper, and Caesar bade farewell to his cousin,
charging him with despatches for the pope, and lavishing upon him all
the tokens of affection he had shown on his arrival.

Cardinal Gian Bargia posted off as soon as he left the supper-table,
but on arriving at Urbino he was seized with such a sudden and
strange indisposition that he was forced to stop; but after a few
minutes, feeling rather better, he went an; scarcely, however, had he
entered Rocca Cantrada when he again felt so extremely ill that he
resolved to go no farther, and stayed a couple of days in the town.
Then, as he thought he was a little better again, and as he had heard
the news of the taking of Forli and also that Caterina Sforza had
been taken prisoner while she was making an attempt to retire into
the castle, he resolved to go back to Caesar and congratulate him on
his victory; but at Fassambrane he was forced to stop a third time,
although he had given up his carriage for a litter.  This was his
last halt: the same day he sought his bed, never to rise from it
again; three days later he was dead.

His body was taken to Rome and buried without any ceremony in the
church of Santa Maria del Populo, where lay awaiting him the corpse
of his friend the Duke of Gandia; and there was now no more talk of
the young cardinal, high as his rank had been, than if he had never
existed.  Thus in gloom and silence passed away all those who were
swept to destruction by the ambition of that terrible trio,
Alexander, Lucrezia, and Caesar.

Almost at the same time Rome was terrified by another murder.  Don
Giovanni Cerviglione, a gentleman by birth and a brave soldier,
captain of the pope's men-at-arms, was attacked one evening by the
sbirri, as he was on his way home from supping with Dan Elisio
Pignatelli.  One of the men asked his name, and as he pronounced it,
seeing that there was no mistake, plunged a dagger into his breast,
while a second man with a back stroke of his sword cut off his head,
which lay actually at his feet before his body had time to fall.

The governor of Rome lodged a complaint against this assassination
with the pope; but quickly perceiving, by the way his intimation was
received, that he would have done better to say nothing, he stopped
the inquiries he had started, so that neither of the murderers was
ever arrested.  But the rumour was circulated that Caesar, in the
short stay he had made at Rome, had had a rendezvous with
Cerviglione's wife, who was a Borgia by birth, and that her husband
when he heard of this infringement of conjugal duty had been angry
enough to threaten her and her lover, too: the threat had reached
Caesar's ears, who, making a long arm of Michelotto, had, himself at
Forli, struck down Cerviglione in the streets of Rome.

Another unexpected death followed so quickly on that of Don Giovanni
Cerviglione that it could not but be attributed to the same
originator, if not to the same cause.  Monsignore Agnelli of Mantua,
archbishop of Cosenza, clerk of the chamber and vice-legate of
Viterbo, having fallen into disgrace with His Holiness, how it is not
known, was poisoned at his own table, at which he had passed a good
part of the night in cheerful conversation with three or four guests,
the poison gliding meanwhile through his veins; then going to bed in
perfect health, he was found dead in the morning.  His possessions
were at once divided into three portions: the land and houses were
given to the Duke of Valentinois; the bishopric went to Francesco
Borgia, son of Calixtus III; and the office of clerk of the chamber
was sold for 5000 ducats to Ventura Bonnassai, a merchant of Siena,
who produced this sum for Alexander, and settled down the very same
day in the Vatican.

This last death served the purpose of determining a point of law
hitherto uncertain: as Monsignore Agnelli's natural heirs had made
some difficulty about being disinherited, Alexander issued a brief;
whereby he took from every cardinal and every priest the right of
making a will, and declared that all their property should henceforth
devolve upon him.

But Caesar was stopped short in the midst of his victories.  Thanks
to the 200,000 ducats that yet remained in his treasury, Ludovico
Sforza had levied 500 men-at-arms from Burgundy and 8000 Swiss
infantry, with whom he had entered Lombardy.  So Trivulce, to face
this enemy, had been compelled to call back Yves d'Alegre and the
troops that Louis XII had lent to Caesar; consequently Caesar,
leaving behind a body of pontifical soldiery as garrison at Forli and
Imola, betook himself with the rest of his force to Rome.

It was Alexander's wish that his entry should be a triumph; so when
he learned that the quartermasters of the army were only a few
leagues from the town, he sent out runners to invite the royal
ambassadars, the cardinals, the prelates, the Roman barons, and
municipal dignitaries to make procession with all their suite to meet
the Duke of Valentinois; and as it always happens that the pride of
those who command is surpassed by the baseness of those who obey, the
orders were not only fulfilled to the letter, but beyond it.

The entry of Caesar took place on the 26th of February, 1500.
Although this was the great Jubilee year, the festivals of the
carnival began none the less for that, and were conducted in a manner
even more extravagant and licentious than usual; and the conqueror
after the first day prepared a new display of ostentation, which he
concealed under the veil of a masquerade.  As he was pleased to
identify himself with the glory, genius, and fortune of the great man
whose name he bore, he resolved on a representation of the triumph of
Julius Caesar, to be given on the Piazzi di Navona, the ordinary
place for holding the carnival fetes.  The next day, therefore, he
and his retinue started from that square, and traversed all the
streets of Rome, wearing classical costumes and riding in antique
cars, on one of which Caesar stood, clad in the robe of an emperor of
old, his brow crowned with a golden laurel wreath, surrounded by
lictors, soldiers, and ensign-bearers, who carried banners whereon
was inscribed the motto, 'Aut Caesar aut nihil'.

Finally, an the fourth Sunday, in Lent, the pope conferred upon
Caesar the dignity he had so long coveted, and appointed him general
and gonfaloniere of the Holy Church.

In the meanwhile Sforza had crossed the Alps and passed the Lake of
Como, amid acclamations of joy from his former subjects, who had
quickly lost the enthusiasm that the French army and Louis's promises
had inspired.  These demonstrations were so noisy at Milan, that
Trivulce, judging that there was no safety for a French garrison in
remaining there, made his way to Navarra.  Experience proved that he
was not deceived; for scarcely had the Milanese observed his
preparations for departure when a suppressed excitement began to
spread through the town, and soon the streets were filled with armed
men.  This murmuring crowd had to be passed through, sword in hand
and lance in rest; and scarcely had the French got outside the gates
when the mob rushed out after the army into the country, pursuing
them with shouts and hooting as far as the banks of the Tesino.
Trivulce left 400 lances at Novarra as well as the 3000 Swiss that
Yves d'Alegre had brought from the Romagna, and directed his course
with the rest of the army towards Mortara, where he stopped at last
to await the help he had demanded from the King of France.  Behind
him Cardinal Ascanio and Ludovico entered Milan amid the acclamations
of the whole town.

Neither of them lost any time, and wishing to profit by this
enthusiasm, Ascanio undertook to besiege the castle of Milan while
Ludovico should cross the Tesino and attack Novarra.

There besiegers and besieged were sons of the same nation; for Yves
d'Alegre had scarcely as many as 300 French with him, and Ludovico
500 Italians.  In fact, for the last sixteen years the Swiss had been
practically the only infantry in Europe, and all the Powers came,
purse in hand, to draw from the mighty reservoir of their mountains.
The consequence was that these rude children of William Tell, put up
to auction by the nations, and carried away from the humble, hardy
life of a mountain people into cities of wealth and pleasure, had
lost, not their ancient courage, but that rigidity of principle for
which they had been distinguished before their intercourse with other
nations.  From being models of honour and good faith they had become
a kind of marketable ware, always ready for sale to the highest
bidder.  The French were the first to experience this venality, which
later-on proved so fatal to Ludovico Sforza.

Now the Swiss in the garrison at Novarra had been in communication
with their compatriots in the vanguard of the ducal army, and when
they found that they, who as a fact were unaware that Ludavico's
treasure was nearly exhausted, were better fed as well as better paid
than themselves, they offered to give up the town and go over to the
Milanese, if they could be certain of the same pay.  Ludovico, as we
may well suppose, closed with this bargain.  The whole of Novarra was
given up to him except the citadel, which was defended by Frenchmen:
thus the enemy's army was recruited by 3000 men.  Then Ludovico made
the mistake of stopping to besiege the castle instead of marching on
to Mortara with the new reinforcement.  The result of this was that
Louis XII, to whom runners had been sent by Trivulce, understanding
his perilous position, hastened the departure of the French
gendarmerie who were already collected to cross into Italy, sent off
the bailiff of Dijon to levy new Swiss forces, and ordered Cardinal
Amboise, his prime minister, to cross the Alps and take up a position
at Asti, to hurry on the work of collecting the troops.  There the
cardinal found a nest-egg of 3000 men.  La Trimouille added 1500
lances and 6000 French infantry; finally, the bailiff of Dijon
arrived with 10,000 Swiss; so that, counting the troops which
Trivulce had at Mortara, Louis XII found himself master on the other
side of the Alps of the first army any French king had ever led out
to battle.  Soon, by good marching, and before Ludovico knew the
strength or even the existence of this army, it took up a position
between Novarra and Milan, cutting off all communication between the
duke and his capital.  He was therefore compelled, in spite of his
inferior numbers, to prepare for a pitched battle.

But it so happened that just when the preparations for a decisive
engagement were being made on both sides, the Swiss Diet, learning
that the sons of Helvetia were on the paint of cutting one another's
throats, sent orders to all the Swiss serving in either army to break
their engagements and return to the fatherland.  But during the two
months that had passed between the surrender of Novarra and the
arrival of the French army before the town, there had been a very
great change in the face of things, because Ludovico Sforza's
treasure was now exhausted.  New confabulations had gone on between
the outposts, and this time, thanks to the money sent by Louis XII,
it was the Swiss in the service of France who were found to be the
better fed and better paid.  The worthy Helvetians, since they no
longer fought far their own liberty, knew the value of their blood
too well to allow a single drop of it to be spilled for less than its
weight in gold: the result was that, as they had, betrayed Yves
d'Alegre, they resolved to betray Ludovico Sforza too; and while the
recruits brought in by the bailiff of Dijon were standing firmly by
the French flag, careless of the order of the Diet, Ludovico's auxili
aries declared that in fighting against their Swiss brethren they
would be acting in disobedience to the Diet, and would risk capital
punishment in the end--a danger that nothing would induce them to
incur unless they immediately received the arrears of their pay.  The
duke, who a spent the last ducat he had with him, and was entirely
cut off from his capital, knew that he could not get money till he
had fought his way through to it, and therefore invited the Swiss to
make one last effort, promising them not only the pay that was in
arrears but a double hire.  But unluckily the fulfilment of this
promise was dependent on the doubtful issue of a battle, and the
Swiss replied that they had far too much respect for their country to
disobey its decree, and that they loved their brothers far too well
to consent to shed their blood without reward; and therefore Sforza
would do well not to count upon them, since indeed the very next day
they proposed to return to their homes.  The duke then saw that all
was lost, but he made a last appeal to their honour, adjuring them at
least to ensure his personal safety by making it a condition of
capitulation.  But they replied that even if a condition of such a
kind, would not make capitulation impossible, it would certainly
deprive them of advantages which they had aright to expect, and on
which they counted as indemnification for the arrears of their pay.
They pretended, however, at last that they were touched by the
prayers of the man whose orders they had obeyed so long, and offered
to conceal him dressed in their clothes among their ranks.  This
proposition was barely plausible; far Sforza was short and, by this
time an old man, and he could not possibly escape recognition in the
midst of an army where the oldest was not past thirty and the
shortest not less than five foot six.  Still, this was his last
chance, and he did not reject it at once, but tried to modify it so
that it might help him in his straits.  His plan was to disguise
himself as a Franciscan monk, so that mounted an a shabby horse he
might pass for their chaplain; the others, Galeazzo di San Severing,
who commanded under him, and his two brothers, were all tall men, so,
adopting the dress of common soldiers, they hoped they might escape
detection in the Swiss ranks.

Scarcely were these plans settled when the duke heard that the
capitulation was signed between Trivulce and the Swiss, who had made
no stipulation in favour of him and his generals.  They were to go
over the next day with arms and baggage right into the French army;
so the last hope of the wretched Ludovico and his generals must needs
be in their disguise.  And so it was.  San Severino and his brothers
took their place in the ranks of the infantry, and Sforza took his
among the baggage, clad in a monk's frock, with the hood pulled over
his eyes.

The army marched off; but the Swiss, who had first trafficked in
their blood, now trafficked in their honour.  The French were warned
of the disguise of Sforza and his generals, and thus they were all
four recognised, and Sforza was arrested by Trimouille himself.  It
is said that the price paid for this treason was the town of
Bellinzona; far it then belonged to the French, and when the Swiss
returned to their mountains and took possession of it, Louis XII took
no steps to get it back again.

When Ascanio Sforza, who, as we know, had stayed at Milan, learned
the news of this cowardly desertion, he supposed that his cause was
lost and that it would be the best plan for him to fly, before he
found himself a prisoner in the hand's of his brother's old subjects:
such a change of face on the people's part would be very natural, and
they might propose perhaps to purchase their own pardon at the price
of his liberty; so he fled by night with the chief nobles of the
Ghibelline party, taking the road to Piacenza, an his way to the
kingdom of Naples.  But when he arrived at Rivolta, he remembered
that there was living in that town an old friend of his childhood, by
name Conrad Lando, whom he had helped to much wealth in his days of
power; and as Ascanio and his companions were extremely; tired, he
resolved to beg his hospitality for a single night.  Conrad received
them with every sign of joy, putting all his house and servants at
their disposal.  But scarcely had they retired to bed when he sent a
runner to Piacenza, to inform Carlo Orsini, at that time commanding
the Venetian garrison, that he was prepared to deliver up Cardinal
Ascanio and the chief men of the Milanese army.  Carlo Orsini did not
care to resign to another so important an expedition, and mounting
hurriedly with twenty-five men, he first surrounded Conrads house,
and then entered sword in hand the chamber wherein Ascanio and his
companions lay, and being surprised in the middle of their sleep,
they yielded without resistance.  The prisoners were taken to Venice,
but Louis XII claimed them, and they were given up.  Thus the King of
France found himself master of Ludovico Sforza and of Ascania, of a
legitimate nephew of the great Francesco Sforza named Hermes, of two
bastards named Alessandro and Cortino, and of Francesco, son of the
unhappy Gian Galeazza who had been poisoned by his uncle.

Louis XII, wishing to make an end of the whole family at a blow,
forced Francesco to enter a cloister, shut up Cardinal Ascanio in the
tower of Baurges, threw into prison Alessandro, Cartino, and Hermes,
and finally, after transferring the wretched Ludovico from the
fortress of Pierre-Eucise to Lys-Saint-George he relegated him for
good and all to the castle of Loches, where he lived for ten years in
solitude and utter destitution, and there died, cursing the day when
the idea first came into his head of enticing the French into Italy.

The news of the catastrophe of Ludovica and his family caused the
greatest joy at Rome, for, while the French were consolidating their
power in Milanese territory, the Holy See was gaining ground in the
Romagna, where no further opposition was offered to Caesar's
conquest.  So the runners who brought the news were rewarded with
valuable presents, and it was published throughout the whole town of
Rome to the sound of the trumpet and drum.  The war-cry of Louis,
France, France, and that of the Orsini, Orso, Orso, rang through all
the streets, which in the evening were illuminated, as though
Constantinople or Jerusalem had been taken. And the pope gave the
people fetes and fireworks, without troubling his head the least in
the world either about its being Holy Week, or because the Jubilee
had attracted more than 200,000 people to Rome; the temporal
interests of his family seeming to him far more important than the
spiritual interests of his subjects.




CHAPTER XI

One thing alone was wanting to assure the success of the vast
projects that the pope and his son were founding upon the friendship
of Louis and an alliance with him--that is,--money.  But Alexander
was not the man to be troubled about a paltry worry of that kind;
true, the sale of benefices was by now exhausted, the ordinary and
extraordinary taxes had already been collected for the whole year,
and the prospect of inheritance from cardinals and priests was a poor
thing now that the richest of them had been poisoned; but Alexander
had other means at his disposal, which were none the less efficacious
because they were less often used.

The first he employed was to spread a, report that the Turks were
threatening an invasion of Christendom, and that he knew for a
positive fact that before the end of the summer Bajazet would land
two considerable armies, one in Romagna, the other in Calabria; he
therefore published two bulls, one to levy tithes of all
ecclesiastical revenues in Europe of whatever nature they might be,
the other to force the Jews into paying an equivalent sum: both bulls
contained the severest sentences of excommunication against those who
refused to submit, or attempted opposition.

The second plan was the selling of indulgences, a thing which had
never been done before: these indulgences affected the people who had
been prevented by reasons of health or business from coming to Rome
for the Jubilee; the journey by this expedient was rendered
unnecessary, and sins were pardoned for a third of what it would have
cost, and just as completely as if the faithful had fulfilled every
condition of the pilgrimage.  For gathering in this tax a veritable
army of collectors was instituted, a certain Ludovico delta Torre at
their head.  The sum that Alexander brought into the pontifical
treasury is incalculable, and same idea of it may be gathered from
the fact that 799,000 livres in gold was paid in from the territory
of Venice alone.

But as the Turks did as a fact make some sort of demonstration from
the Hungarian side, and the Venetians began to fear that they might
be coming in their direction, they asked for help from the pope, who
gave orders that at twelve o'clock in the day in all his States an
Ave Maria should be said, to pray God to avert the danger which was
threatening the most serene republic.  This was the only help the
Venetians got from His Holiness in exchange for the 799,000 livres in
gold that he had got from them.

But it seemed as though God wished to show His strange vicar on earth
that He was angered by the mockery of sacred things, and on the Eve
of St. Peter's Day, just as the pope was passing the Capanile on his
way to the tribune of benedictions, a enormous piece of iron broke
off and fell at his feet; and then, as though one warning had not
been enough, on the next day, St. Peter's, when the pope happened to
be in one of the rooms of his ordinary dwelling with Cardinal Capuano
and Monsignare Poto, his private chamberlain, he saw through the open
windows that a very black cloud was coming up.  Foreseeing a
thunderstorm, he ordered the cardinal and the chamberlain to shut the
windows.  He had not been mistaken; for even as they were obeying his
command, there came up such a furious gust of wind that the highest
chimney of the Vatican was overturned, just as a tree is rooted up,
and was dashed upon the roof, breaking it in; smashing the upper
flooring, it fell into the very room where they were.  Terrified by
the noise of this catastrophe, which made the whole palace tremble,
the cardinal and Monsignore Poto turned round, and seeing the room
full of dust and debris, sprang out upon the parapet and shouted to
the guards at the gate, "The pope is dead, the pope is dead!"  At
this cry, the guards ran up and discovered three persons lying in the
rubbish on the floor, one dead and the other two dying.  The dead man
was a gentleman of Siena ailed Lorenzo Chigi, and the dying were two
resident officials of the Vatican.  They had been walking across the
floor above, and had been flung down with the debris.  But Alexander
was not to be found; and as he gave no answer, though they kept on
calling to him, the belief that he had perished was confirmed, and
very soon spread about the town.  But he had only fainted, and at the
end of a certain time he began to come to himself, and moaned,
whereupon he was discovered, dazed with the blow, and injured, though
not seriously, in several parts of his body.  He had been saved by
little short of a miracle: a beam had broken in half and had left
each of its two ends in the side walls; and one of these had formed a
sort of roof aver the pontifical throne; the pope, who was sitting
there at the time, was protected by this overarching beam, and had
received only a few contusions.

The two contradictory reports of the sudden death and the miraculous
preservation of the pope spread rapidly through Rome; and the Duke of
Valentinois, terrified at the thought of what a change might be
wrought in his own fortunes by any slight accident to the Holy
Father, hurried to the Vatican, unable to assure himself by anything
less than the evidence of his own eyes.  Alexander desired to render
public thanks to Heaven for the protection that had been granted him;
and on the very same day was carried to the church of Santa Maria del
Popalo, escorted by a numerous procession of prelates and men-at
arms, his pontifical seat borne by two valets, two equerries, and two
grooms.  In this church were buried the Duke of Gandia and Gian
Borgia, and perhaps Alexander was drawn thither by same relics of
devotion, or may be by the recollection of his love for his former
mistress, Rosa Vanazza, whose image, in the guise of the Madonna, was
exposed for the veneration of the faithful in a chapel on the left of
the high altar.  Stopping before this altar, the pope offered to the
church the gift of a magnificent chalice in which were three hundred
gold crowns, which the Cardinal of Siena poured out into a silver
paten before the eyes of all, much to the gratification of the
pontifical vanity.

But before he left Rome to complete the conquest of the Romagna, the
Duke of Valentinois had been reflecting that the marriage, once so
ardently desired, between Lucrezia and Alfonso had been quite useless
to himself and his father.  There was more than this to be
considered: Louis XII's rest in Lombardy was only a halt, and Milan
was evidently but the stage before Naples.  It was very possible that
Louis was annoyed about the marriage which converted his enemy's
nephew into the son-in-law of his ally.  Whereas, if Alfonso were
dead, Lucrezia would be the position to marry some powerful lord of
Ferrara or Brescia, who would be able to help his brother-in-law
in the conquest of Romagna.  Alfonso was now not only useless but
dangerous, which to anyone with the character of the Borgias perhaps
seemed worse, the death of Alfonso was resolved upon.  But Lucrezia's
husband, who had understand for a long time past what danger he
incurred by living near his terrible father-in-law, had retired to
Naples.  Since, however, neither Alexander nor Caesar had changed in
their perpetual dissimulation towards him, he was beginning to lose
his fear, when he received an invitation from the pope and his son to
take part in a bull-fight which was to be held in the Spanish fashion
in honour of the duke before his departure: In the present precarious
position of Naples it would not have been good policy far Alfonso to
afford Alexander any sort of pretext for a rupture, so he could not
refuse without a motive, and betook himself to Rome.  It was thought
of no use to consult Lucrezia in this affair, for she had two or
three times displayed an absurd attachment for her husband, and they
left her undisturbed in her government of Spoleto.

Alfonso was received by the pope and the duke with every
demonstration of sincere friendship, and rooms in the Vatican were
assigned to him that he had inhabited before with Lucrezia, in that
part of the building which is known as the Torre Nuova.

Great lists were prepared on the Piazza of St. Peter's; the streets
about it were barricaded, and the windows of the surrounding houses
served as boxes for the spectators.  The pope and his court took
their places on the balconies of the Vatican.

The fete was started by professional toreadors: after they had
exhibited their strength and skill, Alfonso and Caesar in their turn
descended to the arena, and to offer a proof of their mutual
kindness, settled that the bull which pursued Caesar should be killed
by Alfonso, and the bull that pursued Alfonso by Caesar.

Then Caesar remained alone an horseback within the lists, Alfonso
going out by an improvised door which was kept ajar, in order that he
might go back on the instant if he judged that his presence was
necessary.  At the same time, from the opposite side of the lists the
bull was introduced, and was at the same moment pierced all over with
darts and arrows, some of them containing explosives, which took
fire, and irritated the bull to such a paint that he rolled about
with pain, and then got up in a fury, and perceiving a man on
horseback, rushed instantly upon him.  It was now, in this narrow
arena, pursued by his swift enemy, that Caesar displayed all that
skill which made him one of the finest horsemen of the period.
Still, clever as he was, he could not have remained safe long in that
restricted area from an adversary against whom he had no other
resource than flight, had not Alfonso appeared suddenly, just when
the bull was beginning to gain upon him, waving a red cloak in his
left hand, and holding in his right a long delicate Aragon sword.  It
was high time: the bull was only a few paces distant from Caesar, and
the risk he was running appeared so imminent that a woman's scream
was heard from one of the windows.  But at the sight of a man on foot
the bull stopped short, and judging that he would do better business
with the new enemy than the old one, he turned upon him instead.  For
a moment he stood motionless, roaring, kicking up the dust with his
hind feet, and lashing his sides with his tail.  Then he rushed upon
Alfonso, his eyes all bloodshot, his horns tearing up the ground.
Alfonso awaited him with a tranquil air; then, when he was only three
paces away, he made a bound to one sides and presented instead of his
body his sword, which disappeared at once to the hilt; the bull,
checked in the middle of his onslaught, stopped one instant
motionless and trembling, then fell upon his knees, uttered one dull
roar, and lying down on the very spot where his course had been
checked, breathed his last without moving a single step forward.

Applause resounded an all sides, so rapid and clever had been the
blow.  Caesar had remained on horseback, seeking to discover the fair
spectator who had given so lively a proof of her interest in him,
without troubling himself about what was going on: his search had not
been unrewarded, far he had recognized one of the maids of honour to
Elizabeth, Duchess of Urbino, who was betrothed to Gian Battista
Carraciualo, captain-general of the republic of Venice.

It was now Alfonso's turn to run from the bull, Caesar's to fight
him: the young men changed parts, and when four mules had reluctantly
dragged the dead bull from the arena, and the valets and other
servants of His Holiness had scattered sand over the places that were
stained with blood, Alfonso mounted a magnificent Andalusian steed of
Arab origin, light as the wind of Sahara that had wedded with his
mother, while Caesar, dismounting, retired in his turn, to reappear
at the moment when Alfonso should be meeting the same danger from
which he had just now rescued him.

Then a second bull was introduced upon the scene, excited in the same
manner with steeled darts and flaming arrows.  Like his predecessor,
when he perceived a man on horseback he rushed upon him, and then
began a marvellous race, in which it was impossible to see, so
quickly did they fly over the ground, whether the horse was pursuing
the bull or the bull the horse.  But after five or six rounds, the
bull began to gain upon the son of Araby, for all his speed, and it
was plain to see who fled and who pursued; in another moment there
was only the length of two lances between them, and then suddenly
Caesar appeared, armed with one of those long two handed swords which
the French are accustomed to use, and just when the bull, almost
close upon Don Alfonso, came in front of Caesar he brandished the
sword, which flashed like lightning, and cut off his head, while his
body, impelled by the speed of the run, fell to the ground ten paces
farther on.  This blow was so unexpected, and had been performed with
such dexterity, that it was received not with mere clapping but with
wild enthusiasm and frantic outcry.  Caesar, apparently remembering
nothing else in his hour of triumph but the scream that had been
caused by his former danger, picked up the bull's head, and, giving
it to one of his equerries, ordered him to lay it as an act of homage
at the feet of the fair Venetian who had bestowed upon him so lively
a sign of interest.  This fete, besides affording a triumph to each
of the young men, had another end as well; it was meant to prove to
the populace that perfect goodwill existed between the two, since
each had saved the life of the other.  The result was that, if any
accident should happen to Caesar, nobody would dream of accusing
Alfanso; and also if any accident should happen to Alfonso, nobody
would dream, of accusing Caesar.

There was a supper at the Vatican.  Alfonso made an elegant toilet,
and about ten o'clock at night prepared to go from the quarters he
inhabited into those where the pope lived; but the door which
separated the two courts of the building was shut, and knock as he
would, no one came to open it.  Alfonso then thought that it was a
simple matter for him to go round by the Piazza of St. Peter's; so he
went out unaccompanied through one of the garden gates of the Vatican
and made his way across the gloomy streets which led to the stairway
which gave on the piazza.  But scarcely had he set his foot on the
first step when he was attacked by a band of armed men.  Alfonso
would have drawn his sword; but before it was out of the scabbard he
had received two blows from a halberd, one on his head, the other on
his shoulder; he was stabbed in the side, and wounded both in the leg
and in the temple.  Struck down by these five blows, he lost his
footing and fell to the ground unconscious; his assassins, supposing
he was dead, at once remounted the stairway, and found on the piazza
forty horsemen waiting for them: by them they were calmly escorted
from the city by the Porta Portesa.  Alfonso was found at the point
of death, but not actually dead, by some passers-by, some of whom
recognised him, and instantly conveyed the news of his assassination
to the Vatican, while the others, lifting the wounded man in their
arms, carried him to his quarters in the Torre Nuova.  The pope and
Caesar, who learned this news just as they were sitting down to
table, showed great distress, and leaving their companions, at once
went to see Alfonso, to be quite certain whether his wounds were
fatal or not; and an the next morning, to divert any suspicion that
might be turned towards themselves, they arrested Alfonso's maternal
uncle, Francesco Gazella, who had come to Rome in his nephew's
company.  Gazella was found guilty on the evidence of false
witnesses, and was consequently beheaded.

But they had only accomplished half of what they wanted.  By some
means, fair or foul, suspicion had been sufficiently diverted from
the true assassins; but Alfonso was not dead, and, thanks to the
strength of his constitution and the skill of his doctors, who had
taken the lamentations of the pope and Caesar quite seriously, and
thought to please them by curing Alexander's son-in-law, the wounded
man was making progress towards convalescence: news arrived at the
same time that Lucrezia had heard of her husband's accident, and was
starting to come and nurse him herself.  There was no time to lose,
and Caesar summoned Michelotto.

"The same night," says Burcardus, "Don Alfonso, who would not die of
his wounds, was found strangled in his bed."

The funeral took place the next day with a ceremony not unbecoming in
itself, though, unsuited to his high rank.  Dan Francesca Bargia,
Archbishop of Cosenza, acted as chief mourner at St. Peter's, where
the body was buried in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Febbre.

Lucrezia arrived the same evening: she knew her father and brother
too well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately
after Alfonso's death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the
doctors, the surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting
as valet, she knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had
proceeded.  In fear, therefore, that the manifestation of a grief she
felt this time too well might alienate the confidence of her father
and brother, she retired to Nepi with her whole household, her whole
court, and more than six hundred cavaliers, there to spend the period
of her mourning.

This important family business was now settled, and Lucrezia was
again a widow, and in consequence ready to be utilized in the pope's
new political machinations.  Caesar only stayed at Rome to receive
the ambassadors from France and Venice; but as their arrival was
somewhat delayed, and consider able inroads had been made upon the
pope's treasury by the recent festivities, the creation of twelve new
cardinals was arranged:  this scheme was to have two effects, viz.,
to bring 600,000 ducats into the pontifical chest, each hat having
been priced at 50,000 ducats, and to assure the pope of a constant
majority m the sacred council.

The ambassadors at last arrived: the first was M. de Villeneuve, the
same who had come before to see the Duke of Valentinois in the name
of France.  Just as he entered Rome, he met on the road a masked man,
who, without removing his domino, expressed the joy he felt at his
arrival.  This man was Caesar himself, who did not wish to be
recognised, and who took his departure after a short conference
without uncovering his face.  M. de Villeneuve then entered the city
after him, and at the Porta del Populo found the ambassadors of the
various Powers, and among them those of Spain and Naples, whose
sovereigns were not yet, it is true, in declared hostility to France,
though there was already some coolness.  The last-named, fearing to
compromise themselves, merely said to their colleague of France, by
way of complimentary address, "Sir, you are welcome"; whereupon the
master of the ceremonies, surprised at the brevity of the greeting,
asked if they had nothing else to say.  When they replied that they
had not, M. de Villeneuve turned his back upon them, remarking that
those who had nothing to say required no answer; he then took his
place between the Archbishop of Reggia, governor of Rome, and the
Archbishop of Ragusa, and made his way to the palace of the Holy
Apostles, which had been, got ready far his reception.

Same days later, Maria Giorgi, ambassador extraordinary of Venice,
made his arrival.  He was commissioned not only to arrange the
business on hand with the pope, but also to convey to Alexander and
Caesar the title of Venetian nobles, and to inform them that their
names were inscribed in the Golden Book--a favour that both of them
had long coveted, less far the empty honour's sake than for the new
influence that this title might confer.  Then the pope went on to
bestow the twelve cardinals' hats that had been sold.  The new
princes of the Church were Don Diego de Mendoza, archbishop of
Seville; Jacques, archbishop of Oristagny, the Pope's vicar-general;
Thomas, archbishop of Strigania; Piero, archbishop of Reggio,
governor of Rome; Francesco Bargia, archbishop of Cosenza, treasurer-
general; Gian, archbishop of Salerno, vice-chamberlain; Luigi Bargia,
archbishop of Valencia, secretary to His Holiness, and brother of the
Gian Borgia whom Caesar had poisoned; Antonio, bishop of Coma; Gian
Battista Ferraro, bishop of Modem; Amedee d'Albret, son of the King
of Navarre, brother-in-law of the Duke of Valentinois; and Marco
Cornaro, a Venetian noble, in whose person His Holiness rendered back
to the most serene republic the favour he had just received.

Then, as there was nothing further to detain the Duke of Valentinois
at Rome, he only waited to effect a loan from a rich banker named
Agostino Chigi, brother of the Lorenzo Chigi who had perished on the
day when the pope had been nearly killed by the fall of a chimney,
and departed far the Romagna, accompanied by Vitellozzo Vitelli, Gian
Paolo Baglione, and Jacopo di Santa Croce, at that time his friends,
but later on his victims.

His first enterprise was against Pesaro: this was the polite
attention of a brother-in-law, and Gian Sforza very well knew what
would be its consequences; for instead of attempting to defend his
possessions by taking up arms, or to venture an negotiations,
unwilling moreover to expose the fair lands he had ruled so long to
the vengeance of an irritated foe, he begged his subjects, to
preserve their former affection towards himself, in the hope of
better days to come; and he fled into Dalmatia.  Malatesta, lord of
Rimini, followed his example; thus the Duke of Valentinois entered
both these towns without striking a single blow.  Caesar left a
sufficient garrison behind him, and marched on to Faenza.

But there the face of things was changed: Faenza at that time was
under the rule of Astor Manfredi, a brave and handsome young man of
eighteen, who, relying on the love of his subjects towards his
family, had resolved on defending himself to the uttermost, although
he had been forsaken by the Bentivagli, his near relatives, and by
his allies, the Venetian and Florentines, who had not dared to send
him any aid because of the affection felt towards Caesar by the King
of France.  Accordingly, when he perceived that the Duke of
Valentinois was marching against him, he assembled in hot haste all
those of his vassals who were capable of bearing arms, together with
the few foreign soldiers who were willing to come into his pay, and
collecting victual and ammunition, he took up his position with them
inside the town.

By these defensive preparations Caesar was not greatly, disconcerted;
he commanded a magnificent army, composed of the finest troops of
France and Italy; led by such men as Paolo and Giulio Orsini,
Vitellozzo Vitelli and Paolo Baglione, not to steak of himself--that
is to say, by the first captains of the period.  So, after he had
reconnoitred, he at once began the siege, pitching his camp between
the two rivers, Amana and Marziano, placing his artillery on the side
which faces on Forli, at which point the besieged party had erected a
powerful bastion.

At the end of a few days busy with entrenchments, the breach became
practicable, and the Duke of Valentinois ordered an assault, and gave
the example to his soldiers by being the first to march against the
enemy.  But in spite of his courage and that of his captains beside
him, Astor Manfredi made so good a defence that the besiegers were
repulsed with great loss of men, while one of their bravest leaders,
Honario Savella; was left behind in the trenches.

But Faenza, in spite of the courage and devotion of her defenders,
could not have held out long against so formidable an army, had not
winter come to her aid.  Surprised by the rigour of the season, with
no houses for protection and no trees for fuel, as the peasants had
destroyed both beforehand, the Duke of Valentinois was forced to
raise the siege and take up his winter quarters in the neighbouring
towns, in order to be quite ready for a return next spring; for
Caesar could not forgive the insult of being held in check by a
little town which had enjoyed a long time of peace, was governed by a
mere boy, and deprived of all outside aid, and had sworn to take his
revenge.  He therefore broke up his army into three sections, sent
one-third to Imola, the second to Forli, and himself took the third
to Cesena, a third-rate town, which was thus suddenly transformed
into a city of pleasure and luxury.

Indeed, for Caesar's active spirit there must needs be no cessation
of warfare or festivities.  So, when war was interrupted, fetes
began, as magnificent and as exciting as he knew how to make them:
the days were passed in games and displays of horsemanship, the
nights in dancing and gallantry; for the loveliest women of the
Romagna--and that is to say of the whole world had come hither to
make a seraglio for the victor which might have been envied by the
Sultan of Egypt or the Emperor of Constantinople.

While the Duke of Valentinois was making one of his excursions in the
neighbourhood of the town with his retinue of flattering nobles and
titled courtesans, who were always about him, he noticed a cortege an
the Rimini road so numerous that it must surely indicate the approach
of someone of importance.  Caesar, soon perceiving that the principal
person was a woman, approached, and recognised the very same lady-in-
waiting to the Duchess of Urbino who, on the day of the bull-fight,
had screamed when Caesar was all but touched by the infuriated beast.
At this time she was betrothed, as we mentioned, to Gian
Carracciuola, general of the Venetians.  Elizabeth of Gonzaga, her
protectress and godmother, was now sending her with a suitable
retinue to Venice, where the marriage was to take place.

Caesar had already been struck by the beauty of this young girl, when
at Rome; but when he saw her again she appeared more lovely than on
the first occasion, so he resolved on the instant that he would keep
this fair flower of love for himself: having often before reproached
himself for his indifference in passing her by.  Therefore he saluted
her as an old acquaintance, inquired whether she were staying any
time at Cesena, and ascertained that she was only passing through,
travelling by long stages, as she was awaited with much impatience,
and that she would spend the coming night at Forli.  This was all
that Caesar cared to knew; he summoned Michelotto, and in a low voice
said a few wards to him, which were heard by no one else.

The cortege only made a halt at the neighbouring town, as the fair
bride had said, and started at once for Forli, although the day was
already far advanced; but scarcely had a league been revered when a
troop of horsemen from Cesena overtook and surrounded them.  Although
the soldiers in the escort were far from being in sufficient force,
they were eager to defend their general's bride; but soon same fell
dead, and ethers, terrified, took to flight; and when the lady came
dawn from her litter to try to escape, the chief seized her in his
arms and set her in front of him on his horse; then, ordering his men
to return to Cesena without him, he put his horse to the gallop in a
cross direction, and as the shades of evening were now beginning to
fall, he soon disappeared into the darkness.

Carracciuolo learned the news through one of the fugitives, who
declared that he had recognised among the ravishers the Duke of
Valentinois' soldiers.  At first he thought his ears had deceived
him, so hard was it to believe this terrible intelligence; but it was
repeated, and he stood for one instant motionless, and, as it were,
thunderstruck; then suddenly, with a cry of vengeance, he threw off
his stupor and dashed away to the ducal palace, where sat the Doge
Barberigo and the Council of Ten; unannounced, he rushed into their
midst, the very moment after they had heard of Caesar's outrage.

"Most serene lords," he cried, "I am come to bid you farewell, for I
am resolved to sacrifice my life to my private vengeance, though
indeed I had hoped to devote it to the service of the republic.
I have been wounded in the soul's noblest part--in my honour.  The
dearest thing I possessed, my wife, has been stolen from me, and the
thief is the most treacherous, the most impious, the most infamous of
men, it is Valentinois!  My lords, I beg you will not be offended if
I speak thus of a man whose boast it is to be a member of your noble
ranks and to enjoy your protection: it is not so; he lies, and his
loose and criminal life has made him unworthy of such honours, even
as he is unworthy of the life whereof my sword shall deprive him.  In
truth, his very birth was a sacrilege; he is a fratricide, an usurper
of the goods of other men, an oppressor of the innocent, and a
highway assassin; he is a man who will violate every law, even, the
law of hospitality respected by the veriest barbarian, a man who will
do violence to a virgin who is passing through his own country, where
she had every right to expect from him not only the consideration due
to her sex and condition, but also that which is due to the most
serene republic, whose condottiere I am, and which is insulted in my
person and in the dishonouring of my bride; this man, I say, merits
indeed to die by another hand than mine.  Yet, since he who ought to
punish him is not for him a prince and judge, but only a father quite
as guilty as the son, I myself will seek him out, and I will
sacrifice my own life, not only in avenging my own injury and the
blood of so many innocent beings, but also in promoting the welfare
of the most serene republic, on which it is his ambition to trample
when he has accomplished the ruin of the other princes of Italy."

The doge and the senators, who, as we said, were already apprised of
the event that had brought Carracciuolo before them, listened with
great interest and profound indignation; for they, as he told them,
were themselves insulted in the person of their general: they all
swore, on their honour, that if he would put the matter in their
hands, and not yield to his rage, which could only work his own
undoing, either his bride should be rendered up to him without a
smirch upon her bridal veil, or else a punishment should be dealt out
proportioned to the affront.  And without delay, as a proof of the
energy wherewith the noble tribunal would take action in the affair,
Luigi Manenti, secretary to the Ten, was sent to Imola, where the
duke was reported to be, that he might explain to him the great
displeasure with which the most serene republic viewed the outrage
perpetrated upon their candottiere.  At the same time the Council of
Ten and the doge sought out the French ambassador, entreating him to
join with them and repair in person with Manenti to the Duke of
Valentinois, and summon him, in the name of King Louis XII,
immediately to send back to Venice the lady he had carried off.

The two messengers arrived at Imola, where they found Caesar, who
listened to their complaint with every mark of utter astonishment,
denying that he had been in any way connected with the crime, nay,
authorising Manenti and the French ambassador to pursue the culprits
and promising that he would himself have the most active search
carried on.  The duke appeared to act in such complete good faith
that the envoys were for the moment hoodwinked, and themselves
undertook a search of the most careful nature.  They accordingly
repaired to the exact spot and began to procure information.  On the
highroad there had been found dead and wounded.  A man had been seen
going by at a gallop, carrying a woman in distress on his saddle; he
had soon left the beaten track and plunged across country.  A peasant
coming home from working in the fields had seen him appear and vanish
again like a shadow, taking the direction of a lonely house.  An old
woman declared that she had seen him go into this house.  But the
next night the house was gone, as though by enchantment, and the
ploughshare had passed over where it stood; so that none could say,
what had become of her whom they sought, far those who had dwelt in
the house, and even the house itself, were there no longer.

Manenti and the French ambassador returned to Venice, and related
what the duke had said, what they had done, and how all search had
been in vain.  No one doubted that Caesar was the culprit, but no one
could prove it.  So the most serene republic, which could not,
considering their war with the Turks, be embroiled with the pope,
forbade Caracciuala to take any sort of private vengeance, and so the
talk grew gradually less, and at last the occurrence was no more
mentioned.

But the pleasures of the winter had not diverted Caesar's mind from
his plans about Faenza.  Scarcely did the spring season allow him to
go into the country than he marched anew upon the town, camped
opposite the castle, and making a new breach, ordered a general
assault, himself going up first of all; but in spite of the courage
he personally displayed, and the able seconding of his soldiers, they
were repulsed by Astor, who, at the head of his men, defended the
breach, while even the women, at the top of the rampart, rolled down
stones and trunks of trees upon the besiegers.  After an hour's
struggle man to man, Caesar was forced to retire, leaving two
thousand men in the trenches about the town, and among the two
thousand one of his bravest condottieri, Valentino Farnese.

Then, seeing that neither excommunications nor assaults could help
him, Caesar converted the siege into a blockade: all the roads
leading to Faenza were cut off, all communications stopped; and
further, as various signs of revolt had been remarked at Cesena, a
governor was installed there whose powerful will was well known to
Caesar, Ramiro d'Orco, with powers of life and death over the
inhabitants; he then waited quietly before Faenza, till hunger should
drive out the citizens from those walls they defended with such
vehement enthusiasm.  At the end of a month, during which the people
of Faenza had suffered all the horrors of famine, delegates came out
to parley with Caesar with a view to capitulation.  Caesar, who still
had plenty to do in the Romagna, was less hard to satisfy than might
have been expected, and the town yielded an condition that he should
not touch either the persons or the belongings of the inhabitants,
that Astor Manfredi, the youthful ruler, should have the privilege of
retiring whenever he pleased, and should enjoy the revenue of his
patrimony wherever he might be.

The conditions were faithfully kept so far as the inhabitants were
concerned; but Caesar, when he had seen Astor, whom he did not know
before, was seized by a strange passion for this beautiful youth, who
was like a woman: he kept him by his side in his own army, showing
him honours befitting a young prince, and evincing before the eyes of
all the strongest affection for him: one day Astor disappeared, just
as Caracciuolo's bride had disappeared, and no one knew what had
become of him; Caesar himself appeared very uneasy, saying that he
had no doubt made his escape somewhere, and in order to give credence
to this story, he sent out couriers to seek him in all directions.

A year after this double disappearance, there was picked up in the
Tiber, a little below the Castle Sant' Angelo, the body of a
beautiful young woman, her hands bound together behind her back, and
also the corpse of a handsome youth with the bowstring he had been
strangled with tied round his neck.  The girl was Caracciuolo's
bride, the young man was Astor.

During the last year both had been the slaves of Caesar's pleasures;
now, tired of them, he had had them thrown into the Tiber.

The capture of Faenza had brought Caesar the title of Duke of
Romagna, which was first bestowed on him by the pope in full
consistory, and afterwards ratified by the King of Hungary, the
republic of Venice, and the Kings of Castile and Portugal.  The news
of the ratification arrived at Rome on the eve of the day on which
the people are accustomed to keep the anniversary of the foundation
of the Eternal City; this fete, which went back to the days of
Pomponius Laetus, acquired a new splendour in their eyes from the
joyful events that had just happened to their sovereign: as a sign of
joy cannon were fired all day long; in the evening there were
illuminations and bonfires, and during part of the night the Prince
of Squillace, with the chief lords of the Roman nobility, marched
about the streets, bearing torches, and exclaiming, "Long live
Alexander!  Long live Caesar!  Long live the Borgias!  Long live the
Orsini!  Long live the Duke of Romagna!"




CHAPTER XII

Caesar's ambition was only fed by victories: scarcely was he master
of Faenza before, excited by the Mariscotti, old enemies of the
Bentivoglio family, he cast his eyes upon Bologna; but Gian di
Bentivoglio, whose ancestors had possessed this town from time
immemorial, had not only made all preparations necessary for a long
resistance, but he had also put himself under the protection of
France; so, scarcely had he learned that Caesar was crossing the
frontier of the Bolognese territory with his army, than he sent a
courier to Louis XII to claim the fulfilment of his promise.  Louis
kept it with his accustomed good faith; and when Caesar arrived
before Bologna, he received an intimation from the King of France
that he was not to enter on any undertaking against his ally
Bentivoglio; Caesar, not being the man to have his plans upset for
nothing, made conditions for his retreat, to which Bentivoglio
consented, only too happy to be quit of him at this price: the
conditions were the cession of Castello Bolognese, a fortress between
Imola and Faenza, the payment of a tribute of 9000 ducats, and the
keeping for his service of a hundred men-at-arms and two thousand
infantry.  In exchange for these favours, Caesar confided to
Bentivoglio that his visit had been due to the counsels of the
Mariscotti; then, reinforced by his new ally's contingent, he took
the road for Tuscany.  But he was scarcely out of sight when
Bentivoglio shut the gates of Bologna, and commanded his son Hermes
to assassinate with his own hand Agamemnon Mariscotti, the head of
the family, and ordered the massacre of four-and-thirty of his near
relatives, brothers, sons, daughters, and nephews, and two hundred
other of his kindred and friends.  The butchery was carried out by
the noblest youths of Bologna; whom Bentivoglio forced to bathe their
hands in this blood, so that he might attach them to himself through
their fear of reprisals.

Caesar's plans with regard to Florence were now no longer a mystery:
since the month of January he had sent to Pisa ten or twelve hundred
men under the Command of Regniero della Sassetta and Piero di Gamba
Corti, and as soon as the conquest of the Romagna was complete, he
had further despatched Oliverotto di Fermo with new detachments.  His
own army he had reinforced, as we have seen, by a hundred men-at-arms
and two thousand infantry; he had just been joined by Vitellozzo
Vitelli, lord of Citta, di Castello, and by the Orsini, who had
brought him another two or three thousand men; so, without counting
the troops sent to Pisa, he had under his control seven hundred men-
at-arms and five thousand infantry.

Still, in spite of this formidable company, he entered Tuscany
declaring that his intentions were only pacific, protesting that he
only desired to pass through the territories of the republic on his
way to Rome, and offering to pay in ready money for any victual his
army might require.  But when he had passed the defiles of the
mountains and arrived at Barberino, feeling that the town was in his
power and nothing could now hinder his approach, he began to put a
price on the friendship he had at first offered freely, and to impose
his own conditions instead of accepting those of others.  These were
that Piero dei Medici, kinsman and ally of the Orsini, should be
reinstated in his ancient power; that six Florentine citizens, to be
chosen by Vitellozzo, should be put into his hands that they might by
their death expiate that of Paolo Vitelli, unjustly executed by the
Florentines; that the Signoria should engage to give no aid to the
lord of Piombino, whom Caesar intended to dispossess of his estates
without delay; and further, that he himself should be taken into the
service of the republic, for a pay proportionate to his deserts.  But
just as Caesar had reached this point in his negotiations with
Florence, he received orders from Louis XII to get ready, so soon as
he conveniently could, to follow him with his army and help in the
conquest of Naples, which he was at last in a position to undertake.
Caesar dared not break his word to so powerful an ally; he therefore
replied that he was at the king's orders, and as the Florentines were
not aware that he was quitting them on compulsion, he sold his
retreat for the sum of 36,000 ducats per annum, in exchange for which
sum he was to hold three hundred men-at-arms always in readiness to
go to the aid of the republic at her earliest call and in any
circumstances of need.

But, hurried as he was, Caesar still hoped that he might find time to
conquer the territory of Piombino as he went by, and take the capital
by a single vigorous stroke; so he made his entry into the lands of
Jacopo IV of Appiano.  The latter, he found, however, had been
beforehand with him, and, to rob him of all resource, had laid waste
his own country, burned his fodder, felled his trees, torn down his
vines, and destroyed a few fountains that produced salubrious waters.
This did not hinder Caesar from seizing in the space of a few days
Severeto, Scarlino, the isle of Elba, and La Pianosa; but he was
obliged to stop short at the castle, which opposed a serious
resistance.  As Louis XII's army was continuing its way towards Rome,
and he received a fresh order to join it, he took his departure the
next day, leaving behind him, Vitellozzo and Gian Paolo Bagliani to
prosecute the siege in his absence.

Louis XII was this time advancing upon Naples, not with the
incautious ardour of Charles VIII, but, on the contrary, with that
prudence and circumspection which characterised him.  Besides his
alliance with Florence and Rome, he had also signed a secret treaty
with Ferdinand the Catholic, who had similar pretensions, through the
house of Duras, to the throne of Naples to those Louis himself had
through the house of Anjou.  By this treaty the two kings were
sharing their conquests beforehand: Louis would be master of Naples,
of the town of Lavore and the Abruzzi, and would bear the title of
King of Naples and Jerusalem; Ferdinand reserved for his own share
Apulia and Calabria, with the title of Duke of these provinces; both
were to receive the investiture from the pope and to hold them of
him.  This partition was all the more likely to be made, in fact,
because Frederic, supposing all the time that Ferdinand was his good
and faithful friend, would open the gates of his towns, only to
receive into his fortresses conquerors and masters instead of allies.
All this perhaps was not very loyal conduct on the part of a king who
had so long desired and had just now received the surname of
Catholic, but it mattered little to Louis, who profited by
treasonable acts he did not have to share.

The French army, which the Duke of Valentinois had just joined,
consisted of 1000 lances, 4000 Swiss, and 6000 Gascons and
adventurers; further, Philip of Rabenstein was bringing by sea six
Breton and Provencal vessels, and three Genoese caracks, carrying
6500 invaders.

Against this mighty host the King of Naples had.  only 700 men-at-
arms, 600 light horse, and 6000 infantry under the command of the
Colonna, whom he had taken into his pay after they were exiled by the
pope from the States of the Church; but he was counting on Gonsalvo
of Cordova, who was to join him at Gaeta, and to whom he had
confidingly opened all his fortresses in Calabria.

But the feeling of safety inspired by Frederic's faithless ally was
not destined to endure long: on their arrival at Rome, the French and
Spanish ambassadors presented to the pope the treaty signed at
Grenada on the 11th of November, 1500, between Louis XII and
Ferdinand the Catholic, a treaty which up, to that time had been
secret.  Alexander, foreseeing the probable future, had, by the death
of Alfonso, loosened all the bonds that attached him to the house of
Aragon, and then began by making some difficulty about it.  It was
demonstrated that the arrangement had only been undertaken to provide
the Christian princes with another weapon for attacking the Ottoman
Empire, and before this consideration, one may readily suppose, all
the pope's scruples vanished; on the 25th of June, therefore, it was
decided to call a consistory which was to declare Frederic deposed
from the throne of Naples.  When Frederic heard all at once that the
French army had arrived at Rome, that his ally Ferdinand had deceived
him, and that Alexander had pronounced the sentence of his downfall,
he understood that all was lost; but he did not wish it to be said
that he had abandoned his kingdom without even attempting to save it.
So he charged his two new condottieri, Fabrizio Calonna and Ranuzia
di Marciano, to check the French before Capua with 300 men-at-arms,
some light horse, and 3000 infantry; in person he occupied Aversa
with another division of his army, while Prospero Colonna was sent to
defend Naples with the rest, and make a stand against the Spaniards
on the side of Calabria.

These dispositions were scarcely made when d'Aubigny, having passed
the Volturno, approached to lay siege to Capua, and invested the town
on both sides of the river.  Scarcely were the French encamped before
the ramparts than they began to set up their batteries, which were
soon in play, much to the terror of the besieged, who, poor
creatures, were almost all strangers to the town, and had fled
thither from every side, expecting to find protection beneath the
walls.  So, although bravely repulsed by Fabrizio Colonna, the
French, from the moment of their first assault, inspired so great and
blind a terror that everyone began to talk of opening the gates, and
it was only with great difficulty that Calonna made this multitude
understand that at least they ought to reap some benefit from the
check the besiegers had received and obtain good terms of
capitulation.  When he had brought them round to his view, he sent
out to demand a parley with d'Aubigny, and a conference was fixed for
the next day but one, in which they were to treat of the surrender of
the town.

But this was not Caesar Borgia's idea at all: he had stayed behind to
confer with the pope, and had joined the French army with some of his
troops on the very day on which the conference had been arranged for
two days later: and a capitulation of any nature would rob him of his
share of the booty and the promise of such pleasure as would come
from the capture of a city so rich and populous as Capua.  So he
opened up negotiations on his own account with a captain who was on
guard at one of the gates such negotiations, made with cunning
supported by bribery, proved as usual more prompt and efficacious
than any others.  At the very moment when Fabrizio Colonna in a
fortified outpost was discussing the conditions of capitulation with
the French captains, suddenly great cries of distress were heard.
These were caused by Borgia, who without a word to anyone had entered
the town with his faithful army from Romagna, and was beginning to
cut the throats of the garrison, which had naturally somewhat relaxed
their vigilance in the belief that the capitulation was all but
signed.  The French, when they saw that the town was half taken,
rushed on the gates with such impetuosity that the besieged did not
even attempt to defend themselves any longer, and forced their way
into Capua by three separate sides: nothing more could be done then
to stop the issue.  Butchery and pillage had begun, and the work of
destruction must needs be completed: in vain did Fabrizio Colonna,
Ranuzio di Marciano, and Don Ugo di Cardona attempt to make head
against the French and Spaniards with such men as they could get
together.  Fabrizia Calonna and Don Ugo were made prisoners; Ranuzia,
wounded by an arrow, fell into the hands of the Duke of Valentinois;
seven thousand inhabitants were massacred in the streets among them
the traitor who had given up the gate; the churches were pillaged,
the convents of nuns forced open; and then might be seen the
spectacle of some of these holy virgins casting themselves into pits
or into the river to escape the soldiers.  Three hundred of the
noblest ladies of the town took refuge in a tower.  The Duke of
Valentinois broke in the doors, chased out for himself forty of the
most beautiful, and handed over the rest to his army.

The pillage continued for three days.

Capua once taken, Frederic saw that it was useless any longer to
attempt defence.  So he shut himself up in Castel Nuovo and gave
permission to Gaeta and to Naples to treat with the conqueror.  Gaeta
bought immunity from pillage with 60,000 ducats; and Naples with the
surrender of the castle.  This surrender was made to d'Aubigny by
Frederic himself, an condition that he should be allowed to take to
the island of Ischia his money, jewels, and furniture, and there
remain with his family for six months secure from all hostile attack.
The terms of this capitulation were faithfully adhered to on both
sides: d'Aubigny entered Naples, and Frederic retired to Ischia.

Thus, by a last terrible blow, never to rise again, fell this branch
of the house of Aragon, which had now reigned for sixty-five years.
Frederic, its head, demanded and obtained a safe-conduct to pass into
France, where Louis XII gave him the duchy of Anjou and 30,000 ducats
a year, an condition that he should never quit the kingdom; and
there, in fact, he died, an the 9th of September 1504.  His eldest
son, Dan Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, retired to Spain, where he was
permitted to marry twice, but each time with a woman who was known to
be barren; and there he died in 1550.  Alfonso, the second son, who
had followed his father to France, died, it is said, of poison, at
Grenoble, at the age of twenty-two; lastly Caesar, the third son,
died at Ferrara, before he had attained his eighteenth birthday.

Frederic's daughter Charlotte married in France Nicholas, Count of
Laval, governor and admiral of Brittany; a daughter was born of this
marriage, Anne de Laval, who married Francois de la Trimauille.
Through her those rights were transmitted to the house of La
Trimouille which were used later on as a claim upon the kingdom of
the Two Sicilies.

The capture of Naples gave the Duke of Valentinois his liberty again;
so he left the French army, after he had received fresh assurances on
his own account of the king's friendliness, and returned to the siege
of Piombino, which he had been forced to interrupt.  During this
interval Alexander had been visiting the scenes of his son's
conquests, and traversing all the Romagna with Lucrezia, who was now
consoled for her husband's death, and had never before enjoyed quite
so much favour with His Holiness; so, when she returned to Rome.  She
no longer had separate rooms from him.  The result of this
recrudescence of affection was the appearance of two pontifical
bulls, converting the towns of Nepi and Sermoneta into duchies: one
was bestowed on Gian Bargia, an illegitimate child of the pope, who
was not the son of either of his mistresses, Rosa Vanozza or Giulia
Farnese, the other an Don Roderigo of Aragon, son of Lucrezia and
Alfonso: the lands of the Colonna were in appanage to the two
duchies.

But Alexander was dreaming of yet another addition to his fortune;
this was to came from a marriage between Lucrezia and Don Alfonso
d'Este, son of Duke Hercules of Ferrara, in favour of which alliance
Louis XII had negotiated.

His Holiness was now having a run of good fortune, and he learned on
the same day that Piombino was taken and that Duke Hercules had given
the King of France his assent to the marriage.  Both of these pieces
of news were good for Alexander, but the one could not compare in
importance with the other; and the intimation that Lucrezia was to
marry the heir presumptive to the duchy of Ferrara was received with
a joy so great that it smacked of the humble beginnings of the
Borgian house.  The Duke of Valentinois was invited to return to
Rome, to take his share in the family rejoicing, and on the day when
the news was made public the governor of St. Angelo received orders
that cannon should be fired every quarter of an hour from noon to
midnight.  At two o'clock, Lucrezia, attired as a fiancee, and
accompanied by her two brothers, the Dukes of Valentinois and
Squillace, issued from the Vatican, followed by all the nobility of
Rome, and proceeded to the church of the Madonna del Papalo, where
the Duke of Gandia and Cardinal Gian Borgia were buried, to render
thanks for this new favour accorded to her house by God; and in the
evening, accompanied by the same cavalcade, which shone the more
brightly under the torchlight and brilliant illuminations, she made
procession through the whale town, greeted by cries of "Long live
Pope Alexander VI!  Lang live the Duchess of Ferrara!" which were
shouted aloud by heralds clad in cloth of gold.

The next day an announcement was made in the town that a racecourse
for women was opened between the castle of Sant' Angelo and the
Piazza of St. Peter's; that on every third day there would be a bull-
fight in the Spanish fashion; and that from the end of the present
month, which was October, until the first day of Lent, masquerades
would be permitted in the streets of Rome.

Such was the nature of the fetes outside; the programme of those
going on within the Vatican was not presented to the people; for by
the account of Bucciardo, an eye-witness, this is what happened--

"On the last Sunday of the month of October, fifty courtesans supped
in the apostolic palace in the Duke of Valentinois' rooms, and after
supper danced with the equerries and servants, first wearing their
usual garments, afterwards in dazzling draperies; when supper was
over, the table was removed, candlesticks were set on the floor in a
symmetrical pattern, and a great quantity of chestnuts was scattered
on the ground: these the fifty women skilfully picked up, running
about gracefully, in and out between the burning lights; the pope,
the Duke of Valentinois, and his sister Lucrezia, who were looking on
at this spectacle from a gallery, encouraged the most agile and
industrious with their applause, and they received prizes of
embroidered garters, velvet boots, golden caps, and laces; then new
diversions took the place of these."

We humbly ask forgiveness of our readers, and especially of our lady
readers; but though we have found words to describe the first part of
the spectacle, we have sought them in vain for the second; suffice it
to say that just as there had been prizes for feats of adroitness,
others were given now to the dancers who were most daring and brazen.

Some days after this strange night, which calls to mind the Roman
evenings in the days of Tiberius, Nero, and Heliogabalus, Lucrezia,
clad in a robe of golden brocade, her train carried by young girls
dressed in white and crowned with roses, issued from her palace to
the sound of trumpets and clarions, and made her way over carpets
that were laid down in the streets through which she had to pass.
Accompanied by the noblest cavaliers and the loveliest women in Rome,
she betook herself to the Vatican, where in the Pauline hall the pope
awaited her, with the Duke of Valentinois, Don Ferdinand, acting as
proxy for Duke Alfonso, and his cousin, Cardinal d'Este.  The pope
sat on one side of the table, while the envoys from Ferrara stood on
the other: into their midst came Lucrezia, and Don Ferdinand placed
on her finger the nuptial ring; this ceremony over, Cardinal d'Este
approached and presented to the bride four magnificent rings set with
precious stones; then a casket was placed on the table, richly inlaid
with ivory, whence the cardinal drew forth a great many trinkets,
chains, necklaces of pearls and diamonds, of workmanship as costly as
their material; these he also begged Lucrezia to accept, before she
received those the bridegroom was hoping to offer himself, which
would be more worthy of her.  Lucrezia showed the utmost delight in
accepting these gifts; then she retired into the next room, leaning
on the pope's arm, and followed by the ladies of her suite, leaving
the Duke of Valentinois to do the honours of the Vatican to the men.
That evening the guests met again, and spent half the night in
dancing, while a magnificent display of fireworks lighted up the
Piazza of San Paolo.

The ceremony of betrothal over, the pope and the Duke busied
themselves with making preparations for the departure.  The pope, who
wished the journey to be made with a great degree of splendour, sent
in his daughter's company, in addition to the two brothers-in-law and
the gentlemen in their suite, the Senate of Rome and all the lords
who, by virtue of their wealth, could display most magnificence in
their costumes and liveries.  Among this brilliant throng might be
seen Olivero and Ramiro Mattei, sons of Piero Mattel, chancellor of
the town, and a daughter of the pope whose mother was not Rosa
Vanozza; besides these, the pope nominated in consistory Francesco
Borgia, Cardinal of Sosenza, legate a latere, to accompany his
daughter to the frontiers of the Ecclesiastical States.

Also the Duke of Valentinois sent out messengers into all the cities
of Romagna to order that Lucrezia should be received as sovereign
lady and mistress: grand preparations were at once set on foot for
the fulfilment of his orders.  But the messengers reported that they
greatly feared that there would be some grumbling at Cesena, where it
will be remembered that Caesar had left Ramiro d'Orco as governor
with plenary powers, to calm the agitation of the town.  Now Ramiro
d'Orco had accomplished his task so well that there was nothing more
to fear in the way of rebellion; for one-sixth of the inhabitants had
perished on the scaffold, and the result of this situation was that
it was improbable that the same demonstrations of joy could be
expected from a town plunged in mourning that were looked for from
Imala, Faenza, and Pesaro.  The Duke of Valentinais averted this
inconvenience in the prompt and efficacious fashion characteristic of
him alone.  One morning the inhabitants of Cesena awoke to find a
scaffold set up in the square, and upon it the four quarters of a
man, his head, severed from the trunk, stuck up on the end of a pike.

This man was Ramiro d'Orco.

No one ever knew by whose hands the scaffold had been raised by
night, nor by what executioners the terrible deed had been carried
out; but when the Florentine Republic sent to ask Macchiavelli, their
ambassador at Cesena, what he thought of it, he replied:

"MAGNIFICENT LORDS,-I can tell you nothing concerning the execution
of Ramiro d'Orco, except that Caesar Borgia is the prince who best
knows how to make and unmake men according to their deserts.  NICCOLO
MACCHIAVELLI"

The Duke of Valentinois was not disappointed, and the future Duchess
of Ferrara was admirably received in every town along her route, and
particularly at Cesena.

While Lucrezia was on her way to Ferrara to meet her fourth husband,
Alexander and the Duke of Valentinois resolved to make a progress in
the region of their last conquest, the duchy of Piombino.  The
apparent object of this journey was that the new subjects might take
their oath to Caesar, and the real object was to form an arsenal in
Jacopo d'Appiano's capital within reach of Tuscany, a plan which
neither the pope nor his son had ever seriously abandoned.  The two
accordingly started from the port of Corneto with six ships,
accompanied by a great number of cardinals and prelates, and arrived
the same evening at Piombina.  The pontifical court made a stay there
of several days, partly with a view of making the duke known to the
inhabitants, and also in order to be present at certain
ecclesiastical functions, of which the most important was a service
held on the third Sunday in Lent, in which the Cardinal of Cosenza
sang a mass and the pope officiated in state with the duke and the
cardinals.  After these solemn functions the customary pleasures
followed, and the pope summoned the prettiest girls of the country
and ordered them to dance their national dances before him.

Following on these dances came feasts of unheard of magnificence,
during which the pope in the sight of all men completely ignored Lent
and did not fast.  The abject of all these fetes was to scatter
abroad a great deal of money, and so to make the Duke of Valentinois
popular, while poor Jacopo d'Appiano was forgotten.

When they left Piombino, the pope and his son visited the island of
Elba, where they only stayed long enough to visit the old
fortifications and issue orders for the building of new ones.

Then the illustrious travellers embarked on their return journey to
Rome; but scarcely had they put out to sea when the weather became
adverse, and the pope not wishing to put in at Porto Ferrajo, they
remained five days on board, though they had only two days'
provisions.  During the last three days the pope lived on fried fish
that were caught under great difficulties because of the heavy
weather.  At last they arrived in sight of Corneto, and there the
duke, who was not on the same vessel as the pope, seeing that his
ship could not get in, had a boat put out, and so was taken ashore.
The pope was obliged to continue on his way towards Pontercole, where
at last he arrived, after encountering so violent a tempest that all
who were with him were utterly subdued either by sickness or by the
terror of death.  The pope alone did not show one instant's fear, but
remained on the bridge during the storm, sitting on his arm-chair,
invoking the name of Jesus and making the sign of the cross.  At last
his ship entered the roads of Pontercole, where he landed, and after
sending to Corneto to fetch horses, he rejoined the duke, who was
there awaiting him.  They then returned by slow stages, by way of
Civita Vecchia and Palo, and reached Rome after an absence of a
month.  Almost at the same time d'Albret arrived in quest of his
cardinal's hat.  He was accompanied by two princes of the house of
Navarre, who were received with not only those honours which beseemed
their rank, but also as brothers-in-law to whom the, duke was eager
to show in what spirit he was contracting this alliance.




CHAPTER XIII

The time had now come for the Duke of Valentinois to continue the
pursuit of his conquests.  So, since on the 1st of May in the
preceding year the pope had pronounced sentence of forfeiture in full
consistory against Julius Caesar of Varano, as punishment for the
murder of his brother Rudolph and for the harbouring of the pope's
enemies, and he had accordingly been mulcted of his fief of Camerino,
which was to be handed over to the apostolic chamber, Caesar left
Rome to put the sentence in execution.  Consequently, when he arrived
on the frontiers of Perugia, which belonged to his lieutenant, Gian
Paolo Baglioni, he sent Oliverotta da Fermo and Orsini of Gravina to
lay waste the March of Camerino, at the same time petitioning Guido
d'Ubaldo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, to lend his soldiers and
artillery to help him in this enterprise.  This the unlucky Duke of
Urbino, who enjoyed the best possible relations with the pope, and
who had no reason for distrusting Caesar, did not dare refuse.  But
on the very same day that the Duke of Urbina's troops started for
Camerino, Caesar's troops entered the duchy of Urbino, and took
possession of Cagli, one of the four towns of the little State.  The
Duke of Urbino knew what awaited him if he tried to resist, and fled
incontinently, disguised as a peasant; thus in less than eight days
Caesar was master of his whole duchy, except the fortresses of Maiolo
and San Leone.

The Duke of Valentinois forthwith returned to Camerino, where the
inhabitants still held out, encouraged by the presence of Julius
Caesar di Varano, their lord, and his two sons, Venantio and
Hannibal; the eldest son, Gian Maria, had been sent by his father to
Venice.

The presence of Caesar was the occasion of parleying between the
besiegers and besieged.  A capitulation was arranged whereby Varano
engaged to give up the town, on condition that he and his sons were
allowed to retire safe and sound, taking with them their furniture,
treasure, and carriages.  But this was by no means Caesar's
intention; so, profiting by the relaxation in vigilance that had
naturally come about in the garrison when the news of the
capitulation had been announced, he surprised the town in the night
preceding the surrender, and seized Caesar di Varano and his two
sons, who were strangled a short time after, the father at La Pergola
and the sons at Pesaro, by Don Michele Correglio, who, though he had
left the position of sbirro for that of a captain, every now and then
returned to his first business.

Meanwhile Vitellozzo Vitelli, who had assumed the title of General of
the Church, and had under him 800 men-at-arms and 3,000 infantry, was
following the secret instructions that he had received from Caesar by
word of mouth, and was carrying forward that system of invasion which
was to encircle Florence in a network of iron, and in the end make
her defence an impossibility.  A worthy pupil of his master, in whose
school he had learned to use in turn the cunning of a fox and the
strength of a lion, he had established an understanding between
himself and certain young gentlemen of Arezzo to get that town
delivered into his hands.  But the plot had been discovered by
Guglielma dei Pazzi, commissary of the Florentine Republic, and he
had arrested two of the conspirators, whereupon the others, who were
much more numerous than was supposed; had instantly dispersed about
the town summoning the citizens to arms.  All the republican faction,
who saw in any sort of revolution the means of subjugating Florence,
joined their party, set the captives at liberty, and seized
Guglielmo; then proclaiming the establishment of the ancient
constitution, they besieged the citadel, whither Cosimo dei Pazzi,
Bishop of Arezzo, the son of Guglielmo, had fled for refuge; he,
finding himself invested on every side, sent a messenger in hot haste
to Florence to ask for help.

Unfortunately for the cardinal, Vitellozzo's troops were nearer to
the besiegers than were the soldiers of the most serene republic to
the besieged, and instead of help--the whole army of the enemy came
down upon him.  This army was under the command of Vitellozzo, of
Gian Paolo Baglioni, and of Fabio Orsino, and with them were the two
Medici, ever ready to go wherever there was a league against
Florence, and ever ready at the command of Borgia, on any conditions
whatever, to re-enter the town whence they had been banished.  The
next day more help in the form of money and artillery arrived, sent
by Pandolfo Petrucci, and on the 18th of June the citadel of Arezzo,
which had received no news from Florence, was obliged to surrender.

Vitellozzo left the men of Arezzo to look after their town
themselves, leaving also Fabio Orsina to garrison the citadel with a
thousand men.  Then, profiting by the terror that had been spread
throughout all this part of Italy by the successive captures of the
duchy of Urbino, of Camerino, and of Arezzo, he marched upon Monte
San Severino, Castiglione, Aretino, Cortone, and the other towns of
the valley of Chiana, which submitted one after the other almost
without a struggle.  When he was only ten or twelve leagues from
Florence, and dared not an his own account attempt anything against
her, he made known the state of affairs to the Duke of Valentinois.
He, fancying the hour had came at last far striking the blow so long
delayed, started off at once to deliver his answer in person to his
faithful lieutenants.

But the Florentines, though they had sent no help to Guglielmo dei
Pazzi, had demanded aid from Chaumont dumbest, governor of the
Milanese, an behalf of Louis XII, not only explaining the danger they
themselves were in but also Caesar's ambitious projects, namely that
after first overcoming the small principalities and then the states
of the second order, he had now, it seemed, reached such a height of
pride that he would attack the King of France himself.  The news from
Naples was disquieting; serious differences had already occurred
between the Count of Armagnac and Gonzalva di Cordova, and Louis
might any day need Florence, whom he had always found loyal and
faithful.  He therefore resolved to check Caesar's progress, and not
only sent him orders to advance no further step forwards, but also
sent off, to give effect to his injunction, the captain Imbaut with
400 lances.  The Duke of Valentinais on the frontier of Tuscany
received a copy of the treaty signed between the republic and the
King of France, a treaty in which the king engaged to help his ally
against any enemy whatsoever, and at the same moment the formal
prohibition from Louis to advance any further.  Caesar also learned
that beside the 400 lances with the captain Imbaut, which were on the
road to Florence, Louis XII had as soon as he reached Asti sent off
to Parma Louis de la Trimouille and 200 men-at-arms, 3000 Swiss, and
a considerable train of artillery.  In these two movements combined
he saw hostile intentions towards himself, and turning right about
face with his usual agility, he profited by the fact that he had
given nothing but verbal instructions to all his lieutenants, and
wrote a furious letter to Vitellozzo, reproaching him for
compromising his master with a view to his own private interest, and
ordering the instant surrender to the Florentines of the towns and
fortresses he had taken, threatening to march down with his own
troops and take them if he hesitated for a moment.

As soon as this letter was written, Caesar departed for Milan, where
Louis XII had just arrived, bringing with him proof positive that he
had been calumniated in the evacuation of the conquered towns.  He
also was entrusted with the pope's mission to renew for another
eighteen months the title of legate 'a latere' in France to Cardinal
dumbest, the friend rather than the minister of Louis XII.  Thus,
thanks to the public proof of his innocence and the private use of
his influence, Caesar soon made his peace with the King of France.

But this was not all.  It was in the nature of Caesar's genius to
divert an impending calamity that threatened his destruction so as to
come out of it better than before, and he suddenly saw the advantage
he might take from the pretended disobedience of his lieutenants.
Already he had been disturbed now and again by their growing power,
and coveted their towns, now he thought the hour had perhaps came for
suppressing them also, and in the usurpation of their private
possessions striking a blow at Florence, who always escaped him at
the very moment when he thought to take her.  It was indeed an
annoying thing to have these fortresses and towns displaying another
banner than his own in the midst of the beautiful Romagna which he
desired far his own kingdom.  For Vitellozzo possessed Citta di
Castello, Bentivoglio Bologna, Gian Paolo Baglioni was in command of
Perugia, Oliverotto had just taken Fermo, and Pandolfo Petrucci was
lord of Siena; it was high time that all these returned: into his own
hands.  The lieutenants of the Duke of Valentinois, like Alexander's,
were becoming too powerful, and Borgia must inherit from them, unless
he were willing to let them become his own heirs.  He obtained from
Louis XII three hundred lances wherewith to march against them.  As
soon as Vitellozzo Vitelli received Caesar's letter he perceived that
he was being sacrificed to the fear that the King of France inspired;
but he was not one of those victims who suffer their throats to be
cut in the expiation of a mistake: he was a buffalo of Romagna who
opposed his horns to the knife of the butcher; besides, he had the
example of Varano and the Manfredi before him, and, death for death,
he preferred to perish in arms.

So Vitellozzo convoked at Maggione all whose lives or lands were
threatened by this new reversal of Caesar's policy.  These were Paolo
Orsino, Gian Paolo Baglioni, Hermes Bentivoglio, representing his
father Gian, Antonio di Venafro, the envoy of Pandolfo Petrucci,
Olivertoxo da Fermo, and the Duke of Urbino: the first six had
everything to lose, and the last had already lost everything.

A treaty of alliance was signed between the confederates: they
engaged to resist whether he attacked them severally or all together.

Caesar learned the existence of this league by its first effects: the
Duke of Urbino, who was adored by his subjects, had come with a
handful of soldiers to the fortress of San Leone, and it had yielded
at once.  In less than a week towns and fortresses followed this
example, and all the duchy was once more in the hands of the Duke of
Urbino.

At the same time, each member of the confederacy openly proclaimed
his revolt against the common enemy, and took up a hostile attitude.

Caesar was at Imola, awaiting the French troops, but with scarcely
any men; so that Bentivoglio, who held part of the country, and the
Duke of Urbino, who had just reconquered the rest of it, could
probably have either taken him or forced him to fly and quit the
Romagna, had they marched against him; all the more since the two men
on whom he counted, viz., Don Ugo di Cardona, who had entered his
service after Capua was taken, and Michelotto had mistaken his
intention, and were all at once separated from him.  He had really
ordered them to fall back upon Rimini, and bring 200 light horse and
500 infantry of which they had the command; but, unaware of the
urgency of his situation, at the very moment when they were
attempting to surprise La Pergola and Fossombrone, they were
surrounded by Orsino of Gravina and Vitellozzo.  Ugo di Cardona and
Michelotto defended themselves like lions; but in spite of their
utmost efforts their little band was cut to pieces, and Ugo di
Cardona taken prisoner, while Michelotto only escaped the same fate
by lying down among the dead; when night came on, he escaped to Fano.

But even alone as he was, almost without troops at Imola, the
confederates dared attempt nothing against Caesar, whether because of
the personal fear he inspired, or because in him they respected the
ally of the King of France; they contented themselves with taking the
towns and fortresses in the neighbourhood.  Vitellozzo had retaken
the fortresses of Fossombrone, Urbino, Cagli, and Aggobbio; Orsino of
Gravina had reconquered Fano and the whole province; while Gian Maria
de Varano, the same who by his absence had escaped being massacred
with the rest of his family, had re-entered Camerino, borne in
triumph by his people.  Not even all this could destroy Caesar's
confidence in his own good fortune, and while he was on the one hand
urging on the arrival of the French troops and calling into his pay
all those gentlemen known as "broken lances," because they went about
the country in parties of five or six only, and attached themselves
to anyone who wanted them, he had opened up negotiations with his
enemies, certain that from that very day when he should persuade them
to a conference they were undone.  Indeed, Caesar had the power of
persuasion as a gift from heaven; and though they perfectly well knew
his duplicity, they had no power of resisting, not so much his actual
eloquence as that air of frank good-nature which Macchiavelli so
greatly admired, and which indeed more than once deceived even him,
wily politician as he was.  In order to get Paolo Orsino to treat
with him at Imola, Caesar sent Cardinal Borgia to the confederates as
a hostage; and on this Paolo Orsino hesitated no longer, and on the
25th of October, 1502, arrived at Imola.

Caesar received him as an old friend from whom one might have been
estranged a few days because of some slight passing differences; he
frankly avowed that all the fault was no doubt on his side, since he
had contrived to alienate men who were such loyal lords and also such
brave captains; but with men of their nature, he added, an honest,
honourable explanation such as he would give must put everything once
more in statu quo.  To prove that it was goodwill, not fear, that
brought him back to them, he showed Orsino the letters from Cardinal
Amboise which announced the speedy arrival of French troops; he
showed him those he had collected about him, in the wish, he
declared, that they might be thoroughly convinced that what he
chiefly regretted in the whole matter was not so much the loss of the
distinguished captains who were the very soul of his vast enterprise,
as that he had led the world to believe, in a way so fatal to his own
interest, that he could for a single instant fail to recognise their
merit; adding that he consequently relied upon him, Paolo Orsino,
whom he had always cared for most, to bring back the confederates by
a peace which would be as much for the profit of all as a war was
hurtful to all, and that he was ready to sign a treaty in consonance
with their wishes so long as it should not prejudice his own honour.

Orsino was the man Caesar wanted: full of pride and confidence in
himself, he was convinced of the truth of the old proverb that says,
"A pope cannot reign eight days, if he has hath the Colonnas and the
Orsini against him."  He believed, therefore, if not in Caesar's good
faith, at any rate in the necessity he must feel for making peace;
accordingly he signed with him the following conventions--which only
needed ratification--on the 18th of October, 1502, which we reproduce
here as Macchiavelli sent them to the magnificent republic of
Florence.

"Agreement between the Duke of Valentinois and the Confederates.

"Let it be known to the parties mentioned below, and to all who shall
see these presents, that His Excellency the Duke of Romagna of the
one part and the Orsini of the other part, together with their
confederates, desiring to put an end to differences, enmities,
misunderstandings, and suspicions which have arisen between them,
have resolved as follows:

"There shall be between them peace and alliance true and perpetual,
with a complete obliteration of wrongs and injuries which may have
taken place up to this day, both parties engaging to preserve no
resentment of the same; and in conformity with the aforesaid peace
and union, His Excellency the Duke of Romagna shall receive into
perpetual confederation, league, and alliance all the lords
aforesaid; and each of them shall promise to defend the estates of
all in general and of each in particular against any power that may
annoy or attack them for any cause whatsoever, excepting always
nevertheless the Pope Alexander VI and his Very Christian Majesty
Louis XII, King of France: the lords above named promising on the
other part to unite in the defence of the person and estates of His
Excellency, as also those of the most illustrious lards, Don Gaffredo
Bargia, Prince of Squillace, Don Roderigo Bargia, Duke of Sermaneta
and Biselli, and Don Gian Borgia, Duke of Camerino and Negi, all
brothers or nephews of the Duke of Romagna.

"Moreover, since the rebellion and usurpation of Urbino have occurred
during the above-mentioned misunderstandings, all the confederates
aforesaid and each of them shall bind themselves to unite all their
forces for the recovery of the estates aforesaid and of such other
places as have revolted and been usurped.

"His Excellency the Duke of Romagna shall undertake to continue to
the Orsini and Vitelli their ancient engagements in the way of
military service and an the same conditions.

"His Excellency promises further not to insist on the service in
person of more than one of them, as they may choose: the service that
the others may render shall be voluntary.

"He also promises that the second treaty shall be ratified by the
sovereign pontiff, who shall not compel Cardinal Orsino to reside in
Rome longer than shall seem convenient to this prelate.

"Furthermore, since there are certain differences between the Pope
and the lord Gian Bentivoglio, the confederates aforesaid agree that
they shall be put to the arbitration of Cardinal Orsino, of His
Excellency the Duke of Romagna, and of the lord Pandolfo Petrucci,
without appeal.

"Thus the confederates engage, each and all, so soon as they may be
required by the Duke of Romagna, to put into his hands as a hostage
one of the legitimate sons of each of them, in that place and at that
time which he may be pleased to indicate.

"The same confederates promising moreover, all and each, that if any
project directed against any one of them come to their knowledge, to
give warning thereof, and all to prevent such project reciprocally.

"It is agreed, over and above, between the Duke of Romagna and the
confederates aforesaid, to regard as a common enemy any who shall
fail to keep the present stipulations, and to unite in the
destruction of any States not conforming thereto.

                         "(Signed) CAESAR, PAOLO ORSINO.
                                   "AGAPIT, Secretary."

At the same time, while Orsino was carrying to the confederates the
treaty drawn up between him and the duke, Bentivoglio, not willing to
submit to the arbitration indicated, made an offer to Caesar of
settling their differences by a private treaty, and sent his son to
arrange the conditions: after some parleying, they were settled as
follows:--

Bentivaglio should separate his fortunes from the Vitelli and Orsini;

He should furnish the Duke of Valentinois with a hundred men-at-arms
and a hundred mounted archers for eight years;

He should pay 12,000 ducats per annum to Caesar, for the support of a
hundred lances;

In return for this, his son Hannibal was to marry the sister of the
Archbishop of Enna, who was Caesar's niece, and the pope was to
recognise his sovereignty in Bologna;

The King of France, the Duke of Ferrara, and the republic of Florence
were to be the guarantors of this treaty.

But the convention brought to the confederates by Orsino was the
cause of great difficulties on their part.  Vitellozza Vitelli in
particular, who knew Caesar the best, never ceased to tell the other
condottieri that so prompt and easy a peace must needs be the cover
to some trap; but since Caesar had meanwhile collected a considerable
army at Imala, and the four hundred lances lent him by Louis XII had
arrived at last, Vitellozzo and Oliverotto decided to sign the treaty
that Orsino brought, and to let the Duke of Urbino and the lord of
Camerino know of it; they, seeing plainly that it was henceforth
impassible to make a defence unaided, had retired, the one to Citta
di Castello and the other into the kingdom of Naples.

But Caesar, saying nothing of his intentions, started on the 10th of
December, and made his way to Cesena with a powerful army once more
under his command.  Fear began to spread on all sides, not only in
Romagna but in the whole of Northern Italy; Florence, seeing him move
away from her, only thought it a blind to conceal his intentions;
while Venice, seeing him approach her frontiers, despatched all her
troops to the banks of the Po.  Caesar perceived their fear, and lest
harm should be done to himself by the mistrust it might inspire, he
sent away all French troops in his service as soon as he reached
Cesena, except a hundred men with M. de Candale, his brother-in-law;
it was then seen that he only had 2000 cavalry and 2000 infantry with
him.  Several days were spent in parleying, for at Cesena Caesar
found the envoys of the Vitelli and Orsini, who themselves were with
their army in the duchy of Urbino; but after the preliminary
discussions as to the right course to follow in carrying on the plan
of conquest, there arose such difficulties between the general-in-
chief and these agents, that they could not but see the impossibility
of getting anything settled by intermediaries, and the urgent
necessity of a conference between Caesar and one of the chiefs.  So
Oliverotto ran the risk of joining the duke in order to make
proposals to him, either to march an Tuscany or to take Sinigaglia,
which was the only place in the duchy of Urbino that had not again
fallen into Caesar's power.  Caesar's reply was that he did not
desire to war upon Tuscany, because the Tuscans were his friends; but
that he approved of the lieutenants' plan with regard to Sinigaglia,
and therefore was marching towards Fano.

But the daughter of Frederic, the former Duke of Urbino, who held the
town of Sinigaglia, and who was called the lady-prefect, because she
had married Gian delta Rovere, whom his uncle, Sixtus IV, had made
prefect of Rome, judging that it would be impossible to defend
herself against the forces the Duke of Valentinais was bringing, left
the citadel in the hands of a captain, recommending him to get the
best terms he could for the town, and took boat for Venice.

Caesar learned this news at Rimini, through a messenger from Vitelli
and the Orsini, who said that the governor of the citadel, though
refusing to yield to them, was quite ready to make terms with him,
and consequently they would engage to go to the town and finish the
business there.  Caesar's reply was that in consequence of this
information he was sending some of his troops to Cesena and Imola,
for they would be useless to him, as he should now have theirs, which
together with the escort he retained would be sufficient, since his
only object was the complete pacification of the duchy of Urbino.  He
added that this pacification would not be possible if his old friends
continued to distrust him, and to discuss through intermediaries
alone plans in which their own fortunes were interested as well as
his.  The messenger returned with this answer, and the confederates,
though feeling, it is true, the justice of Caesar's remarks, none the
less hesitated to comply with his demand.  Vitellozzo Vitelli in
particular showed a want of confidence in him which nothing seemed
able to subdue; but, pressed by Oliverotto, Gravina, and Orsino, he
consented at last to await the duke's coming; making concession
rather because he could not bear to appear more timid than his
companions, than because of any confidence he felt in the return of
friendship that Borgia was displaying.

The duke learned the news of this decision, so much desired, when he
arrived at Fano on the 20th of December 1502.  At once he summoned
eight of his most faithful friends, among whom were d'Enna, his
nephew, Michelotto, and Ugo di Cardona, and ordered them, as soon as
they arrived at Sinigaglia, and had seen Vitellozzo, Gravina,
Oliveratta, and Orsino come out to meet them, on a pretext of doing
them honour, to place themselves on the right and left hand of the
four generals, two beside each, so that at a given signal they might
either stab or arrest them; next he assigned to each of them his
particular man, bidding them not quit his side until he had reentered
Sinigaglia and arrived at the quarters prepared far him; then he sent
orders to such of the soldiers as were in cantonments in the
neighbourhood to assemble to the number of 8000 on the banks of the
Metaurus, a little river of Umbria which runs into the Adriatic and
has been made famous by the defeat of Hannibal.

The duke arrived at the rendezvous given to his army on the 31st of
December, and instantly sent out in front two hundred horse, and
immediately behind them his infantry; following close in the midst of
his men-at-arms, following the coast of the Adriatic, with the
mountains on his right and the sea on his left, which in part of the
way left only space for the army to march ten abreast.

After four hours' march, the duke at a turn of the path perceived
Sinigaglia, nearly a mile distant from the sea, and a bowshot from
the mountains; between the army and the town ran a little river,
whose banks he had to follow far some distance.  At last he found a
bridge opposite a suburb of the town, and here Caesar ordered his
cavalry to stop: it was drawn up in two lines, one between the road
and the river, the other on the side of the country, leaving the
whole width of the road to the infantry: which latter defiled,
crossed the bridge, and entering the town, drew themselves up in
battle array in the great square.

On their side, Vitellazzo, Gravina, Orsino, and Oliverotto, to make
room for the duke's army, had quartered their soldiers in little
towns or villages in the neighbourhood of Sinigaglia; Oliverotto
alone had kept nearly 1000 infantry and 150 horse, who were in
barracks in the suburb through which the duke entered.

Caesar had made only a few steps towards the town when he perceived
Vitellozzo at the gate, with the Duke of Gravina and Orsina, who all
came out to meet him; the last two quite gay and confident, but the
first so gloomy and dejected that you would have thought he foresaw
the fate that was in store for him; and doubtless he had not been
without same presentiments; for when he left his army to came to
Sinigaglia, he had bidden them farewell as though never to meet
again, had commended the care of his family to the captains, and
embraced his children with tears--a weakness which appeared strange
to all who knew him as a brave condottiere.

The duke marched up to them holding out his hand, as a sign that all
was over and forgotten, and did it with an air at once so loyal and
so smiling that Gravina and Orsina could no longer doubt the genuine
return of his friendship, and it was only Vitellozza still appeared
sad.  At the same moment, exactly as they had been commanded, the
duke's accomplices took their pasts on the right and left of those
they were to watch, who were all there except Oliverotto, whom the
duke could not see, and began to seek with uneasy looks; but as he
crossed the suburb he perceived him exercising his troops on the
square.  Caesar at once despatched Michelotto and d'Enna, with a
message that it was a rash thing to have his troops out, when they
might easily start some quarrel with the duke's men and bring about
an affray: it would be much better to settle them in barracks and
then come to join his companions, who were with Caesar.  Oliverotto,
drawn by the same fate as his friends, made no abjection, ordered his
soldiers indoors, and put his horse to the gallop to join the duke,
escorted on either side by d'Enna and Michelotto.  Caesar, on seeing
him, called him, took him by the hand, and continued his march to the
palace that had been prepared for him, his four victims following
after.

Arrived on the threshold, Caesar dismounted, and signing to the
leader of the men-at-arms to, await his orders, he went in first,
followed by Oliverotto, Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Orsino, each
accompanied by his two satellites; but scarcely had they gone
upstairs and into the first room when the door was shut behind them,
and Caesar turned round, saying, "The hour has come!"  This was the
signal agreed upon.  Instantly the former confederates were seized,
thrown down, and forced to surrender with a dagger at their throat.
Then, while they were being carried to a dungeon, Caesar opened the
window, went out on the balcony and cried out to the leader of his
men-at-arms, "Go forward!"  The man was in the secret, he rushed on
with his band towards the barracks where Oliverotto's soldiers had
just been consigned, and they, suddenly surprised and off their
guard, were at once made prisoners; then the duke's troops began to
pillage the town, and he summoned Macchiavelli.

Caesar and the Florentine envoy were nearly two hours shut up
together, and since Macchiavelli himself recounts the history of this
interview, we will give his own words.

"He summoned me," says the Florentine ambassador, "and in the calmest
manner showed me his joy at the success of this enterprise, which he
assured me he had spoken of to me the evening before; I remember that
he did, but I did not at that time understand what he meant; next he
explained, in terms of much feeling and lively affection for our
city, the different motives which had made him desire your alliance,
a desire to which he hopes you will respond.  He ended with charging
me to lay three proposals before your lordships: first, that you
rejoice with him in the destruction at a single blow of the mortal
enemies of the king, himself, and you, and the consequent
disappearance of all seeds of trouble and dissension likely to waste
Italy: this service of his, together with his refusal to allow the
prisoners to march against you, ought, he thinks, to excite your
gratitude towards him; secondly, he begs that you will at this
juncture give him a striking proof of your friendliness, by urging
your cavalry's advance towards Borgo, and there assembling some
infantry also, in order that they may march with him, should need
arise, on Castello or on Perugia.  Lastly, he desires--and this is
his third condition--that you arrest the Duke of Urbino, if he should
flee from Castello into your territories, when he learns that
Vitellozzo is a prisoner.

"When I objected that to give him up would not beseem the dignity of
the republic, and that you would never consent, he approved of my
words, and said that it would be enough for you to keep the duke, and
not give him his liberty without His Excellency's permission.  I have
promised to give you all this information, to which he awaits your
reply."


The same night eight masked men descended to the dungeon where the
prisoners lay: they believed at that moment that the fatal hour had
arrived for all.  But this time the executioners had to do with
Vitellozzo and Oliverotto alone.  When these two captains heard that
they were condemned, Oliverotto burst forth into reproaches against
Vitellozzo, saying that it was all his fault that they had taken up
arms against the duke: not a word Vitellozzo answered except a prayer
that the pope might grant him plenary indulgence for all his sins.
Then the masked men took them away, leaving Orsino and Gravina to
await a similar fate, and led away the two chosen out to die to a
secluded spot outside the ramparts of the town, where they were
strangled and buried at once in two trenches that had been dug
beforehand.

The two others were kept alive until it should be known if the pope
had arrested Cardinal Orsino, archbishop of Florence and lord of
Santa Croce; and when the answer was received in the affirmative from
His Holiness, Gravina and Orsina, who had been transferred to a
castle, were likewise strangled.

The duke, leaving instructions with Michelotto, set off for
Sinigaglia as soon as the first execution was over, assuring
Macchiavelli that he had never had any other thought than that of
giving tranquillity to the Romagna and to Tuscany, and also that he
thought he had succeeded by taking and putting to death the men who
had been the cause of all the trouble; also that any other revolt
that might take place in the future would be nothing but sparks that
a drop of water could extinguish.

The pope had barely learned that Caesar had his enemies in his power,
when, eager to play the same winning game himself, he announced to
Cardinal Orsino, though it was then midnight, that his son had taken
Sinigaglia, and gave him an invitation to come the next morning and
talk over the good news.  The cardinal, delighted at this increase of
favour, did not miss his appointment.  So, in the morning, he started
an horseback for the Vatican; but at a turn of the first street he
met the governor of Rome with a detachment of cavalry, who
congratulated himself on the happy chance that they were taking the
same road, and accompanied him to the threshold of the Vatican.
There the cardinal dismounted, and began to ascend the stairs;
scarcely, however, had he reached the first landing before his mules
and carriages were seized and shut in the palace stables.  When he
entered the hall of the Perropont, he found that he and all his suite
were surrounded by armed men, who led him into another apartment,
called the Vicar's Hall, where he found the Abbate Alviano, the
protonotary Orsino, Jacopo Santa Croce, and Rinaldo Orsino, who were
all prisoners like himself; at the same time the governor received
orders to seize the castle of Monte Giardino, which belonged to the
Orsini, and take away all the jewels, all the hangings, all the
furniture, and all the silver that he might find.

The governor carried out his orders conscientiously, and brought to
the Vatican everything he seized, down to the cardinal's account-
book.  On consulting this book, the pope found out two things: first,
that a sum of 2000 ducats was due to the cardinal, no debtor's name
being mentioned; secondly, that the cardinal had bought three months
before, for 1500 Roman crowns, a magnificent pearl which could not be
found among the objects belonging to him: on which Alexander ordered
that from that very moment until the negligence in the cardinal's
accounts was repaired, the men who were in the habit of bringing him
food twice a day on behalf of his mother should not be admitted into
the Castle Sant' Angelo.  The same day, the cardinal's mother sent
the pope the 2000 ducats, and the next day his mistress, in man's
attire, came in person to bring the missing pearl.  His Holiness,
however, was so struck with her beauty in this costume, that, we are
told, he let her keep the pearl for the same price she had paid for
it.

Then the pope allowed the cardinal to have his food brought as
before, and he died of poison on the 22nd of February--that is, two
days after his accounts had been set right.

That same night the Prince of Squillace set off to take possession,
in the pope's name, of the lands of the deceased.




CHAPTER XIV

The Duke of Valentinois had continued, his road towards Citta di
Castello and Perugia, and had seized these two towns without striking
a blow; for the Vitelli had fled from the former, and the latter had
been abandoned by Gian Paolo Baglione with no attempt whatever at
resistance.  There still remained Siena, where Pandolfo Petrucci was
shut up, the only man remaining of all who had joined the league
against Caesar.

But Siena was under the protection of the French.  Besides, Siena was
not one of the States of the Church, and Caesar had no rights there.
Therefore he was content with insisting upon Pandolfo Petrucci's
leaving the town and retiring to Lucca, which he accordingly did.

Then all on this side being peaceful and the whole of Romagna in
subjection, Caesar resolved to return to Rome and help the pope to
destroy all that was left of the Orsini.

This was all the easier because Louis XII, having suffered reverses
in the kingdom of Naples, had since then been much concerned with his
own affairs to disturb himself about his allies.  So Caesar, doing
for the neighbourhood of the Holy See the same thing that he had done
far the Romagna, seized in succession Vicovaro, Cera, Palombera,
Lanzano, and Cervetti ; when these conquests were achieved, having
nothing else to do now that he had brought the pontifical States into
subjection from the frontiers of Naples to those of Venice, he
returned to Rome to concert with his father as to the means of
converting his duchy into a kingdom.

Caesar arrived at the right moment to share with Alexander the
property of Cardinal Gian Michele, who had just died, having received
a poisoned cup from the hands of the pope.

The future King of Italy found his father preoccupied with a grand
project: he had resolved, for the Feast of St. Peter's, to create
nine cardinals.  What he had to gain from these nominations is as
follows:

First, the cardinals elected would leave all their offices vacant;
these offices would fall into the hands of the pope, and he would
sell them;

Secondly, each of them would buy his election, more or less dear
according to his fortune; the price, left to be settled at the pope's
fancy, would vary from 10,000 to 40,000 ducats;

Lastly, since as cardinals they would by law lose the right of making
a will, the pope, in order to inherit from them, had only to poison
them: this put him in the position of a butcher who, if he needs
money, has only to cut the throat of the fattest sheep in the flock.

The nomination came to pass: the new cardinals were Giovanni
Castellaro Valentine, archbishop of Trani; Francesco Remolini,
ambassador from the King of Aragon; Francesco Soderini, bishop of
Volterra; Melchiore Copis, bishop of Brissina; Nicolas Fiesque,
bishop of Frejus; Francesco di Sprate, bishop of Leome; Adriano
Castellense, clerk of the chamber, treasurer-general, and secretary
of the briefs; Francesco Boris, bishop of Elva, patriarch of
Constantinople, and secretary to the pope; and Giacomo Casanova,
protonotary and private chamberlain to His Holiness.

The price of their simony paid and their vacated offices sold, the
pope made his choice of those he was to poison: the number was fixed
at three, one old and two new; the old one was Cardinal Casanova, and
the new ones Melchiore Copis and Adriano Castellense, who had taken
the name of Adrian of Carneta from that town where he had been born,
and where, in the capacity of clerk of the chamber, treasurer-
general, and secretary of briefs, he had amassed an immense fortune.

So, when all was settled between Caesar and the pope, they invited
their chosen guests to supper in a vineyard situated near the
Vatican, belonging to the Cardinal of Corneto.  In the morning of
this day, the 2nd of August, they sent their servants and the steward
to make all preparations, and Caesar himself gave the pope's butler
two bottles of wine prepared with the white powder resembling sugar
whose mortal properties he had so often proved, and gave orders that
he was to serve this wine only when he was told, and only to persons
specially indicated; the butler accordingly put the wine an a
sideboard apart, bidding the waiters on no account to touch it, as it
was reserved for the pope's drinking.


[The poison of the Borgias, say contemporary writers, was of two
kinds, powder and liquid.  The poison in the form of powder was a
sort of white flour, almost impalpable, with the taste of sugar, and
called Contarella.  Its composition is unknown.

The liquid poison was prepared, we are told in so strange a fashion
that we cannot pass it by in silence.  We repeat here what we read,
and vouch for nothing ourselves, lest science should give us the lie.

A strong dose of arsenic was administered to a boar; as soon as the
poison began to take effect, he was hung up by his heels; convulsions
supervened, and a froth deadly and abundant ran out from his jaws; it
was this froth, collected into a silver vessel and transferred into a
bottle hermetically sealed, that made the liquid poison.]


Towards evening Alexander VI walked from the Vatican leaning on
Caesar's arm, and turned his steps towards the vineyard, accompanied
by Cardinal Caraffa; but as the heat was great and the climb rather
steep, the pope, when he reached the top, stopped to take breath;
then putting his hand on his breast, he found that he had left in his
bedroom a chain that he always wore round his neck, which suspended a
gold medallion that enclosed the sacred host.  He owed this habit to
a prophecy that an astrologer had made, that so long as he carried
about a consecrated wafer, neither steel nor poison could take hold
upon him.  Now, finding himself without his talisman, he ordered
Monsignors Caraffa to hurry back at once to the Vatican, and told him
in which part of his room he had left it, so that he might get it and
bring it him without delay.  Then, as the walk had made him thirsty,
he turned to a valet, giving signs with his hand as he did so that
his messenger should make haste, and asked for something to drink.
Caesar, who was also thirsty, ordered the man to bring two glasses.
By a curious coincidence, the butler had just gone back to the
Vatican to fetch some magnificent peaches that had been sent that
very day to the pope, but which had been forgotten when he came here;
so the valet went to the under butler, saying that His Holiness and
Monsignors the Duke of Romagna were thirsty and asking for a drink.
The under butler, seeing two bottles of wine set apart, and having
heard that this wine was reserved for the pope, took one, and telling
the valet to bring two glasses on a tray, poured out this wine, which
both drank, little thinking that it was what they had themselves
prepared to poison their guests.

Meanwhile Caraffa hurried to the Vatican, and, as he knew the palace
well, went up to the pope's bedroom, a light in his hand and attended
by no servant.  As he turned round a corridor a puff of wind blew out
his lamp; still, as he knew the way, he went on, thinking there was
no need of seeing to find the object he was in search of; but as he
entered the room he recoiled a step, with a cry of terror: he beheld
a ghastly apparition; it seemed that there before his eyes, in the
middle of the room, between the door and the cabinet which held the
medallion, Alexander VI, motionless and livid, was lying on a bier at
whose four corners there burned four torches.  The cardinal stood
still for a moment, his eyes fixed, and his hair standing on end,
without strength to move either backward or forward; then thinking it
was all a trick of fancy or an apparition of the devil's making, he
made the sign of the cross, invoking God's holy name; all instantly
vanished, torches, bier, and corpse, and the seeming mortuary,
chamber was once more in darkness.

Then Cardinal Caraffa, who has himself recorded this strange event,
and who was afterwards Pope Paul IV, entered baldly, and though an
icy sweat ran dawn his brow, he went straight to the cabinet, and in
the drawer indicated found the gold chain and the medallion, took
them, and hastily went out to give them to the pope.  He found supper
served, the guests arrived, and His Holiness ready to take his 3I7
place at table; as soon as the cardinal was in sight, His Holiness,
who was very pale, made one step towards him; Caraffa doubled his
pace, and handed the medallion to him; but as the pope stretched
forth his arm to take it, he fell back with a cry, instantly followed
by violent convulsions: an instant later, as he advanced to render
his father assistance, Caesar was similarly seized; the effect of the
poison had been more rapid than usual, for Caesar had doubled the
dose, and there is little doubt that their heated condition increased
its activity.

The two stricken men were carried side by side to the Vatican, where
each was taken to his own rooms: from that moment they never met
again.

As soon as he reached his bed, the pope was seized with a violent
fever, which did not give way to emetics or to bleeding; almost
immediately it became necessary to administer the last sacraments of
the Church; but his admirable bodily constitution, which seemed to
have defied old age, was strong enough to fight eight days with
death; at last, after a week of mortal agony, he died, without once
uttering the name of Caesar or Lucrezia, who were the two poles
around which had turned all his affections and all his crimes.  His
age was seventy-two, and he had reigned eleven years.

Caesar, perhaps because he had taken less of the fatal beverage,
perhaps because the strength of his youth overcame the strength of
the poison, or maybe, as some say, because when he reached his own
rooms he had swallowed an antidote known only to himself, was not so
prostrated as to lose sight for a moment of the terrible position he
was in: he summoned his faithful Michelotto, with those he could best
count on among his men, and disposed this band in the various rooms
that led to his own, ordering the chief never to leave the foot of
his bed, but to sleep lying on a rug, his hand upon the handle of his
sward.

The treatment had been the same for Caesar as for the pope, but in
addition to bleeding and emetics strange baths were added, which
Caesar had himself asked for, having heard that in a similar case
they had once cured Ladislaus, King of Naples.  Four posts, strongly
welded to the floor and ceiling, were set up in his room, like the
machines at which farriers shoe horses; every day a bull was brought
in, turned over on his back and tied by his four legs to the four
posts; then, when he was thus fixed, a cut was made in his belly a
foot and a half long, through which the intestines were drawn out;
then Caesar slipped into this living bath of blood: when the bull was
dead, Caesar was taken out and rolled up in burning hot blankets,
where, after copious perspirations, he almost always felt some sort
of relief.

Every two hours Caesar sent to ask news of his father: he hardly
waited to hear that he was dead before, though still at death's door
himself, he summoned up all the force of character and presence of
mind that naturally belonged to him.  He ordered Michelotto to shut
the doors of the Vatican before the report of Alexander's decease
could spread about the town, and forbade anyone whatsoever to enter
the pope's apartments until the money and papers had been removed.
Michelotto obeyed at once, went to find Cardinal Casanova, held a
dagger at his throat, and made him deliver up the keys of the pope's
rooms and cabinets; then, under his guidance, took away two chests
full of gold, which perhaps contained 100,000 Roman crowns in specie,
several boxes full of jewels, much silver and many precious vases;
all these were carried to Caesar's chamber; the guards of the room
were doubled; then the doors of the Vatican were once more thrown
open, and the death of the pope was proclaimed.

Although the news was expected, it produced none the less a terrible
effect in Rome; for although Caesar was still alive, his condition
left everyone in suspense: had the mighty Duke of Romagna, the
powerful condottiere who had taken thirty towns and fifteen
fortresses in five years, been seated, sword in hand, upon his
charger, nothing would have been uncertain of fluctuating even for a
moment; far, as Caesar afterwards told Macchiavelli, his ambitious
soul had provided for all things that could occur on the day of the
pope's death, except the one that he should be dying himself; but
being nailed down to his bed, sweating off the effects the poison had
wrought; so, though he had kept his power of thinking he could no
longer act, but must needs wait and suffer the course of events,
instead of marching on in front and controlling them.

Thus he was forced to regulate his actions no longer by his own plans
but according to circumstances.  His most bitter enemies, who could
press him hardest, were the Orsini and the Colonnas: from the one
family he had taken their blood, from the other their goods.

So he addressed himself to those to whom he could return what he had
taken, and opened negotiations with the Colonnas.

Meanwhile the obsequies of the pope were going forward: the vice-
chancellor had sent out orders to the highest among the clergy, the
superiors of convents, and the secular orders, not to fail to appear,
according to regular custom, on pain of being despoiled of their
office and dignities, each bringing his own company to the Vatican,
to be present at the pope's funeral; each therefore appeared on the
day and at the hour appointed at the pontifical palace, whence the
body was to be conveyed to the church of St. Peter's, and there
buried.  The corpse was found to be abandoned and alone in the
mortuary chamber; for everyone of the name of Borgia, except Caesar,
lay hidden, not knowing what might come to pass.  This was indeed
well justified; for Fabio Orsino, meeting one member of the family,
stabbed him, and as a sign of the hatred they had sworn to one
another, bathed his mouth and hands in the blood.

The agitation in Rome was so great, that when the corpse of Alexander
VI was about to enter the church there occurred a kind of panic, such
as will suddenly arise in times of popular agitation, instantly
causing so great a disturbance in the funeral cortege that the guards
drew up in battle array, the clergy fled into the sacristy, and the
bearers dropped the bier.

The people, tearing off the pall which covered it, disclosed the
corpse, and everyone could see with impunity and close at hand the
man who, fifteen days before, had made princes, kings and emperors
tremble, from one end of the world to the other.

But in accordance with that religious feeling towards death which all
men instinctively feel, and which alone survives every other, even in
the heart of the atheist, the bier was taken up again and carried to
the foot of the great altar in St. Peter's, where, set on trestles,
it was exposed to public view; but the body had become so black, so
deformed and swollen, that it was horrible to behold; from its nose a
bloody matter escaped, the mouth gaped hideously, and the tongue was
so monstrously enlarged that it filled the whole cavity; to this
frightful appearance was added a decomposition so great that,
although at the pope's funeral it is customary to kiss the hand which
bore the Fisherman's ring, not one approached to offer this mark of
respect and religious reverence to the representative of God on
earth.

Towards seven o'clock in the evening, when the declining day adds so
deep a melancholy to the silence of a church, four porters and two
working carpenters carried the corpse into the chapel where it was to
be interred, and, lifting it off the catafalque, where it lay in
state, put it in the coffin which was to be its last abode; but it
was found that the coffin was too short, and the body could not be
got in till the legs were bent and thrust in with violent blows; then
the carpenters put on the lid, and while one of them sat on the top
to force the knees to bend, the others hammered in the nails: amid
those Shakespearian pleasantries that sound as the last orison in the
ear of the mighty; then, says Tommaso Tommasi, he was placed on the
right of the great altar of St. Peter's, beneath a very ugly tomb.

The next morning this epitaph was found inscribed upon the tomb:

    "VENDIT ALEXANDER CLAVES, ALTARIA, CHRISTUM:
     EMERAT ILLE PRIUS, VENDERE JUKE POTEST";

that is,

    "Pope Alexander sold the Christ, the altars, and the keys:
     But anyone who buys a thing may sell it if he please."




CHAPTER XV

From the effect produced at Rome by Alexander's death, one may
imagine what happened not only in the whole of Italy but also in the
rest of the world: for a moment Europe swayed, for the column which
supported the vault of the political edifice had given way, and the
star with eyes of flame and rays of blood, round which all things had
revolved for the last eleven years, was now extinguished, and for a
moment the world, on a sudden struck motionless, remained in silence
and darkness.

After the first moment of stupefaction, all who had an injury to
avenge arose and hurried to the chase.  Sforza retook Pesaro,
Bagloine Perugia, Guido and Ubaldo Urbino, and La Rovere Sinigaglia;
the Vitelli entered Citta di Castello, the Appiani Piombino, the
Orsini Monte Giordano and their other territories; Romagna alone
remained impassive and loyal, for the people, who have no concern
with the quarrels of the great, provided they do not affect
themselves, had never been so happy as under the government of
Caesar.

The Colonnas were pledged to maintain a neutrality, and had been
consequently restored to the possession of their castles and the
cities of Chiuzano, Capo d'Anno, Frascati, Rocca di Papa, and
Nettuno, which they found in a better condition than when they had
left them, as the pope had had them embellished and fortified.

Caesar was still in the Vatican with his troops, who, loyal to him in
his misfortune, kept watch about the palace, where he was writhing on
his bed of pain and roaring like a wounded lion.  The cardinals, who
had in their first terror fled, each his own way, instead of
attending the pope's obsequies, began to assemble once more, some at
the Minerva, others around Cardinal Caraffa.  Frightened by the
troops that Caesar still had, especially since the command was
entrusted to Michelotto, they collected all the money they could to
levy an army of 2000 soldiers with.  Charles Taneo at their head,
with the title of Captain of the Sacred College.  It was then hoped
that peace was re-established, when it was heard that Prospero
Colonna was coming with 3000 men from the side of Naples, and Fabio
Orsino from the side of Viterbo with 200 horse and more than 1000
infantry.  Indeed, they entered Rome at only one day's interval one
from another, by so similar an ardour were they inspired.

Thus there were five armies in Rome: Caesar's army, holding the
Vatican and the Borgo; the army of the Bishop of Nicastro, who had
received from Alexander the guardianship of the Castle Sant' Angelo
and had shut himself up there, refusing to yield; the army of the
Sacred College, which was stationed round about the Minerva; the army
of Prospero Colonna, which was encamped at the Capitol; and the army
of Fabio Orsino, in barracks at the Ripetta.

On their side, the Spaniards had advanced to Terracino, and the
French to Nepi.  The cardinals saw that Rome now stood upon a mine
which the least spark might cause to explode: they summoned the
ambassadors of the Emperor of Germany, the Kings of France and Spain,
and the republic of Venice to raise their voice in the name of their
masters.  The ambassadors, impressed with the urgency of the
situation, began by declaring the Sacred College inviolable: they
then ordered the Orsini, the Colonnas, and the Duke of Valentinois to
leave Rome and go each his own, way.

The Orsini were the first to submit: the next morning their example
was followed by the Colonnas.  No one was left but Caesar, who said
he was willing to go, but desired to make his conditions beforehand:
the Vatican was undermined, he declared, and if his demands were
refused he and those who came to take him should be blown up
together.

It was known that his were never empty threats they came to terms
with him.

[Caesar promised to remain ten miles away from Rome the whole time
the Conclave lasted, and not to take any action against the town or
any other of the Ecclesiastical States: Fabio Orsino and.  Prospero
Colonna had made the same promises.]

[It was agreed that Caesar should quit Rome with his army, artillery,
and baggage; and to ensure his not being attacked or molested in the
streets, the Sacred College should add to his numbers 400 infantry,
who, in case of attack or insult, would fight for him.
The Venetian ambassador answered for the Orsini, the Spanish
ambassador for the Colonnas, the ambassador of France for Caesar.]


At the day and hour appointed Caesar sent out his artillery, which
consisted of eighteen pieces of cannon, and 400 infantry of the
Sacred College, on each of whom he bestowed a ducat: behind the
artillery came a hundred chariots escorted by his advance guard.

The duke was carried out of the gate of the Vatican: he lay on a bed
covered with a scarlet canopy, supported by twelve halberdiers,
leaning forward on his cushions so that no one might see his face
with its purple lips and bloodshot eyes: beside him was his naked
sword, to show that, feeble as he was, he could use it at need: his
finest charger, caparisoned in black velvet embroidered with his
arms, walked beside the bed, led by a page, so that Caesar could
mount in case of surprise or attack: before him and behind, both
right and left, marched his army, their arms in rest, but without
beating of drums or blowing of trumpets: this gave a sombre, funereal
air to the whole procession, which at the gate of the city met
Prospero Colonna awaiting it with a considerable band of men.

Caesar thought at first that, breaking his word as he had so often
done himself, Prospero Colonna was going to attack him.  He ordered a
halt, and prepared to mount his horse; but Prospera Colonna, seeing
the state he was in, advanced to his bedside alone: he came, against
expectation, to offer him an escort, fearing an ambuscade on the part
of Fabio Orsino, who had loudly sworn that he would lose his honour
or avenge the death of Paolo Orsina, his father.  Caesar thanked
Colanna, and replied that from the moment that Orsini stood alone he
ceased to fear him.  Then Colonna saluted the duke, and rejoined his
men, directing them towards Albano, while Caesar took the road to
Citta Castellana, which had remained loyal.

When there, Caesar found himself not only master of his own fate but
of others as well: of the twenty-two votes he owned in the Sacred
College twelve had remained faithful, and as the Conclave was
composed in all of thirty-seven cardinals, he with his twelve votes
could make the majority incline to whichever side he chose.
Accordingly he was courted both by the Spanish and the French party,
each desiring the election of a pope of their own nation.  Caesar
listened, promising nothing and refusing nothing: he gave his twelve
votes to Francesco Piccolomini, Cardinal of Siena, one of his
father's creatures who had remained his friend, and the latter was
elected on the 8th of October and took the name of Pius III.

Caesar's hopes did not deceive him: Pius III was hardly elected
before he sent him a safe-conduct to Rome: the duke came back with
250 men-at-arms, 250 light horse, and 800 infantry, and lodged in his
palace, the soldiers camping round about.

Meanwhile the Orsini, pursuing their projects of vengeance against
Caesar, had been levying many troops at Perugia and the neighbourhood
to bring against him to Rome, and as they fancied that France, in
whose service they were engaged, was humouring the duke for the sake
of the twelve votes which were wanted to secure the election of
Cardinal Amboise at the next Conclave, they went over to the service
of Spain.

Meanwhile Caesar was signing a new treaty with Louis XII, by which he
engaged to support him with all his forces, and even with his person,
so soon as he could ride, in maintaining his conquest of Naples:
Louis, on his side, guaranteed that he should retain possession of
the States he still held, and promised his help in recovering those
he had lost.

The day when this treaty was made known, Gonzalvo di Cordovo
proclaimed to the sound of a trumpet in all the streets of Rome that
every Spanish subject serving in a foreign army was at once to break
his engagement on pain of being found guilty of high treason.

This measure robbed Caesar of ten or twelve of his best officers and
of nearly 300 men.

Then the Orsini, seeing his army thus reduced, entered Rome,
supported by the Spanish ambassador, and summoned Caesar to appear
before the pope and the Sacred College and give an account of his
crimes.

Faithful to his engagements, Pius III replied that in his quality of
sovereign prince the duke in his temporal administration was quite
independent and was answerable for his actions to God alone.

But as the pope felt he could not much longer support Caesar against
his enemies for all his goodwill, he advised him to try to join the
French army, which was still advancing on Naples, in the midst of
which he would alone find safety.  Caesar resolved to retire to
Bracciano, where Gian Giordano Orsino, who had once gone with him to
France, and who was the only member of the family who had not
declared against him, offered him an asylum in the name of Cardinal
dumbest: so one morning he ordered his troops to march for this town,
and, taking his place in their midst, he left Rome.

But though Caesar had kept his intentions quiet, the Orsini had been
forewarned, and, taking out all the troops they had by the gate of
San Pancracio, they had made along detour and blocked Caesar's way;
so, when the latter arrived at Storta, he found the Orsini's army
drawn up awaiting him in numbers exceeding his own by at least one-
half.

Caesar saw that to come to blows in his then feeble state was to rush
on certain destruction; so he ordered his troops to retire, and,
being a first-rate strategist, echelonned his retreat so skilfully
that his enemies, though they followed, dared not attack him, and he
re-entered the pontifical town without the loss of a single man.

This time Caesar went straight to the Vatican, to put himself more
directly under the pope's protection; he distributed his soldiers
about the palace, so as to guard all its exits.  Now the Orsini,
resolved to make an end of Caesar, had determined to attack him
wheresoever he might be, with no regard to the sanctity of the place:
this they attempted, but without success, as Caesar's men kept a good
guard on every side, and offered a strong defence.

Then the Orsini, not being able to force the guard of the Castle
Sant' Angelo, hoped to succeed better with the duke by leaving Rome
and then returning by the Torione gate; but Caesar anticipated this
move, and they found the gate guarded and barricaded.  None the less,
they pursued their design, seeking by open violence the vengeance
that they had hoped to obtain by craft; and, having surprised the
approaches to the gate, set fire to it: a passage gained, they made
their way into the gardens of the castle, where they found Caesar
awaiting them at the head of his cavalry.

Face to face with danger, the duke had found his old strength: and he
was the first to rush upon his enemies, loudly challenging Orsino in
the hope of killing him should they meet; but either Orsino did not
hear him or dared not fight; and after an exciting contest, Caesar,
who was numerically two-thirds weaker than his enemy, saw his cavalry
cut to pieces; and after performing miracles of personal strength and
courage, was obliged to return to the Vatican.  There he found the
pope in mortal agony: the Orsini, tired of contending against the old
man's word of honour pledged to the duke, had by the interposition of
Pandolfo Petrucci, gained the ear of the pope's surgeon, who placed a
poisoned plaster upon a wound in his leg.

The pope then was actually dying when Caesar, covered with dust and
blood, entered his room, pursued by his enemies, who knew no check
till they reached the palace walls, behind which the remnant of his
army still held their ground.

Pius III, who knew he was about to die, sat up in his bed, gave
Caesar the key of the corridor which led to the Castle of Sant'
Angelo, and an order addressed to the governor to admit him and his
family, to defend him to the last extremity, and to let him go
wherever he thought fit; and then fell fainting on his bed.

Caesar took his two daughters by the hand, and, followed by the
little dukes of Sermaneta and Nepi, took refuge in the last asylum
open to him.

The same night the pope died: he had reigned only twenty-six days.

After his death, Caesar, who had cast himself fully dressed upon his
bed, heard his door open at two o'clock in the morning: not knowing
what anyone might want of him at such an hour, he raised himself on
one elbow and felt for the handle of his sword with his other hand;
but at the first glance he recognised in his nocturnal visitor
Giuliano della Rovere.

Utterly exhausted by the poison, abandoned by his troops, fallen as
he was from the height of his power, Caesar, who could now do nothing
for himself, could yet make a pope: Giuliano delta Rovere had come to
buy the votes of his twelve cardinals.

Caesar imposed his conditions, which were accepted.

If elected, Giuliano delta Ravere was to help Caesar to recover his
territories in Romagna; Caesar was to remain general of the Church;
and Francesco Maria delta Rovere, prefect of Rome, was to marry one
of Caesar's daughters.

On these conditions Caesar sold his twelve cardinals to Giuliano.

The next day, at Giuliano's request, the Sacred College ordered the
Orsini to leave Rome for the whole time occupied by the Conclave.

On the 31st of October 1503, at the first scrutiny, Giuliano delta
Rovere was elected pope, and took the name of Julius II.

He was scarcely installed in the Vatican when he made it his first
care to summon Caesar and give him his former rooms there; then,
since the duke was fully restored to health, he began to busy himself
with the re-establishment of his affairs, which had suffered sadly of
late.

The defeat of his army and his own escape to Sant' Angelo, where he
was supposed to be a prisoner, had brought about great changes in
Romagna.  Sesena was once more in the power of the Church, as
formerly it had been; Gian Sforza had again entered Pesaro; Ordelafi
had seized Forli; Malatesta was laying claim to Rimini; the
inhabitants of Imola had assassinated their governor, and the town
was divided between two opinions, one that it should be put into the
hands of the Riani, the other, into the hands of the Church; Faenza
had remained loyal longer than any other place; but at last, losing
hope of seeing Caesar recover his power, it had summoned Francesco,
a natural son of Galeotto Manfredi, the last surviving heir of this
unhappy family, all whose legitimate descendants had been massacred
by Borgia.

It is true that the fortresses of these different places had taken no
part in these revolutions, and had remained immutably faithful to the
Duke of Valentinois.

So it was not precisely the defection of these towns, which, thanks
to their fortresses, might be reconquered, that was the cause of
uneasiness to Caesar and Julius II, it was the difficult situation
that Venice had thrust upon them.  Venice, in the spring of the same
year, had signed a treaty of peace with the Turks: thus set free from
her eternal enemy, she had just led her forces to the Romagna, which
she had always coveted: these troops had been led towards Ravenna,
the farthermost limit of the Papal estates, and put under the command
of Giacopo Venieri, who had failed to capture Cesena, and had only
failed through the courage of its inhabitants; but this check had
been amply compensated by the surrender of the fortresses of Val di
Lamane and Faenza, by the capture of Farlimpopoli, and the surrender
of Rimini, which Pandolfo Malatesta, its lard, exchanged for the
seigniory of Cittadella, in the State of Padua, and far the rank of
gentleman of Venice.

Then Caesar made a proposition to Julius II: this was to make a
momentary cession to the Church of his own estates in Romagna, so
that the respect felt by the Venetians for the Church might save
these towns from their aggressors; but, says Guicciardini, Julius II,
whose ambition, so natural in sovereign rulers, had not yet
extinguished the remains of rectitude, refused to accept the places,
afraid of exposing himself to the temptation of keeping them later
on, against his promises.

But as the case was urgent, he proposed to Caesar that he should
leave Rome, embark at Ostia, and cross over to Spezia, where
Michelotto was to meet him at the head of 100 men-at-arms and 100
light horse, the only remnant of his magnificent army, thence by land
to Ferrara, and from Ferrara to Imala, where, once arrived, he could
utter his war-cry so loud that it would be heard through the length
and breadth of Romagna.

This advice being after Caesar's own heart, he accepted it at once.

The resolution submitted to the Sacred College was approved, and
Caesar left for Ostia, accompanied by Bartolommeo della Rovere,
nephew of His Holiness.

Caesar at last felt he was free, and fancied himself already on his
good charger, a second time carrying war into all the places where he
had formerly fought.  When he reached Ostia, he was met by the
cardinals of Sorrento and Volterra, who came in the name of Julius II
to ask him to give up the very same citadels which he had refused
three days before: the fact was that the pope had learned in the
interim that the Venetians had made fresh aggressions, and recognised
that the method proposed by Caesar was the only one that would check
them.  But this time it was Caesar's turn, to refuse, for he was
weary of these tergiversations, and feared a trap; so he said that
the surrender asked for would be useless, since by God's help he
should be in Romagna before eight days were past.  So the cardinals
of Sorrento and Volterra returned to Rome with a refusal.

The next morning, just as Caesar was setting foot on his vessel, he
was arrested in the name of Julius II.

He thought at first that this was the end; he was used to this mode
of action, and knew how short was the space between a prison and a
tomb; the matter was all the easier in his case, because the pope, if
he chose, would have plenty of pretext for making a case against him.
But the heart of Julius was of another kind from his; swift to anger,
but open to clemency; so, when the duke came back to Rome guarded,
the momentary irritation his refusal had caused was already calmed,
and the pope received him in his usual fashion at his palace, and
with his ordinary courtesy, although from the beginning it was easy
for the duke to see that he was being watched.  In return for this
kind reception, Caesar consented to yield the fortress of Cesena to
the pope, as being a town which had once belonged to the Church, and
now should return; giving the deed, signed by Caesar, to one of his
captains, called Pietro d'Oviedo, he ordered him to take possession
of the fortress in the name of the Holy See.  Pietro obeyed, and
starting at once for Cesena, presented himself armed with his warrant
before Don Diego Chinon; a noble condottiere of Spain, who was
holding the fortress in Caesar's name.  But when he had read over the
paper that Pietro d'Oviedo brought, Don Diego replied that as he knew
his lord and master was a prisoner, it would be disgraceful in him to
obey an order that had probably been wrested from him by violence,
and that the bearer deserved to die for undertaking such a cowardly
office.  He therefore bade his soldiers seize d'Oviedo and fling him
down from the top of the walls: this sentence was promptly executed.

This mark of fidelity might have proved fatal to Caesar: when the
pope heard how his messenger had been treated, he flew into such a
rage that the prisoner thought a second time that his hour was come;
and in order to receive his liberty, he made the first of those new
propositions to Julius II, which were drawn up in the form of a
treaty and sanctioned by a bull.  By these arrangements, the Duke of
Valentinois was bound to hand over to His Holiness, within the space
of forty days, the fortresses of Cesena and Bertinoro, and authorise
the surrender of Forli.  This arrangement was guaranteed by two
bankers in Rome who were to be responsible for 15,000 ducats, the sum
total of the expenses which the governor pretended he had incurred in
the place on the duke's account.  The pope on his part engaged to
send Caesar to Ostia under the sole guard of the Cardinal of Santa
Croce and two officers, who were to give him his full liberty on the
very day when his engagements were fulfilled: should this not happen,
Caesar was to be taken to Rome and imprisoned in the Castle of Sant'
Angelo.  In fulfilment of this treaty, Caesar went down the Tiber as
far as Ostia, accompanied by the pope's treasurer and many of his
servants.  The Cardinal of Santa Croce followed, and the next day
joined him there.

But as Caesar feared that Julius II might keep him a prisoner, in
spite of his pledged word, after he had yielded up the fortresses,
he asked, through the mediation of Cardinals Borgia and Remolina,
who, not feeling safe at Rome, had retired to Naples, for a safe-
conduct to Gonzalva of Cordova, and for two ships to take him there;
with the return of the courier the safe-conduct arrived, announcing
that the ships would shortly follow.

In the midst of all this, the Cardinal of Santa Croce, learning that
by the duke's orders the governors of Cesena and Bertinoro had
surrendered their fortresses to the captains of His Holiness, relaxed
his rigour, and knowing that his prisoner would some day or other be
free, began to let him go out without a guard.  Then Caesar, feeling
some fear lest when he started with Gonzalvo's ships the same thing
might happen as on the occasion of his embarking on the pope's
vessel--that is, that he might be arrested a second time--concealed
himself in a house outside the town; and when night came on, mounting
a wretched horse that belonged to a peasant, rode as far as Nettuno,
and there hired a little boat, in which he embarked for Monte
Dragone, and thence gained Naples.  Gonzalvo received him with such
joy that Caesar was deceived as to his intention, and this time
believed that he was really saved.  His confidence was redoubled
when, opening his designs to Gonzalvo, and telling him that he
counted upon gaining Pisa and thence going on into Romagna, Ganzalva
allowed him to recruit as many soldiers at Naples as he pleased,
promising him two ships to embark with.  Caesar, deceived by these
appearances, stopped nearly six weeks at Naples, every day seeing the
Spanish governor and discussing his plans.  But Gonzalvo was only
waiting to gain time to tell the King of Spain that his enemy was in
his hands; and Caesar actually went to the castle to bid Gonzalvo
good-bye, thinking he was just about to start after he had embarked
his men on the two ships.  The Spanish governor received him with his
accustomed courtesy, wished him every kind of prosperity, and
embraced him as he left; but at the door of the castle Caesar found
one of Gonzalvo's captains, Nuno Campeja by name, who arrested him as
a prisoner of Ferdinand the Catholic.  Caesar at these words heaved a
deep sigh, cursing the ill luck that had made him trust the word of
an enemy when he had so often broken his own.

He was at once taken to the castle, where the prison gate closed
behind him, and he felt no hope that anyone would come to his aid;
for the only being who was devoted to him in this world was
Michelotto, and he had heard that Michelotto had been arrested near
Pisa by order of Julius II.  While Caesar was being taken to prison
an officer came to him to deprive him of the safe-conduct given him
by Gonzalvo.

The day after his arrest, which occurred on the 27th of May, 1504,
Caesar was taken on board a ship, which at once weighed anchor and
set sail for Spain: during the whole voyage he had but one page to
serve him, and as soon as he disembarked he was taken to the castle
of Medina del Campo.

Ten years later, Gonzalvo, who at that time was himself proscribed,
owned to Loxa on his dying bed that now, when he was to appear in the
presence of God, two things weighed cruelly on his conscience: one
was his treason to Ferdinand, the other his breach of faith towards
Caesar.




CHAPTER XVI

Caesar was in prison for two years, always hoping that Louis XII
would reclaim him as peer of the kingdom of France; but Louis, much
disturbed by the loss of the battle of Garigliano, which robbed him
of the kingdom of Naples, had enough to do with his own affairs
without busying himself with his cousin's.  So the prisoner was
beginning to despair, when one day as he broke his bread at breakfast
he found a file and a little bottle containing a narcotic, with a
letter from Michelotto, saying that he was out of prison and had left
Italy for Spain, and now lay in hiding with the Count of Benevento in
the neighbouring village: he added that from the next day forward he
and the count would wait every night on the road between the fortress
and the village with three excellent horses; it was now Caesar's part
to do the best he could with his bottle and file.  When the whole
world had abandoned the Duke of Romagna he had been remembered by a
sbirro.

The prison where he had been shut up for two years was so hateful to
Caesar that he lost not a single moment: the same day he attacked one
of the bars of a window that looked out upon an inner court, and soon
contrived so to manipulate it that it would need only a final push to
come out.  But not only was the window nearly seventy feet from the
ground, but one could only get out of the court by using an exit
reserved for the governor, of which he alone had the key; also this
key never left him; by day it hung at his waist, by night it was
under his pillow: this then was the chief difficulty.

But prisoner though he was, Caesar had always been treated with the
respect due to his name and rank: every day at the dinner-hour he was
conducted from the room that served as his prison to the governor,
who did the honours of the table in a grand and courteous fashion.
The fact was that Dan Manuel had served with honour under King
Ferdinand, and therefore, while he guarded Caesar rigorously,
according to orders, he had a great respect for so brave a general,
and took pleasure in listening to the accounts of his battles.  So he
had often insisted that Caesar should not only dine but also
breakfast with him; happily the prisoner, yielding perhaps to some
presentiment, had till now refused this favour.  This was of great
advantage to him, since, thanks to his solitude, he had been able to
receive the instruments of escape sent by Michelotto.  The same day
he received them, Caesar, on going back to his room, made a false
step and sprained his foot; at the dinner-hour he tried to go down,
but he pretended to be suffering so cruelly that he gave it up.  The
governor came to see him in his room, and found him stretched upon
the bed.

The day after, he was no better; the governor had his dinner sent in,
and came to see him, as on the night before; he found his prisoner so
dejected and gloomy in his solitude that he offered to come and sup
with him: Caesar gratefully accepted.

This time it was the prisoner who did the honours: Caesar was
charmingly courteous; the governor thought he would profit by this
lack of restraint to put to him certain questions as to the manner of
his arrest, and asked him as an Old Castilian, for whom honour is
still of some account, what the truth really was as to Gonzalvo's and
Ferdinand's breach of faith, with him.  Caesar appeared extremely
inclined to give him his entire confidence, but showed by a sign that
the attendants were in the way.  This precaution appeared quite
natural, and the governor took no offense, but hastened to send them
all away, so as to be sooner alone with his companion.  When the door
was shut, Caesar filled his glass and the governor's, proposing the
king's health: the governor honoured the toast: Caesar at once began
his tale; but he had scarcely uttered a third part of it when,
interesting as it was, the eyes of his host shut as though by magic,
and he slid under the table in a profound sleep.

After half a hour had passed, the servants, hearing no noise, entered
and found the two, one on the table, the other under it: this event
was not so extraordinary that they paid any great attention to it:
all they did was to carry Don Manuel to his room and lift Caesar on
the bed; then they put away the remnant of the meal for the next
day's supper, shut the door very carefully, and left their prisoner
alone.

Caesar stayed for a minute motionless and apparently plunged in the
deepest sleep; but when he had heard the steps retreating, he quietly
raised his head, opened his eyes, slipped off the bed, walked to the
door, slowly indeed, but not to all appearance feeling the accident
of the night before, and applied his ear for some minutes to the
keyhole; then lifting his head with an expression of indescribable
pride, he wiped his brow with his hand, and for the first time since
his guards went out, breathed freely with full-drawn breaths.

There was no time to lose: his first care was to shut the door as
securely on the inside as it was already shut on the outside, to blow
out the lamp, to open the window, and to finish sawing through the
bar.  When this was done, he undid the bandages on his leg, took down
the window and bed curtains, tore them into strips, joined the
sheets, table napkins and cloth, and with all these things tied
together end to end, formed a rope fifty or sixty feet long, with
knots every here and there.  This rope he fixed securely to the bar
next to the one he had just cut through; then he climbed up to the
window and began what was really the hardest part of his perilous
enterprise, clinging with hands and feet to this fragile support.
Luckily he was both strong and skilful, and he went down the whole
length of the rope without accident; but when he reached the end and
was hanging on the last knot, he sought in vain to touch the ground
with his feet; his rope was too short.

The situation was a terrible one: the darkness of the night prevented
the fugitive from seeing how far off he was from the ground, and his
fatigue prevented him from even attempting to climb up again.  Caesar
put up a brief prayer, whether to Gad or Satan he alone could say;
then letting go the rope, he dropped from a height of twelve or
fifteen feet.

The danger was too great for the fugitive to trouble about a few
trifling contusions: he at once rose, and guiding himself by the
direction of his window, he went straight to the little door of exit;
he then put his hand into the pocket of his doublet, and a cold sweat
damped his brow; either he had forgotten and left it in his room or
had lost it in his fall; anyhow, he had not the key.

But summoning his recollections, he quite gave up the first idea for
the second, which was the only likely one: again he crossed the
court, looking for the place where the key might have fallen, by the
aid of the wall round a tank on which he had laid his hand when he
got up; but the object of search was so small and the night so dark
that there was little chance of getting any result; still Caesar
sought for it, for in this key was his last hope: suddenly a door was
opened, and a night watch appeared, preceded by two torches.  Caesar
far the moment thought he was lost, but remembering the tank behind
him, he dropped into it, and with nothing but his head above water
anxiously watched the movements of the soldiers, as they advanced
beside him, passed only a few feet away, crossed the court, and then
disappeared by an opposite door.  But short as their luminous
apparition had been, it had lighted up the ground, and Caesar by the
glare of the torches had caught the glitter of the long-sought key,
and as soon as the door was shut behind the men, was again master of
his liberty.

Half-way between the castle and the village two cavaliers and a led
horse were waiting for him: the two men were Michelotto and the Count
of Benevento.  Caesar sprang upon the riderless horse, pressed with
fervour the hand of the count and the sbirro; then all three galloped
to the frontier of Navarre, where they arrived three days later, and
were honourably received by the king, Jean d'Albret, the brother of
Caesar's wife.

From Navarre he thought to pass into France, and from France to make
an attempt upon Italy, with the aid of Louis XII; but during Caesar's
detention in the castle of Medina del Campo, Louis had made peace
with the King of Spain; and when he heard of Caesar's flight; instead
of helping him, as there was some reason to expect he would, since he
was a relative by marriage, he took away the duchy of Valentinois and
also his pension.  Still, Caesar had nearly 200,000 ducats in the
charge of bankers at Genoa; he wrote asking for this sum, with which
he hoped to levy troops in Spain and in Navarre, and make an attempt
upon Pisa: 500 men, 200,000 ducats, his name and his word were more
than enough to save him from despair.

The bankers denied the deposit.

Caesar was at the mercy of his brother-in-law.

One of the vassals of the King of Navarre, named Prince Alarino, had
just then revolted: Caesar then took command of the army which Jean
d'Albret was sending out against him, followed by Michelotto, who was
as faithful in adversity as ever before.  Thanks to Caesar's courage
and skilful tactics, Prince Alarino was beaten in a first encounter;
but the day after his defeat he rallied his army, and offered battle
about three o'clock in the afternoon.  Caesar accepted it.

For nearly four hours they fought obstinately on both sides; but at
length, as the day was going down, Caesar proposed to decide the
issue by making a charge himself, at the head of a hundred men-at-
arms, upon a body of cavalry which made his adversary's chief force.
To his great astonishment, this cavalry at the first shock gave way
and took flight in the direction of a little wood, where they seemed
to be seeking refuge.  Caesar followed close on their heels up to the
edge of the forest; then suddenly the pursued turned right about
face, three or four hundred archers came out of the wood to help
them, and Caesar's men, seeing that they had fallen into an ambush,
took to their heels like cowards, and abandoned their leader.

Left alone, Caesar would not budge one step; possibly he had had
enough of life, and his heroism was rather the result of satiety than
courage: however that may be, he defended himself like a lion; but,
riddled with arrows and bolts, his horse at last fell, with Caesar's
leg under him.  His adversaries rushed upon him, and one of them
thrusting a sharp and slender iron pike through a weak place in his
armour, pierced his breast; Caesar cursed God and died.

But the rest of the enemy's army was defeated, thanks to the courage
of Michelotto, who fought like a valiant condottiere, but learned, on
returning to the camp in the evening, from those who had fled; that
they had abandoned Caesar and that he had never reappeared.  Then
only too certain, from his master's well-known courage, that disaster
had occurred, he desired to give one last proof of his devotion by
not leaving his body to the wolves and birds of prey.  Torches were
lighted, for it was dark, and with ten or twelve of those who had
gone with Caesar as far as the little wood, he went to seek his
master.  On reaching the spot they pointed out, he beheld five men
stretched side by side; four of them were dressed, but the fifth had
been stripped of his clothing and lay completely naked.  Michelotto
dismounted, lifted the head upon his knees, and by the light of the
torches recognised Caesar.

Thus fell, on the 10th of March, 1507, on an unknown field, near an
obscure village called Viane, in a wretched skirmish with the vassal
of a petty king, the man whom Macchiavelli presents to all princes as
the model of ability, diplomacy, and courage.

As to Lucrezia, the fair Duchess of Ferrara, she died full of years,
and honours, adored as a queen by her subjects, and sung as a goddess
by Ariosto and by Bembo.




EPILOGUE

There was once in Paris, says Boccaccio, a brave and good merchant
named Jean de Civigny, who did a great trade in drapery, and was
connected in business with a neighbour and fellow-merchant, a very
rich man called Abraham, who, though a Jew, enjoyed a good
reputation.  Jean de Civigny, appreciating the qualities of the
worthy Israelite; feared lest, good man as he was, his false religion
would bring his soul straight to eternal perdition; so he began to
urge him gently as a friend to renounce his errors and open his eyes
to the Christian faith, which he could see for himself was prospering
and spreading day by day, being the only true and good religion;
whereas his own creed, it was very plain, was so quickly diminishing
that it would soon disappear from the face of the earth.  The Jew
replied that except in his own religion there was no salvation, that
he was born in it, proposed to live and die in it, and that he knew
nothing in the world that could change his opinion.  Still, in his
proselytising fervour Jean would not think himself beaten, and never
a day passed but he demonstrated with those fair words the merchant
uses to seduce a customer, the superiority of the Christian religion
above the Jewish; and although Abraham was a great master of Mosaic
law, he began to enjoy his friend's preaching, either because of the
friendship he felt for him or because the Holy Ghost descended upon
the tongue of the new apostle; still obstinate in his own belief, he
would not change.  The more he persisted in his error, the more
excited was Jean about converting him, so that at last, by God's
help, being somewhat shaken by his friend's urgency, Abraham one day
said--

"Listen, Jean: since you have it so much at heart that I should be
converted, behold me disposed to satisfy you; but before I go to Rome
to see him whom you call God's vicar on earth, I must study his
manner of life and his morals, as also those of his brethren the
cardinals; and if, as I doubt not, they are in harmony with what you
preach, I will admit that, as you have taken such pains to show me,
your faith is better than mine, and I will do as you desire; but if
it should prove otherwise, I shall remain a Jew, as I was before; for
it is not worth while, at my age, to change my belief for a worse
one."

Jean was very sad when he heard these words; and he said mournfully
to himself, "Now I have lost my time and pains, which I thought I had
spent so well when I was hoping to convert this unhappy Abraham; for
if he unfortunately goes, as he says he will, to the court of Rome,
and there sees the shameful life led by the servants of the Church,
instead of becoming a Christian the Jew will be more of a Jew than
ever."  Then turning to Abraham, he said, "Ah, friend, why do you
wish to incur such fatigue and expense by going to Rome, besides the
fact that travelling by sea or by land must be very dangerous for so
rich a man as you are?  Do you suppose there is no one here to
baptize you?  If you have any doubts concerning the faith I have
expounded, where better than here will you find theologians capable
of contending with them and allaying them?  So, you see, this voyage
seems to me quite unnecessary: just imagine that the priests there
are such as you see here, and all the better in that they are nearer
to the supreme pastor.  If you are guided by my advice, you will
postpone this toil till you have committed some grave sin and need
absolution; then you and I will go together."

But the Jew replied--

"I believe, dear Jean, that everything is as you tell me; but you
know how obstinate I am.  I will go to Rome, or I will never be a
Christian."

Then Jean, seeing his great wish, resolved that it was no use trying
to thwart him, and wished him good luck; but in his heart he gave up
all hope; for it was certain that his friend would come back from his
pilgrimage more of a Jew than ever, if the court of Rome was still as
he had seen it.

But Abraham mounted his horse, and at his best speed took the road to
Rome, where on his arrival he was wonderfully well received by his
coreligionists; and after staying there a good long time, he began to
study the behaviour of the pope, the cardinals and other prelates,
and of the whole court.  But much to his surprise he found out,
partly by what passed under his eyes and partly by what he was told,
that all from the pope downward to the lowest sacristan of St.
Peter's were committing the sins of luxurious living in a most
disgraceful and unbridled manner, with no remorse and no shame, so
that pretty women and handsome youths could obtain any favours they
pleased.  In addition to this sensuality which they exhibited in
public, he saw that they were gluttons and drunkards, so much so that
they were more the slaves of the belly than are the greediest of
animals.  When he looked a little further, he found them so
avaricious and fond of money that they sold for hard cash both human
bodies and divine offices, and with less conscience than a man in
Paris would sell cloth or any other merchandise.  Seeing this and
much more that it would not be proper to set down here, it seemed to
Abraham, himself a chaste, sober, and upright man, that he had seen
enough.  So he resolved to return to Paris, and carried out the
resolution with his usual promptitude.  Jean de Civigny held a great
fete in honour of his return, although he had lost hope of his coming
back converted.  But he left time for him to settle down before he
spoke of anything, thinking there would be plenty of time to hear the
bad news he expected.  But, after a few days of rest, Abraham himself
came to see his friend, and Jean ventured to ask what he thought of
the Holy Father, the cardinals, and the other persons at the
pontifical court.  At these words the Jew exclaimed, "God damn them
all!  I never once succeeded in finding among them any holiness, any
devotion, any good works; but, on the contrary, luxurious living,
avarice, greed, fraud, envy, pride, and even worse, if there is
worse; all the machine seemed to be set in motion by an impulse less
divine than diabolical.  After what I saw, it is my firm conviction
that your pope, and of course the others as well, are using all their
talents, art, endeavours, to banish the Christian religion from the
face of the earth, though they ought to be its foundation and
support; and since, in spite of all the care and trouble they expend
to arrive at this end, I see that your religion is spreading every
day and becoming more brilliant and more pure, it is borne in upon me
that the Holy Spirit Himself protects it as the only true and the
most holy religion; this is why, deaf as you found me to your counsel
and rebellious to your wish, I am now, ever since I returned from
this Sodom, firmly resolved on becoming a Christian.  So let us go at
once to the church, for I am quite ready to be baptized."

There is no need to say if Jean de Civigny, who expected a refusal,
was pleased at this consent.  Without delay he went with his godson
to Notre Dame de Paris, where he prayed the first priest he met to
administer baptism to his friend, and this was speedily done; and the
new convert changed his Jewish name of Abraham into the Christian
name of Jean; and as the neophyte, thanks to his journey to Rome, had
gained a profound belief, his natural good qualities increased so
greatly in the practice of our holy religion, that after leading an
exemplary life he died in the full odour of sanctity.

This tale of Boccaccio's gives so admirable an answer to the charge
of irreligion which some might make against us if they mistook our
intentions, that as we shall not offer any other reply, we have not
hesitated to present it entire as it stands to the eyes of our
readers.

And let us never forget that if the papacy has had an Innocent VIII
and an Alexander VI who are its shame, it has also had a Pius VII and
a Gregory XVI who are its honour and glory.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "THE BORGIAS", CELEBRATED CRIMES, v1
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 1(of 8), Part 2

By Alexander Dumas, Pere




THE CENCI

1598


Should you ever go to Rome and visit the villa Pamphili, no doubt,
after having sought under its tall pines and along its canals the
shade and freshness so rare in the capital of the Christian world,
you will descend towards the Janiculum Hill by a charming road, in
the middle of which you will find the Pauline fountain.  Having
passed this monument, and having lingered a moment on the terrace of
the church of St. Peter Montorio, which commands the whole of Rome,
you will visit the cloister of Bramante, in the middle of which, sunk
a few feet below the level, is built, on the identical place where
St. Peter was crucified, a little temple, half Greek, half Christian;
you will thence ascend by a side door into the church itself.  There,
the attentive cicerone will show you, in the first chapel to the
right, the Christ Scourged, by Sebastian del Piombo, and in the third
chapel to the left, an Entombment by Fiammingo; having examined these
two masterpieces at leisure, he will take you to each end of the
transverse cross, and will show you--on one side a picture by
Salviati, on slate, and on the other a work by Vasari; then, pointing
out in melancholy tones a copy of Guido's Martyrdom of St. Peter on
the high altar, he will relate to you how for three centuries the
divine Raffaelle's Transfiguration was worshipped in that spot; how
it was carried away by the French in 1809, and restored to the pope
by the Allies in 1814.  As you have already in all probability
admired this masterpiece in the Vatican, allow him to expatiate, and
search at the foot of the altar for a mortuary slab, which you will
identify by a cross and the single word; Orate; under this gravestone
is buried Beatrice Cenci, whose tragical story cannot but impress you
profoundly.

She was the daughter of Francesco Cenci.  Whether or not it be true
that men are born in harmony with their epoch, and that some embody
its good qualities and others its bad ones, it may nevertheless
interest our readers to cast a rapid glance over the period which had
just passed when the events which we are about to relate took place.
Francesco Cenci will then appear to them as the diabolical
incarnation of his time.

On the 11th of August, 1492, after the lingering death-agony of
Innocent VIII, during which two hundred and twenty murders were
committed in the streets of Rome, Alexander VI ascended the
pontifical throne.  Son of a sister of Pope Calixtus III, Roderigo
Lenzuoli Borgia, before being created cardinal, had five children by
Rosa Vanozza, whom he afterwards caused to be married to a rich
Roman.  These children were:

Francis, Duke of Gandia;

Caesar, bishop and cardinal, afterwards Duke of Valentinois;

Lucrezia, who was married four times: her first husband was Giovanni
Sforza, lord of Pesaro, whom she left owing to his impotence; the
second, Alfonso, Duke of Bisiglia, whom her brother Caesar caused to
be assassinated; the third, Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, from
whom a second divorce separated her; finally, the fourth, Alfonso of
Aragon, who was stabbed to death on the steps of the basilica of St.
Peter, and afterwards, three weeks later, strangled, because he did
not die soon enough from his wounds, which nevertheless were mortal;

Giofre, Count of Squillace, of whom little is known;

And, finally, a youngest son, of whom nothing at all is known.

The most famous of these three brothers was Caesar Borgia.  He had
made every arrangement a plotter could make to be King of Italy at
the death of his father the pope, and his measures were so carefully
taken as to leave no doubt in his own mind as to the success of this
vast project.  Every chance was provided against, except one; but
Satan himself could hardly have foreseen this particular one.  The
reader will judge for himself.

The pope had invited Cardinal Adrien to supper in his vineyard on the
Belvidere; Cardinal Adrien was very rich, and the pope wished to
inherit his wealth, as he already had acquired that of the Cardinals
of Sant' Angelo, Capua, and Modena.  To effect this, Caesar Borgia
sent two bottles of poisoned wine to his father's cup-bearer, without
taking him into his confidence; he only instructed him not to serve
this wine till he himself gave orders to do so; unfortunately, during
supper the cup-bearer left his post for a moment, and in this
interval a careless butler served the poisoned wine to the pope, to
Caesar Borgia, and to Cardinal Corneto.

Alexander VI died some hours afterwards; Caesar Borgia was confined
to bed, and sloughed off his skin; while Cardinal Corneto lost his
sight and his senses, and was brought to death's door.

Pius III succeeded Alexander VI, and reigned twenty-five days; on the
twenty-sixth he was poisoned also.

Caesar Borgia had under his control eighteen Spanish cardinals who
owed to him their places in the Sacred College; these cardinals were
entirely his creatures, and he could command them absolutely.  As he
was in a moribund condition and could make no use of them for
himself, he sold them to Giuliano della Rovere, and Giuliano della
Rovere was elected pope, under the name of Julius II.  To the Rome of
Nero succeeded the Athens of Pericles.

Leo X succeeded Julius II, and under his pontificate Christianity
assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners,
gives to this epoch a strange complexion.  Crimes for the moment
disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in
good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by
Catullus.  Leo X died after having assembled under his reign, which
lasted eight years, eight months, and nineteen days, Michael Angelo,
Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto,
Fra Bartolommeo, Giulio Romano, Ariosto, Guicciardini, and
Macchiavelli.

Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna had equal claims to succeed him.
As both were skilful politicians, experienced courtiers, and moreover
of real and almost equal merit, neither of them could obtain a
majority, and the Conclave was prolonged almost indefinitely, to the
great fatigue of the cardinals.  So it happened one day that a
cardinal, more tired than the rest, proposed to elect, instead of
either Medici or Colonna, the son, some say of a weaver, others of a
brewer of Utrecht, of whom no one had ever thought till then, and who
was for the moment acting head of affairs in Spain, in the absence of
Charles the Fifth.  The jest prospered in the ears of those who heard
it; all the cardinals approved their colleague's proposal, and Adrien
became pope by a mere accident.

He was a perfect specimen of the Flemish type a regular Dutchman, and
could not speak a word of Italian.  When he arrived in Rome, and saw
the Greek masterpieces of sculpture collected at vast cost by Leo X,
he wished to break them to pieces, exclaiming, "Suet idola
anticorum."  His first act was to despatch a papal nuncio, Francesco
Cherigato, to the Diet of Nuremberg, convened to discuss the reforms
of Luther, with instructions which give a vivid notion of the manners
of the time.

"Candidly confess," said he, "that God has permitted this schism and
this persecution on account of the sins of man, and especially those
of priests and prelates of the Church; for we know that many
abominable things have taken place in the Holy See."

Adrien wished to bring the Romans back to the simple and austere
manners of the early Church, and with this object pushed reform to
the minutest details.  For instance, of the hundred grooms maintained
by Leo X, he retained only a dozen, in order, he said, to have two
more than the cardinals.

A pope like this could not reign long: he died after a year's
pontificate.  The morning after his death his physician's door was
found decorated with garlands of flowers, bearing this inscription:
"To the liberator of his country."

Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna were again rival candidates.
Intrigues recommenced, and the Conclave was once more so divided that
at one time the cardinals thought they could only escape the
difficulty in which they were placed by doing what they had done
before, and electing a third competitor; they were even talking about
Cardinal Orsini, when Giulio di Medici, one of the rival candidates,
hit upon a very ingenious expedient.  He wanted only five votes; five
of his partisans each offered to bet five of Colonna's a hundred
thousand ducats to ten thousand against the election of Giulio di
Medici.  At the very first ballot after the wager, Giulio di Medici
got the five votes he wanted; no objection could be made, the
cardinals had not been bribed; they had made a bet, that was all.

Thus it happened, on the 18th of November, 1523, Giulio di Medici was
proclaimed pope under the name of Clement VII.  The same day, he
generously paid the five hundred thousand ducats which his five
partisans had lost.

It was under this pontificate, and during the seven months in which
Rome, conquered by the Lutheran soldiers of the Constable of Bourbon,
saw holy things subjected to the most frightful profanations, that
Francesco Cenci was born.

He was the son of Monsignor Nicolo Cenci, afterwards apostolic
treasurer during the pontificate of Pius V.  Under this venerable
prelate, who occupied himself much more with the spiritual than the
temporal administration of his kingdom, Nicolo Cenci took advantage
of his spiritual head's abstraction of worldly matters to amass a net
revenue of a hundred and sixty thousand piastres, about f32,000 of
our money.  Francesco Cenci, who was his only son, inherited this
fortune.

His youth was spent under popes so occupied with the schism of Luther
that they had no time to think of anything else.  The result was,
that Francesco Cenci, inheriting vicious instincts and master of an
immense fortune which enabled him to purchase immunity, abandoned
himself to all the evil passions of his fiery and passionate
temperament.  Five times during his profligate career imprisoned for
abominable crimes, he only succeeded in procuring his liberation by
the payment of two hundred thousand piastres, or about one million
francs.  It should be explained that popes at this time were in great
need of money.

The lawless profligacy of Francesco Cenci first began seriously to
attract public attention under the pontificate of Gregory XIII.  This
reign offered marvellous facilities for the development of a
reputation such as that which this reckless Italian Don Juan seemed
bent on acquiring.  Under the Bolognese Buoncampagno, a free hand was
given to those able to pay both assassins and judges.  Rape and
murder were so common that public justice scarcely troubled itself
with these trifling things, if nobody appeared to prosecute the
guilty parties.  The good Gregory had his reward for his easygoing
indulgence; he was spared to rejoice over the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew.

Francesco Cenci was at the time of which we are speaking a man of
forty-four or forty-five years of age, about five feet four inches in
height, symmetrically proportioned, and very strong, although rather
thin; his hair was streaked with grey, his eyes were large and
expressive, although the upper eyelids drooped somewhat; his nose was
long, his lips were thin, and wore habitually a pleasant smile,
except when his eye perceived an enemy; at this moment his features
assumed a terrible expression; on such occasions, and whenever moved
or even slightly irritated, he was seized with a fit of nervous
trembling, which lasted long after the cause which provoked it had
passed.  An adept in all manly exercises and especially in
horsemanship, he sometimes used to ride without stopping from Rome to
Naples, a distance of forty-one leagues, passing through the forest
of San Germano and the Pontine marshes heedless of brigands, although
he might be alone and unarmed save for his sword and dagger.  When
his horse fell from fatigue, he bought another; were the owner
unwilling to sell he took it by force; if resistance were made, he
struck, and always with the point, never the hilt.  In most cases,
being well known throughout the Papal States as a free-handed person,
nobody tried to thwart him; some yielding through fear, others from
motives of interest.  Impious, sacrilegious, and atheistical, he
never entered a church except to profane its sanctity.  It was said
of him that he had a morbid appetite for novelties in crime, and that
there was no outrage he would not commit if he hoped by so doing to
enjoy a new sensation.

At the age of about forty-five he had married a very rich woman,
whose name is not mentioned by any chronicler.  She died, leaving him
seven children--five boys and two girls.  He then married Lucrezia
Petroni, a perfect beauty of the Roman type, except for the ivory
pallor of her complexion.  By this second marriage he had no
children.

As if Francesco Cenci were void of all natural affection, he hated
his children, and was at no pains to conceal his feelings towards
them: on one occasion, when he was building, in the courtyard of his
magnificent palace, near the Tiber, a chapel dedicated to St.
Thomas, he remarked to the architect, when instructing him to design
a family vault, "That is where I hope to bury them all." The
architect often subsequently admitted that he was so terrified by the
fiendish laugh which accompanied these words, that had not Francesco
Cenci's work been extremely profitable, he would have refused to go
on with it.

As soon as his three eldest boys, Giacomo, Cristoforo, and Rocco,
were out of their tutors' hands, in order to get rid of them he sent
them to the University of Salamanca, where, out of sight, they were
out of mind, for he thought no more about them, and did not even send
them the means of subsistence.  In these straits, after struggling
for some months against their wretched plight, the lads were obliged
to leave Salamanca, and beg their way home, tramping barefoot through
France and Italy, till they made their way back to Rome, where they
found their father harsher and more unkind than ever.

This happened in the early part of the reign of Clement VIII, famed
for his justice.  The three youths resolved to apply to him, to grant
them an allowance out of their father's immense income. They
consequently repaired to Frascati, where the pope was building the
beautiful Aldobrandini Villa, and stated their case.  The pope
admitted the justice of their claims, and ordered Francesco, to allow
each of them two thousand crowns a year.  He endeavoured by every
possible means to evade this decree, but the pope's orders were too
stringent to be disobeyed.

About this period he was for the third time imprisoned for infamous
crimes.  His three sons them again petitioned the pope, alleging that
their father dishonoured the family name, and praying that the
extreme rigour of the law, a capital sentence, should be enforced in
his case.  The pope pronounced this conduct unnatural and odious, and
drove them with ignominy from his presence.  As for Francesco, he
escaped, as on the two previous occasions, by the payment of a large
sum of money.

It will be readily understood that his sons' conduct on this occasion
did not improve their father's disposition towards them, but as their
independent pensions enabled them to keep out of his way, his rage
fell with all the greater intensity on his two unhappy daughters.
Their situation soon became so intolerable, that the elder,
contriving to elude the close supervision under which she was kept,
forwarded to the pope a petition, relating the cruel treatment to
which she was subjected, and praying His Holiness either to give her
in marriage or place her in a convent.  Clement VIII took pity on
her; compelled Francesco Cenci to give her a dowry of sixty thousand
crowns, and married her to Carlo Gabrielli, of a noble family of
Gubbio.  Francesco driven nearly frantic with rage when he saw this
victim released from his clutches.

About the same time death relieved him from two other encumbrances:
his sons Rocco and Cristoforo were killed within a year of each
other; the latter by a bungling medical practitioner whose name is
unknown; the former by Paolo Corso di Massa, in the streets of Rome.
This came as a relief to Francesco, whose avarice pursued his sons
even after their death, far he intimated to the priest that he would
not spend a farthing on funeral services.  They were accordingly
borne to the paupers' graves which he had caused to be prepared for
them, and when he saw them both interred, he cried out that he was
well rid of such good-for-nothing children, but that he should be
perfectly happy only when the remaining five were buried with the
first two, and that when he had got rid of the last he himself would
burn down his palace as a bonfire to celebrate the event.

But Francesco took every precaution against his second daughter,
Beatrice Cenci, following the example of her elder sister.  She was
then a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, beautiful and
innocent as an angel.  Her long fair hair, a beauty seen so rarely in
Italy, that Raffaelle, believing it divine, has appropriated it to
all his Madonnas, curtained a lovely forehead, and fell in flowing
locks over her shoulders.  Her azure eyes bore a heavenly expression;
she was of middle height, exquisitely proportioned; and during the
rare moments when a gleam of happiness allowed her natural character
to display itself, she was lively, joyous, and sympathetic, but at
the same time evinced a firm and decided disposition.

To make sure of her custody, Francesco kept her shut up in a remote
apartment of his palace, the key of which he kept in his own
possession.  There, her unnatural and inflexible gaoler daily brought
her some food.  Up to the age of thirteen, which she had now reached,
he had behaved to her with the most extreme harshness and severity;
but now, to poor Beatrice's great astonishment, he all at once became
gentle and even tender.  Beatrice was a child no longer; her beauty
expanded like a flower; and Francesco, a stranger to no crime,
however heinous, had marked her for his own.

Brought up as she had been, uneducated, deprived of all society, even
that of her stepmother, Beatrice knew not good from evil: her ruin
was comparatively easy to compass; yet Francesco, to accomplish his
diabolical purpose, employed all the means at his command.  Every
night she was awakened by a concert of music which seemed to come
from Paradise.  When she mentioned this to her father, he left her in
this belief, adding that if she proved gentle and obedient she would
be rewarded by heavenly sights, as well as heavenly sounds.

One night it came to pass that as the young girl was reposing, her
head supported on her elbow, and listening to a delightful harmony,
the chamber door suddenly opened, and from the darkness of her own
room she beheld a suite of apartments brilliantly illuminated, and
sensuous with perfumes; beautiful youths and girls, half clad, such
as she had seen in the pictures of Guido and Raffaelle, moved to and
fro in these apartments, seeming full of joy and happiness: these
were the ministers to the pleasures of Francesco, who, rich as a
king, every night revelled in the orgies of Alexander, the wedding
revels of Lucrezia, and the excesses of Tiberius at Capri.  After an
hour, the door closed, and the seductive vision vanished, leaving
Beatrice full of trouble and amazement.

The night following, the same apparition again presented itself,
only, on this occasion, Francesco Cenci, undressed, entered his
daughter's roam and invited her to join the fete.  Hardly knowing
what she did, Beatrice yet perceived the impropriety of yielding to
her father's wishes: she replied that, not seeing her stepmother,
Lucrezia Petroni, among all these women, she dared not leave her bed
to mix with persons who were unknown to her.  Francesco threatened
and prayed, but threats and prayers were of no avail.  Beatrice
wrapped herself up in the bedclothes, and obstinately refused to
obey.

The next night she threw herself on her bed without undressing.  At
the accustomed hour the door opened, and the nocturnal spectacle
reappeared.  This time, Lucrezia Petroni was among the women who
passed before Beatrice's door; violence had compelled her to undergo
this humiliation.  Beatrice was too far off to see her blushes and
her tears.  Francesco pointed out her stepmother, whom she had lacked
for in vain the previous evening; and as she could no longer make any
opposition, he led her, covered with blushes and confusion, into the
middle of this orgy.

Beatrice there saw incredible and infamous things....

Nevertheless, she resisted a long time: an inward voice told her that
this was horrible; but Francesco had the slaw persistence of a demon.
To these sights, calculated to stimulate her passions, he added
heresies designed to warp her mind; he told her that the greatest
saints venerated by the Church were the issue of fathers and
daughters, and in the end Beatrice committed a crime without even
knowing it to be a sin.

His brutality then knew no bounds.  He forced Lucrezia and Beatrice
to share the same bed, threatening his wife to kill her if she
disclosed to his daughter by a single word that there was anything
odious in such an intercourse.  So matters went on for about three
years.

At this time Francesco was obliged to make a journey, and leave the
women alone and free.  The first thing Lucrezia did was to enlighten
Beatrice an the infamy of the life they were leading; they then
together prepared a memorial to the pope, in which they laid before
him a statement of all the blows and outrages they had suffered.
But, before leaving, Francesco Cenci had taken precautions; every
person about the pope was in his pay, or hoped to be.  The petition
never reached His Holiness, and the two poor women, remembering that
Clement VIII had on a farmer occasion driven Giacomo, Cristaforo, and
Rocco from his presence, thought they were included in the same
proscription, and looked upon themselves as abandoned to their fate.

When matters were in this state, Giacomo, taking advantage of his
father's absence, came to pay them a visit with a friend of his, an
abbe named Guerra: he was a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six,
belonging to one of the most noble families in Rome, of a bold,
resolute, and courageous character, and idolised by all the Roman
ladies for his beauty.  To classical features he added blue eyes
swimming in poetic sentiment; his hair was long and fair, with
chestnut beard and eyebrows; add to these attractions a highly
educated mind, natural eloquence expressed by a musical and
penetrating voice, and the reader may form some idea of Monsignor the
Abbe Guerra.

No sooner had he seen Beatrice than he fell in love with her.  On her
side, she was not slow to return the sympathy of the young priest.
The Council of Trent had not been held at that time, consequently
ecclesiastics were not precluded from marriage.  It was therefore
decided that on the return of Francesco the Abbe Guerra should demand
the hand of Beatrice from her father, and the women, happy in the
absence of their master, continued to live on, hoping for better
things to come.

After three or four months, during which no one knew where he was,
Francesco returned.  The very first night, he wished to resume his
intercourse with Beatrice; but she was no longer the same person, the
timid and submissive child had become a girl of decided will; strong
in her love for the abbe, she resisted alike prayers, threats, and
blows.

The wrath of Francesco fell upon his wife, whom he accused of
betraying him; he gave her a violent thrashing.  Lucrezia Petroni was
a veritable Roman she-wolf, passionate alike in love and vengeance;
she endured all, but pardoned nothing.

Some days after this, the Abbe Guerra arrived at the Cenci palace to
carry out what had been arranged.  Rich, young, noble, and handsome,
everything would seem to promise him success; yet he was rudely
dismissed by Francesco.  The first refusal did not daunt him; he
returned to the charge a second time and yet a third, insisting upon
the suitableness of such a union.  At length Francesco, losing
patience, told this obstinate lover that a reason existed why
Beatrice could be neither his wife nor any other man's.  Guerra
demanded what this reason was.  Francesco replied:

"Because she is my mistress."

Monsignor Guerra turned pale at this answer, although at first he did
not believe a word of it; but when he saw the smile with which
Francesco Cenci accompanied his words, he was compelled to believe
that, terrible though it was, the truth had been spoken.

For three days he sought an interview with Beatrice in vain; at
length he succeeded in finding her.  His last hope was her denial of
this horrible story: Beatrice confessed all.  Henceforth there was no
human hope for the two lovers; an impassable gulf separated them.
They parted bathed in tears, promising to love one another always.

Up to that time the two women had not formed any criminal resolution,
and possibly the tragical incident might never have happened, had not
Frances one night returned into his daughter's room and violently
forced her into the commission of fresh crime.

Henceforth the doom of Francesco was irrevocably pronounced.

As we have said, the mind of Beatrice was susceptible to the best and
the worst influences: it could attain excellence, and descend to
guilt.  She went and told her mother of the fresh outrage she had
undergone; this roused in the heart of the other woman the sting of
her own wrongs; and, stimulating each other's desire for revenge,
they, decided upon the murder of Francesco.

Guerra was called in to this council of death.  His heart was a prey
to hatred and revenge.  He undertook to communicate with Giacomo
Cenci, without whose concurrence the women would not act, as he was
the head of the family, when his father was left out of account.

Giacomo entered readily into the conspiracy.  It will be remembered
what he had formerly suffered from his father; since that time he had
married, and the close-fisted old man had left him, with his wife and
children, to languish in poverty.  Guerra's house was selected to
meet in and concert matters.

Giacomo hired a sbirro named Marzio, arid Guerra a second named
Olympio.

Both these men had private reasons for committing the crime--one
being actuated by love, the other by hatred.  Marzio, who was in the
service of Giacomo, had often seen Beatrice, and loved her, but with
that silent and hopeless love which devours the soul.  When he
conceived that the proposed crime would draw him nearer to Beatrice,
he accepted his part in it without any demur.

As for Olympio, he hated Francesco, because the latter had caused him
to lose the post of castellan of Rocco Petrella, a fortified
stronghold in the kingdom of Naples, belonging to Prince Colonna.
Almost every year Francesco Cenci spent some months at Rocco Petrella
with his family; for Prince Colonna, a noble and magnificent but
needy prince, had much esteem for Francesco, whose purse he found
extremely useful.  It had so happened that Francesco, being
dissatisfied with Olympio, complained about him to Prince Colonna,
and he was dismissed.

After several consultations between the Cenci family, the abbe and
the sbirri, the following plan of action was decided upon.

The period when Francesco Cenci was accustomed to go to Rocco
Petrella was approaching: it was arranged that Olympio, conversant
with the district and its inhabitants, should collect a party of a
dozen Neapolitan bandits, and conceal them in a forest through which
the travellers would have to pass.  Upon a given signal, the whole
family were to be seized and carried off.  A heavy ransom was to be
demanded, and the sons were to be sent back to Rome to raise the sum;
but, under pretext of inability to do so, they were to allow the time
fixed by the bandits to lapse, when Francesco was to be put to death.
Thus all suspicions of a plot would be avoided, and the real
assassins would escape justice.

This well-devised scheme was nevertheless unsuccessful.  When
Francesco left Rome, the scout sent in advance by the conspirators
could not find the bandits; the latter, not being warned beforehand,
failed to come down before the passage of the travellers, who arrived
safe and sound at Rocco Petreila.  The bandits, after having
patrolled the road in vain, came to the conclusion that their prey
had escaped, and, unwilling to stay any longer in a place where they
had already spent a week, went off in quest of better luck elsewhere.

Francesco had in the meantime settled down in the fortress, and, to
be more free to tyrannise over Lucrezia and Beatrice, sent back to
Rome Giacomo and his two other sons.  He then recommenced his
infamous attempts upon Beatrice, and with such persistence, that she
resolved herself to accomplish the deed which at first she desired to
entrust to other hands.

Olympio and Marzio, who had nothing to fear from justice, remained
lurking about the castle; one day Beatrice saw them from a window,
and made signs that she had something to communicate to them.  The
same night Olympio, who having been castellan knew all the approaches
to the fortress, made his way there with his companion.  Beatrice
awaited them at a window which looked on to a secluded courtyard; she
gave them letters which she had written to her brother and to
Monsignor Guerra.  The former was to approve, as he had done before,
the murder of their father; for she would do nothing without his
sanction.  As for Monsignor Guerra, he was to pay Olympio a thousand
piastres, half the stipulated sum; Marzio acting out of pure love for
Beatrice, whom he worshipped as a Madonna; which observing, the girl
gave him a handsome scarlet mantle, trimmed with gold lace, telling
him to wear it for love of her.  As for the remaining moiety, it was
to be paid when the death of the old man had placed his wife and
daughter in possession of his fortune.

The two sbirri departed, and the imprisoned conspirators anxiously
awaited their return.  On the day fixed, they were seen again.
Monsignor Guerra had paid the thousand piastres, and Giacomo had
given his consent.  Nothing now stood in the way of the execution of
this terrible deed, which was fixed for the 8th of September, the day
of the Nativity of the Virgin; but Signora Lucrezia, a very devout
person, having noticed this circumstance, would not be a party to the
committal of a double sin; the matter was therefore deferred till the
next day, the 9th.

That evening, the 9th of September, 1598, the two women, supping with
the old man, mixed some narcotic with his wine so adroitly that,
suspicious though he was, he never detected it, and having swallowed
the potion, soon fell into a deep sleep.

The evening previous, Marzio and Olympio had been admitted into the
castle, where they had lain concealed all night and all day; for, as
will be remembered, the assassination would have been effected the
day before had it not been for the religious scruples of Signora
Lucrezia Petroni.  Towards midnight, Beatrice fetched them out of
their hiding-place, and took them to her father's chamber, the door
of which she herself opened.  The assassins entered, and the two
women awaited the issue in the room adjoining.

After a moment, seeing the sbirri reappear pale and nerveless,
shaking their heads without speaking, they at once inferred that
nothing had been done.

"What is the matter?" cried Beatrice; "and what hinders you?"

"It is a cowardly act," replied the assassins, "to kill a poor old
man in his sleep.  At the thought of his age, we were struck with
pity."

Then Beatrice disdainfully raised her head, and in a deep firm .voice
thus reproached them.

"Is it possible that you, who pretend to be brave and strong, have
not courage enough to kill a sleeping old man?  How would it be if he
were awake?  And thus you steal our money!  Very well: since your
cowardice compels me to do so, I will kill my father myself; but you
will not long survive him."

Hearing these words, the sbirri felt ashamed of their irresolution,
and, indicating by signs that they would fulfil their compact, they
entered the room, accompanied by the two women.  As they had said, a
ray of moonlight shone through the open window, and brought into
prominence the tranquil face of the old man, the sight of whose white
hair had so affected them.

This time they showed no mercy.  One of them carried two great nails,
such as those portrayed in pictures of the Crucifixion; the other
bore a mallet: the first placed a nail upright over one of the old
man's eyes; the other struck it with the hammer, and drove it into
his head.  The throat was pierced in the same way with the second
nail; and thus the guilty soul, stained throughout its career with
crimes of violence, was in its turn violently torn from the body,
which lay writhing on the floor where it had rolled.
The young girl then, faithful to her word, handed the sbirri a large
purse containing the rest of the sum agreed upon, and they left.
When they found themselves alone, the women drew the nails out of the
wounds, wrapped the corpse in a sheet, and dragged it through the
rooms towards a small rampart, intending to throw it down into a
garden which had been allowed to run to waste.  They hoped that the
old man's death would be attributed to his having accidentally fallen
off the terrace on his way in the dark to a closet at the end of the
gallery.  But their strength failed them when they reached the door
of the last room, and, while resting there, Lucrezia perceived the
two sbirri, sharing the money before making their escape.  At her
call they came to her, carried the corpse to the rampart, and, from a
spot pointed out by the women, where the terrace was unfenced by any
parapet, they threw it into an elder tree below, whose branches
retained' it suspended.

When the body was found the following morning hanging in the branches
of the elder tree, everybody supposed, as Beatrice and her stepmother
had foreseen, that Francesco, stepping over the edge of the 386
terrace in the dark, had thus met his end.  The body was so scratched
and disfigured that no one noticed the wounds made by the two nails.
The ladies, as soon as the news was imparted to them, came out from
their rooms, weeping and lamenting in so natural a manner as to
disarm any suspicions.  The only person who formed any was the
laundress to whom Beatrice entrusted the sheet in which her father's
body had been wrapped, accounting for its bloody condition by a lame
explanation, which the laundress accepted without question, or
pretended to do so; and immediately after the funeral, the mourners
returned to Rome, hoping at length to enjoy quietude and peace.
For some time, indeed, they did enjoy tranquillity, perhaps poisoned
by remorse, but ere long retribution pursued them.  The court of
Naples, hearing of the sudden and unexpected death of Francesco
Cenci, and conceiving some suspicions of violence, despatched a royal
commissioner to Petrella to exhume the body and make minute
inquiries, if there appeared to be adequate grounds for doing so.  On
his arrival all the domestics in the castle were placed under arrest
and sent in chains to Naples.  No incriminating proofs, however, were
found, except in the evidence of the laundress, who deposed that
Beatrice had given her a bloodstained sheet to wash.  This, clue led
to terrible consequences; for, further questioned she declared that
she could not believe the explanation given to account for its
condition.  The evidence was sent to the Roman court; but at that
period it did not appear strong enough to warrant the arrest of the
Cenci family, who remained undisturbed for many months, during which
time the youngest boy died.  Of the five brothers there only remained
Giacomo, the eldest, and Bernardo, the youngest but one.  Nothing
prevented them from escaping to Venice or Florence; but they remained
quietly in Rome.

Meantime Monsignor Guerra received private information that, shortly
before the death of Francesco, Marzio and Olympio had been seen
prowling round the castle, and that the Neapolitan police had
received orders to arrest them.

The monsignor was a most wary man, and very difficult to catch
napping when warned in time.  He immediately hired two other sbirri
to assassinate Marzio and Olympio.  The one commissioned to put
Olympio out of the way came across him at Terni, and conscientiously
did his work with a poniard, but Marzio's man unfortunately arrived
at Naples too late, and found his bird already in the hands of the
police.

He was put to the torture, and confessed everything.  His deposition
was sent to Rome, whither he shortly afterwards followed it, to be
confronted with the accused.  Warrants were immediately issued for
the arrest of Giacomo, Bernardo, Lucrezia, and Beatrice; they were at
first confined in the Cenci palace under a strong guard, but the
proofs against them becoming stronger and stronger, they were removed
to the castle of Corte Savella, where they were confronted with
Marzio; but they obstinately denied both any complicity in the crime
and any knowledge of the assassin.  Beatrice, above all, displayed
the greatest assurance, demanding to be the first to be confronted
with Marzio; whose mendacity she affirmed with such calm dignity,
that he, more than ever smitten by her beauty, determined, since he
could not live for her, to save her by his death.  Consequently, he
declared all his statements to be false, and asked forgiveness from
God and from Beatrice; neither threats nor tortures could make him
recant, and he died firm in his denial, under frightful tortures.
The Cenci then thought themselves safe.

God's justice, however, still pursued them.  The sbirro who had
killed Olympio happened to be arrested for another crime, and, making
a clean breast, confessed that he had been employed by Monsignor
Guerra--to put out of the way a fellow-assassin named Olympio, who
knew too many of the monsignor's secrets.

Luckily for himself, Monsignor Guerra heard of this opportunely.  A
man of infinite resource, he lost not a moment in timid or irresolute
plans, but as it happened that at the very moment when he was warned,
the charcoal dealer who supplied his house with fuel was at hand, he
sent for him, purchased his silence with a handsome bribe, and then,
buying for almost their weight in gold the dirty old clothes which he
wore, he assumed these, cut off all his beautiful cherished fair
hair, stained his beard, smudged his face, bought two asses, laden
with charcoal, and limped up and down the streets of Rome, crying,
"Charcoal!  charcoal!" Then, whilst all the detectives were hunting
high and low for him, he got out of the city, met a company of
merchants under escort, joined them, and reached Naples, where he
embarked.  What ultimately became of him was never known; it has been
asserted, but without confirmation, that he succeeded--in reaching
France, and enlisted in a Swiss regiment in the pay of Henry IV.

The confession of the sbirro and the disappearance of Monsignor
Guerra left no moral doubt of the guilt of the Cenci.  They were
consequently sent from the castle to the prison; the two brothers,
when put to the torture, broke down and confessed their guilt.
Lucrezia Petroni's full habit of body rendered her unable to bear the
torture of the rope, and, on being suspended in the air, begged to be
lowered, when she confessed all she knew.

As for Beatrice, she continued unmoved; neither promises, threats,
nor torture had any effect upon her; she bore everything
unflinchingly, and the judge Ulysses Moscati himself, famous though
he was in such matters, failed to draw from her a single
incriminating word.  Unwilling to take any further responsibility, he
referred the case to Clement VIII; and the pope, conjecturing that
the judge had been too lenient in applying the torture to, a young
and beautiful Roman lady, took it out of his hands and entrusted it
to another judge, whose severity and insensibility to emotion were
undisputed.

This latter reopened the whole interrogatory, and as Beatrice up to
that time had only been subjected to the ordinary torture, he gave
instructions to apply both the ordinary and extraordinary.  This was
the rope and pulley, one of the most terrible inventions ever devised
by the most ingenious of tormentors.

To make the nature of this horrid torture plain to our readers, we
give a detailed description of it, adding an extract of the presiding
judge's report of the case, taken from the Vatican manuscripts.

Of the various forms of torture then used in Rome the most common
were the whistle, the fire, the sleepless, and the rope.

The mildest, the torture of the whistle, was used only in the case of
children and old persons; it consisted in thrusting between the nails
and the flesh reeds cut in the shape of whistles.

The fire, frequently employed before the invention of the sleepless
torture, was simply roasting the soles of the feet before a hot fire.

The sleepless torture, invented by Marsilius, was worked by forcing
the accused into an angular frame of wood about five feet high, the
sufferer being stripped and his arms tied behind his back to the
frame; two men, relieved every five hours, sat beside him, and roused
him the moment he closed his eyes.  Marsilius says he has never found
a man proof against this torture; but here he claims more than he is
justly entitled to.  Farinacci states that, out of one hundred
accused persons subjected to it, five only refused to confess--a very
satisfactory result for the inventor.

Lastly comes the torture of the rope and pulley, the most in vogue of
all, and known in other Latin countries as the strappado.

It was divided into three degrees of intensity--the slight, the
severe, and the very severe.

The first, or slight torture, which consisted mainly in the
apprehensions it caused, comprised the threat of severe torture,
introduction into the torture chamber, stripping, and the tying of
the rope in readiness for its appliance.  To increase the terror
these preliminaries excited, a pang of physical pain was added by
tightening a cord round the wrists.  This often sufficed to extract a
confession from women or men of highly strung nerves.

The second degree, or severe torture, consisted in fastening the
sufferer, stripped naked, and his hands tied behind his back, by the
wrists to one end of a rope passed round a pulley bolted into the
vaulted ceiling, the other end being attached to a windlass, by
turning which he could be hoisted, into the air, and dropped again,
either slowly or with a jerk, as ordered by the judge.  The
suspension generally lasted during the recital of a Pater Noster, an
Ave Maria, or a Miserere; if the accused persisted in his denial, it
was doubled.  This second degree, the last of the ordinary torture,
was put in practice when the crime appeared reasonably probable but
was not absolutely proved.

The third, or very severe, the first of the extraordinary forms of
torture, was so called when the sufferer, having hung suspended by
the wrists, for sometimes a whole hour, was swung about by the
executioner, either like the pendulum of a clock, or by elevating him
with the windlass and dropping him to within a foot or two of the
ground.  If he stood this torture, a thing almost unheard of, seeing
that it cut the flesh of the wrist to the bone and dislocated the
limbs, weights were attached to the feet, thus doubling the torture.
This last form of torture was only applied when an atrocious crime
had been proved to have been committed upon a sacred person, such as
a priest, a cardinal, a prince, or an eminent and learned man.

Having seen that Beatrice was sentenced to the torture ordinary and
extraordinary, and having explained the nature of these tortures, we
proceed to quote the official report:--

"And as in reply to every question she would confess nothing, we
caused her to be taken by two officers and led from the prison to the
torture chamber, where the torturer was in attendance; there, after
cutting off her hair, he made her sit on a small stool, undressed
her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened
them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling of the
aforesaid chamber, and wound up at the other end by a four lever
windlass, worked by two men."

"Before hoisting her from the ground we again interrogated her
touching the aforesaid parricide; but notwithstanding the confessions
of her brother and her stepmother, which were again produced, bearing
their signatures, she persisted in denying everything, saying, 'Haul
me about and do what you like with me; I have spoken the truth, and
will tell you nothing else, even if I were torn to pieces.'

"Upon this we had her hoisted in the air by the wrists to the height
of about two feet from the ground, while we recited a Pater Noster;
and then again questioned her as to the facts and circumstances of
the aforesaid parricide; but she would make no further answer, only
saying, 'You are killing me!  You are killing me!'

"We then raised her to the elevation of four feet, and began an Ave
Maria.  But before our prayer was half finished she fainted away; or
pretended to do so.

"We caused a bucketful of water to be thrown over her head; feeling
its coolness, she recovered consciousness, and cried, 'My God!  I am
dead!  You are killing me!  My God!'  But this was all she would say.

"We then raised her higher still, and recited a Miserere, during
which, instead of joining in the prayer, she shook convulsively and
cried several times, 'My God!  My God!'

"Again questioned as to the aforesaid parricide, she would confess
nothing, saying only that she was innocent, and then again fainted
away.

"We caused more water to be thrown over her; then she recovered her
senses, opened her eyes, and cried, 'O cursed executioners!  You are
killing me!  You are killing me!'  But nothing more would she say.

"Seeing which, and that she persisted in her denial, we ordered the
torturer to proceed to the torture by jerks.

"He accordingly hoisted her ten feet from the ground, and when there
we enjoined her to tell the truth; but whether she would not or could
not speak, she answered only by a motion of the head indicating that
she could say nothing.

"Seeing which, we made a sign to the executioner, to let go the rope,
and she fell with all her weight from the height of ten feet to that
of two feet; her arms, from the shock, were dislocated from their
sockets; she uttered a loud cry, and swooned away.

"We again caused water to be dashed in her face; she returned to
herself, and again cried out, 'Infamous assassins!  You are killing
me; but were you to tear out my arms, I would tell you nothing else.'

"Upon this, we ordered a weight of fifty pounds to be fastened to her
feet.  But at this moment the door opened, and many voices cried,
'Enough!  Enough!  Do not torture her any more!'"

These voices were those of Giacomo, Bernardo, and Lucrezia Petroni.
The judges, perceiving the obstinacy of Beatrice, had ordered that
the accused, who had been separated for five months, should be
confronted.

They advanced into the torture chamber, and seeing Beatrice hanging
by the wrists, her arms disjointed, and covered with blood, Giacomo
cried out:--

"The sin is committed; nothing further remains but to save our souls
by repentance, undergo death courageously, and not suffer you to be
thus tortured."

Then said Beatrice, shaking her head as if to cast off grief--

"Do you then wish to die?  Since you wish it, be it so."

Then turning to the officers:--

"Untie me," said she, "read the examination to me; and what I have to
confess, I will confess; what I have to deny, I will deny."

Beatrice was then lowered and untied; a barber reduced the
dislocation of her arms in the usual manner; the examination was read
over to her, and, as she had promised, she made a full confession.

After this confession, at the request of the two brothers, they were
all confined in the same prison; but the next day Giacomo and
Bernardo were taken to the cells of Tordinona; as for the women, they
remained where they were.

The pope was so horrified on reading the particulars of the crime
contained in the confessions, that he ordered the culprits to be
dragged by wild horses through the streets of Rome.  But so barbarous
a sentence shocked the public mind, so much so that many persons of
princely rank petitioned the Holy Father on their knees, imploring
him to reconsider his decree, or at least allow the accused to be
heard in their defence.

"Tell me," replied Clement VIII, "did they give their unhappy father
time to be heard in his own defence, when they slew him in so
merciless and degrading a fashion?"

At length, overcome by so many entreaties, he respited them for three
days.

The most eloquent and skilful advocates in Rome immediately busied
themselves in preparing pleadings for so emotional a case, and on the
day fixed for hearing appeared before His Holiness.

The first pleader was Nicolo degli Angeli, who spoke with such force
and eloquence that the pope, alarmed at the effect he was producing
among the audience, passionately interrupted him.

"Are there then to be found," he indignantly cried, "among the Roman
nobility children capable of killing their parents, and among Roman
lawyers men capable of speaking in their defence?  This is a thing we
should never have believed, nor even for a moment supposed it
possible!"

All were silent upon this terrible rebuke, except Farinacci, who,
nerving himself with a strong sense of duty, replied respectfully but
firmly--

"Most Holy Father, we are not here to defend criminals, but to save
the innocent; for if we succeeded in proving that any of the accused
acted in self-defence, I hope that they will be exonerated in the
eyes of your Holiness; for just as the law provides for cases in
which the father may legally kill the child, so this holds good in
the converse.  We will therefore continue our pleadings on receiving
leave from your Holiness to do so."

Clement VIII then showed himself as patient as he had previously been
hasty, and heard the argument of Farinacci, who pleaded that
Francesco Cenci had lost all the rights of a father from, the day
that he violated his daughter.  In support of his contention he
wished to put in the memorial sent by Beatrice to His Holiness,
petitioning him, as her sister had done, to remove her from the
paternal roof and place her in a convent.  Unfortunately, this
petition had disappeared, and notwithstanding the minutest search
among the papal documents, no trace of it could be found.

The pope had all the pleadings collected, and dismissed the
advocates, who then retired, excepting d'Altieri, who knelt before
him, saying--

"Most Holy Father, I humbly ask pardon for appearing before you in
this case, but I had no choice in the matter, being the advocate of
the poor."

The pope kindly raised him, saying:

"Go; we are not surprised at your conduct, but at that of others, who
protect and defend criminals."

As the pope took a great interest in this case, he sat up all night
over it, studying it with Cardinal di San Marcello, a man of much
acumen and great experience in criminal cases.  Then, having summed
it up, he sent a draft of his opinion to the advocates, who read it
with great satisfaction, and entertained hopes that the lives of the
convicted persons would be spared; for the evidence all went to prove
that even if the children had taken their father's life, all the
provocation came from him, and that Beatrice in particular had been
dragged into the part she had taken in this crime by the tyranny,
wickedness, and brutality of her father.  Under the influence of
these considerations the pope mitigated the severity of their prison
life, and even allowed the prisoners to hope that their lives would
not be forfeited.

Amidst the general feeling of relief afforded to the public by these
favours, another tragical event changed the papal mind and frustrated
all his humane intentions.  This was the atrocious murder of the
Marchese di Santa Croce, a man seventy years of age, by his son
Paolo, who stabbed him with a dagger in fifteen or twenty places,
because the father would not promise to make Paolo his sole heir.
The murderer fled and escaped.

Clement VIII was horror-stricken at the increasing frequency of this
crime of parricide: for the moment, however, he was unable to take
action, having to go to Monte Cavallo to consecrate a cardinal
titular bishop in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli; but the day
following, on Friday the 10th of September 1599, at eight o'clock in
the morning, he summoned Monsignor Taverna, governor of Rome, and
said to him--

"Monsignor, we place in your hands the Cenci case, that you may carry
out the sentence as speedily as possible."

On his return to his palace, after leaving His Holiness, the governor
convened a meeting of all the criminal judges in the city, the result
of the council being that all the Cenci were condemned to death.

The final sentence was immediately known; and as this unhappy family
inspired a constantly increasing interest, many cardinals spent the
whole of the night either on horseback or in their carriages, making
interest that, at least so far as the women were concerned, they
should be put to death privately and in the prison, and that a free
pardon should be granted to Bernardo, a poor lad only fifteen years
of age, who, guiltless of any participation in the crime, yet found
himself involved in its consequences.  The one who interested himself
most in the case was Cardinal Sforza, who nevertheless failed to
elicit a single gleam of hope, so obdurate was His Holiness.  At
length Farinacci, working on the papal conscience, succeeded, after
long and urgent entreaties, and only at the last moment, that the
life of Bernardo should be spared.

From Friday evening the members of the brotherhood of the Conforteria
had gathered at the two prisons of Corte Savella and Tordinona.  The
preparations for the closing scene of the tragedy had occupied
workmen on the bridge of Sant' Angelo all night; and it was not till
five o'clock in the morning that the registrar entered the cell of
Lucrezia and Beatrice to read their sentences to them.

Both were sleeping, calm in the belief of a reprieve.  The registrar
woke them, and told them that, judged by man, they must now prepare
to appear before God.

Beatrice was at first thunderstruck: she seemed paralysed and
speechless; then she rose from bed, and staggering as if intoxicated,
recovered her speech, uttering despairing cries.  Lucrezia heard the
tidings with more firmness, and proceeded to dress herself to go to
the chapel, exhorting Beatrice to resignation; but she, raving, wrung
her, hands and struck her head against the wall, shrieking, "To die!
to die!  Am I to die unprepared, on a scaffold! on a gibbet!  My God!
my God!"  This fit led to a terrible paroxysm, after which the
exhaustion of her body enabled her mind to recover its balance, and
from that moment she became an angel of humility and an example of
resignation.

Her first request was for a notary to make her will.  This was
immediately complied with, and on his arrival she dictated its
provisions with much calmness and precision.  Its last clause desired
her interment in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, for which she
always had a strong attachment, as it commanded a view of her
father's palace.  She bequeathed five hundred crowns to the nuns of
the order of the Stigmata, and ordered that her dowry; amounting to
fifteen thousand crowns, should be distributed in marriage portions
to fifty poor girls.  She selected the foot of the high altar as the
place where she wished to be buried, over which hung the beautiful
picture of the Transfiguration, so often admired by her during her
life.

Following her example, Lucrezia in her turn, disposed of her
property: she desired to be buried in the church of San Giorgio di
Velobre, and left thirty-two thousand crowns to charities, with other
pious legacies.  Having settled their earthly affairs, they joined in
prayer, reciting psalms, litanies, and prayers far the dying.

At eight o'clock they confessed, heard mass, and received the
sacraments; after which Beatrice, observing to her stepmother that
the rich dresses they wore were out of place on a scaffold, ordered
two to be made in nun's fashion--that is to say, gathered at the
neck, with long wide sleeves.  That for Lucrezia was made of black
cotton stuff, Beatrice's of taffetas.  In addition she had a small
black turban made to place on her head.  These dresses, with cords
for girdles, were brought them; they were placed on a chair, while
the women continued to pray.

The time appointed being near at hand, they were informed that their
last moment was approaching.  Then Beatrice, who was still on her
knees, rose with a tranquil and almost joyful countenance.  "Mother,"
said she, "the moment of our suffering is impending; I think we had
better dress in these clothes, and help one another at our toilet for
the last time."  They then put on the dresses provided, girt
themselves with the cords; Beatrice placed her turban on her head,
and they awaited the last summons.

In the meantime, Giacomo and Bernardo, whose sentences had been read
to them, awaited also the moment of their death.  About ten o'clock
the members of the Confraternity of Mercy, a Florentine order,
arrived at the prison of Tordinona, and halted on the threshold with
the crucifix, awaiting the appearance of the unhappy youths.  Here a
serious accident had nearly happened.  As many persons were at the
prison windows to see the prisoners come out, someone accidentally
threw down a large flower-pot full of earth, which fell into the
street and narrowly missed one of the Confraternity who was amongst
the torch-bearers just before the crucifix.  It passed so close to
the torch as to extinguish the flame in its descent.

At this moment the gates opened, and Giacomo appeared first on the
threshold.  He fell on his knees, adoring the holy crucifix with
great devotion.  He was completely covered with a large mourning
cloak, under which his bare breast was prepared to be torn by the
red-hot pincers of the executioner, which were lying ready in a
chafing-dish fixed to the cart.  Having ascended the vehicle, in
which the executioner placed him so as more readily to perform this
office, Bernardo came out, and was thus addressed on his appearance
by the fiscal of Rome--

"Signor Bernardo Cenci, in the name of our blessed Redeemer, our Holy
Father the Pope spares your life; with the sole condition that you
accompany your relatives to the scaffold and to their death, and
never forget to pray for those with whom you were condemned to die."

At this unexpected intelligence, a loud murmur of joy spread among
the crowd, and the members of the Confraternity immediately untied
the small mask which covered the youth's eyes; for, owing to his
tender age, it had been thought proper to conceal the scaffold from
his sight.

Then the executioner; having disposed of Giacomo, came down from the
cart to take Bernardo; whose pardon being formally communicated to
him, he took off his handcuffs, and placed him alongside his brother,
covering him up with a magnificent cloak embroidered with gold, for
the neck and shoulders of the poor lad had been already bared, as a
preliminary to his decapitation.  People were surprised to see such a
rich cloak in the possession of the executioner, but were told that
it was the one given by Beatrice to Marzio to pledge him to the
murder of her father, which fell to the executioner as a perquisite
after the execution of the assassin.  The sight of the great
assemblage of people produced such an effect upon the boy that he
fainted.

The procession then proceeded to the prison of Corte Savella,
marching to the sound of funeral chants.  At its gates the sacred
crucifix halted for the women to join: they soon appeared, fell on
their knees, and worshipped the holy symbol as the others had done.
The march to the scaffold was then resumed.

The two female prisoners followed the last row of penitents in single
file, veiled to the waist, with the distinction that Lucrezia, as a
widow, wore a black veil and high-heeled slippers of the same hue,
with bows of ribbon, as was the fashion; whilst Beatrice, as a young
unmarried girl, wore a silk flat cap to match her corsage, with a
plush hood, which fell over her shoulders and covered her violet
frock; white slippers with high heels, ornamented with gold rosettes
and cherry-coloured fringe.  The arms of both were untrammelled,
except far a thin slack cord which left their hands free to carry a
crucifix and a handkerchief.

During the night a lofty scaffold had been erected on the bridge of
Sant' Angelo, and the plank and block were placed thereon.  Above the
block was hung, from a large cross beam, a ponderous axe, which,
guided by two grooves, fell with its whole weight at the touch of a
spring.

In this formation the procession wended its way towards the bridge of
Sant' Angela.  Lucrezia, the more broken down of the two, wept
bitterly; but Beatrice was firm and unmoved.  On arriving at the open
space before the bridge, the women were led into a chapel, where they
were shortly joined by Giacomo and Bernardo; they remained together
for a few moments, when the brothers were led away to the scaffold,
although one was to be executed last, and the other was pardoned.
But when they had mounted the platform, Bernardo fainted a second
time; and as the executioner was approaching to his assistance, some
of the crowd, supposing that his object was to decapitate him, cried
loudly, "He is pardoned!"  The executioner reassured them by seating
Bernardo near the block, Giacomo kneeling on the other side.

Then the executioner descended, entered tie chapel, and reappeared
leading Lucrezia, who was the first to suffer.  At the foot of the
scaffold he tied her hands behind her back, tore open the top of her
corsage so as to uncover her shoulders, gave her the crucifix to
kiss, and led her to the step ladder, which she ascended with great
difficulty, on account of her extreme stoutness; then, on her
reaching the platform, he removed the veil which covered her head.
On this exposure of her features to the immense crowd, Lucrezia
shuddered from head to foot; then, her eyes full of tears, she cried
with a loud voice--

"O my God, have mercy upon me; and do you, brethren, pray for my
soul!"

Having uttered these words, not knowing what was required of her, she
turned to Alessandro, the chief executioner, and asked what she was
to do; he told her to bestride the plank and lie prone upon it; which
she did with great trouble and timidity; but as she was unable, on
account of the fullness of her bust, to lay her neck upon the block,
this had to be raised by placing a billet of wood underneath it; all
this time the poor woman, suffering even more from shame than from
fear, was kept in suspense; at length, when she was properly
adjusted, the executioner touched.  the spring, the knife fell, and
the decapitated head, falling on the platform of the scaffold,
bounded two or three times in the air, to the general horror; the
executioner then seized it, showed it to the multitude, and wrapping
it in black taffetas, placed it with the body on a bier at the foot
of the scaffold.

Whilst arrangements were being made for the decapitation of Beatrice,
several stands, full of spectators, broke down; some people were
killed by this accident, and still more lamed and injured.

The machine being now rearranged and washed, the executioner returned
to the chapel to take charge of Beatrice, who, on seeing the sacred
crucifix, said some prayers for her soul, and on her hands being
tied, cried out, "God grant that you be binding this body unto
corruption, and loosing this soul unto life eternal!"  She then
arose, proceeded to the platform, where she devoutly kissed the
stigmata; then leaving her slippers at the foot of the scaffold, she
nimbly ascended the ladder, and instructed beforehand, promptly lay
down on the plank, without exposing her naked shoulders.  But her
precautions to shorten the bitterness of death were of no avail, for
the pope, knowing her impetuous disposition, and fearing lest she
might be led into the commission of some sin between absolution and
death, had given orders that the moment Beatrice was extended on the
scaffold a signal gun should be fired from the castle of Sant'
Angelo; which was done, to the great astonishment of everybody,
including Beatrice herself, who, not expecting this explosion, raised
herself almost upright; the pope meanwhile, who was praying at Monte
Cavallo, gave her absolution 'in articulo mortis'.  About five
minutes thus passed, during which the sufferer waited with her head
replaced on the block; at length, when the executioner judged that
the absolution had been given, he released the spring, and the axe
fell.

A gruesome sight was then afforded: whilst the head bounced away on
one side of the block, on the other the body rose erect, as if about
to step backwards; the executioner exhibited the head, and disposed
of it and the body as before.  He wished to place Beatrice's body
with that of her stepmother, but the brotherhood of Mercy took it out
of his hands, and as one of them was attempting to lay it on the
bier, it slipped from him and fell from the scaffold to the ground
below; the dress being partially torn from the body, which was so
besmeared with dust and blood that much time was occupied in washing
it.  Poor Bernardo was so overcome by this horrible scene that he
swooned away for the third time, and it was necessary to revive him
with stimulants to witness the fate of his elder brother.

The turn of Giacomo at length arrived: he had witnessed the death of
his stepmother and his sister, and his clothes were covered with
their blood; the executioner approached him and tore off his cloak,
exposing his bare breast covered with the wounds caused by the grip
of red-hot pincers; in this state, and half-naked, he rose to his
feet, and turning to his brother, said--

"Bernardo, if in my examination I have compromised and accused you, I
have done so falsely, and although I have already disavowed this
declaration, I repeat, at the moment of appearing before God, that
you are innocent, and that it is a cruel abuse of justice to compel
you to witness this frightful spectacle."

The executioner then made him kneel down, bound his legs to one of
the beams erected on the scaffold, and having bandaged his eyes,
shattered his head with a blow of his mallet; then, in the sight
of all, he hacked his body into four quarters.  The official party
then left, taking with them Bernardo, who, being in a state of high
fever, was bled and put to bed.

The corpses of the two ladies were laid out each on its bier under
the statue of St. Paul, at the foot of the bridge, with four torches
of white wax, which burned till four o'clock in the afternoon; then,
along with the remains of Giacomo, they were taken to the church of
San Giovanni Decollato; finally, about nine in the evening, the body
of Beatrice, covered with flowers, and attired in the dress worn at
her execution, was carried to the church of San Pietro in Montorio,
with fifty lighted torches, and followed by the brethren of the order
of the Stigmata and all the Franciscan monks in Rome; there,
agreeably to her wish, it was buried at the foot of the high altar.

The same evening Signora Lucrezia was interred, as she had desired to
be, in the church of San Giorgio di Velobre.

All Rome may be said to have been present at this tragedy, carriages,
horses, foot people, and cars crowding as it were upon one another.
The day was unfortunately so hot, and the sun so scorching, that many
persons fainted, others returned home stricken with fever, and some
even died during the night, owing to sunstroke from exposure during
the three hours occupied by the execution.

The Tuesday following, the 14th of September; being the Feast of the
Holy Cross, the brotherhood of San Marcello, by special licence of
the pope, set at liberty the unhappy Bernardo Cenci, with the
condition of paying within the year two thousand five hundred Roman
crowns to the brotherhood of the most Holy Trinity of Pope Sixtus, as
may be found to-day recorded in their archives.

Having now seen the tomb, if you desire to form a more vivid
impression of the principal actors in this tragedy than can be
derived from a narrative, pay a visit to the Barberini Gallery, where
you will see, with five other masterpieces by Guido, the portrait of
Beatrice, taken, some say the night before her execution, others
during her progress to the scaffold; it is the head of a lovely girl,
wearing a headdress composed of a turban with a lappet.  The hair is
of a rich fair chestnut hue; the dark eyes are moistened with recent
tears; a perfectly farmed nose surmounts an infantile mouth;
unfortunately, the loss of tone in the picture since it was painted
has destroyed the original fair complexion.  The age of the subject
may be twenty, or perhaps twenty-two years.

Near this portrait is that of Lucrezia Petrani the small head
indicates a person below the middle height; the attributes are those
of a Roman matron in her pride; her high complexion, graceful
contour, straight nose, black eyebrows, and expression at the same
time imperious and voluptuous indicate this character to the life; a
smile still seems to linger an the charming dimpled cheeks and
perfect mouth mentioned by the chronicler, and her face is
exquisitely framed by luxuriant curls falling from her forehead in
graceful profusion.

As for Giacomo and Bernardo, as no portraits of them are in
existence, we are obliged to gather an idea of their appearance from
the manuscript which has enabled us to compile this sanguinary
history; they are thus described by the eye-witness of the closing
scene--

Giacomo was short, well-made and strong, with black hair and beard;
he appeared to be about twenty-six years of age.

Poor Bernardo was the image of his sister, so nearly resembling her,
that when he mounted the scaffold his long hair and girlish face led
people to suppose him to be Beatrice herself: he might be fourteen or
fifteen years of age.

The peace of God be with them!




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "THE CENCI", CELEBRATED CRIMES, v1
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






MASSACRES OF THE SOUTH
1551-1815

by Alexandre Dumas, Pere




CHAPTER I

It is possible that our reader, whose recollections may perhaps go
back as far as the Restoration, will be surprised at the size of the
frame required for the picture we are about to bring before him,
embracing as it does two centuries and a half; but as everything, has
its precedent, every river its source, every volcano its central
fire, so it is that the spot of earth on which we are going to fix
our eyes has been the scene of action and reaction, revenge and
retaliation, till the religious annals of the South resemble an
account-book kept by double entry, in which fanaticism enters the
profits of death, one side being written with the blood of Catholics,
the other with that of Protestants.

In the great political and religious convulsions of the South, the
earthquake-like throes of which were felt even in the capital, Nimes
has always taken the central place; Nimes will therefore be the pivot
round which our story will revolve, and though we may sometimes leave
it for a moment, we shall always return thither without fail.

Nimes was reunited to France by Louis VIII, the government being
taken from its vicomte, Bernard Athon VI, and given to consuls in the
year 1207. During the episcopate of Michel Briconnet the relics of
St. Bauzile were discovered, and hardly were the rejoicings over this
event at an end when the new doctrines began to spread over France.
It was in the South that the persecutions began, and in 1551 several
persons were publicly burnt as heretics by order of the Seneschal's
Court at Nimes, amongst whom was Maurice Secenat, a missionary from
the Cevennes, who was taken in the very act of preaching.
Thenceforth Nimes rejoiced in two martyrs and two patron saints, one
revered by the Catholics, and one by the Protestants; St. Bauzile,
after reigning as sole protector for twenty-four years, being forced
to share the honours of his guardianship with his new rival.

Maurice Secenat was followed as preacher by Pierre de Lavau; these
two names being still remembered among the crowd of obscure and
forgotten martyrs. He also was put to death on the Place de la
Salamandre, all the difference being that the former was burnt and
the latter hanged.

Pierre de Lavau was attended in his last moments by Dominique Deyron,
Doctor of Theology; but instead of, as is usual, the dying man being
converted by the priest, it was the priest who was converted  by de
Lavau, and the teaching which it was desired should be suppressed
burst forth again.  Decrees were issued against Dominique Deyron; he
was pursued and tracked down, and only escaped the gibbet by fleeing
to the mountains.

The mountains are the refuge of all rising or decaying sects; God has
given to the powerful on earth city, plain, and sea, but the
mountains are the heritage of the oppressed.

Persecution and proselytism kept pace with each other, but the blood
that was shed produced the usual effect: it rendered the soil on
which it fell fruitful, and after two or three years of struggle,
during which two or three hundred Huguenots had been burnt or hanged,
Nimes awoke one morning with a Protestant majority.  In 1556 the
consuls received a sharp reprimand on account of the leaning of the
city towards the doctrines of the Reformation; but in 1557, one short
year after this admonition, Henri II was forced to confer the office
of president of the Presidial Court on William de Calviere, a
Protestant.  At last a decision of the senior judge having declared
that it was the duty of the consuls to sanction the execution of
heretics by their presence, the magistrates of the city protested
against this decision, and the power of the Crown was insufficient to
carry it out.

Henri II dying, Catherine de Medicis and the Guises took possession
of the throne in the name  of Francois II.  There is a moment when
nations can always draw a long breath, it is while their kings are
awaiting burial; and Nimes took advantage of this moment on the death
of Henri II, and on September 29th, 1559, Guillaume Moget founded the
first Protestant community.

Guillaume Moget came from Geneva.  He was the spiritual son of
Calvin, and came to Nimes with the firm purpose of converting all the
remaining Catholics or of being hanged.  As he was eloquent,
spirited, and wily, too wise to be violent, ever ready to give and
take in the matter of concessions, luck was on his side, and
Guillaume Moget escaped hanging.

The moment a rising sect ceases to be downtrodden it becomes a queen,
and heresy, already mistress of three-fourths of the city, began to
hold up its head with boldness in the streets.  A householder called
Guillaume Raymond opened his house to the Calvinist missionary, and
allowed him to preach in it regularly to all who came, and the
wavering were thus confirmed in the new faith.  Soon the house became
too narrow to contain the crowds which flocked thither to imbibe the
poison of the revolutionary doctrine, and impatient glances fell on
the churches.

Meanwhile the Vicomte de Joyeuse, who had just been appointed
governor of Languedoc in the place of M. de Villars, grew uneasy at
the rapid progress made by the Protestants, who so far from trying to
conceal it boasted of it; so he summoned the consuls before him,
admonished them sharply in the king's name, and threatened to quarter
a garrison in the town which would soon put an end to these
disorders.  The consuls promised to stop the evil without the aid of
outside help, and to carry out their promise doubled the patrol and
appointed a captain of the town whose sole duty was to keep order in
the streets.  Now this captain whose office had been created solely
for the repression of heresy, happened to be Captain Bouillargues,
the most inveterate Huguenot who ever existed.

The result of this discriminating choice was that Guillaume Moget
began to preach, and once when a great crowd had gathered in a garden
to hear him hold forth, heavy rain came on, and it became necessary
for the people either to disperse or to seek shelter under a roof.
As the preacher had just reached the most interesting part of his
sermon, the congregation did not hesitate an instant to take the
latter alternative.  The Church of St. Etienne du Capitole was quite
near: someone present suggested that this building, if not the most
suitable, as at least the most spacious for such a gathering.

The idea was received with acclamation: the rain grew heavier, the
crowd invaded the church, drove out the priests, trampled the Holy
Sacrament under foot, and broke the sacred images.  This being
accomplished, Guillaume Moget entered the pulpit, and resumed his
sermon with such eloquence that his hearers' excitement redoubled,
and not satisfied with what had already been done, rushed off to
seize on the Franciscan monastery, where they forthwith installed
Moget and the two women, who, according to Menard the historian of
Languedoc, never left him day or night; all which proceedings were
regarded by Captain Bouillargues with magnificent calm.

The consuls being once more summoned before M. de Villars, who had
again become governor, would gladly have denied the existence of
disorder; but finding this impossible, they threw themselves on his
mercy.  He being unable to repose confidence in them any longer, sent
a garrison to the citadel of Nimes, which the municipality was
obliged to support, appointed a governor of the city with four
district captains under him, and formed a body of military police
which quite superseded the municipal constabulary.  Moget was
expelled from Nimes, and Captain Bouillargues deprived of office.

Francis II dying in his turn, the usual effect was produced,--that
is, the persecution became less fierce,--and Moget therefore returned
to Nimes.  This was a victory, and every victory being a step
forward, the triumphant preacher organised a Consistory, and the
deputies of Nimes demanded from the States-General of Orleans
possession of the churches.  No notice was taken of this demand; but
the Protestants were at no loss how to proceed.  On the 21st December
1561 the churches of Ste. Eugenie, St. Augustin, and the Cordeliers
were taken by assault, and cleared of their images in a hand's turn;
and this time Captain Bouillargues was not satisfied with looking on,
but directed the operations.

The cathedral was still safe, and in it were entrenched the remnant
of the Catholic clergy; but it was apparent that at the earliest
opportunity it too would be turned into a meeting-house; and this
opportunity was not long in coming.

One Sunday, when Bishop Bernard d'Elbene had celebrated mass, just as
the regular preacher was about to begin his sermon, some children who
were playing in the close began to hoot the 'beguinier' [a name of
contempt for friars].  Some of the faithful being disturbed in their
meditations, came out of the church and chastised the little
Huguenots, whose parents considered themselves in consequence to have
been insulted in the persons of their children.  A great commotion
ensued, crowds began to form, and cries of "To the church! to the
church!" were heard.  Captain Bouillargues happened to be in the
neighbourhood, and being very methodical set about organising the
insurrection; then putting himself at its head, he charged the
cathedral, carrying everything before him, in spite of the barricades
which had been hastily erected by the Papists.  The assault was over
in a few moments; the priests and their flock fled by one door, while
the Reformers entered by another.  The building was in the twinkling
of an eye adapted to the new form of worship: the great crucifix from
above the altar was dragged about the streets at the end of a rope
and scourged at every cross-roads.  In the evening a large fire was
lighted in the place before the cathedral, and the archives of the
ecclesiastical and religious houses, the sacred images, the relics of
the saints, the decorations of the altar, the sacerdotal vestments,
even the Host itself, were thrown on it without any remonstrance from
the consuls; the very wind which blew upon Nimes breathed heresy.

For the moment Nimes was in full revolt, and the spirit of
organisation spread: Moget assumed the titles of pastor and minister
of the Christian Church.  Captain Bouillargues melted down the sacred
vessels of the Catholic churches, and paid in this manner the
volunteers of Nimes and the German mercenaries; the stones of the
demolished religious houses were used in the construction of
fortifications, and before anyone thought of attacking it the city
was ready for a siege.  It was at this moment that Guillaume
Calviere, who was at the head of the Presidial Court, Moget being
president of the Consistory, and Captain Bouillargues
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, suddenly resolved to create a
new authority, which, while sharing the powers hitherto vested solely
in the consuls, should be, even more than they, devoted to Calvin:
thus the office of les Messieurs came into being.  This was neither
more nor less than a committee of public safety, and having been
formed in the stress of revolution it acted in a revolutionary
spirit, absorbing the powers of the consuls, and restricting the
authority of the Consistory to things spiritual.  In the meantime the
Edict of Amboise, was promulgated, and it was announced that the
king, Charles IX, accompanied by Catherine de Medicis, was going to
visit his loyal provinces in the South.

Determined as was Captain Bouillargues, for once he had to give way,
so strong was the party against him; therefore, despite the murmurs
of the fanatics, the city of Nimes resolved, not only to open its
gates to its sovereign, but to give him such a reception as would
efface the bad impression which Charles might have received from the
history of recent events.  The royal procession was met at the Pont
du Gare, where young girls attired as nymphs emerged from a grotto
bearing a collation, which they presented to their Majesties, who
graciously and heartily partook of it.  The repast at an end, the
illustrious travellers resumed their progress; but the imagination of
the Nimes authorities was not to be restrained within such narrow
bounds: at the entrance to the city the king found the Porte de la
Couronne transformed into a mountain-side, covered with vines and
olive trees, under which a shepherd was tending his flock.  As the
king approached the mountain parted as if yielding to the magic of
his power, the most beautiful maidens and the most noble came out to
meet their sovereign, presenting him the keys of the city wreathed
with flowers, and singing to the accompaniment of the shepherd's
pipe.  Passing through the mountain, Charles saw chained to a palm
tree in the depths of a grotto a monster crocodile from whose jaws
issued flames: this was a representation of the old coat of arms
granted to the city by Octavius Caesar Augustus after the battle of
Actium, and which Francis I had restored to it in exchange for a
model in silver of the amphitheatre presented to him by the city.
Lastly, the king found in the Place de la Salamandre numerous
bonfires, so that without waiting to ask if these fires were made
from the remains of the faggots used at the martyrdom of Maurice
Secenat, he went to bed very much pleased with the reception accorded
him by his good city of Nimes, and sure that all the unfavourable
reports he had heard were calumnies.

Nevertheless, in order that such rumours, however slight their
foundation, should not again be heard, the king appointed Damville
governor of Languedoc, installing him himself in the chief city of
his government; he then removed every consul from his post without
exception, and appointed in their place Guy-Rochette, doctor and
lawyer; Jean Beaudan, burgess; Francois Aubert, mason; and Cristol
Ligier, farm labourer--all Catholics.  He then left for Paris, where
a short time after he concluded a treaty with the Calvinists, which
the people with its gift of prophecy called "The halting peace of
unsure seat," and which in the end led to the massacre of St.
Bartholomew.

Gracious as had been the measures taken by the king to secure the
peace of his good city of Nimes, they had nevertheless been
reactionary; consequently the Catholics, feeling the authorities were
now on their side, returned in crowds: the householders reclaimed
their houses, the priests their churches; while, rendered ravenous
by the bitter bread of exile, both the clergy and the laity pillaged
the treasury.  Their return was not, however; stained by bloodshed,
although the Calvinists were reviled in the open street.  A few stabs
from a dagger or shots from an arquebus might, however, have been
better; such wounds heal while mocking words rankle in the memory.

On the morrow of Michaelmas Day--that is, on the 31st September
1567--a number of conspirators might have been seen issuing from a
house and spreading themselves through the streets, crying "To arms!
Down with the Papists!" Captain Bouillargues was taking his revenge.

As the Catholics were attacked unawares, they did not make even a
show of resistance: a number of Protestants--those who possessed the
best arms--rushed to the house of Guy-Rochette, the first consul, and
seized the keys of the city.  Guy Rochette, startled by the cries of
the crowds, had looked out of the window, and seeing a furious mob
approaching his house, and feeling that their rage was directed
against himself, had taken refuge with his brother Gregoire.  There,
recovering his courage and presence of mind, he recalled the
important responsibilities attached to his office, and resolving to
fulfil them whatever might happen, hastened to consult with the other
magistrates, but as they all gave him very excellent reasons for not
meddling, he soon felt there was no dependence to be placed on such
cowards and traitors.  He next repaired to the episcopal palace,
where he found the bishop surrounded by the principal Catholics of
the town, all on their knees offering up earnest prayers to Heaven,
and awaiting martyrdom.  Guy-Rochette joined them, and the prayers
were continued.

A few instants later fresh noises were heard in the street, and the
gates of the palace court groaned under blows of axe and crowbar.
Hearing these alarming sounds, the bishop, forgetting that it was his
duty to set a brave example, fled through a breach in the wall of the
next house; but Guy-Rochette and his companions valiantly resolved
not to run away, but to await their fate with patience.  The gates
soon yielded, and the courtyard and palace were filled with
Protestants: at their head appeared Captain Bouillargues, sword in
hand.  Guy-Rochette and those with him were seized and secured in a
room under the charge of four guards, and the palace was looted.
Meantime another band of insurgents had attacked the house of the
vicar-general, John Pebereau, whose body pierced by seven stabs of a
dagger was thrown out of a window, the same fate as was meted out to
Admiral Coligny eight years later at the hands of the Catholics.  In
the house a sum of 800 crowns was found and taken.  The two bands
then uniting, rushed to the cathedral, which they sacked for the
second time.

Thus the entire day passed in murder and pillage: when night came the
large number of prisoners so imprudently taken began to be felt as an
encumbrance by the insurgent chiefs, who therefore resolved to take
advantage of the darkness to get rid of them without causing too much
excitement in the city.  They were therefore gathered together from
the various houses in which they had been confined, and were brought
to a large hall in the Hotel de Ville, capable of containing from
four to five hundred persons, and which was soon full.  An irregular
tribunal arrogating to itself powers of life and death was formed,
and a clerk was appointed to register its decrees.  A list of all the
prisoners was given him, a cross placed before a name indicating that
its bearer was condemned to death, and, list in hand, he went from
group to group calling out the names distinguished by the fatal sign.
Those thus sorted out were then conducted to a spot which had been
chosen beforehand as the place of execution.

This was the palace courtyard in the middle of which yawned a well
twenty-four feet in circumference and fifty deep.  The fanatics thus
found a grave ready-digged as it were to their hand, and to save
time, made use of it.

The unfortunate Catholics, led thither in groups, were either stabbed
with daggers or mutilated with axes, and the bodies thrown down the
well.  Guy-Rochette was one of the first to be dragged up.  For
himself he asked neither mercy nor favour, but he begged that the
life of his young brother might be spared, whose only crime was the
bond of blood which united them; but the assassins, paying no heed to
his prayers, struck down both man and boy and flung them into the
well.  The corpse of the vicar-general, who had been killed the day
before, was in its turn dragged thither by a rope and added to the
others.  All night the massacre went on, the crimsoned water rising
in the well as corpse after corpse was thrown in, till, at break of
day, it overflowed, one hundred and twenty bodies being then hidden
in its depths.

Next day, October 1st, the scenes of tumult were renewed: from early
dawn Captain Bouillargues ran from street to street crying, "Courage,
comrades!  Montpellier, Pezenas, Aramon, Beaucaire, Saint-Andeol, and
Villeneuve are taken, and are on our side.  Cardinal de Lorraine is
dead, and the king is in our power."  This aroused the failing
energies of the assassins.  They joined the captain, and demanded
that the houses round the palace should be searched, as it was almost
certain that the bishop, who had, as may be remembered, escaped the
day before, had taken refuge in one of them.  This being agreed to, a
house-to-house visitation was begun: when the house of M. de
Sauvignargues was reached, he confessed that the bishop was in his
cellar, and proposed to treat with Captain Bouillargues for a ransom.
This proposition being considered reasonable, was accepted, and after
a short discussion the sum of 120 crowns was agreed on.  The bishop
laid down every penny he had about him, his servants were despoiled,
and the sum made up by the Sieur de Sauvignargues, who having the
bishop in his house kept him caged.  The prelate, however, made no
objection, although under other circumstances he would have regarded
this restraint as the height of impertinence; but as it was he felt
safer in M. de Sauvignargues' cellar than in the palace.

But the secret of the worthy prelate's hiding place was but badly
kept by those with whom he had treated; for in a few moments a second
crowd appeared, hoping to obtain a second ransom.  Unfortunately, the
Sieur de Sauvignargues, the bishop, and the bishop's servants had
stripped themselves of all their ready money to make up the first, so
the master of the house, fearing for his own safety, having
barricaded the doors, got out into a lane and escaped, leaving the
bishop to his fate.  The Huguenots climbed in at the windows, crying,
"No quarter!  Down with the Papists!  "The bishop's servants were cut
down, the bishop himself dragged out of the cellar and thrown into
the street.  There his rings and crozier were snatched from him; he
was stripped of his clothes and arrayed in a grotesque and ragged
garment which chanced to be at hand; his mitre was replaced by a
peasant's cap; and in this condition he was dragged back to the
palace and placed on the brink of the well to be thrown in.  One of
the assassins drew attention to the fact that it was already full.
"Pooh!" replied another, "they won't mind a little crowding for a
bishop."  Meantime the prelate, seeing he need expect no mercy from
man, threw himself on his knees and commended his soul to God.
Suddenly, however, one of those who had shown himself most ferocious
during the massacre, Jean Coussinal by name, was touched as if by
miracle with a feeling of compassion at the sight of so much
resignation, and threw himself between the bishop and those about to
strike, and declaring that whoever touched the prelate must first
overcome himself, took him under his protection, his comrades
retreating in astonishment.  Jean Coussinal raising the bishop,
carried him in his arms into a neighbouring house, and drawing his
sword, took his stand on the threshold.

The assassins, however, soon recovered from their surprise, and
reflecting that when all was said and done they were fifty to one,
considered it would be shameful to let themselves be intimidated by a
single opponent, so they advanced again on Coussinal, who with a
back-handed stroke cut off the head of the first-comer.  The cries
upon this redoubled, and two or three shots were fired at the
obstinate defender of the poor bishop, but they all missed aim.  At
that moment Captain Bouillargues passed by, and seeing one man
attacked by fifty, inquired into the cause.  He was told of
Coussinal's odd determination to save the bishop.  "He is quite
right," said the captain; "the bishop has paid ransom, and no one has
any right to touch him."  Saying this, he walked up to Coussinal,
gave him his hand, and the two entered the house, returning in a few
moments with the bishop between them.  In this order they crossed the
town, followed by the murmuring crowd, who were, however, afraid to
do more than murmur; at the gate the bishop was provided with an
escort and let go, his defenders remaining there till he was out of
sight.

The massacres went on during the whole of the second day, though
towards evening the search for victims relaxed somewhat; but still
many isolated acts of murder took place during the night.  On the
morrow, being tired of killing, the people began to destroy, and this
phase lasted a long time, it being less fatiguing to throw stones
about than corpses.  All the convents, all the monasteries, all the
houses of the priests and canons were attacked in turn; nothing was
spared except the cathedral, before which axes and crowbars seemed to
lose their power, and the church of Ste. Eugenie, which was turned
into a powder-magazine.  The day of the great butchery was called
"La Michelade," because it took place the day after Michaelmas, and
as all this happened in the year 1567 the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew must be regarded as a plagiarism.

At last, however, with the help of M. Damville; the Catholics again
got the upper hand, and it was the turn of the Protestants to fly.
They took refuge in the Cevennes.  From the beginning of the troubles
the Cevennes had been the asylum of those who suffered for the
Protestant faith; and still the plains are Papist, and the mountains
Protestant.  When the Catholic party is in the ascendant at Nimes,
the plain seeks the mountain; when the Protestants come into power,
the mountain comes down into the plain.

However, vanquished and fugitive though they were, the Calvinists did
not lose courage: in exile one day, they felt sure their luck would
turn the next; and while the Catholics were burning or hanging them
in effigy for contumacy, they were before a notary, dividing the
property of their executioners.

But it was not enough for them to buy or sell this property amongst
each other, they wanted to enter into possession; they thought of
nothing else, and in 1569--that is, in the eighteenth month of their
exile--they attained their wish in the following manner:

One day the exiles perceived a carpenter belonging to a little
village called Cauvisson approaching their place of refuge.  He
desired to speak to M. Nicolas de Calviere, seigneur de St. Cosme,
and brother of the president, who was known to be a very enterprising
man.  To him the carpenter, whose name was Maduron, made the
following proposition:

In the moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was
a grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent.
Maduron offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a
manner that some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a
band of armed Protestants to gain access to the city.  Nicolas de
Calviere approving of this plan, desired that it should be carried
out at once; but the carpenter pointed out that it would be necessary
to wait for stormy weather, when the waters swollen by the rain would
by their noise drown the sound of the file.  This precaution was
doubly necessary as the box of the sentry was almost exactly above
the grating.  M. de Calviere tried to make Maduron give way; but the
latter, who was risking more than anyone else, was firm.  So whether
they liked it or not, de Calviere and the rest had to await his good
pleasure.

Some days later rainy weather set in, and as usual the fountain
became fuller; Maduron seeing that the favourable moment had arrived,
glided at night into the moat and applied his file, a friend of his
who was hidden on the ramparts above pulling a cord attached to
Maduron's arm every time the sentinel, in pacing his narrow round,
approached the spot.  Before break of day the work was well begun.
Maduron then obliterated all traces of his file by daubing the bars
with mud and wax, and withdrew.  For three consecutive nights he
returned to his task, taking the same precautions, and before the
fourth was at an end he found that by means of a slight effort the
grating could be removed.  That was all that was needed, so he gave
notice to Messire Nicolas de Calviere that the moment had arrived.

Everything was favourable to the undertaking: as there was no moon,
the next night was chosen to carry out the plan, and as soon as it
was dark Messire Nicolas de Calviere set out with his men, who,
slipping down into the moat without noise, crossed, the water being
up to their belts, climbed up the other side, and crept along at the
foot of the wall till they reached the grating without being
perceived.  There Maduron was waiting, and as soon as he caught sight
of them he gave a slight blow to the loose bars; which fell, and the
whole party entered the drain, led by de Calviere, and soon found
themselves at the farther end--that is to say, in the Place de la
Fontaine.  They immediately formed into companies twenty strong, four
of which hastened to the principal gates, while the others patrolled
the streets shouting, "The city taken!  Down with the Papists!  A new
world!  "Hearing this, the Protestants in the city recognised their
co-religionists, and the Catholics their opponents: but whereas the
former had been warned and were on the alert, the latter were taken
by surprise; consequently they offered no resistance, which, however,
did not prevent bloodshed.  M. de St. Andre, the governor of the
town, who during his short period of office had drawn the bitter
hatred of the Protestants on him, was shot dead in his bed, and his
body being flung out of the window, was torn in pieces by the
populace.  The work of murder went on all night, and on the morrow
the victors in their turn began an organised persecution, which fell
more heavily on the Catholics than that to which they had subjected
the Protestants; for, as we have explained above, the former could
only find shelter in the plain, while the latter used the Cevennes as
a stronghold.

It was about this time that the peace, which was called, as we have
said, "the insecurely seated," was concluded.  Two years later this
name was justified by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

When this event took place, the South, strange as it may seem, looked
on: in Nimes both Catholics and Protestants, stained with the other's
blood, faced each other, hand on hilt, but without drawing weapon.
It was as if they were curious to see how the Parisians would get
through.  The massacre had one result, however, the union of the
principal cities of the South and West: Montpellier, Uzes, Montauban,
and La Rochelle, with Nimes at their head, formed a civil and
military league to last, as is declared in the Act of Federation,
until God should raise up a sovereign to be the defender of the
Protestant faith.  In the year 1775 the Protestants of the South
began to turn their eyes towards Henri IV as the coming defender.

At that date Nimes, setting an example to the other cities of the
League, deepened her moats, blew up her suburbs, and added to the
height of her ramparts.  Night and day the work of perfecting the
means of defence went on; the guard at every gate was doubled, and
knowing how often a city had been taken by surprise, not a hole
through which a Papist could creep was left in the fortifications.
In dread of what the future might bring, Nimes even committed
sacrilege against the past, and partly demolished the Temple of Diana
and mutilated the amphitheatre--of which one gigantic stone was
sufficient to form a section of the wall.  During one truce the crops
were sown, during another they were garnered in, and so things went
on while the reign of the Mignons lasted.  At length the prince
raised up by God, whom the Huguenots had waited for so long,
appeared; Henri IV ascended the, throne.

But once seated, Henri found himself in the same difficulty as had
confronted Octavius fifteen centuries earlier, and which confronted
Louis Philippe three centuries later--that is to say, having been
raised to sovereign power by a party which was not in the majority,
he soon found himself obliged to separate from this party and to
abjure his religious beliefs, as others have abjured or will yet
abjure their political beliefs; consequently, just as Octavius had
his Antony, and Louis Philippe was to have his Lafayette, Henri IV
was to have his Biron.  When monarchs are in this position they can
no longer have a will of their own or personal likes and dislikes;
they submit to the force of circumstances, and feel compelled to rely
on the masses; no sooner are they freed from the ban under which they
laboured than they are obliged to bring others under it.

However, before having recourse to extreme measures, Henri IV with
soldierly frankness gathered round him all those who had been his
comrades of old in war and in religion; he spread out before them a
map of France, and showed them that hardly a tenth of the immense
number of its inhabitants were Protestants, and that even that tenth
was shut up in the mountains; some in Dauphine, which had been won
for them by their three principal leaders, Baron des Adrets, Captain
Montbrun, and Lesdiguieres; others in the Cevennes, which had become
Protestant through their great preachers, Maurice Secenat and
Guillaume Moget; and the rest in the mountains of Navarre, whence he
himself had come.  He recalled to them further that whenever they
ventured out of their mountains they had been beaten in every battle,
at Jarnac, at Moncontour, and at Dreux.  He concluded by explaining
how impossible it was for him, such being the case, to entrust the
guidance of the State to their party; but he offered them instead
three things, viz., his purse to supply their present needs, the
Edict of Nantes to assure their future safety, and fortresses to
defend themselves should this edict one day be revoked, for with
profound insight the grandfather divined the grandson: Henri IV
feared Louis XIV.

The Protestants took what they were offered, but of course like all
who accept benefits they went away filled with discontent because
they had not been given more.

Although the Protestants ever afterwards looked on Henri IV as a
renegade, his reign nevertheless was their golden age, and while it
lasted Nines was quiet; for, strange to say, the Protestants took no
revenge for St. Bartholomew, contenting themselves with debarring the
Catholics from the open exercise of their religion, but leaving them
free to use all its rites and ceremonies in private.  They even
permitted the procession of the Host through the streets in case of
illness, provided it took place at night.  Of course death would not
always wait for darkness, and the Host was sometimes carried to the
dying during the day, not without danger to the priest, who, however,
never let himself be deterred thereby from the performance of his
duty; indeed, it is of the essence of religious devotion to be
inflexible; and few soldiers, however brave, have equalled the
martyrs in courage.

During this time, taking advantage of the truce to hostilities and
the impartial protection meted out to all without distinction by the
Constable Damville, the Carmelites and Capuchins, the Jesuits and
monks of all orders and colours, began by degrees to return to Nines;
without any display, it is true, rather in a surreptitious manner,
preferring darkness to daylight; but however this may be, in the
course of three or four years they had all regained foothold in the
town; only now they were in the position in which the Protestants had
been formerly, they were without churches, as their enemies were in
possession of all the places of worship.  It also happened that a
Jesuit high in authority, named Pere Coston, preached with such
success that the Protestants, not wishing to be beaten, but desirous
of giving word for word, summoned to their aid the Rev. Jeremie
Ferrier, of Alais, who at the moment was regarded as the most
eloquent preacher they had.  Needless to say, Alais was situated in
the mountains, that inexhaustible source of Huguenot eloquence.  At
once the controversial spirit was aroused; it did not as yet amount
to war, but still less could it be called peace: people were no
longer assassinated, but they were anathematised; the body was safe,
but the soul was consigned to damnation: the days as they passed were
used by both sides to keep their hand in, in readiness for the moment
when the massacres should again begin.




CHAPTER II

The death of Henri IV led to new conflicts, in which although at
first success was on the side of the Protestants it by degrees went
over to the Catholics; for with the accession of Louis XIII Richelieu
had taken possession of the throne: beside the king sat the cardinal;
under the purple mantle gleamed the red robe.  It was at this crisis
that Henri de Rohan rose to eminence in the South.  He was one of the
most illustrious representatives of that great race which, allied as
it was to the royal houses of Scotland, France, Savoy, and Lorraine;
had taken as their device, "Be king I cannot, prince I will not,
Rohan I am."

Henri de Rohan was at this time about forty years of age, in the
prime of life.  In his youth, in order to perfect his education, he
had visited England, Scotland, and Italy.  In England Elizabeth had
called him her knight; in Scotland James VI had asked him to stand
godfather to his son, afterwards Charles I; in Italy he had been so
deep in the confidence of the leaders of men, and so thoroughly
initiated into the politics of the principal cities, that it was
commonly said that, after Machiavel, he was the greatest authority in
these matters.  He had returned to France in the lifetime of
Henry IV, and had married the daughter of Sully, and after Henri's
death had commanded the Swiss and the Grison regiments--at the siege
of Juliers.  This was the man whom the king was so imprudent as to
offend by refusing him the reversion of the office of governor of
Poitou, which was then held by Sully, his father-in-law.  In order to
revenge himself for the neglect he met with at court, as he states in
his Memoires with military ingenuousness, he espoused the cause of
Conde with all his heart, being also drawn in this direction by his
liking for Conde's brother and his consequent desire to help those of
Conde's religion.

>From this day on street disturbances and angry disputes assumed
another aspect: they took in a larger area and were not so readily
appeased.  It was no longer an isolated band of insurgents which
roused a city, but rather a conflagration which spread over the whole
South, and a general uprising which was almost a civil war.

This state of things lasted for seven or eight years, and during this
time Rohan, abandoned by Chatillon and La Force, who received as the
reward of their defection the field marshal's baton, pressed by
Conde, his old friend, and by Montmorency, his consistent rival,
performed prodigies of courage and miracles of strategy.  At last,
without soldiers, without ammunition, without money, he still
appeared to Richelieu to be so redoubtable that all the conditions of
surrender he demanded were granted.  The maintenance of the Edict of
Nantes was guaranteed, all the places of worship were to be restored
to the Reformers, and a general amnesty granted to himself and his
partisans.  Furthermore, he obtained what was an unheard-of thing
until then, an indemnity of 300,000 livres for his expenses during
the rebellion; of which sum he allotted 240,000 livres to his
co-religionists--that is to say, more than three-quarters of the
entire amount--and kept, for the purpose of restoring his various
chateaux and setting his domestic establishment, which had been
destroyed during the war, again on foot, only 60,000 livres.  This
treaty was signed on July 27th, 1629.

The Duc de Richelieu, to whom no sacrifice was too great in order to
attain his ends, had at last reached the goal, but the peace cost him
nearly 40,000,000 livres; on the other hand, Saintonge, Poitou, and
Languedoc had submitted, and the chiefs of the houses of La
Tremouille, Conde, Bouillon, Rohan, and Soubise had came to terms
with him; organised armed opposition had disappeared, and the lofty
manner of viewing matters natural to the cardinal duke prevented him
from noticing private enmity.  He therefore left Nimes free to manage
her local affairs as she pleased, and very soon the old order, or
rather disorder, reigned once more within her walls.  At last
Richelieu died, and Louis XIII soon followed him, and the long
minority of his successor, with its embarrassments, left to Catholics
and Protestants in the South more complete liberty than ever to carry
on the great duel which down to our own days has never ceased.

But from this period, each flux and reflux bears more and more the
peculiar character of the party which for the moment is triumphant;
when the Protestants get the upper hand, their vengeance is marked by
brutality and rage; when the Catholics are victorious, the
retaliation is full of hypocrisy and greed.  The Protestants pull
down churches and monasteries, expel the monks, burn the crucifixes,
take the body of some criminal from the gallows, nail it on a cross,
pierce its side, put a crown of thorns round its temples and set it
up in the market-place--an effigy of Jesus on Calvary.  The Catholics
levy contributions, take back what they had been deprived of, exact
indemnities, and although ruined by each reverse, are richer than
ever after each victory.  The Protestants act in the light of day,
melting down the church bells to make cannon to the sound of the
drum, violate agreements, warm themselves with wood taken from the
houses of the cathedral clergy, affix their theses to the cathedral
doors, beat the priests who carry the Holy Sacrament to the dying,
and, to crown all other insults, turn churches into slaughter-houses
and sewers.

The Catholics, on the contrary, march at night, and, slipping in at
the gates which have been left ajar for them, make their bishop
president of the Council, put Jesuits at the head of the college, buy
converts with money from the treasury, and as they always have
influence at court, begin by excluding the Calvinists from favour,
hoping soon to deprive them of justice.

At last, on the 31st of December, 1657, a final struggle took place,
in which the Protestants were overcome, and were only saved from
destruction because from the other side of the Channel, Cromwell
exerted himself in their favour, writing with his own hand at the end
of a despatch relative to the affairs of Austria, "I Learn that there
have been popular disturbances in a town of Languedoc called Nimes,
and I beg that order may be restored with as much mildness as
possible, and without shedding of blood."  As, fortunately for the
Protestants, Mazarin had need of Cromwell at that moment, torture was
forbidden, and nothing allowed but annoyances of all kinds.  These
henceforward were not only innumerable, but went on without a pause:
the Catholics, faithful to their system of constant encroachment,
kept up an incessant persecution, in which they were soon encouraged
by the numerous ordinances issued by Louis XIV.  The grandson of
Henri IV could not so far forget all ordinary respect as to destroy
at once the Edict of Nantes, but he tore off clause after clause.

In 1630--that is, a year after the peace with Rohan had been signed
in the preceding reign--Chalons-sur-Saone had resolved that no
Protestant should be allowed to take any part in the manufactures of
the town.

In 1643, six months after the accession of Louis XIV, the laundresses
of Paris made a rule that the wives and daughters of Protestants were
unworthy to be admitted to the freedom of their respectable guild.

In 1654, just one year after he had attained his majority, Louis XIV
consented to the imposition of a tax on the town of Nimes of 4000
francs towards the support of the Catholic and the Protestant
hospitals; and instead of allowing each party to contribute to the
support of its own hospital, the money was raised in one sum, so
that, of the money paid by the Protestants, who were twice as
numerous as the Catholics, two-sixths went to their enemies.  On
August 9th of the same year a decree of the Council ordered that all
the artisan consuls should be Catholics; on the 16th September
another decree forbade Protestants to send deputations to the king;
lastly, on the 20th of December, a further decree declared that all
hospitals should be administered by Catholic consuls alone.

In 1662 Protestants were commanded to bury their dead either at dawn
or after dusk, and a special clause of the decree fixed the number of
persons who might attend a funeral at ten only.

In 1663 the Council of State issued decrees prohibiting the practice
of their religion by the Reformers in one hundred and forty-two
communes in the dioceses of Nimes, Uzes, and Mendes; and ordering the
demolition of their meetinghouses.

In 1664 this regulation was extended to the meeting-houses of Alencon
and Montauban, as Well as their small place of worship in Nimes.  On
the 17th July of the same year the Parliament of Rouen forbade the
master-mercers to engage any more Protestant workmen or apprentices
when the number already employed had reached the proportion of one
Protestant, to fifteen Catholics; on the 24th of the same month the
Council of State declared all certificates of mastership held by a
Protestant invalid from whatever source derived; and in October
reduced to two the number of Protestants who might be employed at the
mint.

In 1665 the regulation imposed on the mercers was extended to the
goldsmiths.

In 1666 a royal declaration, revising the decrees of Parliament, was
published, and Article 31 provided that the offices of clerk to the
consulates, or secretary to a guild of watchmakers, or porter in a
municipal building, could only be held by Catholics; while in Article
33 it was ordained that when a procession carrying the Host passed a
place of worship belonging to the so-called Reformers, the
worshippers should stop their psalm-singing till the procession had
gone by; and lastly, in Article 34 it was enacted that the houses and
other buildings belonging to those who were of the Reformed religion
might, at the pleasure of the town authorities, be draped with cloth
or otherwise decorated on any religious Catholic festival.

In 1669 the Chambers appointed by the Edict of Nantes in the
Parliaments of Rouen and Paris were suppressed, as well as the
articled clerkships connected therewith, and the clerkships in the
Record Office; and in August of the same year, when the emigration of
Protestants was just beginning, an edict was issued, of which the
following is a clause:

"Whereas many of our subjects have gone to foreign countries, where
they continue to follow their various trades and occupations, even
working as shipwrights, or taking service as sailors, till at length
they feel at home and determine never to return to France, marrying
abroad and acquiring property of every description: We hereby forbid
any member of the so-called Reformed Church to leave this kingdom
without our permission, and we command those who have already left
France to return forthwith within her boundaries."

In 1670 the king excluded physicians of the Reformed faith from the
office of dean of the college of Rouen, and allowed only two
Protestant doctors within its precincts.  In 1671 a decree was
published commanding the arms of France to be removed from all the
places of worship belonging to the pretended Reformers.  In 1680 a
proclamation from the king closed the profession of midwife to women
of the Reformed faith.  In 1681 those who renounced the Protestant
religion were exempted for two years from all contributions towards
the support of soldiers sent to their town, and were for the same
period relieved from the duty of giving them board and lodging.  In
the same year the college of Sedan was closed--the only college
remaining in the entire kingdom at which Calvinist children could
receive instruction.  In 1682 the king commanded Protestant notaries;
procurators, ushers, and serjeants to lay down their offices,
declaring them unfit for such professions; and in September of the
same year three months only were allowed them for the sale of the
reversion of the said offices.  In 1684 the Council of State extended
the preceding regulations to those Protestants holding the title of
honorary secretary to the king, and in August of the same year
Protestants were declared incapable of serving on a jury of experts.

In 1685 the provost of merchants in Paris ordered all Protestant
privileged merchants in that city to sell their privileges within a
month.  And in October of the same year the long series of
persecutions, of which we have omitted many, reached its culminating
point--the: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  Henri IV, who foresaw
this result, had hoped that it would have occurred in another manner,
so that his co-religionists would have been able to retain their
fortresses; but what was actually done was that the strong places
were first taken away, and then came the Revocation; after which the
Calvinists found themselves completely at the mercy of their mortal
enemies.

>From 1669, when Louis first threatened to aim a fatal blow at the
civil rights of the Huguenots, by abolishing the equal partition of
the Chambers between the two parties, several deputations had been
sent to him praying him to stop the course of his persecutions; and
in order not to give him any fresh excuse for attacking their party,
these deputations addressed him in the most submissive manner, as the
following fragment from an address will prove:

"In the name of God, sire," said the Protestants to the king, "listen
to the last breath of our dying liberty, have pity on our sufferings,
have pity on the great number of your poor subjects who daily water
their bread with their tears: they are all filled with burning zeal
and inviolable loyalty to you; their love for your august person is
only equalled by their respect; history bears witness that they
contributed in no small degree to place your great and magnanimous
ancestor on his rightful throne, and since your miraculous birth they
have never done anything worthy of blame; they might indeed use much
stronger terms, but your Majesty has spared their modesty by
addressing to them on many occasions words of praise which they would
never have ventured to apply to themselves; these your subjects place
their sole trust in your sceptre for refuge and protection on earth,
and their interest as well as their duty and conscience impels them
to remain attached to the service of your Majesty with unalterable
devotion."

But, as we have seen, nothing could restrain the triumvirate which
held the power just then, and thanks to the suggestions of Pere
Lachaise and Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV determined to gain heaven
by means of wheel and stake.

As we see, for the Protestants, thanks to these numerous decrees,
persecution began at the cradle and followed them to the grave.

As a boy, a Huguenot could--enter no public school; as a youth, no
career was open to him; he could become neither mercer nor concierge,
neither apothecary nor physician, neither lawyer nor consul.  As a
man, he had no sacred house, of prayer; no registrar would inscribe
his marriage or the birth of his children; hourly his liberty and his
conscience were ignored.  If he ventured to worship God by the
singing of psalms, he had to be silent as the Host was carried past
outside.  When a Catholic festival occurred, he was forced not only
to swallow his rage but to let his house be hung with decorations in
sign of joy; if he had inherited a fortune from his fathers, having
neither social standing nor civil rights, it slipped gradually out of
his hands, and went to support the schools and hospitals of his foes.
Having reached the end of his life, his deathbed was made miserable;
for dying in the faith of his fathers, he could not be laid to rest
beside them, and like a pariah he would be carried to his grave at
night, no more than ten of those near and dear to him being allowed
to follow his coffin.

Lastly, if at any age whatever he should attempt to quit the cruel
soil on which he had no right to be born, to live, or to die, he
would be declared a rebel, his goads would be confiscated, and the
lightest penalty that he had to expect, if he ever fell into the
hands of his enemies, was to row for the rest of his life in the
galleys of the king, chained between a murderer and a forger.

Such a state of things was intolerable: the cries of one man are lost
in space, but the groans of a whole population are like a storm; and
this time, as always, the tempest gathered in the mountains, and the
rumblings of the thunder began to be heard.

First there were texts written by invisible hands on city walls, on
the signposts and cross-roads, on the crosses in the cemeteries:
these warnings, like the 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' of Belshazzar,
even pursued the persecutors into the midst of their feasts and
orgies.

Now it was the threat, "Jesus came not to send peace, but a sword."
Then this consolation, "For where two or three are gathered together
in My name, there am I in the midst of them."  Or perhaps it was this
appeal for united action which was soon to become a summons to
revolt, "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that
ye also may have fellowship with us."

And before these promises, taken from the New Testament, the
persecuted paused, and then went home inspired by faith in the
prophets, who spake, as St. Paul says in his First Epistle to the
Thessalonians, "not the word of men but the word of God."

Very soon these words became incarnate, and what the prophet Joel
foretold came to pass: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,...
and I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and
fire,... and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be delivered."

In 1696 reports began to circulate that men had had visions; being
able to see what was going on in the most distant parts, and that the
heavens themselves opened to their eyes.  While in this ecstatic
state they were insensible to pain when pricked with either pin or
blade; and when, on recovering consciousness, they were questioned
they could remember nothing.

The first of these was a woman from Vivarais, whose origin was
unknown.  She went about from town to town, shedding tears of blood.
M. de Baville, intendant of Languedoc, had her arrested and brought
to Montpellier.  There she was condemned to death and burnt at the
stake, her tears of blood being dried by fire.

After her came a second fanatic, for so these popular prophets were
called.  He was born at Mazillon, his name was Laquoite, and he was
twenty years of age.  The gift of prophecy had come to him in a
strange manner.  This is the story told about him:--"One day,
returning from Languedoc, where he had been engaged in the
cultivation of silkworms, on reaching the bottom of the hill of St.
Jean he found a man lying on the ground trembling in every limb.
Moved by pity, he stopped and asked what ailed him.  The man replied,
'Throw yourself on your knees, my son, and trouble not yourself about
me, but learn how to attain salvation and save your brethren.  This
can only be done by the communion of the Holy Ghost, who is in me,
and whom by the grace of God I can bestow on you.  Approach and
receive this gift in a kiss.'  At these words the unknown kissed the
young man on the mouth, pressed his hand and disappeared, leaving the
other trembling in his turn; for the spirit of God was in him, and
being inspired he spread the word abroad."

A third fanatic, a prophetess, raved about the parishes of St.
Andeol de Clerguemont and St. Frazal de Vantalon, but she addressed
herself principally to recent converts, to whom she preached
concerning the Eucharist that in swallowing the consecrated wafer
they had swallowed a poison as venomous as the head of the basilisk,
that they had bent the knee to Baal, and that no penitence on their
part could be great enough to save them.  These doctrines inspired
such profound terror that the Rev. Father Louvreloeil himself tells
us that Satan by his efforts succeeded in nearly emptying the
churches, and that at the following Easter celebrations there were
only half as many communicants as the preceding year.

Such a state of licence, which threatened to spread farther and
farther, awoke the religious solicitude of Messire Francois Langlade
de Duchayla, Prior of Laval, Inspector of Missions of Gevaudan, and
Arch-priest of the Cevennes.  He therefore resolved to leave his
residence at Mende and to visit the parishes in which heresy had
taken the strongest hold, in order to oppose it by every mean's which
God and the king had put in his power.

The Abbe Duchayla was a younger son of the noble house of Langlade,
and by the circumstances of his birth, in spite of his soldierly
instincts, had been obliged to leave epaulet and sword to his elder
brother, and himself assume cassock and stole.  On leaving the
seminary, he espoused the cause of the Church militant with all the
ardour of his temperament.  Perils to encounter; foes to fight, a
religion to force on others, were necessities to this fiery
character, and as everything at the moment was quiet in France, he
had embarked for India with the fervent resolution of a martyr.

On reaching his destination, the young missionary had found himself
surrounded by circumstances which were wonderfully in harmony with
his celestial longings: some of his predecessors had been carried so
far by religious zeal that the King of Siam had put several to death
by torture and had forbidden any more missionaries to enter his
dominions; but this, as we can easily imagine, only excited still
more the abbe's missionary fervour; evading the watchfulness of the
military, and regardless of the terrible penalties imposed by the
king, he crossed the frontier, and began to preach the Catholic
religion to the heathen, many of whom were converted.

One day he was surprised by a party of soldiers in a little village
in which he had been living for three months, and in which nearly all
the inhabitants had abjured their false faith, and was brought before
the governor of Bankan, where instead of denying his faith, he nobly
defended Christianity and magnified the name of God.  He was handed
over to the executioners to be subjected to torture, and suffered at
their hands with resignation everything that a human body can endure
while yet retaining life, till at length his patience exhausted their
rage; and seeing him become unconscious, they thought he was dead,
and with mutilated hands, his breast furrowed with wounds, his limbs
half warn through by heavy fetters, he was suspended by the wrists to
a branch of a tree and abandoned.  A pariah passing by cut him down
and succoured him, and reports of his martyrdom having spread, the
French ambassador demanded justice with no uncertain voice, so that
the King of Siam, rejoicing that the executioners had stopped short
in time, hastened to send back to M.  de Chaumont, the representative
of Louis XIV, a mutilated though still living man, instead of the
corpse which had been demanded.

At the time when Louis XIV was meditating the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes he felt that the services of such a man would be invaluable
to him, so about 1632, Abbe Duchayla was recalled from India, and a
year later was sent to Mende, with the titles of Arch-priest of the
Cevennes and Inspector of Missions.

Soon the abbe, who had been so much persecuted, became a persecutor,
showing himself as insensible to the sufferings of others as he had
been inflexible under his own.  His apprenticeship to torture stood
him in such good stead that he became an inventor, and not only did
he enrich the torture chamber by importing from India several
scientifically constructed machines, hitherto unknown in Europe, but
he also designed many others.  People told with terror of reeds cut
in the form of whistles which the abbe pitilessly forced under the
nails of malignants; of iron pincers for tearing out their beards,
eyelashes, and eyebrows; of wicks steeped in oil and wound round the
fingers of a victim's hands, and then set on fire so as to form a
pair of five-flamed candelabra; of a case turning on a pivot in which
a man who refused to be converted was sometimes shut up, the case
being then made to revolve rapidly till the victim lost
consciousness; and lastly of fetters used when taking prisoners from
one town to another, and brought to such perfection, that when they
were on the prisoner could neither stand nor sit.

Even the most fervent panegyrists of Abbe Duchayla spoke of him with
bated breath, and, when he himself looked into his own heart and
recalled how often he had applied to the body the power to bind and
loose which God had only given him over the soul, he was seized with
strange tremors, and falling on his knees with folded hands and bowed
head he remained for hours wrapt in thought, so motionless that were
it not for the drops of sweat which stood on his brow he might have
been taken for a marble statue of prayer over a tomb.

Moreover, this priest by virtue of the powers with which he was
invested, and feeling that he had the authority of M. de Baville,
intendant of Languedoc, and M. de Broglie, commander of the troops,
behind him, had done other terrible things.

He had separated children from father and mother, and had shut them
up in religious houses, where they had been subjected to such severe
chastisement, by way of making them do penance for the heresy of
their parents, that many of them died under it.

He had forced his way into the chamber of the dying, not to bring
consolation but menaces; and bending over the bed, as if to keep back
the Angel of Death, he had repeated the words of the terrible decree
which provided that in case of the death of a Huguenot without
conversion, his memory should be persecuted, and his body, denied
Christian burial, should be drawn on hurdles out of the city, and
cast on a dungheap.

Lastly, when with pious love children tried to shield their parents
in the death-agony from his threats, or dead from his justice, by
carrying them, dead or dying, to some refuge in which they might hope
to draw their last breath in peace or to obtain Christian burial, he
declared that anyone who should open his door hospitably to such
disobedience was a traitor to religion, although among the heathen
such pity would have been deemed worthy of an altar.

Such was the man raised up to punish, who went on his way, preceded
by terror, accompanied by torture, and followed by death, through a
country already exhausted by long and bloody oppression, and where at
every step he trod on half repressed religious hate, which like a
volcano was ever ready to burst out afresh, but always prepared for
martyrdom.  Nothing held him back, and years ago he had had his grave
hollowed out in the church of St. Germain, choosing that church for
his last long sleep because it had been built by Pope Urban IV when
he was bishop of Mende.

Abbe Duchayla extended his visitation over six months, during which
every day was marked by tortures and executions: several prophets
were burnt at the stake; Francoise de Brez, she who had preached that
the Host contained a more venomous poison than a basilisk's head, was
hanged; and Laquoite, who had been confined in the citadel of
Montpellier, was on the point of being broken on the wheel, when on
the eve of his execution his cell was found empty. No one could ever
discover how he escaped, and consequently his reputation rose higher
than ever, it being currently believed that, led by the Holy Spirit
as St. Peter by the angel, he had passed through the guards invisible
to all, leaving his fetters behind.

This incomprehensible escape redoubled the severity of the
Arch-priest, till at last the prophets, feeling that their only
chance of safety lay in getting rid of him, began to preach against
him as Antichrist, and advocate his death. The abbe was warned of
this, but nothing could abate his zeal.  In France as in India,
martyrdom was his longed-for goal, and with head erect and
unfaltering step he "pressed toward the mark."

At last, on the evening of the 24th of July, two hundred conspirators
met in a wood on the top of a hill which overlooked the bridge of
Montvert, near which was the Arch-priest's residence.  Their leader
was a man named Laporte, a native of Alais, who had become a
master-blacksmith in the pass of Deze.  He was accompanied by an
inspired man, a former wool-carder, born at Magistavols, Esprit
Seguier by name.  This man was, after Laquoite, the most highly
regarded of the twenty or thirty prophets who were at that moment
going up and down the Cevennes in every direction.  The whole party
was armed with scythes, halberts, and swords; a few had even pistols
and guns.

On the stroke of ten, the hour fixed for their departure, they all
knelt down and with uncovered heads began praying as fervently as if
they were about to perform some act most pleasing to God, and their
prayers ended, they marched down the hill to the town, singing
psalms, and shouting between the verses to the townspeople to keep
within their homes, and not to look out of door or window on pain of
death.

The abbe was in his oratory when he heard the mingled singing and
shouting, and at the same moment a servant entered in great alarm,
despite the strict regulation of the Arch-priest that he was never to
be interrupted at his prayers.  This man announced that a body of
fanatics was coming down the hill, but the abbe felt convinced that
it was only an unorganised crowd which was going to try and carry off
six prisoners, at that moment in the 'ceps.' [ A terrible kind of
stocks--a beam split in two, no notches being made for the legs: the
victim's legs were placed between the two pieces of wood, which were
then, by means of a vice at each end, brought gradually together.
Translators Note.]

These prisoners were three young men and three girls in men's
clothes, who had been seized just as they were about to emigrate.  As
the abbe was always protected by a guard of soldiers, he sent for the
officer in command and ordered him to march against, the fanatics and
disperse them.  But the officer was spared the trouble of obeying,
for the fanatics were already at hand.  On reaching the gate of the
courtyard he heard them outside, and perceived that they were making
ready to burst it in.  Judging of their numbers by the sound of their
voices, he considered that far from attacking them, he would have
enough to do in preparing for defence, consequently he bolted and
barred the gate on the inside, and hastily erected a barricade under
an arch leading to the apartments of the abbe.  Just as these
preparations were complete, Esprit Seguier caught sight of a heavy
beam of wood lying in a ditch; this was raised by a dozen men and
used as a battering-ram to force in the gate, which soon showed a
breach.  Thus encouraged, the workers, cheered by the chants of their
comrades, soon got the gate off the hinges, and thus the outside
court was taken.  The crowd then loudly demanded the release of the
prisoners, using dire threats.

The commanding officer sent to ask the abbe what he was to do; the
abbe replied that he was to fire on the conspirators.  This imprudent
order was carried out; one of the fanatics was killed on the spot,
and two wounded men mingled their groans with the songs and threats
of their comrades.

The barricade was next attacked, some using axes, others darting
their swords and halberts through the crevices and killing those
behind; as for those who had firearms, they climbed on the shoulders
of the others, and having fired at those below, saved themselves by
tumbling down again.  At the head of the besiegers were Laporte and
Esprit Seguier, one of whom had a father to avenge and the other a
son, both of whom had been done to death by the abbe.  They were not
the only ones of the party who were fired by the desire of vengeance;
twelve or fifteen others were in the same position.

The abbe in his room listened to the noise of the struggle, and
finding matters growing serious, he gathered his household round him,
and making them kneel down, he told them to make their confession,
that he might, by giving them absolution, prepare them for appearing
before God.  The sacred words had just been pronounced when the
rioters drew near, having carried the barricade, and driven the
soldiers to take refuge in a hall on the ground floor just under the
Arch-priest's room.

But suddenly, the assault was stayed, some of the men going to
surround the house, others setting out on a search for the prisoners.
These were easily found, for judging by what they could hear that
their brethren had come to their rescue, they shouted as loudly as
they could.

The unfortunate creatures had already passed a whole week with their
legs caught and pressed by the cleft beams which formed these
inexpressibly painful stocks.  When the unfortunate victims were
released, the fanatics screamed with rage at the sight of their
swollen bodies and half-broken bones.  None of the unhappy people
were able to stand.  The attack on the soldiers was renewed, and
these being driven out of the lower hall, filled the staircase
leading to the abbe's apartments, and offered such determine.
resistance that their assailants were twice forced to fall back.
Laporte, seeing two of his men killed and five or six wounded, called
out loudly, "Children of God, lay down your arms: this way of going
to work is too slow; let us burn the abbey and all in it.  To work!
to work!  "The advice was good, and they all hastened to follow it:
benches, chairs, and furniture of all sorts were heaped up in the
hall, a palliasse thrown on the top, and the pile fired.  In a moment
the whole building was ablaze, and the Arch-priest, yielding to the
entreaties of his servants, fastened his sheets to the window-bars,
and by their help dropped into the garden.  The drop was so great
that he broke one of his thigh bones, but dragging himself along on
his hands and one knee, he, with one of his servants, reached a
recess in the wall, while another servant was endeavouring to escape
through the flames, thus falling into the hands of the fanatics, who
carried him before their captain.  Then cries of "The prophet! the
prophet!" were heard on all sides.  Esprit Seguier, feeling that
something fresh had taken place, came forward, still holding in his
hand the blazing torch with which he had set fire to the pile.

"Brother," asked Laporte, pointing to the prisoner, "is this man to
die?"

Esprit Seguier fell on his knees and covered his face with his
mantle, like Samuel, and sought the Lord in prayer, asking to know
His will.

In a short time he rose and said, "This man is not to die; for
inasmuch as he has showed mercy to our brethren we must show mercy to
him."

Whether this fact had been miraculously revealed to Seguier, or
whether he had gained his information from other sources, the newly
released prisoners confirmed its truth, calling out that the man had
indeed treated them with humanity.  Just then a roar as of a wild
beast was heard: one of the fanatics, whose brother had been put to
death by the abbe, had just caught sight of him, the whole
neighbourhood being lit up by the fire; he was kneeling in an angle
of the wall, to which he had dragged himself.

"Down with the son of Belial!" shouted the crowd, rushing towards the
priest, who remained kneeling and motionless like a marble statue.
His valet took advantage of the confusion to escape, and got off
easily; for the sight of him on whom the general hate was
concentrated made the Huguenots forget everything else:

Esprit Seguier was the first to reach the priest, and spreading his
hands over him, he commanded the others to hold back. "God desireth
not the death of a sinner,'" said he, "'but rather that he turn from
his wickedness and live.'"

"No, no!" shouted a score of voices, refusing obedience for the first
time, perhaps, to an order from the prophet; "let him die without
mercy, as he struck without pity.  Death to the son of Belial,
death!"

"Silence!" exclaimed the prophet in a terrible voice, "and listen to
the word of God from my mouth.  If this man will join us and take
upon him the duties of a pastor, let us grant him his life, that he
may henceforward devote it to the spread of the true faith."

"Rather a thousand deaths than apostasy!" answered the priest.

"Die, then!" cried Laporte, stabbing him; "take that for having burnt
my father in Nimes."

And he passed on the dagger to Esprit Seguier.

Duchayla made neither sound nor gesture: it would have seemed as if
the dagger had been turned by the priest's gown as by a coat of mail
were it not that a thin stream of blood appeared.  Raising his eyes
to heaven, he repeated the words of the penitential psalm: "Out of
the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord!  Lord, hear my voice!"

Then Esprit Seguier raised his arm and struck in his turn, saying,
"Take that for my son, whom you broke on the wheel at Montpellier."

And he passed on the dagger.

But this blow also was not mortal, only another stream of blood
appeared, and the abbe said in a failing voice, "Deliver me, O my
Saviour, out of my well-merited sufferings, and I will acknowledge
their justice; far I have been a man of blood."

The next who seized the dagger came near and gave his blow, saying,
"Take that for my brother, whom you let die in the 'ceps.'"

This time the dagger pierced the heart, and the abbe had only time to
ejaculate, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy!"
before he fell back dead.

But his death did not satisfy the vengeance of those who had not been
able to strike him living; one by one they drew near and stabbed,
each invoking the shade of some dear murdered one and pronouncing the
same words of malediction.

In all, the body of the abbe received fifty-two dagger thrusts, of
which twenty-four would have been mortal.

Thus perished, at the age of fifty-five, Messire Francois de Langlade
Duchayla, prior of Laval, inspector of missions in Gevaudan, and
Arch-priest of the Cevennes and Mende.

Their vengeance thus accomplished, the murderers felt that there was
no more safety for them in either city or plain, and fled to the
mountains; but in passing near the residence of M. de Laveze, a
Catholic nobleman of the parish of Molezon, one of the fugitives
recollected that he had heard that a great number of firearms was
kept in the house.  This seemed a lucky chance, for firearms were
what the Huguenots needed most of all.  They therefore sent two
envoys to M. de Laveze to ask him to give them at, least a share of
his weapons; but he, as a good Catholic, replied that it was quite
true that he had indeed a store of arms, but that they were destined
to the triumph and not to the desecration of religion, and that he
would only give them up with his life.  With these words, he
dismissed the envoys, barring his doors behind them.

But while this parley was going on the conspirators had approached
the chateau, and thus received the valiant answer to their demands
sooner than M. de Laveze had counted on.  Resolving not to leave him
time to take defensive measures, they dashed at the house, and by
standing on each other's shoulders reached the room in which M. de
Laveze and his entire family had taken refuge.  In an instant the
door was forced, and the fanatics, still reeking with the life-blood
of Abbe Duchayla, began again their work of death.  No one was
spared; neither the master of the house, nor his brother, nor his
uncle, nor his sister, who knelt to the assassins in vain; even his
old mother, who was eighty years of age, having from her bed first
witnessed the murder of all her family, was at last stabbed to the
heart, though the butchers might have reflected that it was hardly
worth while thus to anticipate the arrival of Death, who according to
the laws of nature must have been already at hand.

The massacre finished, the fanatics spread over the castle, supplying
themselves with arms and under-linen, being badly in need of the
latter; for when they left their homes they had expected soon to
return, and had taken nothing with them.  They also carried off the
copper kitchen utensils, intending to turn them into bullets.
Finally, they seized on a sum of 5000 francs, the marriage-portion of
M. de Laveze's sister, who was just about to be married, and thus
laid the foundation of a war fund

The news of these two bloody events soon reached not only Nimes but
all the countryside, and roused the authorities to action.  M. le
Comte de Broglie crossed the Upper Cevennes, and marched down to the
bridge of Montvert, followed by several companies of fusiliers.  From
another direction M. le Comte de Peyre brought thirty-two cavalry and
three hundred and fifty infantry, having enlisted them at Marvejols,
La Canourgue, Chiac, and Serverette.  M. de St. Paul, Abbe Duchayla's
brother, and the Marquis Duchayla, his nephew, brought eighty
horsemen from the family estates.  The Count of Morangiez rode in
from St. Auban and Malzieu with two companies of cavalry, and the
town of Mende by order of its bishop despatched its nobles at the
head of three companies of fifty men each.

But the mountains had swallowed up the fanatics, and nothing was ever
known of their fate, except that from time to time a peasant would
relate that in crossing the Cevennes he had heard at dawn or dusk, on
mountain peak or from valley depths, the sound going up to heaven of
songs of praise.  It was the fanatic assassins worshipping God.

Or occasionally at night, on the tops of the lofty mountains, fires
shone forth which appeared to signal one to another, but on looking
the next night in the same direction all was dark.

So M. de Broglie, concluding that nothing could be done against
enemies who were invisible, disbanded the troops which had come to
his aid, and went back to Montpellier, leaving a company of fusiliers
at Collet, another at Ayres, one at the bridge of Montvert, one at
Barre, and one at Pompidon, and appointing Captain Poul as their
chief,

This choice of such a man as chief showed that M. de Broglie was a
good judge of human nature, and was also perfectly acquainted with
the situation, for Captain Poul was the very man to take a leading
part in the coming struggle.  "He was," says Pere Louvreloeil, priest
of the Christian doctrine and cure of Saint-Germain de Calberte, "an
officer of merit and reputation, born in Ville-Dubert, near
Carcassonne, who had when young served in Hungary and Germany, and
distinguished himself in Piedmont in several excursions against the
Barbets, [ A name applied first to the Alpine smugglers who lived in
the valleys, later to the insurgent peasants in the Cevennes.--
Translator's Note.] notably in one of the later ones, when, entering
the tent of their chief, Barbanaga, he cut off his head.  His tall
and agile figure, his warlike air, his love of hard work, his hoarse
voice, his fiery and austere character, his carelessness in regard to
dress, his mature age, his tried courage, his taciturn habit, the
length and weight of his sword, all combined to render him
formidable.  Therefore no one could have been chosen more suitable
for putting down the rebels, for forcing their entrenchments, and for
putting them to flight."

Hardly had he taken up a position in the market town of Labarre,
which was to be his headquarters, than he was informed that a
gathering of fanatics had been seen on the little plain of Fondmorte,
which formed a pass between two valleys.  He ordered out his Spanish
steed, which he was accustomed to ride in the Turkish manner--that
is, with very short stirrups, so that he could throw himself forward
to the horse's ears, or backward to the tail, according as he wished
to give or avoid a mortal blow.  Taking with him eighteen men of his
own company and twenty-five from the town, he at once set off for the
place indicated, not considering any larger number necessary to put
to rout a band of peasants, however numerous.

The information turned out to be correct: a hundred Reformers led by
Esprit Seguier had encamped in the plain of Fondmorte, and about
eleven o'clock in the morning one of their sentinels in the defile
gave the alarm by firing off his gun and running back to the camp,
shouting, "To arms!"  But Captain Poul, with his usual impetuosity,
did not give the insurgents time to form, but threw himself upon them
to the beat of the drum, not in the least deterred by their first
volley.  As he had expected, the band consisted of undisciplined
peasants, who once scattered were unable to rally.  They were
therefore completely routed.  Poul killed several with his own hand,
among whom were two whose heads he cut off as cleverly as the most
experienced executioner could have done, thanks to the marvellous
temper of his Damascus blade.  At this sight all who had till then
stood their ground took to flight, Poul at their heels, slashing with
his sword unceasingly, till they disappeared among the mountains.  He
then returned to the field of battle, picked up the two heads, and
fastening them to his saddlebow, rejoined his soldiers with his
bloody trophies,--that is to say, he joined the largest group of
soldiers he could find; for the fight had turned into a number of
single combats, every soldier fighting for himself.  Here he found
three prisoners who were about to be shot; but Poul ordered that they
should not be touched: not that he thought for an instant of sparing
their lives, but that he wished to reserve them for a public
execution.  These three men were Nouvel, a parishioner of Vialon,
Moise Bonnet of Pierre-Male, and Esprit Seguier the prophet.

Captain Poul returned to Barre carrying with him his two heads and
his three prisoners, and immediately reported to M. Just de Baville,
intendant of Languedoc, the important capture he had made.  The
prisoners were quickly tried.  Pierre Nouvel was condemned to be
burnt alive at the bridge of Montvert, Molise Bonnet to be broken on
the wheel at Deveze, and Esprit Seguier to be hanged at
Andre-de-Lancise.  Thus those who were amateurs in executions had a
sufficient choice.

However, Moise Bonnet saved himself by becoming Catholic, but Pierre
Nouvel and Esprit Seguier died as martyrs, making profession of the
new faith and praising God.

Two days after the sentence on Esprit Seguier had been carried out,
the body disappeared from the gallows.  A nephew of Laporte named
Roland had audaciously carried it off, leaving behind a writing
nailed to the gibbet.  This was a challenge from Laporte to Poul, and
was dated from the "Camp of the Eternal God, in the desert of
Cevennes," Laporte signing himself "Colonel of the children of God
who seek liberty of conscience."  Poul was about to accept the
challenge when he learned that the insurrection was spreading on
every side.  A young man of Vieljeu, twenty-six years of age, named
Solomon Couderc, had succeeded Esprit Seguier in the office of
prophet, and two young lieutenants had joined Laporte.  One of these
was his nephew Roland, a man of about thirty, pock-marked, fair,
thin, cold, and reserved; he was not tall, but very strong, and of
inflexible courage.  The other, Henri Castanet of Massevaques, was a
keeper from the mountain of Laygoal, whose skill as a marksman was so
well known that it was said he never missed a shot.  Each of these
lieutenants had fifty men under him.

Prophets and prophetesses too increased apace, so that hardly a day
passed without reports being heard of fresh ones who were rousing
whole villages by their ravings.

In the meantime a great meeting of the Protestants of Languedoc had
been held in the fields of Vauvert, at which it had been resolved to
join forces with the rebels of the Cevennes, and to send a messenger
thither to make this resolution known.

Laporte had just returned from La Vaunage, where he had been making
recruits, when this good news arrived; he at once sent his nephew
Roland to the new allies with power to pledge his word in return for
theirs, and to describe to them, in order to attract them, the
country which he had chosen as the theatre of the coming war, and
which, thanks to its hamlets, its woods, its defiles, its valleys,
its precipices, and its caves, was capable of affording cover to as
many bands of insurgents as might be employed, would be a good
rallying-ground after repulse, and contained suitable positions for
ambuscades.  Roland was so successful in his mission that these new
"soldiers of the Lord," as they called themselves, on learning that
he had once been a dragoon, offered him the post of leader, which he
accepted, and returned to his uncle at the head of an army.

Being thus reinforced, the Reformers divided themselves into three
bands, in order to spread abroad their beliefs through the entire
district.  One went towards Soustele and the neighbourhood of Alais,
another towards St. Privat and the bridge of Montvert, while the
third followed the mountain slope down to St. Roman le Pompidou, and
Barre.

The first was commanded by Castanet, the second by Roland, and the
third by Laporte.

Each party ravaged the country as it passed, returning deathblow for
deathblow and conflagration for conflagration, so that hearing one
after another of these outrages Captain Poul demanded reinforcements
from M. de Broglie and M. de Baville, which were promptly despatched.

As soon as Captain Poul found himself at the head of a sufficient
number of troops, he determined to attack the rebels.  He had
received intelligence that the band led by Laporte was just about to
pass through the valley of Croix, below Barre, near Temelague.  In
consequence of this information, he lay in ambush at a favourable
spot on the route.  As soon as the Reformers who were without
suspicion, were well within the narrow pass in which Poul awaited
them, he issued forth at the head of his soldiers, and charged the
rebels with such courage and impetuosity that they, taken by
surprise, made no attempt at resistance, but, thoroughly demoralised,
spread over the mountain-side, putting a greater and greater distance
at, every instant between themselves and the enemy, despite the
efforts of Laporte to make them stand their ground.  At last, seeing
himself deserted, Laporte began to think of his own safety.  But it
was already too late, for he was surrounded by dragoons, and the only
way of retreat open to him lay over a large rock.  This he
successfully scaled, but before trying to get down the other side he
raised his hands in supplication to Heaven; at that instant a volley
was fired, two bullets struck him, and he fell head foremost down the
precipice.

When the dragoons reached the foot of the rock, they found him dead.
As they knew he was the chief of the rebels, his body was searched:
sixty Louis was found in his pockets, and a sacred chalice which he
was in the habit of using as an ordinary drinking-cup.  Poul cut off
his head and the heads of twelve other Reformers found dead on the
field of battle, and enclosing them in a wicker basket, sent them to
M. Just de Baville.

The Reformers soon recovered from this defeat and death, joined all
their forces into one body, and placed Roland at their head in the
place of Laporte.  Roland chose a young man called Couderc de Mazel-
Rozade, who had assumed the name of Lafleur, as his lieutenant, and
the rebel forces were not only quickly reorganised, but made complete
by the addition of a hundred men raised by the new lieutenant, and
soon gave a sign that they were again on the war-path by burning down
the churches of Bousquet, Cassagnas, and Prunet.

Then first it was that the consuls of Mende began to realise that it
was no longer an insurrection they had on hand but a war, and Mende
being the capital of Gevaudan and liable to be attacked at any
moment, they set themselves to bring into repair their counterscarps,
ravelins, bastions, gates, portcullises, moats, walls, turrets,
ramparts, parapets, watchtowers, and the gear of their cannon, and
having laid in a stock of firearms, powder and ball, they formed
eight companies each fifty strong, composed of townsmen, and a
further band of one hundred and fifty peasants drawn from the
neighbouring country.  Lastly, the States of the province sent an
envoy to the king, praying him graciously to take measures to check
the plague of heresy which was spreading from day to day.  The king
at once sent M. Julien in answer to the petition.  Thus it was no
longer simple governors of towns nor even chiefs of provinces who
were engaged in the struggle; royalty itself had come to the rescue.

M. de Julien, born a Protestant, was a, member of the nobility of
Orange, and in his youth had served against France and borne arms in
England and Ireland when William of Orange succeeded James II as King
of England, Julien was one of his pages, and received as a reward for
his fidelity in the famous campaign of 1688 the command of a regiment
which was sent to the aid of the Duke of Savoy, who had begged both
England and Holland to help him. He bore himself so gallantly that it
was in great part due to him that the French were forced to raise the
siege of Cony.

Whether it was that he expected too much from this success, or that
the Duke of Savoy did not recognise his services at their worth, he
withdrew to Geneva, where Louis XIV hearing of his discontent, caused
overtures to be made to him with a view to drawing him into the
French service.  He was offered the same rank in the French army as
he had held in the English, with a pension of 3000 livres.

M. de Julien accepted, and feeling that his religious belief would be
in the way of his advancement, when he changed his master he changed
his Church.  He was given the command of the valley of Barcelonnette,
whence he made many excursions against the Barbets; then he was
transferred to the command of the Avennes, of the principality of
Orange, in order to guard the passes, so that the French Protestants
could not pass over the frontier for the purpose of worshipping with
their Dutch Protestant brethren; and after having tried this for a
year, he went to Versailles to report himself to the king.  While he
was there, it chanced that the envoy from Gevaudan arrived, and the
king being satisfied with de Julien's conduct since he had entered
his service, made him major-general, chevalier of the military order
of St. Louis; and commander-in-chief in the Vivarais and the
Cevennes.

M. de Julien from the first felt that the situation was very grave,
and saw that his predecessors had felt such great contempt for the
heretics that they had not realised the danger of the revolt.  He
immediately proceeded to inspect in person the different points where
M. de Broglie had placed detachments of the Tournon and Marsily
regiments.  It is true that he arrived by the light of thirty burning
village churches.

M. de Broglie, M. de Baville, M. de Julien, and Captain Poul met
together to consult as to the best means of putting an end to these
disorders.  It was agreed that the royal troops should be divided
into two bodies, one under the command of M. de Julien to advance on
Alais, where it was reported large meetings of the rebels were taking
place, and the other under M. de Brogue, to march about in the
neighbourhood of Nimes.

Consequently, the two chiefs separated.  M. le Comte de Broglie at
the head of sixty-two dragoons and some companies of foot, and having
under him Captain Poul and M. de Dourville, set out from Cavayrac on
the 12th of January at 2 a. m., and having searched without finding
anything the vineyards of Nimes and La Garrigue de Milhau, took the
road to the bridge of Lunel.  There he was informed that those he was
in search of had been seen at the chateau of Caudiac the day before;
he therefore at once set out for the forest which lies around it, not
doubting to find the fanatics entrenched there; but, contrary to his
expectations, it was vacant.  He then pushed on to Vauvert, from
Vauvert to Beauvoisin, from Beauvoisin to Generac, where he learned
that a troop of rebels had passed the night there, and in the morning
had left for Aubore.  Resolved to give them no rest, M, de Broglie
set out at once for this village.

When half-way there, a member of his staff thought he could
distinguish a crowd of men near a house about half a league distant;
M. de Broglie instantly ordered Sieur de Gibertin, Captain Paul's
lieutenant, who was riding close by, at the head of his company, to
take eight dragoons and make a reconnaissance, in order to ascertain
who these men were, while the rest of the troops would make a halt.

This little band, led by its officer, crossed a clearing in the wood,
and advanced towards the farmhouse, which was called the Mas de
Gafarel, and which now seemed deserted.  But when they were within
half a gun-shot of the wall the charge was sounded behind it, and a
band of rebels rushed towards them, while from a neighbouring house a
second troop emerged, and looking round, he perceived a third lying
on their faces in a small wood.  These latter suddenly stood up and
approached him, singing psalms.  As it was impossible for M. de
Gibertin to hold his ground against so large a force, he ordered two
shots to be fired as a warning to de Brogue to advance to meet him,
and fell back on his comrades.  Indeed, the rebels had only pursued
him till they had reached a favourable position, on which they took
their stand.

M. de Brogue having surveyed the whole position with the aid of a
telescope, held a council of war, and it was decided that an attack
should be made forthwith.  They therefore advanced on the rebels in
line: Captain Poul on the right, M. de Dourville on the left, and
Count Broglie in the centre.

As they got near they could see that the rebels had chosen their
ground with an amount of strategical sagacity they had never till
then displayed.  This skill in making their dispositions was
evidently due to their having found a new leader whom no one knew,
not even Captain Poul, although they could see him at the head of his
men, carbine in hand.

However, these scientific preparations did not stop M. de Brogue: he
gave the order to charge, and adding example to precept, urged his
horse to a gallop.  The rebels in the first rank knelt on one knee,
so that the rank behind could take aim, and the distance between the
two bodies of troops disappeared rapidly, thanks to the impetuosity
of the dragoons; but suddenly, when within thirty paces of the enemy,
the royals found themselves on the edge of a deep ravine which
separated them from the enemy like a moat.  Some were able to check
their horses in time, but others, despite desperate efforts, pressed
upon by those behind, were pushed into the ravine, and rolled
helplessly to the bottom. At the same moment the order to fire was
given in a sonorous voice, there was a rattle of musketry, and
several dragoons near M. de Broglie fell.

"Forward!" cried Captain Poul, "forward!" and putting his horse at a
part of the ravine where the sides were less steep, he was soon
struggling up the opposite side, followed by a few dragoons.

"Death to the son of Belial!" cried the same voice which had given
the order to fire.  At that moment a single shot rang out, Captain
Poul threw up his hands, letting his sabre go, and fell from his
horse, which instead of running away, touched his master with its
smoking nostrils, then lifting its head, neighed long and low.  The
dragoons retreated.

"So perish all the persecutors of Israel!" cried the leader,
brandishing his carbine.  He then dashed down into the ravine, picked
up Captain Poul's sabre and jumped upon his horse.  The animal,
faithful to its old master, showed some signs of resistance, but soon
felt by the pressure of its rider's knees that it had to do with one
whom it could not readily unseat.  Nevertheless, it reared and
bounded, but the horseman kept his seat, and as if recognising that
it had met its match, the noble animal tossed its head, neighed once
more, and gave in.  While this was going on, a party of Camisards
[Name given to the insurgent Calvinists after the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes.--Translator's Note.] and one of the dragoons had got
down into the ravine, which had in consequence been turned into a
battlefield; while those who remained above on either side took
advantage of their position to fire down at their enemies.  M. de
Dourville, in command of the dragoons, fought among the others like a
simple soldier, and received a serious wound in the head; his men
beginning to lose ground, M. de Brogue tried to rally them, but
without avail, and while he was thus occupied his own troop ran away;
so seeing there was no prospect of winning the battle, he and a few
valiant men who had remained near him dashed forward to extricate M.
Dourville, who, taking advantage of the opening thus made, retreated,
his wound bleeding profusely.  On the other hand, the Camisards
perceiving at some distance bodies of infantry coming up to reinforce
the royals, instead of pursuing their foes, contented themselves with
keeping up a thick and well-directed musketry-fire from the position
in which they had won such a quick and easy victory.

As soon as the royal forces were out of reach of their weapons, the
rebel chief knelt down and chanted the song the Israelites sang when,
having crossed the Red Sea in safety, they saw the army of Pharaoh
swallowed up in the waters, so that although no longer within reach
of bullets the defeated troops were still pursued by songs of
victory.  Their thanksgivings ended, the Calvinists withdrew into the
forest, led by their new chief, who had at his first assay shown the
great extent of his knowledge, coolness, and courage.

This new chief, whose superiors were soon to become his lieutenants,
was the famous Jean Cavalier.

Jean Cavalier was then a young man of twenty-three, of less than
medium height, but of great strength.  His face was oval, with
regular features, his eyes sparkling and beautiful; he had long
chestnut hair falling on his shoulders, and an expression of
remarkable sweetness.  He was born in 1680 at Ribaute, a village in
the diocese of Alais, where his father had rented a small farm, which
he gave up when his son was about fifteen, coming to live at the farm
of St. Andeol, near Mende.

Young Cavalier, who was only a peasant and the son of a peasant,
began life as a shepherd at the Sieur de Lacombe's, a citizen of
Vezenobre, but as the lonely life dissatisfied a young man who was
eager for pleasure, Jean gave it up, and apprenticed himself to a
baker of Anduze.

There he developed a great love for everything connected with the
military; he spent all his free time watching the soldiers at their
drill, and soon became intimate with some of them, amongst others
with a fencing-master who gave him lessons, and a dragoon who taught
him to ride.

On a certain Sunday, as he was taking a walk with his sweetheart on
his arm, the young girl was insulted by a dragoon of the Marquis de
Florae's regiment.  Jean boxed the dragoon's ears, who drew his
sword.  Cavalier seized a sword from one of the bystanders, but the
combatants were prevented from fighting by Jean's friends.  Hearing
of the quarrel, an officer hurried up: it was the Marquis de Florae
himself, captain of the regiment which bore his name; but when he
arrived on the scene he found, not the arrogant peasant who had dared
to attack a soldier of the king, but only the young girl, who had
fainted, the townspeople having persuaded her lover to decamp.

The young girl was so beautiful that she was commonly called la belle
Isabeau, and the Marquis de Florac, instead of pursuing Jean
Cavalier, occupied himself in reviving Isabeau.

As it was, however, a serious affair, and as the entire regiment had
sworn Cavalier's death, his friends advised him to leave the country
for a time.  La belle Isabeau, trembling for the safety of her lover,
joined her entreaties to those of his friends, and Jean Cavalier
yielded.  The young girl promised him inviolable fidelity, and he,
relying on this promise, went to Geneva.

There he made the acquaintance of a Protestant gentleman called Du
Serre, who having glass-works at the Mas Arritas, quite near the farm
of St. Andeol, had undertaken several times, at the request of Jean's
father, Jerome, to convey money to Jean; for Du Serre went very often
to Geneva, professedly on business affairs, but really in the
interests of the Reformed faith.  Between the outlaw and the apostle
union was natural.  Du Serre found in Cavalier a young man of robust
nature, active imagination, and irreproachable courage; he confided
to him his hopes of converting all Languedoc and Vivarais.  Cavalier
felt himself drawn back there by many ties, especially by patriotism
and love.  He crossed the frontier once more, disguised as a servant,
in the suite of a Protestant gentleman; he arrived one night at
Anduze, and immediately directed his steps to the house of Isabeau.

He was just about to knock, although it was one o'clock in the
morning, when the door was opened from within, and a handsome young
man came out, who took tender leave of a woman on the threshold.  The
handsome young man was the Marquis de Florac; the woman was Isabeau.
The promised wife of the peasant had become the mistress of the
noble.

Our hero was not the man to suffer such an outrage quietly.  He
walked straight up to the marquis and stood right in his way.  The
marquis tried to push him aside with his elbow, but Jean Cavalier,
letting fall the cloak in which he was wrapped, drew his sword.  The
marquis was brave, and did not stop to inquire if he who attacked him
was his equal or not.  Sword answered sword, the blades crossed, and
at the end of a few instants the marquis fell, Jean's sword piercing
his chest.

Cavalier felt sure that he was dead, for he lay at his feet
motionless. He knew he had no time to lose, for he had no mercy to
hope for.  He replaced his bloody sword in the scabbard, and made for
the open country; from the open country he hurried into the
mountains, and at break of day he was in safety.

The fugitive remained the whole day in an isolated farmhouse whose
inmates offered him hospitality.  As he very soon felt that he was in
the house of a co-religionist, he confided to his host the
circumstances in which he found himself, and asked where he could
meet with an organised band in which he could enrol himself in order
to fight for the propagation of the Reformed religion.  The farmer
mentioned Generac as being a place in which he would probably find a
hundred or so of the brethren gathered together.  Cavalier set out
the same evening for this village, and arrived in the middle of the
Camisards at the very moment when they had just caught sight of M. de
Broglie and his troops in the distance.  The Calvinists happening to
have no leader, Cavalier with governing faculty which some men
possess by nature, placed himself at their head and took those
measures for the reception of the royal forces of which we have seen
the result, so that after the victory to which his head and arm had
contributed so much he was confirmed in the title which he had
arrogated to himself, by acclamation.

Such was the famous Jean Cavalier when the Royalists first learned of
his existence, through the repulse of their bravest troops and the
death of their most intrepid captain.

The news of this victory soon spread through the Cevennes, and fresh
conflagrations lit up the mountains in sign of joy.  The beacons were
formed of the chateau de la Bastide, the residence of the Marquis de
Chambonnas, the church of Samson, and the village of Grouppieres,
where of eighty houses only seven were left standing.

Thereupon M. de Julien wrote to the king, explaining the serious turn
things had taken, and telling him that it was no longer a few
fanatics wandering through the mountains and flying at the sight of a
dragoon whom they had to put down, but organised companies well led
and officered, which if united would form an army twelve to fifteen
hundred strong.  The king replied by sending M. le Comte de Montrevel
to Nimes.  He was the son of the Marechal de Montrevel, chevalier of
the Order of the Holy Spirit, major-general, lieutenant of the king
in Bresse and Charolais, and captain of a hundred men-at-arms.

In their struggle against shepherds, keepers, and peasants, M. de
Brogue, M. de Julien, and M. de Baville were thus joined together
with the head of the house of Beaune, which had already at this epoch
produced two cardinals, three archbishops, two bishops, a viceroy of
Naples, several marshals of France, and many governors of Savoy,
Dauphine, and Bresse.

He was followed by twenty pieces of ordnance, five thousand bullets,
four thousand muskets, and fifty thousand pounds of powder, all of
which was carried down the river Rhone, while six hundred of the
skilful mountain marksmen called 'miquelets' from Roussillon came
down into Languedoc.

M. de Montrevel was the bearer of terrible orders.  Louis XIV was
determined, no matter what it cost, to root out heresy, and set about
this work as if his eternal salvation depended on it.  As soon as M.
de Baville had read these orders, he published the following
proclamation:

"The king having been informed that certain people without religion
bearing arms have been guilty of violence, burning down churches and
killing priests, His Majesty hereby commands all his subjects to hunt
these people down, and that those who are taken with arms in their
hands or found amongst their bands, be punished with death without
any trial whatever, that their houses be razed to the ground and
their goods confiscated, and that all buildings in which assemblies
of these people have been held, be demolished.  The king further
forbids fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and other relations of
the fanatics, or of other rebels, to give them refuge, food, stores,
ammunition, or other assistance of any kind, under any pretext
whatever, either directly or indirectly, on pain of being reputed
accessory to the rebellion, and he commands the Sieur de Baville and
whatever officers he may choose to prosecute such and pronounce
sentence of death on them.  Furthermore, His Majesty commands that
all the inhabitants of Languedoc who may be absent at the date of the
issue of this proclamation, return home within a week, unless their
absence be caused by legitimate business, in which case they shall
declare the same to the commandant, the Sieur de Montrevel, or to the
intendant, the Sieur de Baville, and also to the mayors and consuls
of the places where they may be, receiving from the latter
certificates that there is a sufficient reason for their delay, which
certificates they shall forward to the above-mentioned commandant or
intendant.  And His Majesty furthermore commands the said commandant
and intendant to admit no foreigner or inhabitant of any other
province into Languedoc for commercial purposes or for any other
reason whatsoever, unless provided with certificates from the
commandants or intendants of the provinces whence they come, or from
the judges of the royal courts in the places whence they come, or
from the nearest place containing such courts.  Foreigners must be
provided with passports from the ambassadors or ministers of the king
accredited to the countries to which they belong, or from the
commandants or intendants of the provinces, or from the judges of the
royal courts of the places in which they may be at the date of this
proclamation.  Furthermore, it is His Majesty's will that those who
are found in the, aforesaid province of Languedoc without such
certificates be regarded as fanatics and rebels, and that they be
prosecuted as such, and punished with death, and that they be brought
for this purpose before the aforesaid Sieur de Baville or the
officers whom he may choose.

"(Signed)
"(Countersigned)

"LOUIS PHILIPPEAU

"Given at Versailles the 25th day, of the month of February 1703."


M. de Montrevel obeyed this proclamation to the letter.  For
instance, one day--the 1st of April 1703--as he was seated at dinner
it was reported to him that about one hundred and fifty Reformers
were assembled in a mill at Carmes, outside Nimes, singing psalms.
Although he was told at the same time that the gathering was composed
entirely of old people and children, he was none the less furious,
and rising from the table, gave orders that the call to horse should
be sounded.  Putting himself at the head of his dragoons, he advanced
on the mill, and before the Huguenots knew that they were about to be
attacked they were surrounded on every side. It was no combat which
ensued, for the Huguenots were incapable of resistance, it was simply
a massacre; a certain number of the dragoons entered the mill sword
in hand, stabbing all whom they could reach, whilst the rest of the
force stationed outside before the windows received those who jumped
out on the points of their swords.  But soon this butchery tired the
butchers, and to get over the business more quickly, the marshal, who
was anxious to return to his dinner, gave orders that the mill should
be set on fire.  This being done, the dragoons, the marshal still at
their head, no longer exerted themselves so violently, but were
satisfied with pushing back into the flames the few unfortunates who,
scorched and burnt, rushed out, begging only for a less cruel death.

Only one victim escaped.  A beautiful young girl of sixteen was saved
by the marshal's valet: both were taken and condemned to death; the
young girl was hanged, and the valet was on the point of being
executed when some Sisters of Mercy from the town threw themselves at
the marshal's feet end begged for his life: after long supplication,
he granted their prayer, but he banished the valet not only from his
service, but from Nimes.

The very same evening at supper word was brought to the marshal that
another gathering had been discovered in a garden near the still
smoking mill.  The indefatigable marshal again rose from table, and
taking with him his faithful dragoons, surrounded the garden, and
caught and shot on the spot all those who were assembled in it.  The
next day it turned out that he had made a mistake: those whom he had
shot were Catholics who had gathered together to rejoice over the
execution of the Calvinists.  It is true that they had assured the
marshal that they were Catholics, but he had refused to listen to
them.  Let us, however, hasten to assure the reader that this mistake
caused no further annoyance to the marshal, except that he received a
paternal remonstrance from the Bishop of Nimes, begging him in future
not to confound the sheep with the wolves.

In requital of these bloody deeds, Cavalier took the chateau of
Serras, occupied the town of Sauve, formed a company of horse, and
advancing to Nimes, took forcible possession of sufficient ammunition
for his purposes.  Lastly, he did something which in the eyes of the
courtiers seemed the most incredible thing of all, he actually wrote
a long letter to Louis XIV himself.  This letter was dated from the
"Desert, Cevennes," and signed "Cavalier, commander of the troops
sent by God"; its purpose was to prove by numerous passages from Holy
Writ that Cavalier and his comrades had been led to revolt solely
from a sense of duty, feeling that liberty of conscience was their
right; and it dilated on the subject of the persecutions under which
Protestants had suffered, and asserted that it was the infamous
measures put in force against them which had driven them to take up
arms, which they were ready to lay down if His Majesty would grant
them that liberty in matters of religion which they sought and if he
would liberate all who were in prison for their faith.  If this were
accorded, he assured the king His Majesty would have no more faithful
subjects than themselves, and would henceforth be ready to shed their
last drop of blood in his service, and wound up by saying that if
their just demands were refused they would obey God rather than the
king, and would defend their religion to their last breath.

Roland, who, whether in mockery or pride, began now to call himself
"Comte Roland," did not lag behind his young brother either as
warrior or correspondent.  He had entered the town of Ganges, where a
wonderful reception awaited him; but not feeling sure that he would
be equally well received at St. Germain and St. Andre, he had written
the following letters:--

"Gentlemen and officers of the king's forces, and citizens of St.
Germain, make ready to receive seven hundred troops who have vowed to
set Babylon on fire; the seminary and the houses of MM. de Fabregue,
de Sarrasin, de Moles, de La Rouviere, de Musse, and de Solier, will
be burnt to the ground.  God, by His Holy Spirit, has inspired my
brother Cavalier and me with the purpose of entering your town in a
few days; however strongly you fortify yourselves, the children of
God will bear away the victory.  If ye doubt this, come in your
numbers, ye soldiers of St. Etienne, Barre, and Florac, to the field
of Domergue; we shall be there to meet you.  Come, ye hypocrites, if
your hearts fail not.

"COMTE ROLAND."


The second letter was no less violent.  It was as follows:--

"We, Comte Roland, general of the Protestant troops of France
assembled in the Cevennes in Languedoc, enjoin on the inhabitants of
the town of St. Andre of Valborgne to give proper notice to all
priests and missionaries within it, that we forbid them to say mass
or to preach in the afore-mentioned town, and that if they will avoid
being burnt alive with their adherents in their churches and houses,
they are to withdraw to some other place within three days.

"COMTE ROLAND."


Unfortunately for the cause of the king, though the rebels met with
some resistance in the villages of the plain, such as St. Germain and
St. Andre, it was otherwise with those situated in the mountains; in
those, when beaten, the Protestants found cover, when victorious
rest; so that M. de Montrevel becoming aware that while these
villages existed heresy would never be extirpated, issued the
following ordinance:--

"We, governor for His most Christian Majesty in the provinces of
Languedoc and Vivarais, do hereby make known that it has pleased the
king to command us to reduce all the places and parishes hereinafter
named to such a condition that they can afford no assistance to the
rebel troops; no inhabitants will therefore be allowed to remain in
them.  His Majesty, however, desiring to provide for the subsistence
of the afore-mentioned inhabitants, orders them to conform to the
following regulations.  He enjoins on the afore-mentioned inhabitants
of the hereinafter-mentioned parishes to repair instantly to the
places hereinafter appointed, with their furniture, cattle, and in
general all their movable effects, declaring that in case of
disobedience their effects will be confiscated and taken away by the
troops employed to demolish their houses.  And it is hereby forbidden
to any other commune to receive such rebels, under pain of having
their houses also razed to the ground and their goods confiscated,
and furthermore being regarded and treated as rebels to the commands
of His Majesty."

To this proclamation were appended the following instructions:--

"I.  The officers who may be appointed to perform the above task
shall first of all make themselves acquainted with the position of
the parishes and villages which are to be destroyed and depopulated,
in order to an effective disposition of the troops, who are to guard
the militia engaged in the work of destruction.

"II.  The attention of the officers is called to the following:--
When two or more villages or hamlets are so near together that they
may be protected at the same time by the same troops, then in order
to save time the work is to be carried on simultaneously in such
villages or hamlets.

"III.  When inhabitants are found still remaining in any of the
proscribed places, they are to be brought together, and a list made
of them, as well as an inventory taken of their stock and corn.

"IV.  Those inhabitants who are of the most consequence among them
shall be selected to guide the others to the places assigned.

"V.  With regard to the live stock, the persons who may be found in
charge of it shall drive it to the appointed place, save and except
mules and asses, which shall be employed in the transport of corn to
whatever places it may be needed in.  Nevertheless, asses may be
given to the very old, and to women with child who may be unable to
walk.

"VI.  A regular distribution of the militia is to be made, so that
each house to be destroyed may have a sufficient number, for the
task; the foundations of such houses may be undermined or any other
method employed which may be most convenient; and if the house can be
destroyed by no other means, it is to be set on fire.

"VII.  No damage is to be done to the houses of former Catholics
until further notice, and to ensure the carrying out of this order a
guard is to be placed in them, and an inventory of their contents
taken and sent to Marechal de Montrevel.

"VIII.  The order forbidding the inhabitants to return to their
houses is to be read to the inhabitants of each village; but if any
do return they shall not be harmed, but simply driven away with
threats; for the king does not desire that blood be shed; and the
said order shall be affixed to a wall or tree in each village.

"IX.  Where no inhabitants are found, the said order shall simply be
affixed as above-mentioned in each place.

"(Signed) "MARECHAL DE MONTREVEL"


Under these instructions the list of the villages to be destroyed was
given.  It was as follows:

18 in the parish of Frugeres,
5    "      "  Fressinet-de-Lozere,
4    "      "  Grizac,
15   "      "  Castagnols,
11   "      "  Vialas,
6    "      "  Saint-Julien,
8    "      "  Saint-Maurice de Vantalon,
14   "      "  Frezal de Vantalon,
7    "      "  Saint-Hilaire de Laret,
6    "      "  Saint-Andeol de Clergues,
28   "      "  Saint-Privat de Vallongues,
10   "      "  Saint-Andre de Lancise,
19   "      "  Saint-Germain de Calberte,
26   "      "  Saint-Etienne de Valfrancesque,
9    "      "  parishes of Prunet and Montvaillant,
16   "      "  parish of Florac.
---
202


A second list was promised, and was shortly afterwards published: it
included the parishes of Frugeres, Pompidon, Saint-Martin, Lansuscle,
Saint-Laurent, Treves, Vebron, Ronnes, Barre, Montluzon, Bousquet, La
Barthes, Balme, Saint-Julien d'Aspaon Cassagnas, Sainte-Croix de
Valfrancesque, Cabriac, Moissac, Saint-Roman, Saint Martin de Robaux,
La Melouse, le Collet de Deze, Saint-Michel de Deze, and the villages
of Salieges, Rampon, Ruas, Chavrieres, Tourgueselle, Ginestous,
Fressinet, Fourques, Malbos, Jousanel, Campis, Campredon,
Lous-Aubrez, La Croix de Fer, Le Cap de Coste, Marquayres, Le
Cazairal, and Le Poujal.

In all, 466 market towns, hamlets, and villages, with 19,500
inhabitants, were included.

All these preparations made Marechal de Montrevel set out for Aix,
September 26th, 1703, in order that the work might be carried out
under his personal supervision.  He was accompanied by MM. de
Vergetot and de Marsilly, colonels of infantry, two battalions of the
Royal-Comtois, two of the Soissonnais infantry, the Languedoc
regiment of dragoons, and two hundred dragoons from the Fimarcon
regiment.  M. de Julien, on his side, set out for the Pont-de-
Montvert at the same time with two battalions from Hainault,
accompanied by the Marquis of Canillac, colonel of infantry, who
brought two battalions of his own regiment, which was stationed in
Rouergue, with him, and Comte de Payre, who brought fifty-five
companies of militia from Gevaudan, and followed by a number of mules
loaded with crowbars, axes, and other iron instruments necessary for
pulling down houses.

The approach of all these troops following close on the terrible
proclamations we have given above, produced exactly the contrary
effect to that intended.  The inhabitants of the proscribed districts
were convinced that the order to gather together in certain places
was given that they might be conveniently massacred together, so that
all those capable of bearing arms went deeper into the mountains, and
joined the forces of Cavalier and Roland, thus reinforcing them to
the number of fifteen hundred men.  Also hardly had M. de Julien set
his hand to the work than he received information from M. de
Montrevel, who had heard the news through a letter from Flechier,
that while the royal troops were busy in the mountains the Camisards
had come down into the plain, swarmed over La Camargue, and had been
seen in the neighbourhood of Saint-Gilles.  At the same time word was
sent him that two ships had been seen in the offing, from Cette, and
that it was more than probable that they contained troops, that
England and Holland were sending to help the Camisards.

M. de Montrevel; leaving the further conduct of the expedition to MM.
de Julien and de Canillac, hastened to Cette with eight hundred men
and ten guns.  The ships were still in sight, and were really, as had
been surmised, two vessels which had been detached from the combined
fleets of England and Holland by Admiral Schowel, and were the
bearers of money, arms, and ammunition to the Huguenots.  They
continued to cruise about and signal, but as the rebels were forced
by the presence of M. de Montrevel to keep away from the coast, and
could therefore make no answer, they put off at length into the open,
and rejoined the fleet.  As M. de Montrevel feared that their retreat
might be a feint, he ordered all the fishermen's huts from
Aigues-Morte to Saint-Gilles to be destroyed, lest they should afford
shelter to the Camisards.  At the same time he carried off the
inhabitants of the district of Guillan and shut them up in the
chateau of Sommerez, after having demolished their villages.  Lastly,
he ordered all those who lived in homesteads, farms, or hamlets, to
quit them and go to some large town, taking with them all the
provisions they were possessed of; and he forbade any workman who
went outside the town to work to take more than one day's provisions
with him.

These measures had the desired effect, but they were terrible in
their results; they deprived the Camisards of  shelter indeed, but
they ruined the province.  M. de Baville, despite his well-known
severity tried remonstrances, but they were taken in bad part by M.
de Montrevel, who told the intendant to mind his own business, which
was confined to civil matters, and to leave military matters in his,
M. de Montrevel's, hands; whereupon the commandant joined M. de
Julien, who was carrying on the work of destruction with
indefatigable vigour.

In spite of all the enthusiasm with which M. de Julien went to work
to accomplish his mission, and being a new convert, it was, of
course, very great.  Material hindrances hampered him at every step.
Almost all the doomed houses were built on vaulted foundations, and
were therefore difficult to lay low; the distance of one house from
another, too, their almost inaccessible position, either on the peak
of a high mountain or in the bottom of a rocky valley, or buried in
the depths of the forest which hid then like a veil, made the
difficulty still greater; whole days were often lost by the workmen
and militia in searching for the dwellings they came to destroy.

The immense size of the parishes also caused delay: that of
Saint-Germain de Calberte, for instance, was nine leagues in
circumference, and contained a hundred and eleven hamlets, inhabited
by two hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine were
Catholic; that of Saint-Etienne de Valfrancesque was of still greater
extent, and its population was a third larger, so that obstacles to
the work multiplied in a remarkable manner.  For the first few days
the soldiers and workmen found food in and around the villages, but
this was soon at an end, and as they could hardly expect the peasants
to keep up the supply, and the provisions they had brought with them
being also exhausted, they were soon reduced to biscuit and water;
and they were not even able to make it into a warm mess by heating
the water, as they had no vessels; moreover, when their hard day's
work was at an end, they had but a handful of straw on which to lie.
These privations, added to their hard and laborious life, brought on
an endemic fever, which incapacitated for work many soldiers and
labourers, numbers of whom had to be dismissed.  Very soon the
unfortunate men, who were almost as much to be pitied as those whom
they were persecuting, waited no longer to be sent away, but deserted
in numbers.

M. de Julien soon saw that all his efforts would end in failure if he
could not gain the king's consent to a slight change in the original
plan.  He therefore wrote to Versailles, and represented to the king
how long the work would take if the means employed were only iron
tools and the human hand, instead of fire, the only true instrument
employed by Heaven in its vengeance.  He quoted in support of his
petition the case of Sodom and Gomorrah--those cities accursed of the
Lord.  Louis XIV, impressed by the truth of this comparison, sent him
back a messenger post-haste authorising him to employ the suggested
means.

"At once," says Pere Louvreloeil, "the storm burst, and soon of all
the happy homesteads nothing was left: the hamlets, with their barns
and outhouses, the isolated farmhouses, the single huts and cottages,
every species of building in short, disappeared before the swift
advancing flames as wild flowers, weeds, and roots fall before the
ploughshare."

This destruction was accompanied by horrible cruelty.  For instance,
twenty-five inhabitants of a certain village took refuge in a
chateau; the number consisted of children and very old people, and
they were all that was left of the entire population.  Palmerolle, in
command of the miquelets, hearing of this, hastened thither, seized
the first eight he could lay hold of, and shot them on the spot, "to
teach them," as he says in his report, "not to choose a shelter which
was not on the list of those permitted to them."

The Catholics also of St. Florent, Senechas, Rousson, and other
parishes, becoming excited at seeing the flames which enveloped the
houses of their old enemies, joined together, and arming themselves
with everything that could be made to serve as an instrument of
death, set out to hunt the conscripts down; they carried off the
flocks of Perolat, Fontareche, and Pajolas, burned down a dozen
houses at the Collet-de-Deze, and from there went to the village of
Brenoux, drunk with the lust of destruction.  There they massacred
fifty-two persons, among them mothers with unborn children; and with
these babes, which they tore from them, impaled on their pikes and
halberts, they continued their march towards the villages of St.
Denis and Castagnols.

Very soon these volunteers organised themselves into companies, and
became known under the name of Cadets de la Croix, from a small white
cross which they wore on their coats; so the poor Huguenots had a new
species of enemy to contend with, much more bloodthirsty than the
dragoons and the miquelets; for while these latter simply obeyed
orders from Versailles, Nimes, or Montpellier, the former gratified a
personal hate--a hate which had come down to them from their fathers,
and which they would pass on to their children.

On the other hand, the young Huguenot leader, who every day gained
more influence over his soldiers, tried to make the dragoons and
Cadets de la Croix suffer in return everything they inflicted on the
Huguenots, except the murders.  In the night from the 2nd to the 3rd
October, about ten o'clock, he came down into the plain and attacked
Sommieres from two different points, setting fire to the houses.  The
inhabitants seizing their arms, made a sortie, but Cavalier charged
them at the head of the Cavalry and forced them to retreat. Thereupon
the governor, whose garrison was too small to leave the shelter of
the walls, turned his guns on them and fired, less in the hope of
inflicting injury on them than in that of being heard by the
neighbouring garrisons.

The Camisards recognising this danger, retired, but not before they
had burnt down the hotels of the Cheval-Blanc, the Croix-d'Or, the
Grand-Louis, and the Luxembourg, as well as a great number of other
houses, and the church and the presbytery of Saint-Amand.

Thence the Camisards proceeded to Cayla and Vauvert, into which they
entered, destroying the fortifications.  There they provided
themselves abundantly with provisions for man and beast.  In Vauvert,
which was almost entirely inhabited by his co-religionists, Cavalier
assembled the inhabitants in the market-place, and made them join
with him in prayer to God, that He would prevent the king from
following evil counsel; he also exhorted his brethren to be ready to
sacrifice their goods and their lives for the re-establishment of
their religion, affirming that the Holy Spirit had revealed to him
that the arm of the Lord, which had always come to their aid, was
still stretched out over them.

Cavalier undertook these movements in the hope of interrupting the
work of destruction going on in Upper Cevennes; and partly obtained
the desired result; for M. de Julien received orders to come down
into the open country and disperse the Camisards.

The troops tried to fulfil this task, but, thanks to the knowledge
that the rebels had of the country, it was impossible to come up with
them, so that Fleshier, who was in the thick of the executions,
conflagrations, and massacres, but who still found time to write
Latin verse and gallant letters, said, in speaking of them, "They
were never caught, and did all the damage they wished to do without
let or hindrance.  We laid their mountains waste, and they laid waste
our plain.  There are no more churches left in our dioceses, and not
being able either to plough or sow our lands, we have no revenues.
We dread serious revolt, and desire to avoid a religious civil war;
so all our efforts are relaxing, we let our arms fall without knowing
why, and we are told, 'You must have patience; it is not possible to
fight against phantoms.'"  Nevertheless, from time to time, these
phantoms became visible.  Towards the end of October, Cavalier came
down to Uzes, carried off two sentinels who were guarding the gates,
and hearing the call to arms within, shouted that he would await the
governor of the city, M. de Vergetot, near Lussan.

And indeed Cavalier, accompanied by his two lieutenants, Ravanel and
Catinat, took his way towards this little town, between Uzes and
Bargeac, which stands upon an eminence surrounded upon all sides by
cliffs, which serve it as ramparts and render it very difficult of
access.  Having arrived within three gun-shots of Lussan, Cavalier
sent Ravanel to demand provisions from the inhabitants; but they,
proud of their natural ramparts, and believing their town
impregnable, not only refused to comply with the requisition, but
fired several shots on the envoy, one of which wounded in the arm a
Camisard of the name of La Grandeur, who had accompanied Ravanel.
Ravanel withdrew, supporting his wounded comrade, followed by shots
and the hootings of the inhabitants.  When they rejoined Cavalier and
made their report, the young commander issued orders to his soldiers
to make ready to take the town the next morning; for, as night was
already falling, he did not venture to start in the dark.  In the
meantime the besieged sent post-haste to M. de Vergetot to warn him
of their situation; and resolving to defend themselves as long as
they could, while waiting for a response to their message they set
about barricading their gates, turned their scythes into weapons,
fastened large hooks on long poles, and collected all the instruments
they could find that could be used in attack or defence.  As to the
Camisards, they encamped for the night near an old chateau called
Fan, about a gun-shot from Lussan.

At break of day loud shouts from the town told the Camisards that the
expected relief was in sight, and looking out they saw in the
distance a troop of soldiers advancing towards them; it was M. de
Vergetat at the head of his regiment, accompanied by forty Irish
officers.

The Protestants prepared themselves, as usual, by reciting psalms and
prayers, notice without taking of the shouts and threats of any of
the townspeople, and having finished their invocations, they marched
out to meet the approaching column.  The cavalry, commanded by
Catinat, made a detour, taking a sheltered way to an unguarded bridge
over a small river not far off, so as to outflank the royal forces,
which they were to attack in the rear as soon as Cavalier and Ravanel
should have engaged them in front.

M. de Vergetot, on his side, continued to advance, so that the
Calvinists and the Catholics were soon face to face.  The battle
began on both sides by a volley; but Cavalier having seen his cavalry
emerging from a neighbouring wood, and counting upon their
assistance, charged the enemy at the double quick.  Catinat judging
by the noise of the firing that his presence was necessary, charged
also at a gallop, falling on the flank of the Catholics.

In this charge, one of M. de Vergetot's captains was killed by a
bullet, and the other by a sabre-cut, and the grenadiers falling into
disorder, first lost ground and then fled, pursued by Catinat and his
horsemen, who, seizing them by the hair, despatched them with their
swords.  Having tried in vain to rally his men, M, de Vergetot,
surrounded by a few Irish, was forced in his turn to fly; he was
hotly pursued, and on the point of being taken, when by good luck he
reached the height of Gamene, with its walls of rock.  Jumping off
his horse, he entered the narrow pathway which led to the top, and
entrenched himself with about a hundred men in this natural fort.
Cavalier perceiving that further pursuit would be dangerous, resolved
to rest satisfied with his victory; as he knew by his own experience
that neither men nor horses had eaten for eighteen hours, he gave the
signal far retreat, and retired on Seyne, where he hoped to find
provisions.

This defeat mortified the royal forces very deeply, and they resolved
to take their revenge.  Having learnt by their spies that on a
certain night in November Cavalier arid his band intended to sleep on
a mountain called Nages, they surrounded the mountain during the
night, so that at dawn Cavalier found himself shut in on every side.
As he wished to see with his own eyes if the investment was complete,
he ordered his troops to fall into rank on the top of the mountain,
giving the command to Ravanel and Catinat, and with a pair of pistols
in his belt and his carbine on his shoulder, he glided from bush to
bush and rock to rock, determined, if any weak spot existed, to
discover it; but the information he had received was perfectly
correct, every issue was guarded.

Cavalier now set off to rejoin his troops, passing through a ravine,
but he had hardly taken thirty steps when he found himself confronted
by a cornet and two dragoons who were lying in ambush.  There was no
time to run away, and indeed such a thought never entered the young
commander's head; he walked straight up to them.  On their side, the
dragoons advanced towards him, and the cornet covering him with his
pistol, called out, "Halt! you are Cavalier; I know you.  It is not
possible for you to escape; surrender at discretion."  Cavalier's
answer was to blow out the cornet's brains with a shot from his
carbine, then throwing it behind him as of no further use, he drew
his two pistols from his belt, walked up to the two dragoons, shot
them both dead, and rejoined his comrades unwounded.  These, who had
believed him lost, welcomed him with cheers.

But Cavalier had something else to do than to celebrate his return;
mounting his horse, he put himself at the head of his men, and fell
upon the royal troops with such impetuosity that they gave way at the
first onset.  Then a strange incident occurred.  About thirty women
who had come to the camp with provisions, carried away by their
enthusiasm at the sight of this success, threw themselves upon the
enemy, fighting like men.  One young girl of about seventeen, Lucrese
Guigon by name, distinguished herself amongst the others by her great
valour.  Not content with encouraging her brethren by the cry of "The
sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" she tore sabres from the hands of
the dead dragoons to despatch the dying.  Catinat, followed by ten of
his men, pursued the flying troops as far as the plain of Calvisson.
There they were able to rally, thanks to the advance of the garrison
to meet them.

Eighty dragoons lay dead on the field of battle, while Cavalier had
only lost five men.

As we shall see, Cavalier was not only a brave soldier and a skilful
captain, but also a just judge.  A few days after the deed of arms
which we have just related, he learned that a horrible murder had
been committed by four Camisards, who had then retired into the
forest of Bouquet.  He sent a detachment of twenty men with orders to
arrest the murderers and bring them before him.  The following are
the details of the crime:

The daughter of Baron Meyrargues, who was not long married to a
gentleman named M. de Miraman, had set out on the 29th November for
Ambroix to join her husband, who was waiting for her there.  She was
encouraged to do this by her coachman, who had often met with
Camisards in the neighbourhood, and although a Catholic, had never
received any harm from them.  She occupied her own carriage, and was
accompanied by a maid, a nurse, a footman, and the coachman who had
persuaded her to undertake the journey.  Two-thirds of the way
already lay safely behind them, when between Lussan and Vaudras she
was stopped by four, men, who made her get out of her carriage and
accompany them into the neighbouring forest.  The account of what
then happened is taken from the deposition of the maid.  We copy it
word for word:

"These wretches having forced us," says she, "to walk into the forest
till we were at some distance from the high road, my poor mistress
grew so tired that she begged the man who walked beside her to allow
her to lean on his shoulder.  He looking round and seeing that they
had reached a lonely spot, replied, 'We need hardly go any farther,'
and made us sit dawn on a plot of grass which was to be the scene of
our martyrdom.  My poor mistress began to plead with the barbarians
in the most touching manner, and so sweetly that she would have
softened the heart of a demon.  She offered them her purse, her gold
waistband, and a fine diamond which she drew from her finger; but
nothing could move these tigers, and one of them said, 'I am going to
kill all the Catholics at once, and shall be gin with you.'  'What
will you gain by my death?' asked my mistress.  'Spare my life.'--
'No; shut up!' replied he.   'You shall die by my hand.  Say your
prayers.'  My good mistress threw herself at once on her knees and
prayed aloud that God would show mercy to her and to her murderers,
and while she was thus praying she received a pistol-shot in her left
breast, and fell; a second assassin cut her across the face with his
sword, and a third dropped a large stone on her head, while the
fourth killed the nurse with a shot from his pistol.  Whether it was
that they had no more loaded firearms, or that they wished to save
their ammunition, they were satisfied with only giving me several
bayonet wounds.  I pretended to be dead: they thought it was really
the case, and went away.  Some time after, seeing that everything had
become quiet, and hearing no sound, I dragged myself, dying as I was,
to where my dear mistress lay, and called her.  As it happened, she
was not quite dead, and she said in a faint voice, 'Stay with me,
Suzon, till I die.'  She added, after a short pause, for she was
hardly able to speak, 'I die for my religion, and I hope that God
will have pity on me.  Tell my husband that I confide our little one
to his care.'  Having said this, she turned her thoughts from the
world, praying to God in broken and tender words, and drew her last
breath as the night fell."

In obedience to Cavalier's orders, the four criminals were taken and
brought before him.  He was then with his troops near Saint-Maurice
de Casevielle; he called a council of war, and having had the
prisoners tried for their atrocious deed, he summed up the evidence
in as clear a manner as any lawyer could have done, and called upon
the judges to pronounce sentence.  All the judges agreed that the
prisoners should be put to death, but just as the sentence was made
known one of the assassins pushed aside the two men who guarded him,
and jumping down a rock, disappeared in the forest before any attempt
could be made to stop him.  The three others were shot.

The Catholics also condemned many to be executed, but the trials
conducted by then were far from being as remarkable for honour and
justice as was that which we have just described.  We may instance
the trial of a poor boy of fourteen, the son of a miller of
Saint-Christol who had been broken the wheel just a month before.
For a moment the judges hesitated to condemn so young a boy to death,
but a witness presented himself who testified that the little fellow
was employed by the fanatics to strangle Catholic children.  Although
no one believed the evidence, yet it was seized-on as a pretext: the
unfortunate boy was condemned to death, and hanged without mercy an
hour later.

A great many people from the parishes devastated by M. de Julien had
taken refuge in Aussilargues, in the parish of St. Andre.  Driven by
hunger and misery, they went beyond the prescribed limits in search
of means of subsistence.  Planque hearing of this, in his burning
zeal for the Catholic faith resolved not to leave such a crime
unpunished.  He despatched a detachment of soldiers to arrest the
culprits: the task was easy, for they were all once more inside the
barrier and in their beds.  They were seized, brought to St. Andre's
Church and shut in; then, without trial of any kind,--they were
taken, five at a time, and massacred: some were shot and some cut
down with sword or axe; all were killed without exception--old and
young women and children.  One of the latter, who had received three
shots was still able to raise his head and cry, "Where is father?
Why doesn't he come and take me away."

Four men and a young girl who had taken refuge in the town of
Lasalle, one of the places granted to the houseless villagers as an
asylum, asked and received formal permission from the captain of the
Soissonais regiment, by name Laplace, to go home on important private
business, on condition that they returned the same night.  They
promised, and in the intention of keeping this promise they all met
on their way back at a small farmhouse.  Just as they reached it a
terrible storm came on.  The men were for continuing their way in
spite of the weather, but the young girl besought them to wait till
daylight, as she did not dare to venture out in the dark during such
a storm, and would die of fright if left alone at the farm.  The men,
ashamed to desert their companion, who was related to one of them,
yielded to her entreaties and remained, hoping that the storm would
be a sufficient excuse for the delay.  As soon as it was light, the
five resumed their journey.  But the news of their crime had reached
the ears of Laplace before they got back.  They were arrested, and
all their excuses were of no avail.  Laplace ordered the men to be
taken outside the town and shot.  The young girl was condemned to be
hanged; and the sentence was to be carried out that very day, but
some nuns who had been sent for to prepare her for death, having
vainly begged Laplace to show mercy, entreated the girl to declare
that she would soon become a mother.  She indignantly refused to save
her life at the cost of her good name, so the nuns took the lie on
themselves and made the necessary declaration before the captain,
begging him if he had no pity for the mother to spare the child at
least, by granting a reprieve till it should be born.  The captain
was/not for a moment deceived, but he sent for a midwife and ordered
her to examine the young girl.  At the end of half an hour she
declared that the assertion of the nuns was true.

"Very well," said the captain: "let them both be kept in prison for
three months; if by the end of that time the truth of this assertion
is not self-evident, both shall be hanged."  When this decision was
made known to the poor woman, she was overcome by fear, and asked to
see the, captain again, to whom she confessed that, led away by the
entreaties of the nuns, she had told a lie.

Upon this, the woman was sentenced to be publicly whipped, and the
young girl hanged on a gibbet round which were placed the corpses of
the four men of whose death she was the cause.

As may easily be supposed, the "Cadets of the Cross" vied with both
Catholics and Protestants in the work of destruction.  One of their
bands devoted itself to destroying everything belonging to the new
converts from Beaucaire to Nimes.  They killed a woman and two
children at Campuget, an old man of eighty at a farm near
Bouillargues, several persons at Cicure, a young girl at Caissargues,
a gardener at Nimes, and many other persons, besides carrying off all
the flocks, furniture, and other property they could lay hands on,
and burning down the farmhouses of Clairan, Loubes, Marine, Carlot,
Campoget Miraman, La Bergerie, and Larnac--all near St. Gilies and
Manduel.  "They stopped travellers on the highways," says
Louvreloeil, "and by way of finding out whether they were Catholic or
not, made them say in Latin the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, the
Symbol of the Faith, and the General Confession, and those who were
unable to do this were put to the sword.  In Dions nine corpses were
found supposed to have been killed by their hands, and when the body
of a shepherd who had been in the service of the Sieur de Roussiere,
a former minister, was found hanging to a tree, no one doubted who
were the murderers.  At last they went so far that one of their bands
meeting the Abbe de Saint Gilles on the road, ordered him to deliver
up to them one of his servants, a new convert, in order to put him to
death.  It was in vain that the abbe remonstrated with them, telling
them it was a shame to put such an affront on a man of his birth and
rank; they persisted none the less in their determination, till at
last the abbe threw his arms round his servant and presented his own
body to the blows directed at the other."

The author of The Troubles in the Cevennes relates something
surpassing all this which took place at Montelus on the 22nd February
"There were a few Protestants in the place," he says, "but they were
far outnumbered by the Catholics; these being roused by a Capuchin
from Bergerac, formed themselves into a body of 'Cadets of the
Cross,' and hastened to serve their apprenticeship to the work of
assassination at the cost of their countrymen.  They therefore
entered the house of one Jean Bernoin, cut off his ears and further
mutilated him, and then bled him to death like a pig.  On coming out
of this house they met Jacques Clas, and shot him in the abdomen, so
that his intestines obtruded; pushing them back, he reached his house
in a terrible condition, to the great alarm of his wife, who was near
her confinement, and her children, who hastened to the help of
husband and father.  But the murderers appeared on the threshold,
and, unmoved by the cries and tears of the unfortunate wife and the
poor little children, they finished the wounded man, and as the wife
made an effort to prevent them, they murdered her also, treating her
dead body, when they discovered her condition, in a manner too
revolting for description; while a neighbour, called Marie Silliot,
who tried to rescue the children, was shot dead; but in her case they
did not pursue their vengeance any further.  They then went into the
open country and meeting Pierre and Jean Bernard, uncle and nephew,
one aged forty-five and the other ten, seized on them both, and
putting a pistol into the hands of the child, forced him to shoot his
uncle.  In the meantime the boy's father had come up, and him they
tried to constrain to shoot his son; but finding that no threats had
any effect, they ended by killing both, one by the sword, the other
by the bayonet.

"The reason why they put an end to father and son so quickly was that
they had noticed three young girls of Bagnols going towards a grove
of mulberry trees, where they were raising silk-worms.  The men
followed them, and as it was broad daylight and the girls were
therefore not afraid, they soon came up with them.  Having first
violated them, they hung them by the feet to a tree, and put them to
death in a horrible manner."

All this took place in the reign of Louis the Great, and for the
greater glory of the Catholic religion.

History has preserved the names of the five wretches who perpetrated
these crimes: they were Pierre Vigneau, Antoine Rey, Jean d'Hugon,
Guillaume, and Gontanille.




CHAPTER III

Such crimes, of which we have only described a few, inspired horror
in the breasts of those who were neither maddened by fanaticism nor
devoured by the desire of vengeance.  One of these, a Protestant,
Baron d'Aygaliers, without stopping to consider what means he had at
his command or what measures were the best to take to accomplish his
object, resolved to devote his life to the pacification of the
Cevennes.  The first thing to be considered was, that if the
Camisards were ever entirely destroyed by means of Catholic troops
directed by de Baville, de Julien, and de Montrevel, the Protestants,
and especially the Protestant nobles who had never borne arms, would
be regarded as cowards, who had been prevented by fear of death or
persecution from openly taking the part of the Huguenots: He was
therefore convinced that the only course to pursue was to get, his
co-religionists to put an end to the struggle themselves, as the one
way of pleasing His Majesty and of showing him how groundless were
the suspicions aroused in the minds of men by the Catholic clergy.

This plan presented, especially to Baron d'Aygaliers, two apparently
insurmountable difficulties, for it could only be carried out by
inducing the king to relax his rigorous measures and by inducing the
Camisards to submit.  Now the baron had no connection with the court,
and was not personally acquainted with a single Huguenot chief.

The first thing necessary to enable the baron to begin his efforts
was a passport for Paris, and he felt sure that as he was a
Protestant neither M. de Baville nor M. de Montrevel would give him
one.  A lucky accident, however, relieved his embarrassment and
strengthened his resolution, for he thought he saw in this accident
the hand of Providence.

Baron d'Aygaliers found one day at the house of a friend a M. de
Paratte, a colonel in the king's army, and who afterwards became
major-general, but who at the time we are speaking of was commandant
at Uzes.  He was of a very impulsive disposition, and so zealous in
matters relating to the Catholic religion and in the service of the
king, that he never could find himself in the presence of a
Protestant without expressing his indignation at those who had taken
up arms against their prince, and also those who without taking up
arms encouraged the rebels in their designs.  M. d'Aygaliers
understood that an allusion was meant to himself, and he resolved to
take advantage of it.

So the next day he paid a visit to M. de Paratte, and instead of
demanding satisfaction, as the latter quite expected, for the
rudeness of his remarks on the previous day, he professed himself
very much obliged for what he had said, which had made such a deep
impression on him that he had made up his mind to give proof of his
zeal and loyalty by going to Paris and petitioning the king for a
position at court.  De Paratte, charmed with what he had heard, and
enchanted with his convert, embraced d'Aygaliers, and gave him, says
the chronicler, his blessing; and with the blessing a passport, and
wished him all the success that a father could wish for his son.
D'Aygaliers had now attained his object, and furnished with the lucky
safe-conduct, he set out for Paris, without having communicated his
intentions to anyone, not even to his mother.

On reaching Paris he put up at a friend's house, and drew up a
statement of his plan: it was very short and very clear.

"The undersigned has the honour to point out humbly to His Majesty:

"That the severities and the persecutions which have been employed by
some of the village priests have caused many people in the country
districts to take up arms, and that the suspicions which new converts
excited have driven a great many of them to join the insurgents.  In
taking this step they were also impelled by the desire to avoid
imprisonment or removal from their homes, which were the remedies
chosen to keep them in the old faith.  This being the case, he thinks
that the best means of putting an end to this state of things would
be to take measures exactly the contrary of those which produced it,
such as putting an end to the persecutions and permitting a certain
number of those of the Reformed religion to bear arms, that they
might go to the rebels and tell them that far from approving of their
actions the Protestants as a whole wished to bring them back to the
right way by setting them a good example, or to fight against them in
order to show the king and France, at the risk of their lives, that
they disapproved of the conduct of their co-religionists, and that
the priests had been in the wrong in writing to the court that all
those of the Reformed religion were in favour of revolt."

D'Aygaliers hoped that the court would adopt this plan; for if they
did, one of two things must happen: either the Camisards, by refusing
to accept the terms offered to them, would make themselves odious to
their brethren (for d'Aygaliers intended to take with him on his
mission of persuasion only men of high reputation among the
Reformers, who would be repelled by the Camisards if they refused to
submit), or else; by laying down their arms and submitting, they
would restore peace to the South of France, obtain liberty of
worship, set free their brethren from the prisons and galleys, and
come to the help of the king in his war against the allied powers, by
supplying him in a moment with a large body of disciplined troops
ready to take the field against his enemies; for not only would the
Camisards, if they were supplied with officers, be available for this
purpose, but also those troops which were at the moment employed in
hunting down the Camisards would be set free for this important duty.

This proposition was so clear and promised to produce such useful
results, that although the prejudice against the Reformers was very
strong, Baron d'Aygaliers found supporters who were at once
intelligent and genuine in the Duke de Chevreuse and the Duke de
Montfort, his son.  These two gentlemen brought about a meeting
between the baron and Chamillard, and the latter presented him to the
Marechal de Villars, to whom he showed his petition, begging him to
bring it to the notice of the king; but M, de Villars, who was well
acquainted with the obstinacy of Louis, who, as Baron de Peken says,
"only saw the Reformers through the spectacles of Madame de
Maintenon," told d'Aygaliers that the last thing he should do would
be to give the king any hint of his plans, unless he wished to see
them come to nothing; on the contrary, he advised him to go at once
to Lyons and wait there for him, M. de Villars; for he would probably
be passing through that town in a few days, being almost certain to
be appointed governor of Languedoc in place of M. de Montrevel, who
had fallen under the king's displeasure and was about to be recalled.
In the course of the three interviews which d'Aygaliers had had with
M. de Villars, he had become convinced that de Villars was a man
capable of understanding his object; he therefore followed his
advice, as he believed his knowledge of the king to be correct, and
left Paris for Lyons.

The recall of M. de Montrevel had been brought about in the following
manner:--M. de Montrevel having just come to Uzes, learned that
Cavalier and his troops were in the neighbourhood of Sainte-Chatte;
he immediately sent M. de La Jonquiere, with six hundred picked
marines and some companies of dragoons from the regiment of Saint-
Sernin, but half an hour later, it having occurred to him that these
forces were not sufficient, he ordered M. de Foix, lieutenant of the
dragoons of Fimarqon, to join M. de La Jonquiere at Sainte-Chatte
with a hundred soldiers of his regiment, and to remain with him if he
were wanted; if not, to return the same night.

M. de Foix gave the necessary orders, chose a hundred of his bravest
men, put himself at their head, and joined M. de La Jonquiere,
showing him his orders; but the latter, confiding in the courage of
his soldiers and unwilling to share with anyone the glory of a
victory of which he felt assured, not only sent away M. de Foix, but
begged him to go back to Uzes, declaring to him that he had enough
troops to fight and conquer all the Camisards whom he might
encounter; consequently the hundred dragoons whom the lieutenant had
brought with him were quite useless at Sainte-Chatte, while on the
contrary they might be very necessary somewhere else.  M. de Foix did
not consider that it was his duty to insist on remaining under these
circumstances, and returned to Uzes, while M. de La Jonquiere
continued his route in order to pass the night at Moussac.  Cavalier
left the town by one gate just as M. de La Jonquiere entered at the
other.  The wishes of the young Catholic commander were thus in a
fair way to be fulfilled, for in all probability he would come up
with his enemy the next day.

As the village was inhabited for the most part by new converts, the
night instead of being spent in repose was devoted to pillage.

The next day the Catholic troops reached Moussac, which they found
deserted, so they went on to Lascours-de-Gravier, a little village
belonging to the barony of Boucairan, which M. de La Jonquiere gave
up to pillage, and where he had four Protestants shot--a man, a
woman, and two young girls.  He then resumed his route.  As it had
rained, he soon came on the trail of the Camisards, the terrible game
which he was hunting down.  For three hours he occupied himself in
this pursuit, marching at the head of his troops, lest someone else
less careful than he should make some mistake, when, suddenly raising
his eyes, he perceived the Camisards on a small eminence called Les
Devois de Maraignargues.  This was the spot they had chosen to await
attack in, being eager for the approaching combat.

As soon as Cavalier saw the royals advancing, he ordered his men,
according to custom, to offer up prayers to God, and when these were
finished he disposed his troops for battle.  His plan was to take up
position with the greater part of his men on the other side of a
ravine, which would thus form a kind of moat between him and the
king's soldiers; he also ordered about thirty horsemen to make a
great round, thus reaching unseen a little wood about two hundred
yards to his left, where they could conceal themselves; and lastly,
he sent to a point on the right sixty foot-soldiers chosen from his
best marksmen, whom he ordered not to fire until the royal forces
were engaged in the struggle with him.

M. de La Jonquiere having approached to within a certain distance,
halted, and sent one of his lieutenants named de Sainte-Chatte to
make a reconnaissance, which he did, advancing beyond the men in
ambush, who gave no sign of their existence, while the officer
quietly examined the ground.  But Sainte-Chatte was an old soldier of
fortune and not easily taken in, so on his return, while explaining
the plan of the ground chosen by Cavalier for the disposition of his
troops to M. de La Jonquiere, he added that he should be very much
astonished if the young Camisard had not employed the little wood on
his left and the lie of the ground on his right as cover for soldiers
in ambush; but M. de La Jonquiere returned that the only thing of
importance was to know the position of the principal body of troops
in order to attack it at once.  Sainte-Chatte told him that the
principal body was that which was before his eyes, and that on this
subject there could be no mistake; for he had approached near enough
to recognise Cavalier himself in the front rank.

This was enough for M. de La Jonquiere: he put himself at the head of
his men and rode straight to the ravine, beyond which Cavalier and
his comrades awaited him in order of battle.  Having got within a
pistol-shot, M. de La Jonquiere gave the order to fire, but he was so
near that Cavalier heard the words and saw the motion made by the men
as they made ready; he therefore gave a rapid sign to his men, who
threw themselves on their faces, as did their leader, and the bullets
passed over them without doing any harm M.M. de La Jonquiere, who
believed them all dead, was astonished when Cavalier and his
Camisards rose up and rushed upon the royal troops, advancing to the
sound of a psalm.  At a distance of ten paces they fired, and then
charged the enemy at the point of the bayonet.  At this moment the
sixty men in ambush to the right opened fire, while the thirty
horsemen to the left, uttering loud shouts, charged at a gallop.
Hearing this noise, and seeing death approach them in three different
directions, the royals believed themselves surrounded, and did not
attempt to make a stand; the men, throwing away their weapons, took
to their heels, the officers alone and a few dragoons whom they had
succeeded in rallying making a desperate resistance.

Cavalier was riding over the field of battle, sabring all the
fugitives whom he met, when he caught sight of a group, composed of
ten naval officers; standing close together and back to back,
spontoon in hand, facing the Camisards, who surrounded them.  He
spurred up to them, passing through the ranks of his soldiers, and
not pausing till he was within fifteen paces of them, although they
raised their weapons to fire.  Then making a sign with his hand that
he wished to speak to them, he said, "Gentlemen, surrender.  I shall
give quarter, and in return for the ten lives I now spare you, will
ask that my father, who is in prison at Nimes, be released."

For sole answer, one of the officers fired and wounded the young
chief's horse in the head.  Cavalier drew a pistol from his belt,
took aim at the officer and killed him, then turning again to the
others, he asked, "Gentlemen, are you as obstinate as your comrade,
or do you accept my offer?  "A second shot was the reply, and a
bullet grazed his shoulder.  Seeing that no other answer was to be
hoped for, Cavalier turned to his soldiers.  "Do your duty," said he,
and withdrew, to avoid seeing the massacre.  The nine officers were
shot.

M. de La Jonquiere, who had received a slight wound in the cheek,
abandoned his horse in order to climb over a wall.  On the other side
he made a dragoon dismount and give him his horse, on which he
crossed the river Gardon, leaving behind him on the battlefield
twenty-five officers and six hundred soldiers killed.  This defeat
was doubly disastrous to the royal cause, depriving it of the flower
of its officers, almost all of those who fell belonging to the
noblest families of France, and also because the Camisards gained
what they so badly needed, muskets, swords, and bayonets in great
quantities, as well as eighty horses, these latter enabling Cavalier
to complete the organisation of a magnificent troop of cavalry.

The recall of the Marechal de Montrevel was the consequence of this
defeat, and M. de Villars, as he had anticipated, was appointed in
his place.  But before giving up his governorship Montrevel resolved
to efface the memory of the check which his lieutenant's
foolhardiness had caused, but for which, according to the rules of
war, the general had to pay the penalty.  His plan was by spreading
false rumours and making feigned marches to draw the Camisards into a
trap in which they, in their turn, would be caught.  This was the
less difficult to accomplish as their latest great victory had made
Cavalier over confident both in himself and his men.

In fact, since the incident connected with the naval officers the
troops of Cavalier had increased enormously in numbers, everyone
desiring to serve under so brave a chief, so that he had now under
him over one thousand infantry and two hundred cavalry; they were
furnished, besides, just like regular troops, with a bugler for the
cavalry, and eight drums and a fife for the infantry.

The marechal felt sure that his departure would be the signal for
some expedition into the level country under Cavalier, so it was
given out that he had left for Montpellier, and had sent forward some
of his baggage-waggons to that place.  On April 15th he was informed
that Cavalier, deceived by the false news, had set out on the 16th
April, intending to pass the night at Caveyrac, a small town about a
league from Nimes, that he might be ready next day to make a descent
on La Vannage.  This news was brought to M. de Montrevel by a village
priest called Verrien, who had in his pay vigilant and faithful spies
in whom he had every confidence.

Montrevel accordingly ordered the commandant of Lunel, M. de
Grandval, to set out the next day, very early in the morning, with
the Charolais regiment and five companies of the Fimarcon and Saint-
Sernin dragoons, and to repair to the heights of Boissieres, where
instructions would await him.  Sandricourt, governor of Nimes, was at
the same time directed to withdraw as many men as possible from the
garrison, both Swiss and dragoons, and send them by night towards
Saint-Come and Clarensac; lastly, he himself set out, as he had said,
but instead of going on to Montpellier, he stopped at Sommieres,
whence he could observe the movements of Cavalier.

Cavalier, as M. de Montrevel already knew, was to sleep on the 15th
at Caveyrac.  On this day Cavalier reached the turning-point in his
magnificent career.  As he entered the town with his soldiers, drums
beating and flags flying, he was at the zenith of his power.  He rode
the splendid horse M. de La Jonquiere had abandoned in his flight;
behind him, serving as page, rode his young brother, aged ten,
followed by four grooms; he was preceded by twelve guards dressed in
red; and as his colleague Roland had taken the title of Comte, he
allowed himself to be called Duke of the Cevennes.

At his approach half of the garrison, which was commanded by M. de
Maillan, took possession of the church and half of the citadel; but
as Cavalier was more bent on obtaining food and rest for his soldiers
than of disturbing the town, he billeted his men on the townspeople,
and placed sentinels at the church and fortress, who exchanged shots
all the night through with the royal troops.  The next morning,
having destroyed the fortifications, he marched out of the town
again, drums beating and flags flying as before.  When almost in
sight of Nimes he made his troops, which had never before been so
numerous or so brilliant, perform a great many evolutions, and then
continued his way towards Nages.

M. de Montrevel received a report at nine o'clock in the morning of
the direction Cavalier and his troops had taken, and immediately left
Sommieres, followed by six companies of Fimarqon dragoons, one
hundred Irish free-lances, three hundred rank and file of the
Hainault regiment, and one company each of the Soissonnais,
Charolais, and Menon regiments, forming in all a corps over nine
hundred strong.  They took the direction of Vaunages, above
Clarensac; but suddenly hearing the rattle of musketry behind them,
they wheeled and made for Langlade.

They found that Grandval had already encountered the Camisards.
These being fatigued had withdrawn into a hollow between Boissieres
and the windmill at Langlade, in order to rest.  The infantry lay
down, their arms beside them; the cavalry placed themselves at the
feet of their horses, the bridle on arm.  Cavalier himself, Cavalier
the indefatigable, broken by the fatigues of the preceding days, had
fallen asleep, with his young brother watching beside him.  Suddenly
he felt himself shaken by the arm, and rousing up, he heard on all
sides cries of "Kill!  Kill!" and "To arms!  To arms!"  Grandval and
his men, who had been sent to find out where the Camisards were, had
suddenly come upon them.

The infantry formed, the cavalry sprang to their saddles, Cavalier
leaped on his horse, and drawing his sword, led his soldiers as usual
against the dragoons, and these, as was also usual, ran away, leaving
twelve of their number dead on the field.  The Camisard cavalry soon
gave up the pursuit, as they found themselves widely separated from
the infantry and from their leader; for Cavalier had been unable to
keep up with them, his horse having received a bullet through its
neck.

Still they followed the flying dragoons for a good hour, from time to
time a wounded dragoon falling from his horse, till at last the
Camisard cavalry found itself confronted by the Charolais regiment,
drawn up in battle array, and behind them the royal dragoons, who had
taken refuge there, and were re-forming.

Carried on by the rapidity of their course, the Camisards could not
pull up till they were within a hundred yards of the enemy; they
fired once, killing several, then turned round and retreated.

When a third of the way, back had been covered, they met their chief,
who had found a fresh horse by the wayside standing beside its dead
master.  He arrived at full gallop, as he was anxious to unite his
cavalry and infantry at once, as he had seen the forces of the
marechal advancing, who, as we have already said, had turned in the
direction of the firing.  Hardly had Cavalier effected the desired
junction of his forces than he perceived that his retreat was cut
off.  He had the royal troops both before and behind him.

The young chief saw that a desperate dash to right or left was all
that remained to him, and not knowing this country as well as the
Cevennes, he asked a peasant the way from Soudorgues to Nages, that
being the only one by which he could escape.  There was no time to
inquire whether the peasant was Catholic or Protestant; he could only
trust to chance, and follow the road indicated.  But a few yards from
the spot where the road from Doudorgues to Nages joins the road to
Nimes he found himself in face of Marechal Montrevel's troops under
the command of Menon.  However, as they hardly outnumbered the
Camisards, these did not stop to look for another route, but bending
forward in their saddles, they dashed through the lines at full
gallop, taking the direction of Nages, hoping to reach the plain
round Calvisson.  But the village, the approaches, the issues were
all occupied by royal troops, and at the same time Grandval and the
marechal joined forces, while Menon collected his men together and
pushed forward.  Cavalier was completely surrounded: he gave the
situation a comprehensive glance--his foes, were five to one.

Rising in his stirrups, so that he could see over every head,
Cavalier shouted so loud that not only his own men heard but also
those of the enemy: "My children, if our hearts fail us now, we
shall be taken and broken on the wheel.  There is only one means of
safety: we must cut our way at full gallop through these people.
Follow me, and keep close order!"

So speaking, he dashed on the nearest group, followed by all his men,
who formed a compact mass; round which the three corps of royal
troops closed.  Then there was everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there
was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets
stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat
and hair.  For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which
Cavalier lost five hundred men and slew a thousand of the enemy.  At
last he won through, followed by about two hundred of his troops, and
drew a long breath; but finding himself in the centre of a large
circle of soldiers, he made for a bridge, where alone it seemed
possible to break through, it being only guarded by a hundred
dragoons.

He divided his men into two divisions, one to force the bridge, the
other to cover the retreat.  Then he faced his foes like a wild boar
driven to bay.

Suddenly loud shouts behind him announced that the bridge was forced;
but the Camisards, instead of keeping the passage open for their
leader, scattered over the plain and sought safety in flight.  But
a child threw himself before them, pistol in hand.  It was Cavalier's
young brother, mounted on one of the small wild horses of Camargues
of that Arab breed which was introduced into Languedoc by the Moors
from Spain.  Carrying a sword and carbine proportioned to his size,
the boy addressed the flying men.  "Where are you going?" he cried,
"Instead of running away like cowards, line the river banks and
oppose the enemy to facilitate my brother's escape."  Ashamed of
having deserved such reproaches, the Camisards stopped, rallied,
lined the banks of the river, and by keeping up a steady fire,
covered Cavalier's retreat, who crossed without having received a
single wound, though his horse was riddled with bullets and he had
been forced to change his sword three times.

Still the combat raged; but gradually Cavalier managed to retreat: a
plain cut by trenches, the falling darkness, a wood which afforded
cover, all combined to help him at last.  Still his rearguard,
harassed by the enemy, dotted the ground it passed over with its
dead, until at last both victors and vanquished were swallowed up by
night.  The fight had lasted ten hours, Cavalier had lost more than
five hundred men, and the royals about a thousand.

"Cavalier," says M. de Villars, in his Memoirs, "acted on this day in
a way which astonished everyone.  For who could help being astonished
to see a nobody, inexperienced in the art of warfare, bear himself in
such difficult and trying circumstances like some great general?  At
one period of the day he was followed everywhere by a dragoon;
Cavalier shot at him and killed his horse.  The dragoon returned the
shot, but missed.  Cavalier had two horses killed under him; the
first time he caught a dragoon's horse, the second time he made one
of his own men dismount and go on foot."

M. de Montrevel also showed himself to be a gallant soldier; wherever
there was danger there was he, encouraging officers and soldiers by
his example: one Irish captain was killed at his side, another
fatally wounded, and a third slightly hurt.  Grandval, on his part,
had performed miracles: his horse was shot under him, and M. de
Montrevel replaced it by one of great value, on which he joined in
the pursuit of the Camisards.  After this affair M, de Montrevel gave
up his place to M. de Villars, leaving word for Cavalier that it was
thus he took leave of his friends.

Although Cavalier came out of this battle with honour, compelling
even his enemies to regard him as a man worthy of their steel, it had
nevertheless destroyed the best part of his hopes.  He made a
halt-near Pierredon to gather together the remnant of his troops, and
truly it was but a remnant which remained.  Of those who came back
the greater number were without weapons, for they had thrown them
away in their flight.  Many were incapacitated for service by their
wounds; and lastly, the cavalry could hardly be said to exist any
longer, as the few men who survived had been obliged to abandon their
horses, in order to get across the high ditches which were their only
cover from the dragoons during the flight.

Meantime the royalists were very active, and Cavalier felt that it
would be imprudent to remain long at Pierredon, so setting out during
the night, and crossing the Gardon, he buried himself in the forest
of Hieuzet, whither he hoped his enemies would not venture to follow
him.  And in fact the first two days were quiet, and his troops
benefited greatly by the rest, especially as they were able to draw
stores of all kinds--wheat, hay, arms, and ammunition--from an
immense cave which the Camisards had used for a long time as a
magazine and arsenal.  Cavalier now also employed it as a hospital,
and had the wounded carried there, that their wounds might receive
attention.

Unfortunately, Cavalier was soon obliged to quit the forest, in spite
of his hopes of being left in peace; for one day on his way back from
a visit to the wounded in the cave, whose existence was a secret, he
came across a hundred miquelets who had penetrated thus far, and who
would have taken him prisoner if he had not, with his, accustomed
presence of mind and courage, sprung from a rock twenty feet high.
The miquelets fired at him, but no bullet reached him.  Cavalier
rejoined his troops, but fearing to attract the rest of the royalists
to the place,--retreated to some distance from the cave, as it was of
the utmost importance that it should not be discovered, since it
contained all his resources.

Cavalier had now reached one of those moments when Fortune, tired of
conferring favours, turns her back on the favourite.  The royalists
had often noticed an old woman from the village of Hieuzet going
towards the forest, sometimes carrying a basket in her hand,
sometimes with a hamper on her head, and it occurred to them that she
was supplying the hidden Camisards with provisions.  She was arrested
and brought before General Lalande, who began his examination by
threatening that he would have her hanged if she did not at once
declare the object of her frequent journeys to the forest without
reserve.  At first she made use of all kinds of pretexts, which only
strengthened the suspicions of Lalande, who, ceasing his questions,
ordered her to be taken to the gallows and hanged.  The old woman
walked to the place of execution with such a firm step that the
general began to think he would get no information from her, but at
the foot of the ladder her courage failed.  She asked to be taken
back before the general, and having been promised her life, she
revealed everything.

M. de Lalande put himself at once at the head of a strong detachment
of miquelets, and forced the woman to walk before them till they
reached the cavern, which they never would have discovered without a
guide, so cleverly was the entrance hidden by rocks and brushwood.
On entering, the first thing that met their eye was the wounded,
about thirty in number.  The miquelets threw themselves upon them and
slaughtered them.  This deed accomplished, they went farther into the
cave, which to their great surprise contained a thousand things they
never expected to find there--heaps of grain, sacks of flour, barrels
of wine, casks of brandy, quantities of chestnuts and potatoes; and
besides all this, chests containing ointments, drugs and lint, and
lastly a complete arsenal of muskets, swords, and bayonets, a
quantity of powder ready-made, and sulphur, saltpetre, and
charcoal-in short, everything necessary for the manufacture of more,
down to small mills to be turned by hand.  Lalande kept his word: the
life of an old woman was not too much to give in return for such a
treasure.

Meantime M. de Villars, as he had promised, took up Baron d'Aygaliers
in passing through Lyons, so that during the rest of the journey the
peacemaker had plenty of time to expatiate on his plans.  As M. de
Villars was a man of tact and a lover of justice, and desired above
all things to bring a right spirit to bear on the performance of the
duties of his new office, in which his two predecessors had failed,
he promised the baron "to keep," as he expressed himself, his "two
ears open" and listen to both sides, and as a first proof of
impartiality--he refused to give any opinion until he had heard M, de
Julien, who was coming to meet him at Tournon.

When they arrived at Tournon, M. de Julien was there to receive them,
and had a very different story to tell from that which M. de Villars
had heard from d'Aygaliers.  According to him, the only pacific
ration possible was the complete extermination of the Camisards.  He
felt himself very hardly treated in that he had been allowed to
destroy only four hundred villages and hamlets in the Upper Cevennes,
--assuring de Villars with the confidence of a man who had studied
the matter profoundly, that they should all have been demolished
without exception, and all the peasants killed to the last man.

So it came to pass that M. de Villars arrived at Beaucaire placed
like Don Juan between the spirits of good and evil, the one advising
clemency and the other murder.  M. de Villars not being able to make
up his mind, on reaching Nimes, d'Aygaliers assembled the principal
Protestants of the town, told them of his plan, showing them its
practicability, so that  also joined in the good work, and drew up a
document in which they asked the marechal to allow them to take up
arms and march against the rebels, as they were determined either to
bring them back into the good way by force of example or to fight
them as a proof of their loyalty.

This petition, which was signed by several nobles and by almost all
the lawyers and merchants of the city of Nimes, was presented to M.
de Villars on Tuesday, 22nd April, 1704, by M. de Albenas, at the
head of seven or eight hundred persons of the Reformed religion.
M. de Villars received the request kindly, thanked its bearer and
those who accompanied him, assuring them that he had no doubt of the
sincerity of their professions, and that if he were in want of help
he would have recourse to them with as much confidence as if they
were old Catholics.  He hoped, however, to win the rebels back by
mildness, and he begged them to second his efforts in this direction
by spreading abroad the fact that an amnesty was offered to all those
who would lay down arms and return to their houses within a week.
The very next day but one, M. de Villars set out from Nimes to visit
all the principal towns, in order to make himself acquainted with
men, things, and places.

Although the answer to the petition had been a delicate refusal,
d'Aygaliers was not discouraged, but followed M. de Villars
everywhere.  When the latter arrived at Alais, the new governor sent
for MM. de Lalande and de Baville, in order to consult them as to the
best means of inducing the Camisards to lay down their arms.  Baron
d'Aygaliers was summoned to this consultation, and described his plan
to the two gentlemen.  As he expected, both were opposed to it;
however, he tried to bring them over to his side by presenting to
them what seemed to him to be cogent reasons for its adoption.  But
de Lalande and de Baville made light of all his reasons, and rejected
his proposals with such vehemence, that the marechal, however much
inclined to the side of d'Aygaliers, did not venture to act quite
alone, and said he would not decide on any course until he reached
Uzes.

D'Aygaliers saw clearly that until he had obtained the approbation of
either the general or the intendant, he would get nothing from the
marechal.  He therefore considered which of the two he should try to
persuade, and although de Baville was his personal enemy, having
several times shown his hatred for him and his family, he decided to
address himself to him.

In consequence, the next day, to the great astonishment of M. de
Baville, d'Aygaliers paid him a visit.  The intendant received him
coldly but politely, asked him to sit down, and when he was seated
begged to know the motive which had brought him.  "Sir," replied the
baron, "you have given my family and me such cause of offence that I
had come to the firm resolution never to ask a favour of you, and as
perhaps you may have remarked during the journey we have taken with
M. le marechal, I would rather have died of thirst than accept a
glass of water from you.  But I have come here to-day not upon any
private matter, to obtain my own ends, but upon a matter which
concerns the welfare of the State.  I therefore beg you to put out of
your mind the dislike which you have to me and mine, and I do this
the more earnestly that your dislike can only have been caused by the
fact that our religion is different from yours--a thing which could
neither have been foreseen nor prevented.  My entreaty is that you do
not try to set M. le marechal against the course which I have
proposed to him, which I am convinced would bring the disorders in
our province to an end, stop the occurrence of the many unfortunate
events which I am sure you look on with regret, and spare you much
trouble and embarrassment."

The intendant was much touched by this calm speech, and above all by
the confidence which M. d'Aygaliers had shown him, and replied that
he had only offered opposition to the plan of pacification because he
believed it to be impracticable.  M. d'Aygaliers then warmly pressed
him to try it before rejecting it for ever, and in the end M.  de
Baville withdrew his opposition.

M, d'Aygaliers hastened to the marechal, who finding himself no
longer alone in his favourable opinion, made no further delay, but
told the baron to call together that very day all the people whom he
thought suitable for the required service, and desired that they
should be presented to him the next morning before he set out for
Nimes.

The next day, instead of the fifty men whom the marachal had thought
could be gathered together, d'Aygaliers came to him followed by
eighty, who were almost all of good and many of noble family.  The
meeting took place, by the wish of the baron, in the courtyard of the
episcopal palace.  "This palace," says the baron in his Memoirs,
"which was of great magnificence, surrounded by terraced gardens and
superbly furnished, was occupied by Monseigneur Michel Poncet de La
Riviere.  He was a man passionately devoted to pleasures of all
kinds, especially to music, women, and good cheer.  There were always
to be found in his house good musicians, pretty women, and excellent
wines.  These latter suited him so well that he never left the table
without being in a pleasant humour, and at such a moment if it came
into his head that anyone in his diocese was not as good a Christian
as himself, he would sit down and write to M. de Baville, urging that
the delinquent ought to be sent into exile.  He often did this honour
to my late father."  M. d'Aygaliers goes on to say that "on seeing
such a great number of Huguenots in the court who were all declaring
that they were better servants of the king than the Catholics, he
almost fell from his balcony with vexation and surprise.  This
vexation increased when he saw M. de Villars and M. de Baville, who
had apartments in the palace, come down into the court and talk to
these people.  One hope still remained to him: it was that the
marechal and the intendant had come down to send them away; but this
last hope was cruelly disappointed when he heard M. de Villars say
that he accepted their service and expected them to obey d'Aygaliers
in all matters concerning the service of the king."

But this was not all that had to be accomplished arms were necessary
for the Protestants, and though their number was not great, there was
a difficulty in finding them weapons.  The unfortunate Calvinists had
been disarmed so often that even their table-knives had been carried
off, so it was useless to search their houses for guns and sabres.
D'Aygaliers proposed that they should take the arms of the
townspeople, but M. de Villars considered that it would offend the
Catholics to have their arms taken from them and given to the
Protestants.  In the end, however, this was the course that had to be
adopted: M. de Paratte was ordered to give fifty muskets and the same
number of bayonets to M. d'Aygaliers, who also received, as the
reward of his long patience, from M. de Villars, before the latter
left for Nimes, the following commission:

"We, Marechal de Villars, general in the armies of the king, etc.,
etc., have given permission to M. d'Aygaliers, nobleman and
Protestant of the town of Uzes, and to fifty men chosen by him, to
make war on the Camisards.

"(Signed) "VILLARS

"(Countersigned) "MORETON

"Given at Uzes, the 4th of May 1704"


Hardly had M. de Villars set out for Nimes than d'Aygaliers met with
fresh difficulties.  The bishop, who could not forget that his
episcopal palace had been turned into barracks for Huguenots, went
from house to house threatening those who had promised to countenance
d'Aygaliers' plans, and strictly forbidding the captains of the town
troops to deliver any weapons to the Protestants.  Fortunately,
d'Aygaliers had not accomplished so much. without having learned not
to draw back when the road grew rough, so he also on his side went
about confirming the strong and encouraging the feeble, and called on
M. de Paratte to beg him to carry out the orders of M. de Villars.
De Paratte was happily an old soldier, whose one idea was that
discipline should be maintained, so that he gave the guns and
bayonets to d'Aygaliers on the spot, without a word of objection, and
thus enabled the latter to start at five o'clock next morning with
his little band.

Meantime de Baville and de Lalande had been reflecting what great
influence d'Aygaliers would gain in the province should he succeed in
his aims, and their jealousy had made them resolve to forestall him
in his work, by themselves inducing Cavalier to abandon his present
course.  They did not conceal from themselves that this would be
difficult, but as they could command means of corruption which were
not within the power of d'Aygaliers, they did not despair of success.

They therefore sent for a countryman called Lacombe, in order to
enlist him on their side; for Cavalier, when a boy, had been his
shepherd for two years, and both had remained friends ever since:
this man undertook to try and bring about a meeting between the two
gentlemen and Cavalier--an enterprise which would have been dangerous
for anyone else.  He promised first of all to explain to Cavalier the
offers of MM. de Baville and de Lalande.

Lacombe kept his word: he set off the same day, and two days later
appeared before Cavalier.  The first feeling of the young chief was
astonishment, the second pleasure.  Lacombe could not have chosen a
better moment to speak of peace to his former shepherd.

"Indeed," says Cavalier in his Memoirs, "the loss which I had just
sustained at Nages was doubly painful to me because it was
irreparable.  I had lost at one blow not only a great number of
weapons, all my ammunition, and all my money, but also a body of men,
inured to danger and fatigue, and capable of any undertaking;
--besides all this, I had been robbed of my stores--a loss which made
itself felt more than all the others put together, because as long as
the secret of the cavern was kept, in all our misfortunes we were
never without resources; but from the moment it got into the
possession of our enemies we were quite destitute.  The country was
ravaged, my friends had grown cold, their purses were empty, a
hundred towns had been sacked and burned, the prisons were full of
Protestants, the fields were uncultivated.  Added to all this, the
long promised help from England had never arrived, and the new
marechal had appeared in the province accompanied by fresh troops."

Nevertheless, in spite of his desperate position, Cavalier listened
to the propositions laid before him by Lacombe with cold and haughty
front, and his reply was that he would never lay down arms till the
Protestants had obtained the right to the free exercise of their
religion.

Firm as was this answer, Lalande did not despair of inducing Cavalier
to come to terms: he therefore wrote him a letter with his own hand,
asking him for an interview, and pledging his word that if they came
to no agreement Cavalier should be free to retire without any harm
being done him; but he added that, if he refused this request, he
should regard him as an enemy to peace, and responsible for all the
blood which might be shed in future.

This overture, made with a soldier's frankness, had a great effect on
Cavalier, and in order that neither his friends nor his enemies
should have the least excuse for blaming him, he resolved to show
everyone that he was eager to seize the first chance of making peace
on advantageous terms.

He therefore replied to Lalande, that he would come to the bridge of
Avene on that very day, the 12th May, at noon, and sent his letter by
Catinat, ordering him to deliver it into the hands of the Catholic
general himself.

Catinat was worthy of his mission.  He was a peasant from Cayla,
whose real name was Abdias Maurel.  He had served under Marshal
Catinat in Italy, the same who had maintained so gallant a struggle
against Prince Eugene.  When Maurel returned home he could talk of
nothing but his marshal and his campaigns, so that he soon went among
his neighbours by the name of "Catinat."  He was, as we have seen,
Cavalier's right hand, who had placed him in command of his cavalry,
and who now entrusted him with a still more dangerous post, that of
envoy to a man who had often said that he would give 2000 livres to
him who would bring him the head of Cavalier, and 1000 livres each
for the heads of his two lieutenants.  Catinat was quite well aware
of this offer of Lalande's, yet he appeared before the general
perfectly cool and calm; only, either from a feeling of propriety or
of pride, he was dressed in full uniform.

The bold and haughty expression of the man who presented Cavalier's
letter astonished the general, who asked him his name.

"I am Catinat," he answered.

"Catinat!" exclaimed Lalande in surprise.

"Yes, Catinat, commander of the cavalry of Cavalier."

"What!" said Lalande, "are you the Catinat who massacred so many
people in Beaucaire?"

"Yes, I am.  I did it, but it was my duty."

"Well," exclaimed M. de Lalande, "you show great hardihood in daring
to appear before me."

"I came," said Catinat proudly, "trusting to your honour and to the
promise that Brother Cavalier gave me that nothing should happen to
me."

"He was quite right," returned Lalande, taking the letter.  Having
read it, he said, "Go back to Cavalier and assure him that I shall be
at the bridge of Avene at noon, accompanied only by a few officers
and thirty dragoons.  I expect to find him there with a similar
number of men."

"But," answered Catinat, "it is possible that Brother Cavalier may
not wish-to come with so poor a following."

"If so," returned Lalande, "then tell him that he may bring his whole
army if he likes, but that I shall not take a single man with me more
than I have said; as Cavalier has confidence in me, I have confidence
in him."

Catinat reported Lalande's answer to his chief it was of a kind that
he understood and liked, so leaving the rest of his troops at
Massanes, he chose sixty men from his infantry, and eight horsemen as
escort.  On coming in sight of the bridge, he saw Lalande approaching
from the other side.  He at once ordered his sixty men to halt, went
a few steps farther with his eight horsemen, and then ordered them in
their turn to stop, and advanced alone towards the bridge.  Lalande
had acted in the same manner with regard to his dragoons and
officers, and now dismounting, came towards Cavalier.

The two met in the middle of the bridge, and saluted with the
courtesy of men who had learned to esteem each other on the field of
battle.  Then after a short silence, during which they examined each
other, Lalande spoke.

"Sir," said he, "the king in his clemency desires to put an end to
the war which is going on between his subjects, and which can only
result in the ruin of his kingdom.  As he knows that this war has
been instigated and supported by the enemies of France, he hopes to
meet no opposition to his wishes among those of his subjects who were
momentarily led astray, but to whom he now offers pardon."

"Sir," answered Cavalier, "the war not having been begun by the
Protestants, they are always ready for peace--but a real peace,
without restriction or reserve.  They have no right, I know, to lay
down conditions, but I hope they will be permitted to discuss those
which may be laid down for them.  Speak openly, sir, and let me know
what the offers are that you have been authorised to make to us, that
I may judge if we can accept them."

"But how would it be," said Lalande, "if you were mistaken, and if
the king desired to know what conditions you would consider
reasonable?"

"If that is so," answered Cavalier, "I will tell you our conditions
at once, in order not to prolong the negotiations; for every minute's
delay, as you know, costs someone his life or fortune."

"Then tell me what your conditions are," returned Lalande.

"Well," said Cavalier, "our demands are three first, liberty of
conscience; secondly, the release of all prisoners who have been
condemned to imprisonment or the galleys because of their religion;
and thirdly, that if we are not granted liberty of conscience we may
be at least permitted to leave the kingdom."

"As far as I can judge," replied Lalande, "I do not believe that the
king will accept the first proposition, but it is possible that he
may accede to the third.  In that case, how many Protestants would
you take with you?"

"Ten thousand of all ages and both sexes."

"The number is excessive, sir.  I believe that His Majesty is not
disposed to go beyond three thousand."

"Then," replied Cavalier, "there is nothing more to be said, for I
could not accept passports for any smaller number, and I could accept
for the ten thousand only on condition that the king would grant us
three months in which to dispose of our possessions and withdraw from
the country without being molested.  Should His Majesty, however, not
be pleased to allow us to leave the kingdom, then we beg that our
edicts be re-enacted and our privileges restored, whereupon we shall
become once more, what we were formerly, His Majesty's loyal and
obedient servants."

"Sir," said Lalande, "I shall lay your conditions before M. le
Marechal, and if no satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at, it will
be to me a matter of profound regret.  And now, sir, will you permit
me to inspect more closely the gallant men with whose help you have
done such astounding deeds?"  Cavalier smiled; for these "gallant
men" when caught had been broken on the wheel, burnt at the stake, or
hanged like brigands.  His sole answer was an inclination of the head
as he turned and led the way to his little escort.  M. de Lalande
followed him with perfect confidence, and, passing by the eight
horsemen who were grouped on the road, he walked up to the infantry,
and taking out of his pocket a handful of gold, he scattered it
before them, saying:

"There, my men! that is to drink the king's health with."

Not a man stooped to pick the money up, and one of them said, shaking
his head

"It is not money we want, but liberty of conscience."

"My men," answered Lalande, "it is unfortunately not in my power to
grant your demand, but I advise you to submit to the king's will and
trust in his clemency."

"Sir," answered Cavalier, "we are all ready to obey him, provided
that he graciously grant us our just demands; if not, we shall die
weapon in hand, rather than expose ourselves once more to such
outrages as have already been inflicted on us."

"Your demands shall be transmitted word for word to M. de Villars,
who will lay them before the king," said Lalande, "and you may be
sure, sir, that my most sincere wish is that His Majesty may not find
them exorbitant."

With these words, M. de Lalande saluted Cavalier, and turned to
rejoin his escort; but Cavalier, wishing to return confidence with
confidence, crossed the bridge with him, and accompanied the general
to where his soldiers had halted.  There, with another salute, the
two chiefs parted, M. de Lalande taking the road to Uzes, while
Cavalier rejoined his comrades.

Meantime d'Aygaliers, who, as we have seen, had not left Uzes until
the 5th May, in order to join Cavalier, did not come up with him
until the 13th, that is to say, the day after his conference with
Lalande.  D'Aygaliers gives us an account of their interview, and we
cannot do better than quote it.

"Although it was the first time that we had met face to face, we
embraced each other as if we were old acquaintances.  My little band
mixed with his and sang psalms together, while Cavalier and I talked.
I was very much pleased with what, he said, and convinced him without
difficulty that he should submit for the sake of the brethren, who
could then choose whichever course best suited them, and either leave
the kingdom or serve the king.  I said that I believed the last
course to be the best, provided we were allowed to worship God
according to our consciences; because I hoped that, seeing their
faithful service, His Majesty would recognise that he had been
imposed upon by those who had described us as disloyal subjects, and
that we should thus obtain for the whole nation that liberty of
conscience which had been granted to us; that in no other way, as far
as I could see, could our deplorable condition be ameliorated, for
although Cavalier and his men might be able to exist for some time
longer in the forests and mountains, they would never be strong
enough to save the inhabitants of towns and other enclosed places
from perishing.

"Upon this he replied, that although the Catholics seldom kept a
promise made to those of our religion, he was willing to risk his
life for the welfare of his brethren and the province but that he
trusted if he confided in the clemency of the king for whom he had
never ceased to pray, no harm would happen him."

Thereupon d'Aygaliers, delighted to find him so well inclined, begged
him to give him a letter for M. de Villars, and as Cavalier knew the
marechal to be loyal and zealous, and had great confidence in him, he
wrote without any hesitation the following letter:

"MONSEIGNEUR,--Permit me to address your Excellency in order to beg
humbly for the favour of your protection for myself and for my
soldiers.  We are filled with the most ardent desire to repair the
fault which we have committed by bearing arms, not against the king,
as our enemies have so falsely asserted, but to defend our lives
against those who persecuted us, attacking us so fiercely that we
believed it was done by order of His Majesty.  We know that it was
written by St. Paul that subjects ought to submit themselves to their
king, and if in spite of these sincere protestations our sovereign
should still demand our blood, we shall soon be ready to throw
ourselves on his justice or his mercy; but we should, Monseigneur,
regard ourselves as happy, if His Majesty, moved by our repentance,
would grant us his pardon and receive us into his service, according
to the example of the God of mercy whose representative His Majesty
is on earth.  We trust, Monseigneur, by our faithfulness and zeal to
acquire the honour of your protection, and we glory in the thought of
being permitted, under the command of such an illustrious and
noble-minded general as yourself, to shed our blood for the king;
this being so, I hope that your Excellency will be pleased to allow
me to inscribe myself with profound respect and humility,
Monseigneur, your most humble and obedient servant,

"CAVALIER."


D'Aygaliers, as soon as he got possession of this letter, set out for
Nimes in the best of spirits; for he felt sure that he was bringing
M. de Villars more than he had expected.  And, indeed, as soon as the
marechal saw how far things had gone, in spite of everything that
Lalande could say, who in his jealousy asserted that d'Aygaliers
would spoil everything, he sent him back to Cavalier with an
invitation to come to Nimes.  D'Aygaliers set out at once, promising
to bring the young chief back with him, at which Lalande laughed
loudly, pretending to be very much amused at the baron's confident
way of speaking, and protesting that Cavalier would not come.

In the meantime events were happening in the mountains which might
easily have changed the state of mind of the young chief.  The Comte
de Tournan, who was in command at Florae, had encountered Roland's
army in the plain of Fondmortes, and had lost two hundred men, a
considerable sum of money, and eighty mules loaded with provisions.
The anxiety which this news caused to M. de Villars was soon
relieved; for six days after the defeat he received a letter from
Cavalier by the hands of Lacombe, the same who had brought about the
interview on the bridge of Avenes.  In this letter Cavalier expressed
the greatest regret for what had just happened.

D'Aygaliers therefore found Cavalier in the best of humours when he
joined him at Tarnac.  The first feeling that the young chief felt on
receiving the invitation was one of stupefaction; for an interview
with the marechal was an honour so unexpected and so great, that his
impression was that some treason lay behind it; but he was soon
reassured when he recalled the character for loyalty which the
marechal bore, and how impossible it was that d'Aygaliers should lend
himself to treachery.  So Cavalier sent back word that he would obey
the marechal's orders; and that he put himself entirely into his
hands in what concerned the arrangements for the interview.  M. de
Villars let him know that he would expect him on the 16th in the
garden of the convent of the Recollets of Nimes, which lay just
outside the city, between the gates of Beaucaire and the Madeleine,
and that Lalande would meet him beyond Carayrac to receive him and to
bring him hostages.




CHAPTER IV

On the 15th May Cavalier set out from Tarnac at the head of one
hundred and sixty foot-soldiers and fifty horse; he was accompanied
by his young brother and by d'Aygaliers and Lacombe.  They all passed
the night at Langlade.

The next day they set out for Nimes, and, as had been agreed upon,
were met by Lalande between Saint-Cesaire and Carayrac.  Lalande
advanced to greet Cavalier and present the hostages to him. These
hostages were M. de La Duretiere, captain of the Fimarcon regiment, a
captain of infantry, several other officers, and ten dragoons.
Cavalier passed them over to his lieutenant, Ravanel, who was in
command of the infantry, and left them in his charge at
Saint-Cesaire.  The cavalry accompanied him to within a musket-shot
of Nimes, and encamped upon the heights.  Besides this, Cavalier
posted sentinels and mounted orderlies at all the approaches to the
camp, and even as far off as the fountain of Diana and the tennis-
court.  These precautions taken, he entered the city, accompanied by
his brother, d'Aygaliers, Lacombe, and a body-guard of eighteen
cavalry, commanded by Catinat.  Lalande rode on before to announce
their arrival to the marechal, whom he found waiting with MM. de
Baville and Sandricourt, in the garden of the Recollets, dreading
every moment to receive word that Cavalier had refused to come; for
he expected great results from this interview.  Lalande, however,
reassured him by telling him the young Huguenot was behind.

In a few minutes a great tumult was heard: it was the people
hastening to welcome their hero.  Not a Protestant, except paralytic
old people and infants in the cradle, remained indoors; for the
Huguenots, who had long looked on Cavalier as their champion, now
considered him their saviour, so that men and women threw themselves
under the feet of his horse in their efforts to kiss the skirts of
his coat.  It was more like a victor making his entry into a
conquered town than a rebel chief coming to beg for an amnesty for
himself and his adherents.  M. de Villars heard the outcry from the
garden of Recollets, and when he learned its cause his esteem for
Cavalier rose higher, for every day since his arrival as governor had
showed him more and more clearly how great was the young chief's
influence.  The tumult increased as Cavalier came nearer, and it
flashed through the marechal's mind that instead of giving hostages
he should have claimed them.  At this moment Cavalier appeared at the
gate, and seeing the marechal's guard drawn up in line, he caused his
own to form a line opposite them.  The memoirs of the time tell us
that he was dressed in a coffee-coloured coat, with a very full white
muslin cravat; he wore a cross-belt from which depended his sword,
and on his head a gold-laced hat of black felt.  He was mounted on a
magnificent bay horse, the same which he had taken from M. de La
Jonquiere on the bloody day of Vergenne.

The lieutenant of the guard met him at the gate.  Cavalier quickly
dismounted, and throwing the bridle of his horse to one of his men,
he entered the garden, and advanced towards the expectant group,
which was composed, as we have said, of Villars, Baville, and
Sandricourt.  As he drew near, M. de Villars regarded him with
growing astonishment; for he could not believe that in the young
man, or rather boy, before him he saw the terrible Cevenol chief,
whose name alone made the bravest soldiers tremble.  Cavalier at this
period had just completed his twenty-fourth year, but, thanks to his
fair hair which fell in long locks over his shoulders, and to the
gentle expression of his eyes he did not appear more than eighteen.
Cavalier was acquainted with none of the men in whose presence he
stood, but he noticed M. de Villars' rich dress and air of command.
He therefore saluted him first; afterwards, turning towards the
others, he bowed to each, but less profoundly, then somewhat
embarrassed and with downcast eyes be stood motionless and silent.
The marechal still continued to look at him in silent astonishment,
turning from time to time to Baville and Sandricourt, as if to assure
himself that there was no mistake and that it was really the man whom
they expected who stood before them.  At last, doubting still, in
spite of the signs they made to reassure him, he asked--

"Are you really Jean Cavalier?"

"Yes, monseigneur," was the reply, given in an unsteady voice.

"But I mean Jean Cavalier, the Camisard general, he who has assumed
the title of Duke of the Cevennes."

"I have not assumed that title, monseigneur, only some people call me
so in joke: the king alone has the right to confer titles, and I
rejoice exceedingly, monseigneur, that he has given you that of
governor of Languedoc."

"When you are speaking of the king, why do you not say 'His
Majesty'?" said M. de Baville.  "Upon my soul, the king is too good
to treat thus with a rebel."

The blood rushed to Cavalier's head, his face flamed, and after a
moment's pause, fixing his eye boldly upon M. de Baville, and
speaking in a voice which was now as firm as it had been tremulous a
moment before, he said, "If you have only brought me here, sir, to
speak to me in such a manner, you might better have left me in my
mountains, and come there yourself to take a lesson in hospitality.
If I am a rebel, it is not I who am answerable, for it was the
tyranny and cruelty of M. de Baville which forced us to have recourse
to arms; and if history takes exception to anything connected with
the great monarch for whose pardon I sue to-day, it will be, I hope,
not that he had foes like me, but friends like him."

M. de Baville grew pale with anger; for whether Cavalier knew to whom
he was speaking or not, his words had the effect of a violent blow
full in his face; but before he could reply M. de Villars interposed.

"Your business is only with me, sir," he said; "attend to me alone,
I beg: I speak in the name of the king; and the king, of his
clemency, wishes to spare his subjects by treating them with
tenderness."

Cavalier opened his mouth to reply, but the intendant cut him short.

"I should hope that that suffices," he said contemptuously: "as
pardon is more than you could have hoped for, I suppose you are not
going to insist on the other conditions you laid down?"

"But it is precisely those other conditions," said Cavalier,
addressing himself to M. de Villars, and not seeming to see that
anyone else was present, "for which we have fought.  If I were alone,
sir, I should give myself up, bound hand and foot, with entire
confidence in your good faith, demanding no assurances and exacting
no conditions; but I stand here to defend the interests of my
brethren and friends who trust me; and what is more, things have gone
so far that we must either die weapon in hand, or obtain our rights."

The intendant was about to speak, but the marechal stopped him with
such an imperative gesture that he stepped back as if to show that he
washed his hands of the whole matter.

"What are those rights?  Are they those which M. Lalande has
transmitted to me by word of mouth?"

"Yes, sir."

"It would be well to commit them to writing."

"I have done so, monseigneur, and sent a copy to M. d'Aygaliers."

"I have not seen it, sir; make me another copy and place it in my
hands, I beg."

"I shall go and set about it directly, monseigneur," stepping back as
if about to withdraw.

"One moment!" said the marechal, detaining him by a smile.  "Is it
true that you are willing to enter the king's army?"

"I am more than willing, I desire it with all my heart," exclaimed
Cavalier, with the frank enthusiasm natural to his age, "but I cannot
do so till our just demands are granted."

"But if they were granted--?"

"Then, sir," replied Cavalier, "the king has never had more loyal
subjects than we shall be."

"Well, have a little patience and everything will be arranged, I
hope."

"May God grant it!" said Cavalier.  "He is my witness that we desire
peace beyond everything."  And he took another step backwards.

"You will not go too far away, I hope," said the marechal.

"We shall remain wherever your excellency may appoint," said
Cavalier.

Very well," continued M. de Villars; "halt at Calvisson, and try all
you can to induce the other leaders to follow your example."

"I shall do my best, monseigneur; but while we await His Majesty's
reply shall we be allowed to fulfil our religious duties unimpeded?"

"Yes, I shall give orders that you are to have full liberty in that
respect."

"Thanks, monseigneur."

Cavalier bowed once more, and was about to go; but M. de Villars
accompanied him and Lalande, who had now joined them, and who stood
with his hand on Cavalier's shoulder, a few steps farther.  Catinat
seeing that the conference was at an end, entered the garden with his
men.  Thereupon M. de Villars took leave, saying distinctly, "Adieu,
Seigneur Cavalier," and withdrew, leaving the young chief surrounded
by a dozen persons all wanting to speak to him at once.  For half an
hour he was detained by questions, to all of which he replied
pleasantly.  On one finger was an emerald taken from a naval officer
named Didier, whom he had killed with his own hand in the action at
Devois de Martignargues; he kept time by a superb watch which had
belonged to M. d'Acqueville, the second in command of the marines;
and he offered his questioners from time to time perfumed snuff from
a magnificent snuffbox, which he had found in the holsters when he
took possession of M. de La Jonquiere's horse.  He told everyone who
wished to listen that he had never intended to revolt against the
king; and that he was now ready to shed the last drop of his blood in
his service; that he had several times offered to surrender on
condition that liberty of conscience was granted to those of the new
faith, but that M. de Montrevel had always rejected his offers, so
that he had been obliged to remain under arms, in order to deliver
those who were in prison, and to gain permission for those who were
free to worship God in their own way.

He said these things in an unembarrassed and graceful manner, hat in
hand; then passing through the crowd which had gathered outside the
garden of the Recollets, he repaired to the Hotel de la Poste for
lunch, and afterwards walked along the Esplanade to the house of one
Guy Billard, a gardener, who was his head prophet's father.  As he
thus moved about he was preceded by two Camisards with drawn swords,
who made way for him; and several ladies were presented to him who
were happy to touch his doublet.  The visit over, he once again
passed along the Esplanade, still preceded by his two Camisards, and
just as he passed the Little Convent he and those with him struck up
a psalm tune, and continued singing till they reached Saint-Cesaire,
where the hostages were.  These he at once sent back.

Five hundred persons from Nimes were awaiting him; refreshments were
offered to him, which he accepted gratefully, thanking all those who
had gathered together to meet him.  At last he went off to St.
Denoise, where he was to sup and sleep; but before going to bed he
offered up supplications in a loud voice for the king, for M. de
Villars, for M. de Lalande, and even for M. de Baville.

The next morning, Cavalier, according to promise, sent a copy of his
demands to M. de Villars, who caused it to be laid before the king,
along with a full report of all that had passed at the interview at
Nimes.  As soon as the young chief had sent off his missive, he
rejoined his troops at Tarnac, and related all that had passed to
Roland, urging him to follow his example.  That night he slept at
Sauves, having passed through Durfort at the head of his men; a
captain of dragoons named Montgros, with twenty-five soldiers,
accompanying him everywhere, by M. de Villars' orders, and seeing
that the villages through which they passed furnished him with all
that was needed.  They left Sauves on May 16th very early in the
morning, in order to get to Calvisson, which, as our readers may
remember, was the place appointed for the residence of Cavalier
during the truce.  In passing through Quissac, where they stopped for
refreshments, they were joined by Castanet who delivered a long
sermon, at which all the Protestants of the neighbourhood were
present.

The two battalions of the Charolais regiment which were quartered at
Calvisson had received orders on the evening of the 17th to march out
next morning, so as to make room for the Camisards.

On the 18th the head of the commissary department, Vincel, ordered
suitable accommodation to be provided for Cavalier and his troops;
the muster roll being in the hands of M. d'Aygaliers, it would be
sent by him or brought in the course of the day.  In the meantime,
vans were arriving filled with all sorts of provisions, followed by
droves of cattle, while a commissary and several clerks, charged with
the distribution of rations, brought up the rear.

On the 19th, Catinat, accompanied by twelve Camisards, rode into the
town, and was met at the barrier by the commandant and eighty
townspeople.  As soon as the little band came in sight the commandant
reiterated his orders that nothing should be said or done in the
town, on pain of corporal punishment, that could offend the
Camisards.

At one o'clock P. M. Baron d'Aygaliers arrived, followed in his turn
by the chief of the commissariat, Vincel, by Captain Cappon, two
other officers named Viala and Despuech, and six dragoons.  These
were the hostages Cavalier had given.

At six o'clock there was heard a great noise; and shouts of
"Cavalier!  Cavalier!" resounded on all sides.  The young Cevenol was
in sight, and the whole population hastened to meet him.  He rode at
the head of his cavalry, the infantry following, and the whole
number--about six hundred men--sang psalms in a loud voice.

When they reached the church, Cavalier drew up before it with all his
men in review order, and for some time the singing went on.  When it
stopped, a long prayer was offered up, which was most edifying to all
the bystanders; and this being over, Cavalier went to the quarters
assigned him, which were in the best house in Calvisson.  Arrived
there, he sent out for a dozen loaves that he might judge how his men
were going to be fed; not finding them white enough, he complained to
M. Vincel, whom he sent for, and who promised that in future the
bread should be of a better quality.  Having received this assurance,
Cavalier gave orders that the loaves in hand should be distributed
for that day, but probably fearing poison, he first made M. de Vincel
and his clerks taste them in his presence.  These duties
accomplished, he visited in person all the gates of the town, placed
guards and posted sentinels at all the entrances and along all the
avenues, the most advanced being three-quarters of a league from the
town.  Besides this, he placed guards in the streets, and a sentinel
at each door of the house he occupied; in addition, thirty guards
always slept outside the door of his bedroom, and these accompanied
him as an escort when he went out; not that he was afraid, for he was
not of a mistrustful character, but that he thought it politic to
give people an exalted idea of his importance.  As to his soldiers,
they were billeted on the inhabitants, and received each as daily
rations a pound of meat, a quart of wine, and two and a half pounds
of bread.

The same day a convocation was held on the site of the old
meeting-house which had been destroyed by the Catholics.  It was a
very numerous assembly, to which crowds of people came from all
parts; but on the following days it was still more numerous; for, as
the news spread, people ran with great eagerness to hear the
preaching of the word of which they had been so long deprived.
D'Aygaliers tells us in his Memoirs that--"No one could help being
touched to see a whole people just escaped from fire and sword,
coming together in multitudes to mingle their tears and sighs.  So
famished were they for the manna divine, that they were like people
coming out of a besieged city, after a long and cruel famine, to whom
peace has brought food in abundance, and who, first devouring it with
their eyes, then throw themselves on it, devouring it bodily--meat,
bread, and fruit--as it comes to hand.  So it was with the
unfortunate inhabitants of La Vannage, and even of places more
distant still.  They saw their brethren assembling in the meadows and
at the gates of Calvisson, gathering in crowds and pressing round
anyone who started singing a psalm, until at last four or five
thousand persons, singing, weeping, and praying, were gathered
together, and remained there all day, supplicating God with a
devotion that went to every heart and made a deep impression.  All
night the same things went on; nothing was to be heard but preaching,
singing, praying, and prophesying."

But if it was a time of joy for the Protestants, it was a time of
humiliation for the Catholics.  "Certainly," says a contemporary
historian, "it was a very surprising thing, and quite a novelty, to
see in a province like Languedoc, where so many troops were
quartered, such a large number of villains--all murderers,
incendiaries, and guilty of sacrilege--gathered together in one place
by permission of those in command of the troops; tolerated in their
eccentricities, fed at the public expense, flattered by everyone, and
courteously, received by people sent specially to meet them."

One of those who was most indignant at this state of things was M. de
Baville.  He was so eager to put an end to it that he went to see the
governor, and told him the scandal was becoming too great in his
opinion: the assemblies ought to be put an end to by allowing the
troops to fall upon them and disperse them; but the governor thought
quite otherwise, and told Baville that to act according to his advice
would be to set fire to the province again and to scatter for ever
people whom they had got together with such difficulty.  In any case,
he reminded Baville that what he objected to would be over in a few
days.  His opinion was that de Baville might stifle the expression of
his dissatisfaction for a little, to bring about a great good.  "More
than that," added the marechal, "the impatience of the priests is
most ridiculous.  Besides your remonstrances, of which I hope I have
now heard the last, I have received numberless letters full of such
complaints that it would seem as if the prayers of the Camisards not
only grated on the ears of the clergy but flayed them alive.  I
should like above everything to find out the writers of these
letters, in order to have them flogged; but they have taken good care
to put no signatures.  I regard it as a very great impertinence for
those who caused these disturbances to grumble and express their
disapproval at my efforts to bring them to an end."  After this
speech, M, de Baville saw there was nothing for him to do but to let
things take their course.

The course that they took turned Cavalier's head more and more; for
thanks to the injunctions of M. de Villars, all the orders that
Cavalier gave were obeyed as if they had been issued by the governor
himself.  He had a court like a prince, lieutenants like a general,
and secretaries like a statesman.  It was the duty of one secretary
to give leave of absence to those Camisards who had business to
attend to or who desired to visit their relations.  The following is
a copy of the form used for these passports:

"We, the undersigned, secretary to Brother Cavalier, generalissimo of
the Huguenots, permit by this order given by him to absent himself on
business for three days.
                                   "(Signed) DUPONT.
"Calvisson, this----"


And these safe-conducts were as much respected as if they had been
signed "Marechal de Villars."

On the 22nd M. de Saint-Pierre arrived from the court, bringing the
reply of the king to the proposals which Cavalier had submitted to
M. de Lalande.  What this reply was did not transpire; probably it
was not in harmony with the pacific intentions of the marechal.  At
last, on the 25th, the answer to the demands which Cavalier had made
to M. de Villars himself arrived. The original paper written by the
Camisard chief himself had been sent to Louis XIV, and he returned it
with notes in his own writing; thus these two hands, to one of which
belonged the shepherd's crook and to the other the sceptre, had
rested on the same sheet of paper.  The following is the text of the
agreement as given by Cavalier in his Memoirs:

     "THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE REFORMERS OF
               LANGUEDOC TO THE KING

"1. That it may please the king to grant us liberty of conscience
throughout the province, and to permit us to hold religious meetings
in every suitable place, except fortified places and walled cities.

'Granted, on condition that no churches be built.

"2. That all those in prison or at the galleys who have been sent
there since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, because of their
religion, be set at liberty within six weeks from the date of this
petition.

'Granted.

"3. That all those who have left the kingdom because of their
religion be allowed to return in freedom and safety, and that their
goods and privileges be restored to them.

'Granted on condition that they take the oath of fidelity to the
king.

"4. That the Parliament of Languedoc be reestablished on its ancient
footing, and with all its former privileges.

'The king reserves decision on this point.

"5.  That the province of Languedoc be exempted from the poll tax for
ten years, this to apply, to Catholics and Protestants alike, both
sides having equally suffered.

'Refused.

"6.  That the cities of Perpignan, Montpellier, Cette, and
Aiguemortes be assigned us as cities of refuge.

'Refused.

"7.  That the inhabitants of the Cevennes whose houses were burnt or
otherwise destroyed during the war be exempt from taxes for seven
years.

'Granted.

"8.  That it may please His Majesty to permit Cavalier to choose 2000
men, both from among his own troops and from among those who may be
delivered from the prisons and galleys, to form a regiment of
dragoons for the service of His Majesty, and that this regiment when
formed may at once be ordered to serve His Majesty in Portugal.

'Granted: and on condition that all the Huguenots everywhere lay down
their arms, the king will permit them to live quietly in the free
exercise of their religion.'"


"I had been a week at Calvisson," says Cavalier in his Memoirs, "when
I received a letter from M. le Marechal de Villars ordering me to
repair to Nimes, as he wished to see me, the answer to my demands.
having arrived.  I obeyed at once, and was very much displeased to
find that several of my demands, and in particular the one relating
to the cities of refuge, had been refused; but M. le marechal assured
me that the king's word was better than twenty cities of refuge, and
that after all the trouble we had given him we should regard it as
showing great clemency on his part that he had granted us the greater
part of what we had asked.  This reasoning was not entirely
convincing, but as there was no more time for deliberation, and as I
was as anxious for peace as the king himself, I decided to accept
gracefully what was offered."

All the further advantage that Cavalier could obtain from M. de
Villars was that the treaty should bear the date of the day on which
it had been drawn up; in this manner the prisoners who were to be set
at liberty in six weeks gained one week.

M. de Villars wrote at the bottom of the treaty, which was signed the
same day by him and M. de Baville on the part of the king, and by
Cavalier and Daniel Billard on the part of the Protestants, the
following ratification:

"In virtue of the plenary powers which we have received from the
king, we have granted to the Reformers of Languedoc the articles
above made known.

"MARECHAL DE VILLARS       J. CAVALIER

"LAMOIGNON DE BAVILLE      DANIEL BILLARD

"Given at Nimes, the 17th of May 1704"


These two signatures, all unworthy as they were to stand beside their
own, gave such great delight to MM. de Villars and de Baville, that
they at once sent off fresh orders to Calvisson that the wants of the
Camisards should be abundantly supplied until the articles of the
treaty were executed--that is to say, until the prisoners and the
galley slaves were set at liberty, which, according to article 2 of
the treaty, would be within the next six weeks.  As to Cavalier, the
marechal gave him on the spot a commission as colonel, with a pension
of 1200 livres attached, and the power of nominating the subordinate
officers in his regiment, and at the same time he handed him a
captain's commission for his young brother.

Cavalier drew up the muster-roll of the regiment the same day, and
gave it to the marechal.  It was to consist of seven hundred and
twelve men, forming fifteen companies, with sixteen captains, sixteen
lieutenants, a sergeant-major, and a surgeon-major.

While all this was happening, Roland, taking advantage of the
suspension of hostilities, was riding up and down the province as if
he were viceroy of the Cevennes, and wherever he appeared he had a
magnificent reception.  Like Cavalier, he gave leave of absence and
furnished escorts, and held himself haughtily, sure that he too would
soon be negotiating treaties on terms of equality with marshals of
France and governors of provinces.  But Roland was much mistaken: M.
de Villars had made great concessions to the popularity of Cavalier,
but they were the last he intended to make.  So, instead of being in
his turn summoned to Nimes, or Uzes, to confer with M. de Villars,
Roland merely received an intimation from Cavalier that he desired to
speak with him on important business.

They met near Anduze, and Cavalier, faithful to the promise given to
M. de Villars, neglected no argument that he could think of to induce
Roland to follow his example; but Roland would listen to nothing.
Then, when Cavalier saw that arguments and promises were of no avail,
he raised his voice in anger; but Roland, laying his hand on his
shoulder, told him that his head was turned, that he should remember
that he, Roland, was his senior in command, and therefore bound by
nothing that had been promised in his name by his junior, and that he
had registered a vow in Heaven that nothing would persuade him to
make peace unless complete liberty of conscience were granted to all.
The young Cevenol, who was unaccustomed to such language, laid his
hand on the hilt of his sword, Roland, stepping back, drew his, and
the consultation would have ended in a duel if the prophets had not
thrown themselves between them, and succeeded in getting Roland to
consent to one of their number, a man much esteemed among the
Huguenots, named Salomon, going back to Nimes with Cavalier to learn
from M. de Villars' own mouth what the exact terms were which
Cavalier had accepted and now offered to Roland.

In a couple of hours Cavalier and Salomon set out together, and
arrived at Nimes on the 27th May, escorted by twenty-five men; they
halted at the tower of Magne, and the Protestants of the city came
out to meet them, bringing refreshments; then, after prayers and a
hasty meal, they advanced to the barracks and crossed the courtyards.
The concourse of people and the enthusiasm was no whit less than on
Cavalier's first entry, more than three hundred persons kissing his
hands and knees.  Cavalier was dressed on this occasion in a doublet
of grey cloth, and a beaver hat, laced with gold, and adorned with a
white feather.

Cavalier and his travelling-companion went direct to the garden of
the Recollets, and hardly had they got there than MM. de Villars and
de Baville, accompanied by Lalande and Sandricourt, came out to meet
them: the conference lasted three hours, but all that could be
learned of the result was that Salomon had declared that his brethren
would never lay down their arms till full liberty of conscience had
been secured to them. In consequence of this declaration, it was
decided that Cavalier and his regiment should be despatched to Spain
without delay, in order to weaken the Calvinist forces to that
extent; meantime Salomon was sent back to Roland with a positive
promise that if he would surrender, as Cavalier had done, he would be
granted the same conditions--that is to say, receive a commission as
colonel, have the right to name the officers of his regiment, and
receive a pension of 1200 livres.  On quitting the garden of the
Recollets, Cavalier found as great a crowd as ever waiting for him,
and so closely did they press on him that two of his men were obliged
to ride before him with drawn sabres to clear a way for him till the
Montpellier road was reached.  He lay that night at Langlade, in
order to rejoin his troops early next morning.

But during his absence things had happened among these men, who had
hitherto obeyed him blindly, which he little expected.  He had left,
as usual, Ravanel in command; but hardly had he ridden away when
Ravanel began to take all kinds of precautions, ordering the men not
to lay aside their arms.  The negotiations with M. de Villars had
made him most anxious; he looked upon all the promises given as
snares, and he regarded the compromise favoured by his chief as a
defection on Cavalier's part.  He therefore called all the officers
and men together, told them of his fears, and ended by imbuing them
with his suspicions.  This was all the more easily done, as it was
very well known that Cavalier had joined the Huguenots less from
devotion to the cause than to avenge a private wrong, and on many
occasions had given rise to the remark that he had more genius than
religion.

So, on getting back to Calvisson, the young chief found his principal
officers, Ravanel at their head, drawn up in the market-place,
waiting for him.  As soon as he drew near they told him that they
were determined to know at once what were the conditions of the
treaty he had signed with the marechal; they had made up their minds
to have a plain answer without delay.  Such a way of speaking to him
was so strange and unexpected, that Cavalier shrugged his shoulders
and replied that such matters were no business of theirs, being too
high for their intelligence; that it was his business to decide what
course to take and theirs to take it; it had always been so in the
past, and with the help of God and his own, Cavalier's, goodwill, it
should still be so in future; and having so spoken, he told them to
disperse.  Ravanel upon this came forward, and in the name of all the
others said they would not go away until they knew what orders
Cavalier was about to give the troops, that they might consult among
themselves whether they should obey them or not.  This
insubordination was too much for Cavalier's patience.

"The orders are," he said, "to put on the uniforms that are being
made for you, and to follow me to Portugal."

The effect of such words on men who were expecting nothing less than
the re-enactment of the Edict of Nantes, can be easily imagined; the
words "coward" and "traitor" could be distinguished above the
murmurs, as Cavalier noticed with increasing astonishment.  Raising
himself in his stirrups, and glancing round with that look before
which they had been used to tremble, he asked in a voice as calm as
if all the demons of anger were not raging in his heart, "Who called
Jean Cavalier traitor and coward?"

"I," said Ravanel, crossing his arms on his breast.

Cavalier drew a pistol from his holsters, and striking those near him
with the butt end, opened a way towards his lieutenant, who drew his
sword; but at this moment the commissary-general, Vincel, and Captain
Cappon threw themselves between the two and asked the cause of the
quarrel.

"The cause," said Ravanel, "is that the Cadets of the Cross, led by
the 'Hermit,' have just knocked out the brains of two of our
brethren, who were coming to join us, and are hindering others front
attending our meetings to worship God: the conditions of the truce
having been thus broken, is it likely they will keep those of the
treaty?  We refuse to accept the treaty."

"Sir," said Vincel, "if the 'Hermit' has done what you say, it is
against the orders of the marachal, and the misdoer will be punished;
besides, the large number of strangers at present in Calvisson ought
to be sufficient proof that no attempt has been made to prevent the
new converts from coming to the town, and it seems to me that you
have been too easily led to believe everything that malicious people
have told you."

"I believe what I choose to believe," said Ravanel impatiently; "but
what I know and say is, that I shall never lay down arms till the
king grants us full liberty of conscience, permission to rebuild our
places of worship, and sends us back all prisoners and exiles."

"But, judging by your tone," said Cavalier, who had till now remained
silent while toying with his pistol, "you seem to be in command here;
have we changed, parts without my being aware?"

"It is possible," said Ravanel.

Cavalier burst out laughing.

"It seems to astonish you," said Ravanel, "but it is true.  Make
peace for yourself, lay down what conditions suit you, sell yourself
for whatever you will bring; my only reply is, You are a coward and a
traitor. But as to the troops, they will not lay down arms except on
the conditions formulated by me."

Cavalier tried to get at Ravanel, but seeing from his paleness and
his smile that terrible things would happen if he reached his
lieutenant, Vincel and Cappon, backed by some Camisards, threw
themselves before his horse. Just then the whole band shouted with
one voice, "No peace! no peace! no reconciliation till our temples
are restored!"  Cavalier then saw for the first time that things were
more serious than he had believed, but Vincel, Cappon, Berlie, and
about twenty Camisards surrounded the young chief and forced him to
enter a house; it was the house of Vincel.

They had hardly got indoors when the 'generale' was sounded:
resisting all entreaties, Cavalier sprang to the door, but was
detained by Berlie, who said that the first thing he ought to do was
to write M. de Villars an account of what had happened, who would
then take measures to put things straight.

"You are right," said Cavalier; "as I have so many enemies, the
general might be told if I were killed that I had broken my word.
Give me pen and ink."

Writing materials were brought, and he wrote to M. de Villars.

"Here," he said, giving the letter unsealed to Vincel, "set out for
Nimes and give this to the marechal, and tell him, if I am killed in
the attempt I am about to make, I died his humble servant."

With these words, he darted out of the house and mounted his horse,
being met at the door by twelve to fifteen men who had remained
faithful to him.  He asked them where Ravanel and his troops were,
not seeing a single Camisard in the streets; one of the soldiers
answered that they were probably still in town, but that they were
moving towards Les Garrigues de Calvisson.  Cavalier set off at a
gallop to overtake them.

In crossing the market-place he met Catinat, walking between two
prophets, one called Moses and the other Daniel Guy; Catinat was just
back from a visit to the mountains, so that he had taken no part in
the scene of insubordination that had so lately been enacted.

Cavalier felt a ray of hope; he was sure he could depend on Catinat
as on himself.  He hurried to greet him, holding out his hand; but
Catinat drew back his.

"What does this mean?" cried Cavalier, the blood mounting to his
forehead.

"It means," answered Catinat, "that you are a traitor, and I cannot
give my hand to a traitor."

Cavalier gave a cry of rage, and advancing on Catinat, raised his
cane to strike him; but Moses and Daniel Guy threw themselves
between, so that the blow aimed at Catinat fell on Moses.  At the
same moment Catinat, seeing Cavalier's gesture, drew a pistol from
his belt.  As it was at full cock, it went off in his hand, a bullet
piercing Guy's hat, without, however, wounding him.

At the noise of the report shouts were heard about a hundred yards
away.  It was the Camisards, who had been on the point of leaving the
town, but hearing the shot had turned back, believing that some of
their brethren were being murdered.  On seeing them appear, Cavalier
forgot Catinat, and rode straight towards them.  As soon as they
caught sight of him they halted, and Ravanel advanced before them
ready for every danger.

"Brethren," he cried, "the traitor has come once more to tempt us.
Begone, Judas!  You have no business here."

"But I have," exclaimed Cavalier.  "I have to punish a scoundrel
called Ravanel, if he has courage to follow me."

"Come on, then," cried Ravanel, darting down a small side-street,
"and let us have done with it."  The Camisards made a motion as if to
follow them, but Ravanel turning towards them ordered them to remain
where they were.

They obeyed, and thus Cavalier could see that, insubordinate as they
had been towards him, they were ready to obey another.

Just at the moment as he turned into the narrow street where the
dispute was to be settled once for all, Moses and Guy came up, and
seizing the bridle of his horse stopped him, while the Camisards who
were on the side of Cavalier surrounded Ravanel and forced him to
return to his soldiers.  The troops struck up a psalm, and resumed
their march, while Cavalier was held back by force.

At last, however, the young Cevenol succeeded in breaking away from
those who surrounded him, and as the street by which the Camisards
had retired was blocked, he dashed down another.  The two prophets
suspecting his intention, hurried after the troops by the most direct
route, and got up with them, just as Cavalier, who had made the
circuit of the town, came galloping across the plain to intercept
their passage.  The troops halted, and Ravanel gave orders to fire.
The first rank raised their muskets and took aim, thus indicating
that they were ready to obey.  But it was not a danger of this kind
that could frighten Cavalier; he continued to advance.  Then Moses
seeing his peril, threw himself between the Camisards and him,
stretching out his arms and shouting, "Stop! stop! misguided men!
Are you going to kill Brother Cavalier like a highwayman and thief?
You must pardon him, my brethren! you must pardon him!  If he has
done wrong in the past, he will do better in future."

Then those who had taken aim at Cavalier grounded their muskets, and
Cavalier changing menace for entreaty, begged them not to break the
promise that he had made in their name; whereupon the prophets struck
up a psalm, and the rest of the soldiers joining in, his voice was
completely drowned.  Nevertheless, Cavalier did not lose heart, but
accompanied them on their march to Saint-Esteve, about a league
farther on, unable to relinquish all hope.  On reaching Saint-Esteve
the singing ceased for a moment, and he made another attempt to
recall them to obedience.  Seeing, however, that it was all in vain,
he gave up hope, and calling out, "At least defend yourselves as
well as you can, for the dragoons will soon be on you," he set his
horse's head towards the town.  Then turning to them for the last
time, he said, "Brethren, let those who love me follow me!"  He
pronounced these words in tones so full of grief and affection that
many were shaken in their resolution; but Ravanel and Moses seeing
the effect he had produced, began to shout, "The sword of the Lord!"
Immediately all the troops turned their back on Cavalier except about
forty men who had joined him on his first appearance.

Cavalier went into a house near by, and wrote another letter to M. de
Villars, in which he told him what had just taken place, the efforts
he had made to win back his troops, and the conditions they demanded.
He ended by assuring him that he would make still further efforts,
and promised the marechal that he would keep him informed of
everything that went on.  He then withdrew to Cardet, not venturing
to return to Calvisson.

Both Cavalier's letters reached M. de Villars at the same time; in
the first impulse of anger aroused by this unexpected check, he
issued the following order:

"Since coming to this province and taking over the government by
order of the king, our sole thought has been how to put an end to the
disorders we found existing here by gentle measures, and to restore
peace and to preserve the property of those who had taken no part in
the disturbances.  To that end we obtained His Majesty's pardon for
those rebels who had, by the persuasion of their chiefs, been induced
to lay down their arms; the only condition exacted being that they
should throw themselves on the king's clemency and beg his permission
to expiate their crime by adventuring their lives in his service.
But, being informed that instead of keeping the engagements they had
made by signing petitions, by writing letters, and by speaking words
expressing their intentions, some among them have been trying to
delude the minds of the people with false hopes of full liberty for
the exercise of this so-called Reformed religion, which there has
never been any intention of granting, but which we have always
declared as clearly as we could, to be contrary to the will of the
king and likely to bring about great evils for which it would be
difficult to find a remedy, it becomes necessary to prevent those who
give belief to these falsehoods from expecting to escape from
well-deserved chastisement.  We therefore declare hereby that all
religious assemblies are expressly forbidden under the penalties
proclaimed in the edicts and ordinances of His Majesty, and that
these will be more strictly enforced in the future than in the past.

"Furthermore, we order all the troops under our command to break up
such assemblies by force, as having been always illegal, and we
desire to impress on the new converts of this province that they are
to give their obedience where it is due, and we forbid them to give
any credence to the false reports which the enemies of their repose
are spreading abroad.  If they let themselves be led astray, they
will soon find themselves involved in troubles and misfortunes, such
as the loss of their lands, the ruin of their families, and the
desolation of their country; and we shall take care that the true
authors of these misfortunes shall receive punishment proportioned to
their crime.

"MARECHAL DE VILLARS

"Given at Nimes the 27th day of May 1704"


This order, which put everything back upon the footing on which it
had been in the time of M. de Montrevel, had hardly been issued than
d'Aygaliers, in despair at seeing the result of so much labour
destroyed in one day, set off for the mountains to try and find
Cavalier.  He found him at Cardet, whither, as we have said, he had
retired after the day of Calvisson.  Despite the resolution which
Cavalier had taken never to show his face again to the marechal, the
baron repeated to him so many times that M. de Villars was thoroughly
convinced that what had happened had not been his fault, he having
done everything that he could to prevent it, that the young chief
began to feel his self-confidence and courage returning, and hearing
that the marachal had expressed himself as very much pleased with his
conduct, to which Vincel had borne high testimony, made up his mind
to return to Nimes.  They left Cardet at once, followed by the forty
men who had remained true to Cavalier, ten on horse and thirty on
foot, and arrived on the 3lst May at Saint-Genies, whither M. de
Villars had come to meet them.

The assurances of d'Aygaliers were justified.  The marechal received
Cavalier as if he were still the chief of a powerful party and able
to negotiate with him on terms of equality.  At Cavalier's request,
in order to prove to him that he stood as high in his good opinion as
ever, the marechal returned once more to gentle methods, and
mitigated the severity of his first proclamation by a second,
granting an extension of the amnesty:

"The principal chiefs of the rebels, with the greater number of their
followers, having surrendered, and having received the king's pardon,
we declare that we give to all those who have taken up arms until
next Thursday, the 5th instant inclusive, the opportunity of
receiving the like pardon, by surrendering to us at Anduze, or to M.
le Marquis de Lalande at Alais, or to M. de Menon at Saint Hippolyte,
or to the commandants of Uzes, Nimes, and Lunel.  But the fifth day
passed, we shall lay a heavy hand on all rebels, pillaging and
burning all the places which have given them refuge, provisions, or
help of any kind; and that they may not plead ignorance of this
proclamation, we order it to be publicly read and posted up in every
suitable place.

"MARECHAL DE VILLARS

"At Saint-Genies, the 1st June 1704"

The next day, in order to leave no doubt as to his good intentions,
the marechal had the gibbets and scaffolds taken down, which until
then had been permanent erections.

At the same time all the Huguenots were ordered to make a last effort
to induce the Camisard chiefs to accept the conditions offered them
by M. de Villars.  The towns of Alais, Anduze, Saint-Jean, Sauve,
Saint-Hippolyte, and Lasalle, and the parishes of Cros, Saint-Roman,
Manoblet, Saint-Felix, Lacadiere, Cesas, Cambo, Colognac, and Vabre
were ordered to send deputies to Durfort to confer as to the best
means of bringing about that peace which everyone desired.  These
deputies wrote at once to M. de Villars to beg him to send them M.
d'Aygaliers, and to M. d'Aygaliers to request him to come.

Both consented to do as they were asked, and M. d'Aygaliers arrived
at Durfort on the 3rd of June 1704.

The deputies having first thanked him for the trouble which he had
taken to serve the common cause during the past year, resolved to
divide their assembly into two parts, one of which, was to remain
permanently sitting, while the other went to seek Roland and Ravanel
to try and obtain a cessation of hostilities.  The deputies charged
with this task were ordered to make it quite clear to the two chiefs
that if they did not accept the proposals made by M. de Villars, the
Protestants in general would take up arms and hunt them down, and
would cease to supply them with the means of subsistence.

On hearing this, Roland made reply that the deputies were to go back
at once to those who sent them, and threatened, should they ever show
him their faces again, to fire on them.

This answer put an end to the assembly, the deputies dispersed, and
d'Aygaliers returned to the Marechal de Villars to make his report.

Hardly had he done this when a letter from Roland arrived, in which
the Camisard chief asked M. de Villars to grant him an interview,
such as he had granted to Cavalier.  This letter was addressed to
d'Aygaliers, who immediately communicated its contents to the
marechal, from whom he received orders to set out at once to find
Roland and to spare no pains to bring him round.

D'Aygaliers, who was always indefatigable when working for his
country, started the same day, and went to a mountain about
three-quarters of a league from Anduze, where Roland awaited him.
After a conference of two hours, it was agreed that hostages should
be exchanged and negotiations entered upon.

Consequently, M. de Villars on his side sent Roland M. de Montrevel,
an officer commanding a battalion of marines, and M. de la
Maison-Blanche, captain of the Froulay regiment; while Roland in
return sent M. de Villars four of his principal officers with the
title of plenipotentiaries.

Unskilled in diplomacy as these envoys were, and laughable as they
appeared to contemporary historians, they received nevertheless the
marechal's consent to the following conditions:

1.  That Cavalier and Roland should each be placed in charge of a
regiment serving abroad, and that each of them should be allowed a
minister.

2.  That all the prisoners should be released and the exiles
recalled.

3.  That the Protestants should be permitted to leave the kingdom,
taking their effects with them.

4.  That those Camisards who desired to remain might do so, on giving
up their arms.

5.  That those who were abroad might return.

6.  That no one should be molested on account of his religion
provided everyone remained quietly at home.

7.  That indemnities should be borne by the whole province, and not
exacted specially from the Protestants.

8.  That a general amnesty should be granted to all without reserve.

These articles were laid before Roland and Ravanel by d'Aygaliers.
Cavalier, who from the day he went back to Nimes had remained in the
governor's suite, asked leave to return with the baron, and was
permitted to do so.  D'Aygaliers and he set out together in
consequence for Anduze, and met Roland and Ravanel about a quarter of
a league from the town, waiting to know the result of the
negotiations.  They were accompanied by MM. de Montbel and de
Maison-Blanche, the Catholic hostages.

As soon as Cavalier and Roland met they burst out into recriminations
and reproaches, but through the efforts of d'Aygaliers they soon
became more friendly, and even embraced on parting.

But Ravanel was made of harder stuff: as soon as he caught sight of
Cavalier he called him "traitor," saying that for his part he would
never surrender till the Edict of Nantes was re-enacted; then, having
warned them that the governor's promises were not to be trusted, and
having predicted that a day would come when they would regret their
too great confidence in him, he left the conference and rejoined his
troops, which, with those of Roland, were drawn up on a mountain
about three-quarters of a league distant.

The negotiators did not, however, despair.  Ravanel had gone away,
but Roland had debated with them at some length, so they determined
to speak to "the brethren"--that is, to the troops under Roland and
Ravanel, whose headquarters at the moment were at Leuzies, in order
that they might know exactly what articles had been agreed on between
Roland's envoys and the marechal.  Those who made up their minds to
take this step were, Cavalier, Roland, Moise, Saint-Paul, Laforet,
Maille, and d'Aygaliers.  We take the following account of what
happened in consequence of this decision from d'Aygaliers' Memoirs:

"We had no sooner determined on this plan, than, anxious to carry it
out, we set off.  We followed a narrow mountain path on the face of
the cliff which rose up to our right; to our left flowed the Gardon.

"Having gone about a league, we came in sight of the troops, about
3000 strong; an advanced post barred our way.

"Thinking it was placed there in our honour, I was advancing
unsuspiciously, when suddenly we found our road cut off by Camisards
to right and left, who threw themselves on Roland and forced him in
among their troops.  Maille and Malplach were dragged from their
horses.  As to Cavalier, who was somewhat behind, as soon as he saw
people coming towards him with uplifted sabres and shouting Traitor!
he put spurs to his horse and went off at full gallop, followed by
some townspeople from Anduze who had come with us, and who, now that
they saw the reception we met with, were ready to die with fear.

"I was too far forward to escape: five or six muskets rested on my
breast and a pistol pressed each ear; so I made up my mind to be
bold.  I told the troopers to fire; I was willing to die in the
service of my prince, my country, and my religion, as well as for
themselves, whom I was trying to benefit by procuring them the king's
goodwill.

"These words, which I repeated several times in the midst of the
greatest uproar, gave them pause.

"They commanded me to retire, as they did not want to kill me.  I
said I should do nothing of the kind: I was going into the middle of
the troops to defend Roland against the charge of treason, or be put
to death myself, unless I could convince them that what I had
proposed to him and Cavalier was for the good of the country, of our
religion, and the brethren; and having thus expostulated at the top
of my voice against thirty voices all trying to drown mine for about
an hour, I offered to fight the man who had induced them to oppose
us.

"At this offer they pointed their muskets at me once more; but
Maille, Malplach, and some others threw themselves before me, and
although they were unarmed, had enough influence to hinder my being
insulted; I was forced, however, to retreat.

"In leaving, I warned them that they were about to bring great
misfortunes on the province, whereupon a man named Claris stepped out
from among the troops, and approaching me exclaimed, 'Go on, sir, and
God bless you!  We know that you mean well, and were the first to be
taken in.  But go on working for the good of the country, and God
will bless you.'"

D'Aygaliers returned to the marechal, who, furious at the turn things
had taken, resolved instantly to break off all negotiations and have
recourse once more to measures of severity.  However, before actually
carrying out this determination, he wrote the following letter to the
king:

"SIRE,--It is always my glory to execute faithfully your Majesty's
orders, whatever those orders may be; but I should have been able, on
many occasions since coming here, to display my zeal for your
Majesty's service in other ways if I had not had to deal with madmen
on whom no dependence could be placed.  As soon as we were ready to
attack them, they offered to submit, but a little later changed their
minds again.  Nothing could be a greater proof of madness than their
hesitation to accept a pardon of which they were unworthy, and which
was so generously offered by your Majesty.  If they do not soon make
up their minds, I shall bring them back to the paths of duty by
force, and thus restore this province to that state of peace which
has been disturbed by these fools."

The day after writing this letter to the king, Roland sent Maille to
M. de Villars to beg him to wait till Saturday and Sunday the 7th and
the 8th June were over, before resorting to severity, that being the
end of the truce.  He gave him a solemn promise that he would, in the
interval, either bring in his troops to the last man, or would
himself surrender along with a hundred and fifty followers.  The
marechal consented to wait till Saturday morning, but as soon as
Saturday arrived he gave orders to attack the Camisards, and the next
day led a considerable body of troops to Carnoulet, intending to take
the Huguenots by surprise, as word had been brought that they were
all gathered there.  They, however, received intelligence of his
plan, and evacuated the village during the night.

The village had to pay dearly for its sin of hospitality; it was
pillaged and burnt down: the miquelets even murdered two women whom
they found there, and d'Aygaliers failed to obtain any satisfaction
for this crime.  In this manner M, de Villars kept the fatal promise
he had given, and internecine war raged once more.

Furious at having missed the Camisards, de Menon having heard from
his scouts that Roland was to sleep next night at the chateau de
Prade, went to M. de Villars and asked leave to conduct an expedition
against the chief.  He was almost sure of taking Roland by surprise,
having procured a guide whose knowledge of the country was minute.
The marechal gave him carte blanche.  In the evening Menon set out
with two hundred grenadiers.  He had already put three-quarters of
the way behind him without being discovered, when an Englishman met
them by chance.  This man was serving under Roland, but had been
visiting his sweetheart in a neighbouring village, and was on his way
home when he fell among Menon's grenadiers.  Without a thought for
his own safety, he fired off his gun, shouting, "Fly! fly!  The
royals are upon you!"

The sentinels took up the cry, Roland jumped out of bed, and, without
staying for clothes or horse, ran off in his shirt, escaping by a
postern gate which opened on the forest just as de Menon entered by
another.  He found Roland's bed still warm, and took possession of
his clothes, finding in a coat pocket a purse containing thirty-five
Louis, and in the stables three superb horses.  The Camisards
answered this beginning of hostilities by a murder.  Four of them,
thinking they had reasons for displeasure against one of M. de
Baville's subordinates, named Daude, who was both mayor and
magistrate; at Le Vigan, hid in a corn-field which he had to pass on
his way back from La Valette, his country  place.  Their measures
were successful: Daude came along just as was expected, and as he had
not the slightest suspicion of the impending danger, he continued
conversing with M, de Mondardier, a gentleman of the neighbourhood
who had asked for the; hand of Daude's daughter in marriage that very
day.  Suddenly he found himself surrounded by four men, who,
upbraiding him for his exactions and cruelties, shot him twice
through the head with a pistol.  They offered no violence to M. de
Mondardier except to deprive him of his laced hat and sword.  The day
on which M. de Villars heard of its murder he set a price on the
heads of Roland, Ravanel, and Catinat.  Still the example set by
Cavalier, joined to the resumption of hostilities, was not without
influence on the Camisards; every day letters arrived from single
troopers offering to lay down their arms, and in one day thirty
rebels came in and put themselves into Lalande's hands, while twenty
surrendered to Grandval; these were accorded not only pardon, but
received a reward, in hopes that they might be able to induce others
to do like them; and on the 15th June eight of the troops which had
abandoned Cavalier at Calvisson made submission; while twelve others
asked to be allowed to return to their old chief to follow him
wherever he went.  This request was at once granted: they were sent
to Valabregues, where they found forty-two of their old comrades,
amongst whom were Duplan and Cavalier's young brother, who had been
ordered there a few days before.  As they arrived they were given
quarters in the barracks, and received good pay--the chiefs forty
sous a day, and the privates ten.  So they felt as happy as possible,
being well fed and well lodged, and spent their time preaching,
praying, and psalm-singing, in season and out of season.  All this,
says La Baume, was so disagreeable to the inhabitants of the place,
who were Catholics, that if they had not been guarded by the king's
soldiers they would have been pitched into the Rhone.




CHAPTER V

Meantime the date of Cavalier's departure drew near.  A town was to
be named in which he was to reside at a sufficient distance from the
theatre of war to prevent the rebels from depending on him any more;
in this town he was to organise his regiment, and as soon as it was
complete it was to go, under his command, to Spain, and fight for the
king.  M. de Villars was still on the same friendly terms with him,
treating him, not like a rebel, but according to his new rank in the
French army.  On the 21st June he told him that he was to get ready
to leave the next day, and at the same time he handed him an advance
on their future pay--fifty Louis for himself, thirty for Daniel
Billard, who had been made lieutenant-colonel in the place of
Ravanel, ten for each captain, five for each lieutenant, two for each
sergeant, and one for each private.  The number of his followers had
then reached one hundred and fifty, only sixty of whom were armed.
M. de Vassiniac, major in the Fimarcn regiment, accompanied them with
fifty dragoons and fifty of the rank and file from Hainault.

All along the road Cavalier and his men met with a courteous
reception; at Macon they found orders awaiting them to halt.
Cavalier at once wrote to M. de Chamillard to tell him that he had
things of importance to communicate to him, and the minister sent a
courier of the Cabinet called Lavallee to bring Cavalier to
Versailles.  This message more than fulfilled all Cavalier's hopes:
he knew that he had been greatly talked about at court, and in spite
of his natural modesty the reception he had met with at Times had
given him new ideas, if not of his own merit, at least of his own
importance.  Besides, he felt that his services to the king deserved
some recognition.

The way in which Cavalier was received by Chamillard did not disturb
these golden dreams: the minister welcomed the young colonel like a
man whose worth he appreciated, and told him that the great lords and
ladies of the court were not less favourably disposed towards him.
The next day Chamillard announced to Cavalier that the king desired
to see him, and that he was to keep himself prepared for a summons to
court.  Two days later, Cavalier received a letter from the minister
telling him to be at the palace at four o'clock in the afternoon, and
he would place him on the grand staircase, up which the king would
pass.

Cavalier put on his handsomest clothes, for the first time in his
life perhaps taking trouble with his toilet.  He had fine features,
to which his extreme youth, his long fair hair, and the gentle
expression of his eyes lent much charm.  Two years of warfare had
given him a martial air; in short, even among the most elegant, he
might pass as a beau cavalier.

At three o'clock he reached Versailles, and found Chamillard waiting
for him; all the courtiers of every rank were in a state of great
excitement, for they had learned that the great Louis had expressed a
wish to meet the late Cevenol chief, whose name had been pronounced
so loud and so often in the mountains of Languedoc that its echoes
had resounded in the halls of Versailles.  Cavalier had not been
mistaken in thinking that everyone was curious to see him, only as no
one yet knew in what light the king regarded him, the courtiers dared
not accost him for fear of compromising their dignity; the manner of
his reception by His Majesty would regulate the warmth of his
reception by everyone else.

Met thus by looks of curiosity and affected silence, the young
colonel felt some embarrassment, and this increased when Chamillard,
who had accompanied him to his appointed place, left him to rejoin
the king.  However, in a few moments he did what embarrassed people
so often do, hid his shyness under an air of disdain, and, leaning on
the balustrade, crossed his legs and played with the feather of his
hat.

When half an hour had passed in this manner, a great commotion was
heard: Cavalier turned in the direction from which it came, and
perceived the king just entering the vestibule.  It was the first
time he had seen him, but he recognized him at once.  Cavalier's
knees knocked together and his face flushed.

The king mounted the stairs step by step with his usual dignity,
stopping from time to time to say a word or make a sign with head or
hand.  Behind him, two steps lower, came Chamillard, moving and
stopping as the king moved and stopped, and answering the questions
which His Majesty put to him in a respectful but formal and precise
manner.

Reaching the level on which Cavalier stood, the king stopped under
pretext of pointing out to Chamillard a new ceiling which Le Brun had
just finished, but really to have a good look at the singular man who
had maintained a struggle against two marshals of France and treated
with a third on equal terms.  When he had examined him quite at his
ease, he turned to Chamillard, pretending he had only just caught
sight of the stranger, and asked:

"Who is this young gentleman?"

"Sire," answered the minister, stepping forward to present him to the
king, "this is Colonel Jean Cavalier."

"Ah yes," said the king contemptuously, "the former baker of Anduze!"

And shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, he passed on.

Cavalier on his side had, like Chamillard, taken a step forward, when
the scornful answer of the great king changed him into a statue.  For
an instant he stood motionless and pale as death, then instinctively
he laid his hand on his sword, but becoming conscious that he was
lost if he remained an instant longer among these people, whom not
one of his motions escaped, although they pretended to despise him
too much to be aware of his presence, he dashed down the staircase
and through the hall, upsetting two or three footmen who were in his
way, hurried into the garden, ran across it at full speed, and
regaining his room at the hotel, threw himself on the floor, where he
rolled like a maniac, uttering cries of rage, and cursing the hour
when, trusting to the promises of M. de Villars, he had abandoned the
mountains where he was as much a king as Louis XIV at Versailles. The
same evening he received orders to leave Paris and rejoin his
regiment at Macon.  He therefore set out the next morning, without
seeing M. de Chamillard again.

Cavalier on arriving at Macon found that his comrades had had a visit
from M. d'Aygaliers, who had come again to Paris, in the hope of
obtaining more from the king than M. de Villars could or would grant.

Cavalier, without telling his comrades of the strange manner in which
the king had received him, gave them to understand that he was
beginning to fear that not only would the promises they had received
be broken, but that some strange trick would be played upon them.

Thereupon these men, whose chief and oracle he had been for so long,
asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would
follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first
opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the country.  They
all declared themselves ready to follow him anywhere.  This caused
Cavalier a new pang of regret, for he could not help recollecting
that he had once had under his command fifteen hundred men like
these.

The next day Cavalier and his comrades set out on their march without
knowing whither they were being taken, not having been able to obtain
any information as to their destination from their escort--a silence
which confirmed them in their resolution.  As soon, therefore, as
they reached Onnan, Cavalier declared that he considered that the
looked-for opportunity had arrived, asking them if they were still in
the same mind: they returned that they would do whatever he advised.
Cavalier then ordered them to hold themselves in readiness, Daniel
offered up a prayer, and the prayer ended, the whole company deserted
in a body, and, crossing Mont Belliard, entered Porentruy, and took
the road to Lausanne.

Meantime d'Aygaliers, in his turn, arrived at Versailles, with
letters from M. de Villars for the Duke of Beauvilliers, president of
the king's council, and for Chamillard.  The evening of his arrival
he delivered these letters to those to whom they were addressed, and
both gentlemen promised to present him to the king.

Four days later, Chamillard sent word to d'Aygaliers that he was to
be next day at the door of the king's chamber at the time when the
council entered.  D'Aygaliers was punctual, the king appeared at the
usual hour, and as he paused before d'Aygaliers, Chamillard came
forward and said

Baron d'Aygaliers, sire."

"I am very glad to see you, sir," said the king, "for I am very much
pleased with the zeal you have displayed in Languedoc in my service
--very much pleased indeed."

"Sire," answered d'Aygaliers, "I consider myself most unfortunate in
that I have been able to accomplish nothing deserving of the gracious
words which your Majesty deigns to address me, and I pray God of His
grace to grant me in the future an opportunity of proving my zeal and
loyalty in your Majesty's service more clearly than hitherto."

"Never mind, never mind," said the king.  "I repeat, sir, that I am
very much pleased with what you have done."

And he entered the room where the council was waiting.

D'Aygaliers went away only half satisfied: he had not come so far
only to receive commendation from the king, but in the hope of
obtaining some concession for his brethren; but with Louis XIV it was
impossible either to intercede or complain, one could only wait.

The same evening Chamillard sent for the baron, and told him that as
Marechal Villars had mentioned in his letter that the Camisards had
great confidence in him, d'Aygaliers, he wished to ask him if he were
willing to go once more to them and try and bring them back to the
path of duty.

"Certainly I am willing; but I fear things have now got so far that
there will be great difficulty in calming the general perturbation of
mind."

"But what can these people want?" asked Chamillard, as if he had just
heard them spoken of for the first time, "and by what means can we
pacify them?"

"In my opinion," said the baron, "the king should allow to all his
subjects the free exercise of their religion."

"What! legalise once more the exercise of the so-called Reformed
religion!" exclaimed the minister.  "Be sure you never mention such a
thing again.  The king would rather see his kingdom destroyed than
consent to such a measure."

"Monseigneur," replied the baron, "if that is the case, then I must
say with great regret that I know of no other way to calm the
discontent which will ultimately result in the ruin of one of the
fairest provinces in France."

"But that is unheard-of obstinacy," said the minister, lost in
astonishment; "these people will destroy themselves, and drag their
country down with them.  If they cannot conform to our religion, why
do they not worship God in their own way at home?  No one will
disturb them as long as they don't insist on public worship."

"At first that was all they wanted, monseigneur; and I am convinced
that if people had not been dragged to confession and communion by
force, it would have been easy to keep them in that submissive frame
of mind from which they were only driven by despair; but at present
they say that it is not enough to pray at home, they want to be
married, to have their children baptised and instructed, and to die
and be buried according to the ordinances of their own faith."

"Where may you have seen anyone who was ever made to communicate by
force?" asked Chamillard.

D'Aygaliers looked at the minister in surprise, thinking he spoke in
joke; but seeing he was quite serious, he answered:

"Alas, monseigneur, my late father and my mother, who is still
living, are both instances of people subjected to this indignity."

"Are you, then, not a Catholic?" asked Chamillard.

"No, monseigneur," replied d'Aygaliers.

"Then how did you manage to return to France?"

"To speak the truth, sir, I only came back to help my mother to
escape; but she never could make up her mind to leave France, as such
a step was surrounded by many difficulties which she feared she could
never surmount.  So she asked my other relations to persuade me to
remain.  I yielded to their importunities on condition that they
would never interfere with my beliefs.  To accomplish this end they
got a priest with whom they were intimate to say that I had changed
my views once more, and I did not contradict the report.  It was a
great sin on my part, and I deeply repent it.  I must add, however,
that whenever anyone has asked me the question your Excellency asked
me just now I have always given the same reply."

The minister did not seem to take the baron's frankness in bad part;
only he remarked, when dismissing him, that he hoped he would find
out some way of ridding the kingdom of those who refused to think in
religious matters as His Majesty commanded.

D'Aygaliers replied that it was a problem to which he had given much
thought, but without ever being able to find a solution, but that he
would think about it more earnestly in future.  He then withdrew.

Some days later, Chamillard sent ward to d'Aygaliers that the king
would graciously give him a farewell audience.  The baron relates
what took place at this second interview, as follows.

"His Majesty," says he, "received me in the council chamber, and was
so good as to repeat once more in the presence of all his ministers
that he was very much pleased with my services, but that there was
one thing about me he should like to correct.  I begged His Majesty
to tell me what the fault was, and I should try to get rid of it at,
the peril of my life."

"'It is your religion,' said the king.  'I should like to have you
become a good Catholic, so that I might be able to grant you favours
and enable you to serve me better.'  His Majesty added that I ought
to seek instruction, and that then I should one day recognise what a
great benefit he desired to bring within my reach.

"I answered that I would esteem myself happy if at the cost of my
life I could prove the burning zeal with which I was filled for the
service of the greatest of earthly kings, but that I should be
unworthy of the least of his favours if I obtained it by hypocrisy or
by anything of which my conscience did not approve, but that I was
grateful for the goodness which made him anxious for my salvation.
I told him also that I had already taken every opportunity of
receiving instruction, and had tried to put aside the prejudices
arising from my birth, such as often hindered people from recognising
the truth, with the result that I had at one time almost lost all
sense of religion, until God, taking pity on me, had opened my eyes
and brought me out of that deplorable condition, making me see that
the faith in which I had been born was the only one for me.  'And I
can assure your Majesty,' I added, 'that many of the Languedoc
bishops who ought, it seems to me, to try to make us Catholics, are
the instruments which Providence uses to prevent us from becoming so.
For instead of attracting us by gentleness and good example, they
ceaselessly subject us to all kinds of persecutions, as if to
convince us that God is punishing us for our cowardice in giving up a
religion which we know to be good, by delivering us up to pastors
who, far from labouring to assure our salvation, use all their
efforts to drive us to despair."

"At this the king shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Enough, do not
say any more.' I asked for his blessing as the king and father of all
his subjects.  The king burst out laughing, and told me that M. de
Chamillard would give me his orders."

In virtue of this intimation d'Aygaliers went next day to the
minister's country house; for Chamillard had given him that address,
and there he learned that the king had granted him a pension of 800
livres.  The baron remarked that, not having worked for money, he had
hoped for a better reward; as far as money was concerned, he desired
only the reimbursement of the actual expenses of his journeys to and
from, but Chamillard answered that the king expected all that he
offered and whatever he offered to be accepted with gratitude.  To
this there was no possible reply, so the same evening d'Aygaliers set
out on his return to Languedoc.

Three months later, Chamillard forwarded him an order to leave the
kingdom, telling him that he was to receive a pension of four hundred
crowns per annum, and enclosing the first quarter in advance.

As there was no means of evading this command, D'Aygaliers set out
for Geneva, accompanied by thirty-three followers, arriving there on
the 23rd of September.  Once rid of him, Louis the Magnificent
thought that he had done his part nobly and that he owed him nothing
further, so that d'Aygaliers waited a whole year in vain for the
second quarter of his pension.

At the end of this time, as his letters to Chamillard remained
unanswered, and finding himself without resources in a foreign
country, he believed himself justified in returning to France and
taking up his residence on his family estate.  Unfortunately, on his
way through Lyons, the provost of merchants, hearing of his return,
had him arrested, and sent word to the king, who ordered him to be
taken to the chateau de Loches.  After a year's imprisonment,
d'Aygaliers, who had just entered on his thirty-fifth year, resolved
to try and escape, preferring to die in the attempt rather than
remain a prisoner for life.  He succeeded in getting possession of a
file with which he removed one of the bars of his window, and by
means of knotting his sheets together, he got down, taking the
loosened bar with him to serve, in case of need, as a weapon.  A
sentinel who was near cried, "Who goes there?" but d'Aygaliers
stunned him with his bar.  The cry, however, had given the alarm: a
second sentinel saw a man flying, fired at him, and killed him on the
spot.

Such was the reward of the devoted patriotism of Baron d'Aygaliers!

Meantime Roland's troops had increased greatly in number, having been
joined by the main body of those who had once been commanded by
Cavalier, so that he had, about eight hundred men at his disposal.
Some distance away, another chief, named Joanny, had four hundred;
Larose, to whom Castanet had transferred his command, found himself
at the head of three hundred; Boizeau de Rochegude was followed by
one hundred, Saltet de Soustel by two hundred, Louis Coste by fifty,
and Catinat by forty, so that, in spite of the victory of Montrevel
and the negotiations of M. de Villars, the Camisards still formed an
effective force of eighteen hundred and ninety men, not to speak of
many single troopers who owned no commander but acted each for
himself, and were none the less mischievous for that.  All these
troops, except these latter, obeyed Roland, who since the defection
of Cavalier had been recognised as generalissimo of the forces.
M. de Villars thought if he could separate Roland from his troops as
he had separated Cavalier, his plans would be more easy to carry out.

So he made use of every means within his reach to gain over Roland,
and as soon as one plan failed he tried another.  At one moment he
was almost sure of obtaining his object by the help of a certain
Jourdan de Mianet, a great friend of his, who offered his services as
an intermediary, but who failed like all the others, receiving from
Roland a positive refusal, so that it became evident that resort must
be had to other means than those of persuasion.  A sum of 100 Louis
had already been set on Roland's head: this sum was now doubled.

Three days afterwards, a young man from Uzes, by name Malarte, in
whom Roland had every confidence, wrote to M. de Paratte that the
Camisard general intended to pass the night of the 14th of August at
the chateau Castelnau.

De Paratte immediately made his dispositions, and ordered
Lacoste-Badie, at the head of two companies of dragoons, and all the
officers at Uzes who were well mounted, to hold themselves in
readiness to start on an expedition at eight o'clock in the evening,
but not revealing its object to them till the time came.  At eight
o'clock, having been told what they had to do, they set off at such a
pace that they came in sight of the chateau within an hour, and were
obliged to halt and conceal themselves, lest they should appear too
soon, before Roland had retired for the night.  But they need not
have been afraid; the Camisard chief, who was accustomed to rely on
all his men as on himself, had gone to bed without any suspicion,
having full confidence in the vigilance of one of his officers, named
Grimaud, who had stationed himself as sentinel on the roof of the
chateau.  Led by Malarte, Lacoste-Badie and his dragoons took a
narrow covered way, which led them to the foot of the walls, so that
when Grimaud saw them it was already too late, the chateau being
surrounded on all sides.  Firing off his gun, he cried, "To arms!"
Roland, roused by the cry and the shot, leaped out of bed, and taking
his clothes in one hand and his sword in the other, ran out of his
room.  At the door he met Grimaud, who, instead of thinking of his
own safety, had come to watch over that of his chief.  They both ran
to the stables to get horses, but three of their men--Marchand,
Bourdalie, and Bayos--had been before them and had seized on the best
ones, and riding them bare-backed had dashed through the front gates
before the dragoons could stop them.  The horses that were left were
so wretched that Roland felt there was no chance of out-distancing
the dragoons by their help, so he resolved to fly on foot, thus
avoiding the open roads and being able to take refuge in every ravine
and every bush as cover.  He therefore hastened with Grimaud and four
other officers who had gathered round him towards a small back gate
which opened on the fields, but as there was, besides the troops
which entered the chateau, a ring of dragoons round it, they fell at
once into the hands of some men who had been placed in ambush.
Seeing himself surrounded, Roland let fall the clothes which he had
not yet had time to put on, placed his back against a tree, drew his
sword, and challenged the boldest, whether officer or private, to
approach.  His features expressed such resolution, that when he thus,
alone and half naked, defied them all, there was a moment's
hesitation, during which no one ventured to take a forward step; but
this pause was broken by the report of a gun: the arm which Roland
had stretched out against his adversaries fell to his side, the sword
with which he had threatened them escaped from his hand, his knees
gave way, so that his body, which was only supported by the tree
against which he leaned, after remaining an instant erect, gradually
sank to the ground.  Collecting all his strength, Roland raised his
two hands to Heaven, as if to call down the vengeance of God upon his
murderers, then, without having uttered a single word, he fell
forward dead, shot through the heart.  The name of the dragoon who
killed him was Soubeyrand.

Maillie, Grimaud, Coutereau, Guerin, and Ressal, the five Camisard
officers, seeing their chief dead, let themselves be taken as if they
were children, without thinking of making any resistance.

The dead body of Roland was carried back in triumph to Uzes, and from
there to Nimes, where it was put upon trial as if still alive.  It
was sentenced to be dragged on hurdles and then burnt.  The execution
of this sentence was carried out with such pomp as made it impossible
for the one party to forget the punishment and for the other to
forget the martyrdom.  At the end the ashes of Roland were scattered
to the four winds of heaven.

The execution of the five officers followed close on that of their
chief's body; they were condemned to be broken on the wheel, and the
sentence was carried out on all at once.  But their death, instead of
inspiring the Calvinists with terror, gave them rather fresh courage,
for, as an eye-witness relates, the five Camisards bore their
tortures not only with fortitude, but with a light-heartedness which
surprised all present, especially those who had never seen a Camisard
executed before.

Malarte received his 200 Louis, but to-day his name is coupled with
that of Judas in the minds of his countrymen.

>From this time on fortune ceased to smile on the Camisards.  Genius
had gone with Cavalier, and, faith with Roland.  The very day of the
death of the latter, one of their stores, containing more than eighty
sacks of corn, had been taken at Toiras.  The next day, Catinat, who,
with a dozen men, was in hiding in a vineyard of La Vaunage, was
surprised by a detachment of Soissonnais; eleven of his men were
killed, the twelfth made prisoner, and he himself barely escaped with
a severe wound.  The 25th of the same month, a cavern near Sauve,
which the rebels used as a store, and which contained one hundred and
fifty sacks of fine wheat, was discovered; lastly, Chevalier de
Froulay had found a third hiding-place near Mailet.  In this, which
had been used not only as a store but as a hospital, besides a
quantity of salt beef, wine, and flour, six wounded Camisards were
found, who were instantly shot as they lay.

The only band which remained unbroken was Ravanel's, but since the
departure of Cavalier things had not gone well with his lieutenant.

In consequence of this, and also on account of the successive checks
which the other bodies of Camisard troops had met with, Ravanel
proclaimed a solemn fast, in order to intercede with God to protect
the Huguenot cause.  On Saturday, the 13th September, he led his
entire force to the wood of St. Benazet, intending to pass the whole
of the next day with them there in prayer.  But treason was rife.
Two peasants who knew of this plan gave information to M. Lenoir,
mayor of Le Vigan, and he sent word to the marechal and M. de
Saville, who were at Anduze.

Nothing could have been more welcome to the governor than this
important information: he made the most careful disposition of his
forces, hoping to destroy the rebellion at one blow.  He ordered
M. de Courten, a brigadier-colonel in command at Alais, to take a
detachment of the troops under him and patrol the banks of the Gardon
between Ners and Castagnols.  He was of opinion that if the Camisards
were attacked on the other side by a body of soldiers drawn from
Anduze, which he had stationed during the night at Dommersargues,
they would try to make good their retreat towards the river.  The
force at Dommersargues might almost be called a small army; for it
was composed of a Swiss battalion, a battalion of the Hainault
regiment, one from the Charolais regiment, and four companies of
dragoons from Fimarcon and Saint-Sernin.

Everything took place as the peasants had said: on Saturday the 13th,
the Camisards entered, as we have seen, the wood of St. Benazet, and
passed the night there.

At break of day the royals from Dommersargues began their advance.
The Camisard outposts soon perceived the movement, and warned
Ravanel, who held his little council of war.  Everyone was in favour
of instant retreat, so they retired towards Ners, intending to cross
the Gardon below that town: just as M. de Villars had foreseen, the
Camisards did everything necessary for the success of his plans, and
ended by walking right into the trap set for them.

On emerging from the wood of St. Benazet, they caught sight of a
detachment of royals drawn up and waiting for them between Marvejols
and a mill called the Moulin-du-Pont. Seeing the road closed in this
direction, they turned sharp to the left, and gained a rocky valley
which ran parallel to the Gardon. This they followed till they came
out below Marvejols, where they crossed the river.  They now thought
themselves out of danger, thanks to this manoeuvre, but suddenly they
saw another detachment of royals lying on the grass near the mill of
La Scie.  They at once halted again, and then, believing themselves
undiscovered, turned back, moving as noiselessly as possible,
intending to recross the river and make for Cardet.  But they only
avoided one trap to fall into another, for in this direction they
were met by the Hainault battalion, which swooped down upon them.
A few of these ill-fated men rallied at the sound of Ravanel's voice
and made an effort to defend themselves in spite of the prevailing
confusion; but the danger was so imminent, the foes so numerous, and
their numbers decreased so rapidly under the fierce assault, that
their example failed of effect, and flight became general: every man
trusted to chance for guidance, and, caring nothing for the safety of
others, thought only of his own.

Then it ceased to be a battle and become a massacre, for the royals
were ten to one; and among those they encountered, only sixty had
firearms, the rest, since the discovery of their various magazines,
having been reduced to arm themselves with bad swords, pitchforks,
and bayonets attached to sticks.  Hardly a man survived the fray.
Ravanel himself only succeeded in escaping by throwing himself into
the river, where he remained under water between two rocks for seven
hours, only coming to the surface to breathe.  When night fell and
the dragoons had retired, he also fled.

This was the last battle of the war, which had lasted four years.
With Cavalier and Roland, those two mountain giants, the power of the
rebels disappeared.  As the news of the defeat spread, the Camisard
chiefs and soldiers becoming convinced that the Lord had hidden His
face from them, surrendered one by one.  The first to set an example
was Castanet.  On September 6th, a week after the defeat of Ravanel,
he surrendered to the marechal.  On the 19th, Catinat and his
lieutenant, Franqois Souvayre, tendered their submission; on the
22nd, Amet, Roland's brother, came in; on October 4th, Joanny; on the
9th, Larose, Valette, Salomon, Laforet, Moulieres, Salles, Abraham
and Marion; on the 20th, Fidele; and on the 25th, Rochegude.

Each made what terms he could; in general the conditions were
favourable.  Most of those who submitted received rewards of money,
some more, some less; the smallest amount given being 200 livres.
They all received passports, and were ordered to leave the kingdom,
being sent, accompanied by an escort and at the king's expense, to
Geneva.  The following is the account given by Marion of the
agreement he came to with the Marquis Lalande; probably all the
others were of the same nature.

"I was deputed," he says, "to treat with this lieutenant-general in
regard to the surrender of my own troops and those of Larose, and to
arrange terms for the inhabitants of thirty-five parishes who had
contributed to our support during the war.  The result of the
negotiations was that all the prisoners from our cantons should be
set at liberty, and be reinstated in their possessions, along with
all the others.  The inhabitants of those parishes which had been
ravaged by fire were to be exempt from land-tax for three years; and
in no parish were the inhabitants to be taunted with the past, nor
molested on the subject of religion, but were to be free to worship
God in their own houses according to their consciences."

These agreements were fulfilled with such punctuality, that Larose
was permitted to open the prison doors of St. Hippolyte to forty
prisoners the very day he made submission.

As we have said, the Camisards, according as they came in, were sent
off to Geneva.  D'Aygaliers, whose fate we have anticipated, arrived
there on September 23rd, accompanied by Cavalier's eldest brother,
Malpach, Roland's secretary, and thirty-six Camisards.  Catinat and
Castanet arrived there on the 8th October, along with twenty-two
other persons, while Larose, Laforet, Salomon, Moulieres, Salles,
Marion, and Fidele reached it under the escort of forty dragoons from
Fimarcon in the month of November.

Of all the chiefs who had turned Languedoc for four years into a vast
arena, only Ravanel remained, but he refused either to surrender or
to leave the country.  On the 8th October the marechal issued an
order declaring he had forfeited all right to the favour of an
amnesty, and offering a reward of 150 Louis to whoever delivered him
up living, and 2400 livres to whoever brought in his dead body, while
any hamlet, village, or town which gave him refuge would be burnt to
the ground and the inhabitants put to the sword.

The revolt seemed to be at an end and peace established.  So the
marechal was recalled to court, and left Nimes on January the 6th.
Before his departure he received the States of Languedoc, who
bestowed on him not only the praise which was his due for having
tempered severity with mercy, but also a purse of 12,000 livres,
while a sum of 8000 livres was presented to his wife.  But all this
was only a prelude to the favours awaiting him at court.  On the day
he returned to Paris the king decorated him with all the royal orders
and created him a duke.  On the following day he received him, and
thus addressed him: "Sir, your past services lead me to expect much
of those you will render me in the future.  The affairs of my kingdom
would be better conducted if I had several Villars at my disposal.
Having only one, I must always send him where he is most needed.  It
was for that reason I sent you to Languedoc.  You have, while there,
restored tranquillity to my subjects, you must now defend them
against their enemies; for I shall send you to command my army on the
Moselle in the next campaign."

The, Duke of Berwick arrived at Montpellier on the 17th March to
replace Marechal Villars.  His first care was to learn from M. de
Baville the exact state of affairs.  M. de Baville told him that they
were not at all settled as they appeared to be on the surface.
In fact, England and Holland, desiring nothing so much as that an
intestine war should waste France, were making unceasing efforts to
induce the exiles to return home, promising that this time they would
really support them by lending arms, ammunition, and men, and it was
said that some were already on their way back, among the number
Castanet.

And indeed the late rebel chief, tired of inaction, had left Geneva
in the end of February, and arrived safely at Vivarais.  He had held
a religious meeting in a cave near La Goree, and had drawn to his
side Valette of Vals and Boyer of Valon.  Just as the three had
determined to penetrate into the Cevennes, they were denounced by
some peasants before a Swiss officer named Muller, who was in command
of a detachment of troops in the village of Riviere.  Muller
instantly mounted his horse, and guided by the informers made his way
into the little wood in which the Camisards had taken refuge, and
fell upon them quite unexpectedly.  Boyer was killed in trying to
escape; Castanet was taken and brought to the nearest prison, where
he was joined the next day by Valette, who had also been betrayed by
some peasants whom he had asked for assistance.

The first punishment inflicted on Castanet was, that he was compelled
to carry in his hand the head of Boyer all the way from La Goree to
Montpellier.  He protested vehemently at first, but in vain: it was
fastened to his wrist by the hair; whereupon he kissed it on both
cheeks, and went through the ordeal as if it were a religious act,
addressing words of prayer to the head as he might have done to a
relic of a martyr.

Arrived at Montpellier, Castanet was examined, and at first persisted
in saying that he had only returned from exile because he had not the
wherewithal to live abroad.  But when put to the torture he was made
to endure such agony that, despite his courage and constancy, he
confessed that he had formed a plan to introduce a band of Huguenot
soldiers with their officers into the Cevennes by way of Dauphine or
by water, and while waiting for their arrival he had sent on
emissaries in advance to rouse the people to revolt; that he himself
had also shared in this work; that Catinat was at the moment in
Languedoc or Vivarais engaged in the same task, and provided with a
considerable sum of money sent him by foreigners for distribution,
and that several persons of still greater importance would soon cross
the frontier and join him.

Castanet was condemned to be broken on the wheel.  As he was about to
be led to execution, Abbe Tremondy, the cure of Notre-Dame, and Abbe
Plomet, canon of the cathedral, came to his cell to make a last
effort to convert him, but he refused to speak.  They therefore went
on before, and awaited him on the scaffold.  There they appeared to
inspire Castanet with more horror than the instruments of torture,
and while he addressed the executioner as "brother," he called out to
the priests, "Go away out of my sight, imps from the bottomless pit!
What are you doing here, you accursed tempters?  I will die in the
religion in which I was born.  Leave me alone, ye hypocrites, leave
me alone!"  But the two abbes were unmoved, and Castanet expired
cursing, not the executioner but the two priests, whose presence
during his death-agony disturbed his soul, turning it away from
things which should have filled it.

Valette was sentenced to be hanged, and was executed on the same day
as Castanet.

In spite of the admissions wrung from Castanet in March, nearly a
month passed without any sign of fresh intrigues or any attempt at
rebellion.  But on the 17th of April, about seven o'clock in the
evening, M. de Baville received intelligence that several Camisards
had lately returned from abroad, and were in hiding somewhere, though
their retreat was not known.  This information was laid before the
Duke of Berwick, and he and M. de Baville ordered certain houses to
be searched, whose owners were in their opinion likely to have given
refuge to the malcontents.  At midnight all the forces which they
could collect were divided into twelve detachments, composed of
archers and soldiers, and at the head of each detachment was placed a
man that could be depended upon.  Dumayne, the king's lieutenant,
assigned to each the districts they were to search, and they all set
out at once from the town hall, at half-past twelve, marching in
silence, and separating at signs from their leaders, so anxious were
they to make no noise.  At first all their efforts were of no avail,
several houses being searched without any result; but at length
Jausserand, the diocesan provost, having entered one of the houses
which he and Villa, captain of the town troops, had had assigned to
them, they found three men sleeping on mattresses laid on the floor.
The provost roused them by asking them who they were, whence they
came, and what they were doing at Montpellier, and as they, still
half asleep, did not reply quite promptly, he ordered them to dress
and follow him.

These three men were Flessiere, Gaillard, and Jean-Louis.  Flessiere
was a deserter from the Fimarcon regiment: he it was who knew most
about the plot.  Gaillard had formerly served in the Hainault
regiment; and Jean-Louis, commonly called "the Genevois," was a
deserter from the Courten regiment.

Flessiere, who was the leader, felt that it would be a great disgrace
to let themselves be taken without resistance; he therefore pretended
to obey, but in lifting up his clothes, which lay upon a trunk, he
managed to secure two pistols, which he cocked.  At the noise made by
the hammers the provost's suspicions were aroused, and throwing
himself on Flessiere, he seized him round the waist from behind.
Flessiere, unable to turn, raised his arm and fired over his
shoulder.  The shot missed the provost, merely burning a lock of his
hair, but slightly wounded one of his servants, who was carrying a
lantern.  He then tried to fire a second shot, but Jausserand,
seizing him by the wrist with one hand, blew out his brains with the
other.  While Jausserand and Flessiere were thus struggling, Gaillard
threw himself on Villa, pinning his arms to his sides.  As he had no
weapons, he tried to push him to the wall, in order to stun him by
knocking his head against it; but when the servant, being wounded,
let the lantern fall, he took advantage of the darkness to make a
dash for the door, letting go his hold of his antagonist.
Unfortunately for him, the doors, of which there were two, were
guarded, and the guards, seeing a half-naked man running away at the
top of his speed, ran after him, firing several shots.  He received a
wound which, though not dangerous, impeded his flight, so that he was
boon overtaken and captured.  They brought him back a prisoner to the
town hall, where Flessiere's dead body already lay.

Meanwhile Jean-Louis had had better luck.  While the two struggles as
related above were going on, he slipped unnoticed to an open window
and got out into the street.  He ran round the corner of the house,
and disappeared like a shadow in the darkness before the eyes of the
guards.  For a long time he wandered from street to street, running
down one and up another, till chance brought him near
La Poissonniere.  Here he perceived a beggar propped against a post
and fast asleep; he awoke him, and proposed that they should exchange
clothes.  As Jean-Louis' suit was new and the beggar's in rags, the
latter thought at first it was a joke.  Soon perceiving, however,
that the offer was made in all seriousness, he agreed to the
exchange, and the two separated, each delighted with his bargain.
Jean-Louis approached one of the gates of the town, in order to be
able to get out as soon as it was opened, and the begger hastened off
in another direction, in order to get away from the man who had let
him have so good a bargain, before he had time to regret the exchange
he had made.

But the night's adventures were far from being over.  The beggar was
taken a prisoner, Jean-Louis' coat being recognised, and brought to
the town hall, where the mistake was discovered.  The Genevois
meantime got into a dark street, and lost his way.  Seeing three men
approach, one of whom carried a lantern, he went towards the light,
in order to find out where he was, and saw, to his surprise, that one
of the men was the servant whom Flessiere had wounded, and who was
now going to have his wound dressed.  The Genevois tried to draw back
into the shade, but it was too late: the servant had recognised him.
He then tried to fly; but the wounded man soon overtook him, and
although one of his hands was disabled, he held him fast with the
other, so that the two men who were with him ran up and easily
secured him.  He also was brought to the town hall, where he found
the Duke of Berwick and M. de Baville, who were awaiting the result
of the affray.

Hardly had the prisoner caught sight of them than, seeing himself
already hanged, which was no wonder considering the marvellous
celerity with which executions were conducted at that epoch, he threw
himself on his knees, confessed who he was, and related for what
reason he had joined the fanatics.  He went on to say that as he had
not joined them of his own free will, but had been forced to do so,
he would, if they would spare his life, reveal important secrets to
them, by means of which they could arrest the principal conspirators.

His offer was so tempting and his life of so little worth that the
duke and de Baville did not long hesitate, but pledged their word to
spare his life if the revelations he was about to make proved to be
of real importance.  The bargain being concluded, the Genevois made
the following statement:

"That several letters having arrived from foreign countries
containing promises of men and money, the discontented in the
provinces had leagued together in order to provoke a fresh rebellion.
By means of these letters and other documents which were scattered
abroad, hopes were raised that M. de Miremont, the last Protestant
prince of the house of Bourbon, would bring them reinforcements five
or six thousand strong.  These reinforcements were to come by sea and
make a descent on Aigues-Mortes or Cette,--and two thousand Huguenots
were to arrive at the same time by way of Dauphine and join the
others as they disembarked.

"That in this hope Catinat, Clary, and Jonquet had left Geneva and
returned to France, and having joined Ravanel had gone secretly
through those parts of the country known to be infected with
fanaticism, and made all necessary arrangements, such as amassing
powder and lead, munitions of war, and stores of all kinds, as well
as enrolling the names of all those who were of age to bear arms.
Furthermore, they had made an estimate of what each city, town, and
village ought to contribute in money or in kind to the--League of the
Children of God, so that they could count on having eight or ten
thousand men ready to rise at the first signal.  They had furthermore
resolved that there should be risings in several places at the same
time, which places were already chosen, and each of those who were to
take part in the movement knew his exact duty.  At Montpellier a
hundred of the most determined amongst the disaffected were to set
fire in different quarters to the houses of the Catholics, killing
all who attempted to extinguish the fires, and with the help of the
Huguenot inhabitants were, to slaughter the garrison, seize the
citadel, and carry off the Duke of Berwick and M. de Baville.  The
same things were to be done at Nimes, Uzes, Alais, Anduze,
Saint-Hippolyte, and Sommieres.  Lastly, he said, this conspiracy had
been going on for more than three months, and the conspirators, in
order not to be found out, had only revealed their plans to those
whom they knew to be ready to join them: they had not admitted a
single woman to their confidence, or any man whom it was possible to
suspect.  Further, they had only met at night and a few persons at a
time, in certain country houses, to which admittance was gained by
means of a countersign; the 25th of April was the day fixed for the
general rising and the execution of these projects."

As may be seen, the danger was imminent, as there was only six days'
interval between the revelation and the expected outburst; so the
Genevois was consulted, under renewed promises of safety for himself,
as to the best means of seizing on the principal chiefs in the
shortest possible time.  He replied that he saw no other way but to
accompany them himself to Nimes, where Catinat and Ravanel were in
hiding, in a house of which he did not know the number and in a
street of which he did not know the name, but which he was sure of
recognising when he saw them.  If this advice were to be of any
avail, there was no time to be lost, for Ravanel and Catinat were to
leave Nimes on the 20th or the 21st at latest; consequently, if they
did not set off at once, the chiefs would no longer be there when
they arrived.  The advice seemed good, so the marechal and the
intendant hastened to follow it: the informer was sent to Nimes
guarded by six archers, the conduct of the expedition was given to
Barnier, the provost's lieutenant, a man of intellect and common
sense, and in whom the provost had full confidence.  He carried
letters for the Marquis of Sandricourt.

As they arrived late on the evening of the 19th, the Genevois was at
once led up and down the streets of Nimes, and, as he had promised,
he pointed out several houses in the district of Sainte-Eugenie.
Sandricourt at once ordered the garrison officers, as well as those
of the municipal and Courten regiments, to put all their soldiers
under arms and to station them quietly throughout the town so as to
surround that district.  At ten o'clock, the Marquis of Sandricourt,
having made certain that his instructions had been carefully carried
out, gave orders to MM. de L'Estrade, Barnier, Joseph Martin, Eusebe,
the major of the Swiss regiment, and several other officers, along
with ten picked men, to repair to the house of one Alison, a silk
merchant, this house having been specially pointed out by the
prisoner.  This they did, but seeing the door open, they had little
hope of finding the chiefs of a conspiracy in a place so badly
guarded; nevertheless, determined to obey their instructions, they
glided softly into the hall.  In a few moments, during which silence
and darkness reigned, they heard people speaking rather loudly in an
adjoining room, and by listening intently they caught the following
words: "It is quite sure that in less than three weeks the king will
be no longer master of Dauphine, Vivarais, and Languedoc.  I am being
sought for everywhere, and here I am in Nimes, with nothing to fear."

It was now quite clear to the listeners that close at hand were some
at least of those for whom they were looking.  They ran to the door,
which was ajar, and entered the room, sword in hand.  They found
Ravanel, Jonquet, and Villas talking together, one sitting on a
table, another standing on the hearth, and the third lolling on a
bed.

Jonquet was a young man from Sainte-Chatte, highly thought of among
the Camisards.  He had been, it may be remembered, one of Cavalier's
principal officers.  Villas was the son of a doctor in Saint-
Hippolyte; he was still young, though he had seen ten years' service,
having been cornet in England in the Galloway regiment.  As to
Ravanel, he is sufficiently known to our readers to make any words of
introduction unnecessary.

De l'Estrade threw himself on the nearest of the three, and, without
using his sword, struck him with his fist.  Ravanel (for it was he)
being half stunned, fell back a step and asked the reason of this
violent assault; while Barnier exclaimed, "Hold him fast, M. de
l'Estrade; it is Ravanel!"  "Well, yes, I am Ravanel," said the
Camisard," but that is no reason for making so much noise."  As he
said these words he made an attempt to reach his weapons, but de
l'Estrade and Barnier prevented him by throwing themselves on him,
and succeeded in knocking him down after a fierce struggle.  While,
this was going on, his two companions were secured, and the three
were removed to the fort, where their guard never left them night or
day.

The Marquis of Sandricourt immediately sent off a courier to the Duke
of Berwick and M. de Baville to inform them of the important capture
he had made.  They were so delighted at the news that they came next
day to Nimes.

They found the town intensely excited, soldiers with fixed bayonets
at every street corner, all the houses shut up, and the gates of the
town closed, and no one allowed to leave without written permission
from Sandricourt.  On the 20th, and during the following night, more
than fifty persons were arrested, amongst whom were Alison, the
merchant in whose house Ravanel, Villas, and Jonquet were found;
Delacroix, Alison's brother-in-law, who, on hearing the noise of the
struggle, had hidden on the roof and was not discovered till next
day; Jean Lauze, who was accused of having prepared Ravanel's supper;
Lauze's mother, a widow; Tourelle, the maid-servant; the host of the
Coupe d'Or, and a preacher named La Jeunesse.

Great, however, as was the joy felt by the duke, the marquis, and de
Baville, it fell short of full perfection, for the most dangerous man
among the rebels was still at large; in spite of every effort,
Catinat's hiding-place had not till now been discovered.

Accordingly, the duke issued a proclamation offering a reward of one
hundred Louis-d'or to whoever would take Catinat, or cause him to be
taken prisoner, and granting a free pardon to anyone who had
sheltered him, provided that he was denounced before the
house-to-house visitation which was about to be made took place.
After the search began, the master of the house in which he might be
found would be hung at his own door, his family thrown into prison,
his goods confiscated, his house razed to the ground, without any
form of trial whatever.

This proclamation had the effect expected by the duke: whether the
man in whose house Catinat was concealed grew frightened and asked
him to leave, or whether Catinat thought his best course would be to
try and get away from the town, instead of remaining shut up in it,
he dressed himself one morning in suitable clothes, and went to a
barber's, who shaved him, cut his hair, and made up his face so as to
give him as much the appearance of a nobleman as possible; and then
with wonderful assurance he went out into the streets, and pulling
his hat over his eyes and holding a paper in his hand as if reading
it, he crossed the town to the gate of St. Antoine.  He was almost
through when Charreau, the captain of the guard, having his attention
directed to Catinat by a comrade to whom he was talking, stopped him,
suspecting he was trying to escape.  Catinat asked what he wanted
with him, and Charreau replied that if he would enter the guard-house
he would learn; as under such circumstances any examination was to be
avoided, Catinat tried to force his way out; whereupon he was seized
by Charreau and his brother-officer, and Catinat seeing that
resistance would be not only useless but harmful, allowed himself to
be taken to the guard-room.

He had been there about an hour without being recognised by any of
those who, drawn by curiosity, came to look at him, when one of the
visitors in going out said he bore a strong resemblance to Catinat;
some children hearing these words, began to shout, "Catinat is taken!
Catinat is taken!  "This cry drew a large crowd to the guard-house,
among others a man whose name was Anglejas, who, looking closely at
the prisoner, recognised him and called him by name.

Instantly the guard was doubled, and Catinat searched: a psalm-book
with a silver clasp and a letter addressed to "M. Maurel, called
Catinat," were found on him, leaving no doubt as to his identity;
while he himself, growing impatient, and desiring to end all these
investigations, acknowledged that he was Catinat and no other.

He was at once taken to the palace, where the Presidial Court was
sitting, M. de Baville and the president being occupied in trying
Ravanel, Villas, and Jonquet.  On hearing the news of this important
capture, the intendant, hardly daring to believe his ears, rose and
went out to meet the prisoner, in order to convince himself that it
was really Catinat.

>From the Presidial Court he was brought before the Duke of Berwick,
who addressed several questions to him, which Catinat answered; he
then told the duke he had something of importance to impart to him
and to him alone.  The duke was not very anxious for a tete-a-tete
with Catinat; however, having ordered his hands to be securely bound,
and telling Sandricourt not to go away, he consented to hear what the
prisoner had to say.

Catinat then, in the presence of the duke and Sandricourt, proposed
that an exchange of prisoners should be made, the Marechal de
Tallard, who was a prisoner of war in England, being accepted in his
place.  Catinat added that if this offer was not accepted, the
marechal would meet the same treatment from the English as might be
meted out to him, Catinat, in France.  The duke, full of the
aristocratic ideas to which he was born, found the proposal insolent,
and said, "If that is all you have to propose, I can assure you that
your hours are numbered."

Thereupon Catinat was promptly sent back to the palace, where truly
his trial did not occupy much time.  That of the three others was
already finished, and soon his was also at an end, and it only
remained to pronounce sentence on all four.  Catinat and Ravanel, as
the most guilty, were condemned to be burnt at the stake.  Some of
the councillors thought Catinat should have been torn apart by four
horses, but the majority were for the stake, the agony lasting
longer, being more violent and more exquisite than in the of other
case.

Villars and Jonquet were sentenced to be broken  on the wheel alive
--the only difference between them being that Jonquet was to be to
taken while still living and thrown into the fire lit round Catinat
and Ravael.  It was also ordered that the four condemned men before
their execution should be put to the torture ordinary and
extraordinary.  Catinat, whose temper was fierce, suffered with
courage, but cursed his torturers.  Ravanel bore all the torments
that could be inflicted on him with a fortitude that was more than
human, so that the torturers were exhausted before he was.  Jonquet
spoke little, and the revelations he made were of slight importance.
Villas confessed that the conspirators had the intention of carrying
off the duke and M. de Baville when they were out walking or driving,
and he added that this plot had been hatched at the house of a
certain Boeton de Saint-Laurent-d'Aigozre, at Milhaud, in Rouergue.

Meanwhile all this torturing and questioning had taken so much time
that when the stake and the scaffold were ready it was almost dark,
so that the duke put off the executions until the next day, instead
of carrying them out by torchlight.  Brueys says that this was done
in order that the most disaffected amongst the fanatics should not be
able to say that it was not really Catinat, Ravanel, Villas, and
Jonquet who had been executed but some other unknown men; but it is
more probable that the duke and Baville were afraid of riots, as was
proved by their ordering the scaffold and the stake to be erected at
the end of the Cours and opposite the glacis of the fortress, so that
the garrison might be at hand in case of any disturbance.

Catinat was placed in a cell apart, and could be, heard cursing and
complaining all night through.  Ravanel, Villas, and Jonquet were
confined together, and passed the night singing and praying.

The next day, the 22nd April, 1705, they were taken from the prison
and drawn to the place of execution in two carts, being unable to
walk, on account of the severe torture to which they had been
subjected, and which had crushed the bones of their legs.  A single
pile of wood had been prepared for Catinat and Ravanel, who were to
be burnt together; they were in one cart, and Villas and Jonquet, for
whom two wheels had been prepared, were in the other.

The first operation was to bind Catinat and Ravanel back to back to
the same stake, care being taken to place Catinat with his face to
windward, so that his agony might last longer, and then the pile was
lit under Ravanel.

As had been foreseen, this precaution gave great pleasure to those
people who took delight in witnessing executions.  The wind being
rather high, blew the flames away from Catinat, so that at first the
fire burnt his legs only--a circumstance which, the author of the
History of the Camisards tells us, aroused Catinat's impatience.
Ravanel, however, bore everything to the end with the greatest
heroism, only pausing in his singing to address words of
encouragement to his companion in suffering, whom he could not see,
but whose groans and curses he could hear; he would then return to
his psalms, which he continued to sing until his voice was stifled in
the flames.  Just as he expired, Jonquet was removed from the wheel,
and carried, his broken limbs dangling, to the burning pile, on which
he was thrown.  From the midst of the flames his voice was heard
saying, "Courage, Catinat; we shall soon meet in heaven."  A few
moments later, the stake, being burnt through at the base, broke, and
Catinat falling into the flames, was quickly suffocated.  That this
accident had not been forseen and prevented by proper precautions
caused great displeasure to spectators who found that the
three-quarter of an hour which the spectacle had lasted was much too
brief a time.

Villas lived three hours longer on his wheel, and expired without
having uttered a single complaint.

Two days later, there was another trial, at which six persons were
condemned to death and one to the galleys; these were the two
Alisons, in whose house Villas, Ravanel, and Jonquet had been found;
Alegre, who was accused of having concealed Catinat, and of having
been the Camisard treasurer; Rougier, an armourer who was found
guilty of having repaired the muskets of the rebels; Jean Lauze, an
innkeeper who had prepared meals for Ravanel; La Jeunesse, a
preacher, convicted of having preached sermons and sung psalms; and
young Delacroix, brother-in-law to one of the Alisons.  The first
three were condemned to be broken on the wheel, their houses
demolished, and their goods confiscated.  The next three were to be
hanged.  Jean Delacroix, partly because of his youth, but more
because of the revelations he made, was only sent to the galleys.
Several years later he was liberated and returned to Arles, and was
carried off by the plague in 1720.

All these sentences were carried out with the utmost rigour.

Thus, as may be seen, the suppression of the revolt proceeded apace;
only two young Camisard chiefs were still at large, both of whom had
formerly served under Cavalier and Catinat.  The name of the one was
Brun and of the other Francezet.  Although neither of them possessed
the genius and influence of Catinat and Ravanel, yet they were both
men to be feared, the one on account of his personal strength, the
other for his skill and agility.  Indeed, it was said of him that he
never missed a shot, and that one day being pursued by dragoons he
had escaped by jumping over the Gardon at a spot where it was
twenty-two feet wide.

For a long time all search was in vain, but one day the wife of a
miller named Semenil came into town ostensibly to buy provisions, but
really to denounce them as being concealed, with two other Camisards,
in her husband's house.

This information was received with an eager gratitude, which showed
the importance which the governor of Nimes attached to their capture.
The woman was promised a reward of fifty Louis if they were taken,
and the Chevalier de la Valla, Grandidier, and fifty Swiss, the major
of the Saint-Sernin regiment, a captain, and thirty dragoons, were
sent off to make the capture.  When they were within a quarter of a
league of the mill, La Valla, who was in command of the expedition,
made the woman give him all the necessary topographical information.

Having learned that besides the door by which they hoped to effect an
entrance, the mill possessed only one other, which opened on a bridge
over the Vistre, he despatched ten dragoons and five Swiss to occupy
this bridge, whilst he and the rest of the troops bore down on the
main entrance.  As soon as the four Camisards perceived the approach
of the soldiers, their first thought was to escape by the bridge, but
one of them having gone up to the roof to make sure that the way was
clear, came down exclaiming that the bridge was occupied.  On hearing
this, the four felt that they were lost, but nevertheless resolved to
defend themselves as valiantly and to sell their lives as dearly as
possible.  As soon as the royals were within musket range of the
mill, four shots were fired, and two dragoons, one Swiss, and one
horse, fell.  M. de Valla thereupon ordered the troops to charge at
full gallop, but before the mill door was reached three other shots
were heard, and two more men killed.  Nevertheless, seeing they could
not long hold out against such numbers, Francezet gave the signal for
retreat, calling out, "Sauve qui petit!" at the same instant he
jumped out of a lattice window twenty feet from the ground, followed
by Brun.  Neither of them being hurt, both set off across country,
one trusting to his strength and the other to his fleetness of foot.
The two other Camisards, who had tried to escape by the door, were
captured.

The soldiers, horse and foot, being now free to give all their
attention to Brun and Francezet, a wonderful race began; for the two
fugitives, being strong and active, seemed to play with their
pursuers, stopping every now and then, when they had gained
sufficient headway, to shoot at the nearest soldiers; when Francezet,
proving worthy of his reputation, never missed a single shot.  Then,
resuming their flight and loading their weapons as they ran, they
leaped rivers and ditches, taking advantage of the less direct road
which the troops were obliged to follow, to stop and take breath,
instead of making for some cover where they might have found safety.
Two or three times Brun was on the point of being caught, but each
time the dragoon or Swiss who had got up to him fell, struck by
Francezet's unerring bullet.  The chase lasted four hours, during
which time five officers, thirty dragoons, and fifty Swiss were
baffled by two men, one of whom Francezet was almost a boy, being
only twenty years old!  Then the two Camisards, having exhausted
their ammunition, gave each other the name of a village as a
rendezvous, and each taking a different direction, bounded away with
the lightness of a stag.  Francezet ran in the direction of Milhaud
with such rapidity that he gained on the dragoons, although they put
their horses at full speed.  He was within an inch of safety, when a
peasant named La Bastide, who was hoeing in a field, whence he had
watched the contest with interest from the moment he had first caught
sight of it, seeing the fugitive make for an opening in a wall, ran
along at the foot of the wall on the other side, and, just as
Francezet dashed through the opening like a flash of lightning,
struck him such a heavy blow on the head with his hoe that the skull
was laid open, and he fell bathed in blood.

The dragoons, who had seen in the distance what had happened, now
came up, and rescued Francezet from the hands of his assailant, who
had continued to rain blows upon him, desiring to put an end to him.
The unconscious Camisard was carried to Milhaud, where his wounds
were bandaged, and himself revived by means of strong spirits forced
into mouth and nostrils.

We now return to Brun.  At first it seemed as if he were more
fortunate than his comrade; for, meeting with no obstacle, he was
soon not only out of reach, but out of sight of his enemies.  He now,
however, felt broken by fatigue, and taught caution by the treachery
to which he had almost fallen a victim, he dared not ask for an
asylum, so, throwing himself down in a ditch, he was soon fast
asleep.  The dragoons, who had not given up the search, presently
came upon him, and falling on him as he lay, overpowered him before
he was well awake.

When both Camisards met before the governor, Francezet replied to all
interrogations that since the death of brother Catinat his sole
desire had been to die a martyr's death like him; while Brun said
that he was proud and happy to die in the cause of the Lord along
with such a brave comrade as Francezet.  This manner of defence led
to the application of the question both ordinary and extraordinary,
and to the stake; and our readers already know what such a double
sentence meant.  Francezet and Brun paid both penalties on the 30th
of April, betraying no secrets and uttering no complaints.

Boeton, who had been denounced by Villas when under torture (and who
thereby abridged his agony) as the person in whose house the plot to
carry off the Duke of Berwick and de Baville had been arranged, still
remained to be dealt with.

He was moderate in his religious views, but firm and full of faith;
his principles resembled those of the Quakers in that he refused to
carry arms; he was, however, willing to aid the good cause by all
other means within his reach.  He was at home waiting, with that calm
which perfect trust in God gives, for the day to come which had been
appointed for the execution of the plan, when suddenly his house was
surrounded during the night by the royals.  Faithful to his
principles, he offered no resistance, but held out his hands to be
bound.  He was taken in triumph to Nimes, and from there to the
citadel of Montpellier.  On the way he encountered his wife and his
son, who were going to the latter town to intercede for him.  When
they met him, they dismounted from their horse, for the mother was
riding on a pillion behind the son, and kneeling on the highroad,
asked for Boeton's blessing.  Unfeeling though the soldiers were,
they yet permitted their prisoner to stop an instant, while he,
raising his fettered hands to heaven, gave the double blessing asked
for.  So touched was Baron Saint-Chatte by the scene (be it remarked
in passing that the baron and Boeton were cousins by marriage) that
he permitted them to embrace one another, so for a few moments they
stood, the husband and father clasped to the hearts of his dear ones;
then, on a sign from Boeton, they tore themselves away, Boeton
commanding them to pray for M. de Saint-Chatte, who had given them
this consolation.  As he resumed his march the prisoner set them the
example by beginning to sing a psalm for the benefit of M. de
Saint-Chatte.

The next day, despite the intercession of his wife and son, Boeton
was condemned to torture both ordinary and extraordinary, and then to
be broken on the wheel.  On hearing this cruel sentence, he said that
he was ready to suffer every ill that God might send him in order to
prove the steadfastness of his faith.

And indeed he endured his torture with such firmness, that M. de
Baville, who was present in the hope of obtaining a confession,
became more impatient than the sufferer, and, forgetting his sacred
office, the judge struck and insulted the prisoner.  Upon this Baeton
raised his eyes to heaven and cried, "Lord, Lord! how long shall the
wicked triumph?  How long shall innocent blood be shed?  How long
wilt Thou not judge and avenge our blood with cries to Thee?
Remember Thy jealousy, O Lord, and Thy loving-kindness of old!"  Then
M. de Baville withdrew, giving orders that he was to be brought to
the scaffold.

The scaffold was erected on the Esplanade: being, as was usual when
this sort of death was to be inflicted, a wooden platform five or six
feet high, on which was fastened flat a St. Andrew's cross, formed of
two beams of wood in the form of an X.  In each of the four arms two
square pieces were cut out to about half the depth of the beam, and
about a foot apart, so that when the victim was bound on the cross
the outstretched limbs were easy to break by a blow at these points,
having no support beneath.  Lastly, near the cross, at one corner of
the scaffold an upright wooden post was fixed, on which was fastened
horizontally a small carriage wheel, as on a pivot, the projecting
part of the nave being sawn off to make it flat.  On this bed of pain
the sufferer was laid, so that the spectators might enjoy the sight
of his dying convulsions when, the executioner having accomplished
his part, the turn of death arrived.

Boeton was carried to execution in a cart, and drums were beaten that
his exhortations might not be heard.  But above the roll of drums his
voice rose unfalteringly, as he admonished his brethren to uphold
their fellowship in Christ.

Half-way to the Esplanade a friend of the condemned man, who happened
to be in the street, met the procession, and fearing that he could
not support the sight, he took refuge in a shop.  When Boeton was
opposite the door, he stopped the cart and asked permission of the
provost to speak to his friend.  The request being granted, he called
him out, and as he approached, bathed in tears, Boeton said, "Why do
you run away from me?  Is it because you see me covered with the
tokens of Jesus Christ?  Why do you weep because He has graciously
called me to Himself, and all unworthy though I be, permits me to
seal my faith with my blood?"  Then, as the friend threw himself into
Boeton's arms and some signs of sympathetic emotion appeared among
the crowd; the procession was abruptly ordered to move on; but though
the leave-taking was thus roughly broken short, no murmur passed the
lips of Boeton.

In turning out of the first street, the scaffold came in sight; the
condemned man raised his hands towards heaven, and exclaimed in a
cheerful voice, while a smile lit up his face, "Courage, my soul!  I
see thy place of triumph, whence, released from earthly bonds, thou
shah take flight to heaven."

When he got to the foot of the scaffold, it was found he could not
mount without assistance; for his limbs, crushed in the terrible
"boot," could no longer sustain his weight.  While they were
preparing to carry him up, he exhorted and comforted the Protestants,
who were all weeping round him.  When he reached the platform he laid
himself of his own accord on the cross; but hearing from the
executioner that he must first be undressed, he raised himself again
with a smile, so that the executioner's assistant could remove his
doublet and small-clothes.  As he wore no stockings, his legs being
bandaged the man also unwound these bandages, and rolled up Boeton's
shirts-sleeves to the elbow, and then ordered him to lay himself
again on the cross.  Boeton did so with unbroken calm.  All his limbs
were then bound to the beams with cords at every joint; this
accomplished, the assistant retired, and the executioner came
forward.  He held in his hand a square bar of iron, an inch and a
half thick, three feet long, and rounded at one end so as to form a
handle.

When Boeton saw it he began singing a psalm, but almost immediately
the melody was interrupted by a cry: the executioner had broken a
bone of Boeton's right leg; but the singing was at once resumed, and
continued without interruption till each limb had been broken in two
places.  Then the executioner unbound the formless but still living
body from the cross, and while from its lips issued words of faith in
God he laid it on the wheel, bending it back on the legs in such a
manner that the heels and head met; and never once during the
completion of this atrocious performance did the voice of the
sufferer cease to sound forth the praises of the Lord.

No execution till then had ever produced such an effect on the crowd,
so that Abbe Massilla, who was present, seeing the general emotion,
hastened to call M. de Baville's attention to the fact that, far from
Boeton's death inspiring the Protestants with terror, they were only
encouraged to hold out, as was proved by their tears, and the praises
they lavished on the dying man.

M, de Baville, recognising the truth of this observation, ordered
that Boeton should be put out of misery.  This order being conveyed
to the executioner, he approached the wheel to break in Boeton's
chest with one last blow; but an archer standing on the scaffold
threw himself before the sufferer, saying that the Huguenot had not
yet suffered half enough.  At this, Boeton, who had heard the
dreadful dispute going on beside him, interrupted his prayers for an
instant, and raising his head, which hung down over the edge of the
wheel, said, "Friend, you think I suffer, and in truth I do; but He
for whom I suffer is beside me and gives me strength to bear
everything joyfully."  Just then M. de Baville's order was repeated,
and the archer, no longer daring to interfere, allowed the
executioner to approach.  Then Boeton, seeing his last moment had
come, said, "My dear friends, may my death be an example to you, to
incite you to preserve the gospel pure; bear faithful testimony that
I died in the religion of Christ and His holy apostles."  Hardly had
these words passed his lips, than the death-blow was given and his
chest crushed; a few inarticulate sounds, apparently prayers, were
heard; the head fell back, the martyrdom was ended.

This execution ended the war in Languedoc.  A few imprudent preachers
still delivered belated sermons, to which the rebels listened
trembling with fear, and for which the preachers paid on the wheel or
gibbet.  There were disturbances in Vivarais, aroused by Daniel
Billard, during which a few Catholics were found murdered on the
highway; there were a few fights, as for instance at Sainte-Pierre-
Ville, where the Camisards, faithful to the old traditions which had
come to them from Cavalier, Catinat, and Ravenal, fought one to
twenty, but they were all without importance; they were only the last
quiverings of the dying civil strife, the last shudderings of the
earth when the eruption of the volcano is over.

Even Cavalier understood that the end had come, for he left Holland
for England.  There Queen Anne distinguished him by a cordial
welcome; she invited him to enter her service, an offer which he
accepted, and he was placed in command of a regiment of refugees; so
that he actually received in England the grade of colonel, which he
had been offered in France.  At the battle of Almanza the regiment
commanded by Cavalier found itself opposed by a French regiment.  The
old enemies recognised each other, and with a howl of rage, without
waiting for the word of command or executing any military evolutions,
they hurled themselves at each other with such fury that, if we may
believe the Duke of Berwick, who was present, they almost annihilated
each other in the conflict.  Cavalier, however, survived the
slaughter, in which he had performed his part with energy; and for
his courage was made general and governor of the island of Jersey.
He died at Chelsea in May 1740, aged sixty years.  "I must confess,"
says Malesherbes, "that this soldier, who without training became a
great general by means of his natural gifts; this Camisard, who dared
in the face of fierce troopers to punish a crime similar to those by
which the troopers existed; this rude peasant, who, admitted into the
best society; adopted its manners and gained its esteem and love;
this man, who though accustomed to an adventurous life, and who might
justly have been puffed up by success, had yet enough philosophy to
lead for thirty-five years a tranquil private existence, appears to
me to be one of the rarest characters to be met with in the pages of
history."




CHAPTER VI

At length Louis XIV, bowed beneath the weight of a reign of sixty
years, was summoned in his turn to appear before God, from whom, as
some said, he looked for reward, and others for pardon.  But Nimes,
that city with the heart of fire, was quiet; like the wounded who
have lost the best part of their blood, she thought only, with the
egotism of a convalescent, of being left in peace to regain the
strength which had become exhausted through the terrible wounds which
Montrevel and the Duke of Berwick had dealt her.  For sixty years
petty ambition had taken the place of sublime self-sacrifice, and
disputes about etiquette succeeded mortal combats.  Then the
philosophic era dawned, and the sarcasms of the encyclopedists
withered the monarchical intolerance of Louis XIV and Charles IX.
Thereupon the Protestants resumed their preaching, baptized their
children and buried their dead, commerce flourished once more, and
the two religions lived side by side, one concealing under a peaceful
exterior the memory of its martyrs, the other the memory of its
triumphs.  Such was the mood on which the blood-red orb of the sun of
'89 rose.  The Protestants greeted it with cries of joy, and indeed
the promised liberty gave them back their country, their civil
rights, and the status of French citizens.

Nevertheless, whatever were the hopes of one party or the fears of
the other, nothing had as yet occurred to disturb the prevailing
tranquillity, when, on the 19th and 20th of July, 1789, a body of
troops was formed in the capital of La Gard which was to bear the
name of the Nimes Militia: the resolution which authorised this act
was passed by the citizens of the three orders sitting in the hall of
the palace.

It was as follows:--

"Article 10.  The Nimes Legion shall consist of a colonel, a
lieutenant-colonel, a major, a lieutenant-major, an adjutant,
twenty-four captains, twenty-four lieutenants, seventy-two sergeants,
seventy-two corporals, and eleven hundred and fifty-two privates--in
all, thirteen hundred and forty-nine men, forming eighty companies.

"Article 11.  The place of general assembly shall be, the Esplanade.

"Article 12.  The eighty companies shall be attached to the four
quarters of the town mentioned below--viz., place de l'Hotel-de-
Ville, place de la Maison-Carree, place Saint-Jean, and place du
Chateau.

"Article 13.  The companies as they are formed by the permanent
council shall each choose its own captain, lieutenant, sergeants and
corporals, and from the date of his nomination the captain shall have
a seat on the permanent council."


The Nimes Militia was deliberately formed upon certain lines which
brought Catholics and Protestants closely together as allies, with
weapons in their hands; but they stood over a mine which was bound to
explode some day, as the slightest friction between the two parties
would produce a spark.

This state of concealed enmity lasted for nearly a year, being
augmented by political antipathies; for the Protestants almost to man
were Republicans, and the Catholics Royalists.

In the interval--that is to say, towards January, 1790--a Catholic
called Francois Froment was entrusted by the Marquis de Foucault with
the task of raising, organising, and commanding a Royalist party in
the South.  This we learn from one of his own letters to the marquis,
which was printed in Paris in 1817.  He describes his mode of action
in the following words:--

It is not difficult to understand that being faithful to my religion
and my king, and shocked at the seditious ideas which were
disseminated on all sides, I should try to inspire others with the
same spirit with which I myself was animated, so, during the year
1789, I published several articles in which I exposed the dangers
which threatened altar and throne.  Struck with the justice of my
criticisms, my countrymen displayed the most zealous ardor in their
efforts to restore to the king the full exercise of all his rights.
Being anxious to take advantage of this favourable state of feeling,
and thinking that it would be dangerous to hold communication with
the ministers of Louis XVI, who were watched by the conspirators, I
went secretly to Turin to solicit the approbation and support of the
French princes there.  At a consultation which was held just after my
arrival, I showed them that if they would arm not only the partisans
of the throne, but those of the altar, and advance the interests of
religion while advancing the interests of royalty, it would be easy
to save both.

"My plan had for sole object to bind a party together, and give it as
far as I was able breadth and stability.

"As the revolutionists placed their chief dependence on force, I felt
that they could only be met by force; for then as now I was convinced
of this great truth, that one strong passion can only be overcome by
another stronger, and that therefore republican fanaticism could only
be driven out by religious zeal.

"The princes being convinced of the correctness of my reasoning and
the efficacy of my remedies, promised me the arms and supplies
necessary to stem the tide of faction, and the Comte d'Artois gave me
letters of recommendation to the chief nobles in Upper Languedoc,
that I might concert measures with them; for the nobles in that part
of the country had assembled at Toulouse to deliberate on the best
way of inducing the other Orders to unite in restoring to the
Catholic religion its useful influence, to the laws their power, and
to the king his liberty and authority.

"On my return to Languedoc, I went from town to town in order to meet
those gentlemen to whom the Comte d'Artois had written, among whom
were many of the most influential Royalists and some members of the
States of Parliament.  Having decided on a general plan, and agreed
on a method of carrying on secret correspondence with each other, I
went to Nimes to wait for the assistance which I had been promised
from Turin, but which I never received.  While waiting, I devoted
myself to awakening and sustaining the zeal of the inhabitants, who
at my suggestion, on the 20th April, passed a resolution, which was
signed by 5,000 inhabitants."

This resolution, which was at once a religious and political
manifesto, was drafted by Viala, M. Froment's secretary, and it lay
for signature in his office.  Many of the Catholics signed it without
even reading it, for there was a short paragraph prefixed to the
document which contained all the information they seemed to desire.

"GENTLEMEN,--The aspirations of a great number of our Catholic and
patriotic fellow-citizens are expressed in the resolution which we
have the honour of laying before you.  They felt that under present
circumstances such a resolution was necessary, and they feel
convinced that if you give it your support, as they do not doubt you
will, knowing your patriotism, your religious zeal, and your love for
our august sovereign, it will conduce to the happiness of France, the
maintenance of the true religion, and the rightful authority of the
king.

"We are, gentlemen, with respect, your very humble and obedient
servants, the President and Commissioners of the Catholic Assembly of
Nimes.

"(Signed)

"FROMENT, Commissioner         LAPIERRE, President
FOLACHER,    "                LEVELUT, Commissioner
FAURE,       "                MELCHIOND,    "
ROBIN,       "                VIGNE,        "       "


At the same time a number of pamphlets, entitled Pierre Roman to the
Catholics of Nines, were distributed to the people in the streets,
containing among other attacks on the Protestants the following
passages:

"If the door to high positions and civil and military honours were
closed to the Protestants, and a powerful tribunal established at
Nimes to see that this rule were strictly kept, you would soon see
Protestantism disappear.

"The Protestants demand to share all the privileges which you enjoy,
but if you grant them this, their one thought will then be to
dispossess you entirely, and they will soon succeed.

"Like ungrateful vipers, who in a torpid state were harmless, they
will when warmed by your benefits turn and kill you.

"They are your born enemies: your fathers only escaped as by a
miracle from their blood-stained hands.  Have you not often heard of
the cruelties practised on them?  It was a slight thing when the
Protestants inflicted death alone, unaccompanied by the most horrible
tortures.  Such as they were such they are."


It may easily be imagined that such attacks soon embittered minds
already disposed to find new causes for the old hatred, and besides
the Catholics did not long confine themselves to resolutions and
pamphlets.  Froment, who had already got himself appointed
Receiver-General of the Chapter and captain of one of the Catholic
companies, insisted on being present at the installation of the Town
Council, and brought his company with him armed with pitchforks, in
spite of the express prohibition of the colonel of the legion.  These
forks were terrible weapons, and had been fabricated in a particular
form for the Catholics of Nimes, Uzes, and Alais.  But Froment and
his company paid no attention to the prohibition, and this
disobedience made a great impression on the Protestants, who began to
divine the hostility of their adversaries, and it is very possible
that if the new Town Council had not shut their eyes to this act of
insubordination, civil war might have burst forth in Nimes that very
day.

The next day, at roll-call, a sergeant of another company, one
Allien, a cooper by trade, taunted one of the men with having carried
a pitchfork the day before, in disobedience to orders.  He replied
that the mayor had permitted him to carry it; Allien not believing
this, proposed to some of the men to go with him to the mayor's and
ask if it were true.  When they saw M. Marguerite, he said that he
had permitted nothing of the kind, and sent the delinquent to prison.
Half an hour later, however, he gave orders for his release.

As soon as he was free he set off to find his comrades, and told them
what had occurred: they, considering that an insult to one was an
insult to the whole company, determined on having satisfaction at
once, so about eleven o'clock P.M. they went to the cooper's house,
carrying with them a gallows and ropes ready greased.  But quietly as
they approached, Allien heard them, for his door being bolted from
within had to be forced.  Looking out of the window, he saw a great
crowd, and as he suspected that his life was in danger, he got out of
a back window into the yard and so escaped.  The militia being thus
disappointed, wreaked their vengeance on some passing Protestants,
whose unlucky stars had led them that way; these they knocked about,
and even stabbed one of them three times with a knife.

On the 22nd April, 1790, the royalists--that is to say, the
Catholics--assumed the white cockade, although it was no longer the
national emblem, and on the 1st May some of the militia who had
planted a maypole at the mayor's door were invited to lunch with him.
On the 2nd, the company which was on guard at the mayor's official
residence shouted several times during the day, "Long live the king!
Up with the Cross and down with the black throats!" (This was the
name which they had given to the Calvinists.) "Three cheers for the
white cockade!  Before we are done, it will be red with the blood of
the Protestants!"  However, on the 5th of May they ceased to wear it,
replacing it by a scarlet tuft, which in their patois they called the
red pouf, which was immediately adopted as the Catholic emblem.

Each day as it passed brought forth fresh brawls and provocations:
libels were invented by the Capuchins, and spread abroad by three of
their number.  Meetings were held every day, and at last became so
numerous that the town authorities called in the aid of the
militia-dragoons to disperse them.  Now these gatherings consisted
chiefly of those tillers of the soil who are called cebets, from a
Provencal word cebe, which means "onion," and they could easily be
recognised as Catholics by their red pouf, which they wore both in
and out of uniform.  On the other hand, the dragoons were all
Protestants.

However, these latter were so very gentle in their admonitions, that
although the two parties found themselves, so to speak, constantly
face to face and armed, for several days the meetings were dispersed
without bloodshed.  But this was exactly what the cebets did not
want, so they began to insult the dragoons and turn them into
ridicule.  Consequently, one morning they gathered together in great
numbers, mounted on asses, and with drawn swords began to patrol the
city.

At the same time, the lower classes, who were nearly all Catholics,
joined the burlesque patrols in complaining loudly of the dragoons,
some saying that their horses had trampled on their children, and
others that they had frightened their wives.

The Protestants contradicted them, both parties grew angry, swords
were half drawn, when the municipal authorities came on the scene,
and instead of apprehending the ringleaders, forbade the dragoons to
patrol the town any more, ordering them in future to do nothing more
than send twenty men every day to mount guard at the episcopal palace
and to undertake no other duty except at the express request of the
Town Council.  Although it was expected that the dragoons would
revolt against such a humiliation, they submitted, which was a great
disappointment to the cebets, who had been longing for a chance to
indulge in new outrages.  For all that, the Catholics did not
consider themselves beaten; they felt sure of being able to find some
other way of driving their quarry to bay.

Sunday, the 13th of June, arrived.  This day had been selected by the
Catholics for a great demonstration.  Towards ten o'clock in the
morning, some companies wearing the red tuft, under pretext of going
to mass, marched through the city armed and uttering threats.  The
few dragoons, on the other hand, who were on guard at the palace, had
not even a sentinel posted, and had only five muskets in the guard-
house.  At two o'clock P.M. there was a meeting held in the Jacobin
church, consisting almost exclusively of militia wearing the red
tuft.  The mayor pronounced a panegyric on those who wore it, and was
followed by Pierre Froment, who explained his mission in much the
same words as those quoted above.  He then ordered a cask of wine to
be broached and distributed among the cebets, and told them to walk
about the streets in threes, and to disarm all the dragoons whom they
might meet away from their post.  About six o'clock in the evening a
red-tuft volunteer presented himself at the gate of the palace, and
ordered the porter to sweep the courtyard, saying that the volunteers
were going to get up a ball for the dragoons.  After this piece of
bravado he went away, and in a few moments a note arrived, couched in
the following terms:

"The bishop's porter is warned to let no dragoon on horse or on foot
enter or leave the palace this evening, on pain of death.

"13th June 1790."


This note being brought to the lieutenant, he came out, and reminded
the volunteer that nobody but the town authorities could give orders
to the servants at the palace.  The volunteer gave an insolent
answer, the lieutenant advised him to go away quietly, threatening if
he did not to put him out by force.  This altercation attracted a
great many of the red-tufts from outside, while the dragoons, hearing
the noise, came down into the yard; the quarrel became more lively,
stones were thrown, the call to arms was heard, and in a few moments
about forty cebets, who were prowling around in the neighbourhood of
the palace, rushed into the yard carrying guns and swords.  The
lieutenant, who had only about a dozen dragoons at his back, ordered
the bugle to sound, to recall those who had gone out; the volunteers
threw themselves upon the bugler, dragged his instrument from his
hands, and broke it to pieces.  Then several shots were fired by the
militia, the dragoons returned them, and a regular battle began.  The
lieutenant soon saw that this was no mere street row, but a
deliberate rising planned beforehand, and realising that very serious
consequences were likely to ensue, he sent a dragoon to the town hall
by a back way to give notice to the authorities.

M. de Saint-Pons, major of the Nimes legion, hearing some noise
outside, opened his window, and found the whole city in a tumult:
people were running in every direction, and shouting as they ran that
the dragoons were being killed at the palace.  The major rushed out
into the streets at once, gathered together a dozen to fifteen
patriotic citizens without weapons, and hurried to the town hall:
There he found two officials of the town, and begged them to go at
once to the place de l'Eveche, escorted by the first company, which
was on guard at the town hall.  They agreed, and set off.  On the way
several shots were fired at them, but no one was hit.  When they
arrived at the square, the cebets fired a volley at them with the
same negative result.  Up the three principal streets which led to
the palace numerous red-tufts were hurrying; the first company took
possession of the ends of the streets, and being fired at returned
the fire, repulsing the assailants and clearing the square, with the
loss of one of their men, while several of the retreating cebets were
wounded.

While this struggle was going on at the palace, the spirit of murder
broke loose in the town.

At the gate of the Madeleine, M. de Jalabert's house was broken into
by the red-tufts; the unfortunate old man came out to meet them and
asked what they wanted.  "Your life and the lives of all the other
dogs of Protestants!" was the reply.  Whereupon he was seized and
dragged through the streets, fifteen insurgents hacking at him with
their swords.

At last he managed to escape from their hands, but died two days
later of his wounds.

Another old man named Astruc, who was bowed beneath the weight of
seventy-two years and whose white hair covered his shoulders, was met
as he was on his way to the gate of Carmes.  Being recognised as a
Protestant, he received five wounds from some of the famous
pitchforks belonging to the company of Froment.  He fell, but the
assassins picked him up, and throwing him into the moat, amused
themselves by flinging stones at him, till one of them, with more
humanity than his fellows, put a bullet through his head.

Three electors--M. Massador from near Beaucaire, M. Vialla from the
canton of Lasalle, and M. Puech of the same place-were attacked by
red-tufts on their way home, and all three seriously wounded. The
captain who had been in command of the detachment on guard at the
Electoral Assembly was returning to his quarters, accompanied by a
sergeant and three volunteers of his own company, when they were
stopped on the Petit-Cours by Froment, commonly called Damblay, who,
pressing the barrel of a pistol to the captain's breast, said,
"Stand, you rascal, and give up your arms."  At the same time the
red-tufts, seizing the captain from behind by the hair, pulled him
down.  Froment fired his pistol, but missed.  As he fell the captain
drew his sword, but it was torn from his hands, and he received a cut
from Froment's sword.  Upon this the captain made a great effort, and
getting one of his arms free, drew a pistol from his pocket, drove
back his assassins, fired at Froment, and missed him.  One of the men
by his side was wounded and disarmed.

A patrol of the regiment of Guienne, attached to which was M. Boudon,
a dragoon officer, was passing the Calquieres.  M. Boudon was
attacked by a band of red-tufts and his casque and his musket carried
off.  Several shots were fired at him, but none of them hit him; the
patrol surrounded him to save him, but as he had received two bayonet
wounds, he desired revenge, and, breaking through his protectors,
darted forward to regain possession of his musket, and was killed in
a moment.  One of his fingers was cut off to get at a diamond ring
which he wore, his pockets were rifled of his purse and watch, and
his body was thrown into the moat.

Meantime the place-des-Recollets, the Cours, the place-des-Carmes,
the Grand-Rue, and rue de Notre Dame-de-l'Esplanade were filled with
men armed with guns, pitchforks, and swords.  They had all come from
Froment's house, which overlooked that part of Nimes called Les
Calquieres, and the entrance to which was on the ramparts near the
Dominican Towers.  The three leaders of the insurrection--Froment.
Folacher, and Descombiez--took possession of these towers, which
formed a part of the old castle; from this position the Catholics
could sweep the entire quay of Les Calquieres and the steps of the
Salle de Spectacle with their guns, and if it should turn out that
the insurrection they had excited did not attain the dimensions they
expected nor gain such enthusiastic adherents, it would be quite
feasible for them to defend themselves in such a position until
relief came.

These arrangements were either the result of long meditation or were
the inspiration of some clever strategist.  The fact is that
everything leads one to believe that it was a plan which had been
formed with great care, for the rapidity with which all the
approaches to the fortress were lined with a double row of militiamen
all wearing the red tuft, the care which was taken to place the most
eager next the barracks in which the park of artillery was stationed,
and lastly, the manner in which the approach to the citadel was
barred by an entire company (this being the only place where the
patriots could procure arms), combine to prove that this plan was the
result of much forethought; for, while it appeared to be only
defensive, it enabled the insurrectionists to attack without much,
danger; it caused others to believe that they had been first
attacked.  It was successfully carried out before the citizens were
armed, and until then only a part of the foot guard and the twelve
dragoons at the palace had offered any resistance to the
conspirators.

The red flag round which, in case of civil war, all good citizens
were expected to gather, and which was kept at the town hall, and
which should have been brought out at the first shot, was now loudly
called for.  The Abbe de Belmont, a canon, vicar-general, and
municipal official, was persuaded, almost forced, to become
standard-bearer, as being the most likely on account of his
ecclesiastical position to awe rebels who had taken up arms in the
name of religion.  The abbe himself gives the following account of
the manner in which he fulfilled this mandate:

"About seven o'clock in the evening I was engaged with MM. Porthier
and Ferrand in auditing accounts, when we heard a noise in the court,
and going out on the lobby, we saw several dragoons coming upstairs,
amongst whom was M. Paris.  They told us that fighting was going on
in the place de-l'Eveche, because some one or other had brought a
note to the porter ordering him to admit no more dragoons to the
palace on pain of death.  At this point I interrupted their story by
asking why the gates had not been closed and the bearer of the letter
arrested, but they replied to me that it had not been possible;
thereupon MM. Ferrand and Ponthier put on their scarfs and went out.

"A few instants later several dragoons, amongst whom I recognised
none but MM. Lezan du Pontet, Paris junior, and Boudon, accompanied
by a great number of the militia, entered, demanding that the red
flag should be brought out.  They tried to open the door of the
council hall, and finding it locked, they called upon me for the key.
I asked that one of the attendants should be sent for, but they were
all out; then I went to the hall-porter to see if he knew where the
key was.  He said M. Berding had taken it.  Meanwhile, just as the
volunteers were about to force an entrance, someone ran up with the
key.  The door was opened, and the red flag seized and forced into my
hands.  I was then dragged down into the courtyard, and from thence
to the square.

"It was all in vain to tell them that they ought first to get
authority, and to represent to them that I was no suitable
standard-bearer on account of my profession; but they would not
listen to any objection, saying that my life depended upon my
obedience, and that my profession would overawe the disturbers of the
public peace.  So I went on, followed by a detachment of the Guienne
regiment, part of the first company of the legion, and several
dragoons; a young man with fixed bayonet kept always at my side.
Rage was depicted on the faces of all those who accompanied me, and
they indulged in oaths and threats, to which I paid no attention.

"In passing through the rue des Greffes they complained that I did not
carry the red flag high enough nor unfurl it fully.  When we got to
the guardhouse at the Crown Gate, the guard turned out, and the
officer was commanded to follow us with his men.  He replied that he
could not do that without a written order from a member of the Town
Council.  Thereupon those around me told me I must write such an
order, but I asked for a pen and ink; everybody was furious because I
had none with me.  So offensive were the remarks indulged in by the
volunteers and some soldiers of the Guienne regiment, and so
threatening their gestures, that I grew alarmed.  I was hustled and
even received several blows; but at length M. de Boudon brought me
paper and a pen, and I wrote:--'I require the troops to assist us to
maintain order by force if necessary.'  Upon this, the officer
consented to accompany us.  We had hardly taken half a dozen steps
when they all began to ask what had become of the order I had just
written, for it could not be found.  They surrounded me, saying that
I had not written it at all, and I was on the point of being trampled
underfoot, when a militiaman found it all crumpled up in his pocket.
The threats grew louder, and once more it was because I did not carry
the flag high enough, everyone insisting that I was quite tall enough
to display it to better advantage.

"However, at this point the militiamen with the red tufts made their
appearance, a few armed with muskets but the greater number with
swords; shots were exchanged, and the soldiers of the line and the
National Guard arranged themselves in battle order, in a kind of
recess, and desired me to go forward alone, which I refused to do,
because I should have been between two fires.

"Upon this, curses, threats, and blows reached their height.  I was
dragged out before the troops and struck with the butt ends of their
muskets and the flat of their swords until I advanced.  One blow that
I received between the shoulders filled my mouth with blood.

"All this time those of the opposite party were coming nearer, and
those with whom I was continued to yell at me to go on.  I went on
until I met them.  I besought them to retire, even throwing myself at
their feet.  But all persuasion was in vain; they swept me along with
them, making me enter by the Carmelite Gate, where they took the flag
from me and allowed me to enter the house of a woman whose name I
have never known.  I was spitting such a quantity of blood that she
took pity on me and brought me everything she could think of as
likely to do me good, and as soon as I was a little revived I asked
to be shown the way to M. Ponthier's."

While Abbe de Belmont was carrying the red flag the militia forced
the Town Councillors to proclaim martial law.  This had just been
done when word was brought that the first red flag had been carried
off, so M. Ferrand de Missol got out another, and, followed by a
considerable escort, took the same road as his colleague, Abbe de
Belmont.  When he arrived at the Calquieres, the red-tufts, who still
adorned the ramparts and towers, began to fire upon the procession,
and one of the militia was disabled; the escort retreated, but M.
Ferrand advanced alone to the Carmelite Gate, like M. de Belmont, and
like him, he too, was taken prisoner.

He was brought to the tower, where he found Froment in a fury,
declaring that the Council had not kept its promise, having sent no
relief, and having delayed to give up the citadel to him.

The escort, however, had only retreated in order to seek help; they
rushed tumultuously to the barracks, and finding the regiment of
Guienne drawn up in marching order in command of Lieutenant-Colonel
Bonne, they asked him to follow them, but he refused without a
written order from a Town Councillor.  Upon this an old corporal
shouted, "Brave soldiers of Guienne! the country is in danger, let us
not delay to do our duty."  "Yes, yes," cried the soldiers; "let us
march" The lieutenant colonel no longer daring to resist, gave the
word of command, and they set off for the Esplanade.

As they came near the rampart with drums beating, the firing ceased,
but as night was coming on the new-comers did not dare to risk
attacking, and moreover the silence of the guns led them to think
that the rebels had given up their enterprise.  Having remained an
hour in the square, the troops returned to their quarters, and the
patriots went to pass the night in an inclosure on the Montpellier
road.

It almost seemed as if the Catholics were beginning to recognise the
futility of their plot; for although they had appealed to fanaticism,
forced the Town Council to do their will, scattered gold lavishly and
made wine flow, out of eighteen companies only three had joined them.
"Fifteen companies," said M. Alquier in his report to the National
Assembly, "although they had adopted the red tuft, took no part in
the struggle, and did not add to the number of crimes committed
either on that day or during the days that followed.  But although
the Catholics gained few partisans among their fellow-citizens, they
felt certain that people from the country would rally to their aid;
but about ten o'clock in the evening the rebel ringleaders, seeing
that no help arrived from that quarter either, resolved to apply a
stimulus to those without.  Consequently, Froment wrote the following
letter to M. de Bonzols, under-commandant of the province of
Languedoc, who was living at Lunel:

"SIR, Up to the present all my demands, that the Catholic companies
should be put under arms, have been of no avail.  In spite of the
order that you gave at my request, the officials of the municipality
were of opinion that it would be more prudent to delay the
distribution of the muskets until after the meeting of the Electoral
Assembly.  This day the Protestant dragoons have attacked and killed
several of our unarmed Catholics, and you may imagine the confusion
and alarm that prevail in the town.  As a good citizen and a true
patriot, I entreat you to send an order to the regiment of royal
dragoons to repair at once to Nimes to restore tranquillity and put
down all who break the peace.  The Town Council does not meet, none
of them dares to leave his house; and if you receive no requisition
from them just now, it is because they go in terror of their lives
and fear to appear openly.  Two red flags have been carried about the
streets, and municipal officers without guards have been obliged to
take refuge in patriotic houses.  Although I am only a private
citizen, I take the liberty of asking for aid from you, knowing that
the Protestants have sent to La Vannage and La Gardonninque to ask
you for reinforcements, and the arrival of fanatics from these
districts would expose all good patriots to slaughter.  Knowing as I
do of your kindness and justice, I have full trust that my prayer
will receive your favourable attention.

"FROMENT, Captain of Company No. 39

"June 13, 1790, 11 o'c.  p.m."


Unfortunately for the Catholic party, Dupre and Lieutaud, to whom
this letter was entrusted for delivery, and for whom passports were
made out as being employed on business connected with the king and
the State, were arrested at Vehaud, and their despatches laid before
the Electoral Assembly.  Many other letters of the same kind were
also intercepted, and the red-tufts went about the town saying that
the Catholics of Nimes were being massacred.

The priest of Courbessac, among others, was shown a letter saying
that a Capuchin monk had been murdered, and that the Catholics were
in need of help.  The agents who brought this letter to him wanted
him to put his name to it that they might show it everywhere, but
were met by a positive refusal.

At Bouillargues and Manduel the tocsin was sounded: the two villages
joined forces, and with weapons in their hands marched along the road
from Beaucaire to Nimes.  At the bridge of Quart the villagers of
Redressan and Marguerite joined them.  Thus reinforced, they were
able to bar the way to all who passed and subject them to
examination; if a man could show he was a Catholic, he was allowed to
proceed, but the Protestants were murdered then and there.  We may
remind our readers that the "Cadets de la Croix" pursued the same
method in 1704.

Meantime Descombiez, Froment, and Folacher remained masters of the
ramparts and the tower, and when very early one morning their forces
were augmented by the insurgents from the villages (about two hundred
men), they took advantage of their strength to force a way into the
house of a certain Therond, from which it was easy to effect an
entrance to the Jacobin monastery, and from there to the tower
adjoining, so that their line now extended from the gate at the
bridge of Calquieres to that at the end of College Street.  From
daylight to dusk all the patriots who came within range were fired at
whether they were armed or not.

On the 14th June, at four o'clock in the morning, that part of the
legion which was against the Catholics gathered together in the
square of the Esplanade, where they were joined by the patriots from
the adjacent towns and villages, who came in in small parties till
they formed quite an army.  At five A.M. M. de St. Pons, knowing that
the windows of the Capuchin monastery commanded the position taken up
by the patriots, went there with a company and searched the house
thoroughly, and also the Amphitheatre, but found nothing suspicious
in either.

Immediately after, news was heard of the massacres that had taken
place during the night.

The country-house belonging to M. and Mme.  Noguies had been broken
into, the furniture destroyed, the owners killed in their beds, and
an old man of seventy who lived with them cut to pieces with a
scythe.

A young fellow of fifteen, named Payre, in passing near the guard
placed at the Pont des files, had been asked by a red-tuft if he were
Catholic or Protestant.  On his replying he was Protestant, he was
shot dead on the spot.  "That was like killing a lamb," said a
comrade to the murderer.  "Pooh!" said he, "I have taken a vow to
kill four Protestants, and he may pass for one."

M. Maigre, an old man of eighty-two, head of one of the most
respected families in the neighbourhood, tried to escape from his
house along with his son, his daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, and
two servants; but the carriage was stopped, and while the rebels were
murdering him and his son, the mother and her two children succeeded
in escaping to an inn, whither the assassins pursued them,
Fortunately, however, the two fugitives having a start, reached the
inn a few minutes before their pursuers, and the innkeeper had enough
presence of mind to conceal them and open the garden gate by which he
said they had escaped.  The Catholics, believing him, scattered over
the country to look for them, and during their absence the mother and
children were rescued by the mounted patrol.

The exasperation of the Protestants rose higher and higher as reports
of these murders came in one by one, till at last the desire for
vengeance could no longer be repressed, and they were clamorously
insisting on being led against the ramparts and the towers, when
without warning a heavy fusillade began from the windows and the
clock tower of the Capuchin monastery.  M. Massin, a municipal
officer, was killed on the spot, a sapper fatally wounded, and
twenty-five of the National Guard wounded more or less severely.  The
Protestants immediately rushed towards the monastery in a disorderly
mass; but the superior, instead of ordering the gates to be opened,
appeared at a window above the entrance, and addressing the
assailants as the vilest of the vile, asked them what they wanted at
the monastery.  "We want to destroy it, we want to pull it down till
not one stone rests upon another," they replied.  Upon this, the
reverend father ordered the alarm bells to be rung, and from the
mouths of bronze issued the call for help; but before it could
arrive, the door was burst in with hatchets, and five Capuchins and
several of the militia who wore the red tuft were killed, while all
the other occupants of the monastery ran away, taking refuge in the
house of a Protestant called Paulhan.  During this attack the church
was respected; a man from Sornmieres, however, stole a pyx which he
found in the sacristy, but as soon as his comrades perceived this he
was arrested and sent to prison.

In the monastery itself, however, the doors were broken in, the
furniture smashed, the library and the dispensary wrecked.  The
sacristy itself was not spared, its presses being broken into, its
chests destroyed, and two monstrances broken; but nothing further was
touched.  The storehouses and the small cloth-factory connected with
the monastery remained intact, like the church.

But still the towers held out, and it was round them that the real
fighting took place, the resistance offered from within being all the
more obstinate that the besieged expected relief from moment to
moment, not knowing that their letters had been intercepted by the
enemy.  On every side the rattling of shot was heard, from the
Esplanade, from the windows, from the roofs; but very little effect
was produced by the Protestants, for Descombiez had told his men to
put their caps with the red tufts on the top of the wall, to attract
the bullets, while they fired from the side.  Meantime the
conspirators, in order to get a better command of the besiegers,
reopened a passage which had been long walled up between the tower
Du Poids and the tower of the Dominicans.  Descombiez, accompanied by
thirty men, came to the door of the monastery nearest the
fortifications and demanded the key of another door which led to that
part of the ramparts which was opposite the place des Carmes, where
the National Guards were stationed.  In spite of the remonstrances of
the monks, who saw that it would expose them to great danger, the
doors were opened, and Froment hastened to occupy every post of
vantage, and the battle began in that quarter, too, becoming fiercer
as the conspirators remarked that every minute brought the
Protestants reinforcements from Gardonninque and La Vaunage.  The
firing began at ten o'clock in the morning, and at four o'clock in
the afternoon it was going on with unabated fury.

At four o'clock, however, a servant carrying a flag of truce
appeared; he brought a letter from Descombiez, Fremont, and Folacher,
who styled themselves "Captains commanding the towers of the Castle."
It was couched in the following words:--

"To the Commandant of the troops of the line, with the request that
the contents be communicated to the militia stationed in the
Esplanade.

"SIR,--We have just been informed that you are anxious for peace.  We
also desire it, and have never done anything to break it.  If those
who have caused the frightful confusion which at present prevails in
the city are willing to bring it to an end, we offer to forget the
past and to live with them as brothers.

"We remain, with all the frankness and loyalty of patriots and
Frenchmen, your humble servants,

"The Captains of the Legion of Nimes, in command of the towers of the
Castle,

"FROMENT, DESCOMBIEZ, FOLACHER NIMES, the 14th June 1790, 4.00 P.M."


On the receipt of this letter, the city herald was sent to the towers
to offer the rebels terms of capitulation.  The three "captains in
command" came out to discuss the terms with the commissioners of the
electoral body; they were armed and followed by a great number of
adherents.  However, as the negotiators desired peace before all
things, they proposed that the three chiefs should surrender and
place themselves in the hands of the Electoral Assembly.  This offer
being refused, the electoral commissioners withdrew, and the rebels
retired behind their fortifications.  About five o'clock in the
evening, just as the negotiations were broken off, M. Aubry, an
artillery captain who had been sent with two hundred men to the depot
of field artillery in the country, returned with six pieces of
ordnance, determined to make a breach in the tower occupied by the
conspirators, and from which they were firing in safety at the
soldiers, who had no cover.  At six o'clock, the guns being mounted,
their thunder began, first drowning the noise of the musketry and
then silencing it altogether; for the cannon balls did their work
quickly, and before long the tower threatened to fall.  Thereupon the
electoral commissioners ordered the firing to cease for a moment, in
the hope that now the danger had become so imminent the leaders would
accept the conditions which they had refused one hour before; and not
desiring to drive them to desperation, the commissioners advanced
again down College Street, preceded by a bugler, and the captains
were once more summoned to a parley.  Froment and Descombiez came out
to meet them, and seeing the condition of the tower, they agreed to
lay down their arms and send them for the palace, while they
themselves would proceed to the Electoral Assembly and place
themselves under its protection.  These proposals being accepted, the
commissioners waved their hats as a sign that the treaty was
concluded.

At that instant three shots were fired from the ramparts, and cries
of "Treachery! treachery!" were heard on every side.  The Catholic
chiefs returned to the tower, while the Protestants, believing that
the commissioners were being assassinated, reopened the cannonade;
but finding that it took too long to complete the breach, ladders
were brought, the walls scaled, and the towers carried by assault.
Some of the Catholics were killed, the others gained Froment's house,
where, encouraged by him, they tried to organise a resistance; but
the assailants, despite the oncoming darkness, attacked the place
with such fury that doors and windows were shattered in an instant.
Froment and his brother Pierre tried to escape by a narrow staircase
which led to the roof, but before they reached it Pierre was wounded
in the hip and fell; but Froment reached the roof, and sprang upon an
adjacent housetop, and climbing from roof to roof, reached the
college, and getting into it by a garret window, took refuge in a
large room which was always unoccupied at night, being used during
the day as a study.

Froment remained hidden there until eleven o'clock.  It being then
completely dark, he got out of the window, crossed the city, gained
the open country, and walking all night, concealed himself during the
day in the house of a Catholic.  The next night he set off again, and
reached the coast, where he embarked on board a vessel for Italy, in
order to report to those who had sent him the disastrous result of
his enterprise.

For three whole days the carnage lasted.  The Protestants losing all
control over themselves, carried on the work of death not only
without pity but with refined cruelty.  More than five hundred
Catholics lost their lives before the 17th, when peace was restored.

For a long time recriminations went on between Catholics and
Protestants, each party trying to fix on the other the responsibility
for those dreadful three days; but at last Franqois Froment put an
end to all doubt on the subject, by publishing a work from which are
set forth many of the details just laid before our readers, as well
as the reward he met with when he reached Turin.  At a meeting of the
French nobles in exile, a resolution was passed in favour of
M. Pierre Froment and his children, inhabitants of Nimes.

We give a literal reproduction of this historic document:

"We the undersigned, French nobles, being convinced that our Order
was instituted that it might become the prize of valour and the
encouragement of virtue, do declare that the Chevalier de Guer having
given us proof of the devotion to their king and the love of their
country which have been displayed by M. Pierre Froment, receiver of
the clergy, and his three sons, Mathieu Froment citizen, Jacques
Froment canon, Francois Froment advocate, inhabitants of Nimes, we
shall henceforward regard them and their descendants as nobles and
worthy to enjoy all the distinctions which belong to the true
nobility.  Brave citizens, who perform such distinguished actions as
fighting for the restoration of the monarchy, ought to be considered
as the equals of those French chevaliers whose ancestors helped to
found it.  Furthermore, we do declare that as soon as circumstances
permit we shall join together to petition His Majesty to grant to
this family, so illustrious through its virtue, all the honours and
prerogatives which belong to those born noble.

"We depute the Marquis de Meran, Comte d'Espinchal, the Marquis
d'Escars, Vicomte de Pons, Chevalier de Guer, and the Marquis de la
Feronniere to go to Mgr. le Comte d'Artois, Mgr. le Duc d'Angouleme,
Mgr. le Duc de Berry, Mgr. le Prince de Conde, Mgr. le Due de
Bourbon, and Mgr. le Duc d'Enghien, to beg them to put themselves at
our head when we request His Majesty to grant to MM. Froment all the
distinctions and advantages reserved for the true nobility.

"At TURIN, 12th September 1790."

The nobility of Languedoc learned of the honours conferred on their
countryman, M. Froment, and addressed the following letter to him:


"LORCH, July 7, 1792

"MONSIEUR, The nobles of Languedoc hasten to confirm the resolution
adopted in your favour by the nobles assembled at Turin.  They
appreciate the zeal and the courage which have distinguished your
conduct and that of your family; they have therefore instructed us to
assure you of the pleasure with which they will welcome you among
those nobles who are under the orders of Marshal de Castries, and
that you are at liberty to repair to Lorch to assume your proper rank
in one of the companies.

"We have the honour to be, monsieur, your humble and obedient
servants,

"COMTE DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

"MARQUIS DE LA JONQUIERE
"ETC."




CHAPTER VII

The Protestants, as we have said, hailed the golden dawn of the
revolution with delight; then came the Terror, which struck at all
without distinction of creed.  A hundred and thirty-eight heads fell
on the scaffold, condemned by the revolutionary tribunal of the Gard.
Ninety-one of those executed were Catholic, and forty-seven
Protestants, so that it looked as if the executioners in their desire
for impartiality had taken a census of the population.

Then came the Consulate: the Protestants being mostly tradesmen and
manufacturers, were therefore richer than the Catholics, and had more
to lose; they seemed to see more chance of stability in this form of
government than in those preceding it, and it was evident that it had
a more powerful genius at its head, so they rallied round it with
confidence and sincerity.  The Empire followed, with its inclination
to absolutism, its Continental system, and its increased taxation;
and the Protestants drew back somewhat, for it was towards them who
had hoped so much from him that Napoleon in not keeping the promises
of Bonaparte was most perjured.

The first Restoration, therefore, was greeted at Nimes with a
universal shout of joy; and a superficial-observer might have thought
that all trace of the old religious leaven had disappeared.  In fact,
for seventeen years the two faiths had lived side by side in perfect
peace and mutual good-will; for seventeen years men met either for
business or for social purposes without inquiring about each other's
religion, so that Nimes on the surface might have been held up as an
example of union and fraternity.

When Monsieur arrived at Nimes, his guard of honour was drawn from
the city guard, which still retained its organisation of 1812, being
composed of citizens without distinction of creed.  Six decorations
were conferred on it--three on Catholics, and three on Protestants.
At the same time, M. Daunant, M. Olivier Desmonts, and M. de Seine,
the first the mayor, the second the president of the Consistory, and
the third a member of the Prefecture, all three belonging to the
Reformed religion, received the same favour.

Such impartiality on the part of Monsieur almost betrayed a
preference, and this offended the Catholics.  They muttered to one
another that in the past there had been a time when the fathers of
those who had just been decorated by the hand of the prince had
fought against his faithful adherents.  Hardly had Monsieur left the
town, therefore, than it became apparent that perfect harmony no
longer existed.

The Catholics had a favorite cafe, which during the whole time the
Empire lasted was also frequented by Protestants without a single
dispute caused by the difference of religion ever arising.  But from
this time forth the Catholics began to hold themselves aloof from the
Protestants; the latter perceiving this, gave up the cafe by degrees
to the Catholics, being determined to keep the peace whatever it
might cost, and went to a cafe which had been just opened under the
sign of the "Isle of Elba."  The name was enough to cause them to be
regarded as Bonapartists, and as to Bonapartists the cry "Long live
the king!" was supposed to be offensive, they were saluted at every
turn with these words, pronounced in a tone which became every day
more menacing.  At first they gave back the same cry, "Long live the
king!" but then they were called cowards who expressed with their
lips a sentiment which did not come from their hearts.  Feeling that
this accusation had some truth in it, they were silent, but then they
were accused of hating the royal family, till at length the cry which
at first had issued from full hearts in a universal chorus grew to be
nothing but an expression of party hatred, so that on the 21st
February, 1815, M. Daunant the mayor, by a decree, prohibited the
public from using it, as it had become a means of exciting sedition.
Party feeling had reached this height at Nimes when, on the 4th
March, the news of the landing of Napoleon arrived.

Deep as was the impression produced, the city remained calm, but
somewhat sullen; in any case, the report wanted confirmation.
Napoleon, who knew of the sympathy that the mountaineers felt for
him, went at once into the Alps, and his eagle did not as yet take so
high a flight that it could be seen hovering above Mount Geneve.

On the 12th, the Duc d'Angouleme arrived: two proclamations calling
the citizens to arms signalised his presence.  The citizens answered
the call with true Southern ardour: an army was formed; but although
Protestants and Catholics presented themselves for enrolment with
equal alacrity, the Protestants were excluded, the Catholics denying
the right of defending their legitimate sovereign to any but
themselves.

This species of selection apparently went on without the knowledge of
the Duc d'Angouleme.  During his stay in Nimes he received
Protestants and Catholics with equal cordiality, and they set at his
table side by side.  It happened once, on a Friday, at dinner, that a
Protestant general took fish and a Catholic general helped himself to
fowl.  The duke being amused, drew attention to this anomaly,
whereupon the Catholic general replied, "Better more chicken and less
treason."  This attack was so direct, that although the Protestant
general felt that as far as he was concerned it had no point, he rose
from table and left the room.  It was the brave General Gilly who was
treated in this cruel manner.

Meanwhile the news became more disastrous every day: Napoleon was
moving about with the rapidity of his eagles.  On the 24th March it
was reported in Nimes that Louis XVIII had left Paris on the 19th and
that Napoleon had entered on the 20th.  This report was traced to its
source, and it was found that it had been spread abroad by M. Vincent
de Saint-Laurent, a councillor of the Prefecture and one of the most
respected men in Nimes.  He was summoned at once before the
authorities and asked whence he had this information; he replied,
"From a letter received from M. Bragueres," producing the letter.
But convincing as was this proof, it availed him nothing: he was
escorted from brigade to brigade till he reached the Chateau d'If.
The Protestants sided with M. Vincent de Saint-Laurent, the Catholics
took the part of the authorities who were persecuting him, and thus
the two factions which had been so long quiescent found themselves
once more face to face, and their dormant hatred awoke to new life.
For the moment, however, there was no explosion, although the city
was at fever heat, and everyone felt that a crisis was at hand.

On the 22nd March two battalions of Catholic volunteers had already
been enlisted at Nimes, and had formed part of the eighteen hundred
men who were sent to Saint-Esprit.  Just before their departure
fleurs-de-lys had been distributed amongst them, made of red cloth;
this change in the colour of the monarchical emblem was a threat
which the Protestants well understood.

The prince left Nimes in due course, taking with him the rest of the
royal volunteers, and leaving the Protestants practically masters of
Nimes during the absence of so many Catholics.  The city, however,
continued calm, and when provocations began, strange to say they came
from the weaker party.

On the 27th March six men met in a barn; dined together, and then
agreed to make the circuit of the town.  These men were Jacques
Dupont, who later acquired such terrible celebrity under the name of
Trestaillons, Truphemy the butcher, Morenet the dog shearer, Hours,
Servant, and Gilles.  They got opposite the cafe "Isle of Elba," the
name of which indicated the opinion of those who frequented it.  This
cafe was faced by a guard-house which was occupied by soldiers of the
67th Regiment.  The six made a halt, and in the most insulting tones
raised the cry of "Long live the king!"  The disturbance that ensued
was so slight that we only mention it in order to give an idea of the
tolerance of the Protestants, and to bring upon the stage the men
mentioned above, who were three months later to play such a terrible
part.

On April 1st the mayor summoned to a meeting at his official
residence the municipal council, the members of all the variously
constituted administrative bodies in Nimes, the officers of the city
guards, the priests, the Protestant pastors, and the chief citizens.
At this meeting, M. Trinquelague, advocate of the Royal Courts, read
a powerful address, expressing the love, of the citizens for their
king and country, and exhorting them to union and peace.  This
address was unanimously adopted and signed by all present, and
amongst the signatures were those of the principal Protestants of
Nimes.  But this was not all: the next day it was printed and
published, and copies sent to all the communes in the department over
which the white flag still floated.  And all this happened, as we
have said, on April and, eleven days after Napoleon's return to
Paris.

The same day word arrived that the Imperial Government had been
proclaimed at Montpellier.

The next day, April 3rd, all the officers on half-pay assembled at
the fountain to be reviewed by a general and a sub-inspector, and as
these officers were late, the order of the, day issued by General
Ambert, recognising the Imperial Government, was produced and passed
along the ranks, causing such excitement that one of the officers
drew his sword and cried, "Long live the emperor!"  These magic words
were re-echoed from every side, and they all hastened to the barracks
of the 63rd Regiment, which at once joined the officers.  At this
juncture Marshal Pelissier arrived, and did not appear to welcome the
turn things had taken; he made an effort to restrain the enthusiasm
of the crowd, but was immediately arrested by his own soldiers.  The
officers repaired in a body to the headquarters of General Briche,
commandant of the garrison, and asked for the official copy of the
order of the day.  He replied that he had received none, and when
questioned as to which side he was on he refused to answer.  The
officers upon this took him prisoner.  Just as they had consigned him
to the barracks for confinement, a post-office official arrived
bringing a despatch from General Ambert.  Learning that General
Briche was a prisoner, the messenger carried his packet to the
colonel of the 63rd Regiment, who was the next in seniority after the
general.  In opening it, it was found to contain the order of the
day.

Instantly the colonel ordered the 'gineyale' to sound: the town
guards assumed arms, the troops left the barracks and formed in line,
the National Guards in the rear of the regular troops, and when they
were all thus drawn up; the order of the day was read; it was then
snatched out of the colonel's hands, printed on large placards, and
in less time than seemed possible it was posted up in every street
and at every street corner; the tricolour replaced the white cockade,
everyone being obliged to wear the national emblem or none at all,
the city was proclaimed in a state of seige, and the military
officers formed a vigilance committee and a police force.

While the Duc d'Angouleme had been staying at Nimes, General Gilly
had applied for a command in that prince's army, but in spite of all
his efforts obtained nothing; so immediately after the dinner at
which he was insulted he had withdrawn to Avernede, his place in the
country.  He was awoke in the night of the 5th-6th April by a courier
from General Ambert, who sent to offer him the command of the 2nd
Subdivision.  On the 6th, General Gilly went to Nimes, and sent in
his acceptance, whereby the departments of the Gard, the Lozere, and
Ardeche passed under his authority.

Next day General Gilly received further despatches from General
Ambert, from which he learned that it was the general's intention, in
order to avoid the danger of a civil war, to separate the Duc
d'Angouleme's army from the departments which sympathised with the
royal cause; he had therefore decided to make Pont-Saint-Esprit a
military post, and had ordered the 10th Regiment of mounted
chasseurs, the 13th artillery, and a battalion of infantry to move
towards this point by forced marches.  These troops were commanded by
Colonel Saint-Laurent, but General Ambert was anxious that if it
could be done without danger, General Gilly should leave Nimes,
taking with him part of the 63rd Regiment, and joining the other
forces under the command of Colonel Saint-Laurent, should assume the
chief command.  As the city was quite tranquil, General Gilly did not
hesitate to obey this order: he set out from Nimes on the 7th, passed
the night at Uzes, and finding that town abandoned by the
magistrates, declared it in a state of siege, lest disturbances
should arise in the absence of authority.  Having placed M. de
Bresson in command, a retired chief of battalion who was born in
Uzes, and who usually lived there, he continued his march on the
morning of the 8th.

Beyond the village of Conans, General Gilly met an orderly sent to
him by Colonel Saint-Laurent to inform him that he, the colonel, had
occupied Pont Saint-Esprit, and that the Duc d'Angouleme, finding
himself thus caught between two fires, had just sent General
d'Aultanne, chief of staff in the royal army, to him, to enter into
negotiations for a surrender.  Upon this, General Gilly quickened his
advance, and on reaching Pont-Saint-Esprit found General d'Aultanne
and Colonel Saint-Laurent conferring together at the Hotel de la
Poste.

As Colonel Saint-Laurent had received his instructions directly from
the commander-in-chief, several points relating to the capitulation
had already been agreed upon; of these General Gilly slightly altered
some, and approved of the others, and the same day the following
convention was signed:

"Convention concluded between General Gilly and Baron de Damas

"S.A.R.  Mgr. le Duc d'Angouleme, Commander-in-Chief of the royal army
in the South, and Baron de Gilly, General of Division and
Commander-in-Chief of the first corps of the Imperial Army, being
most anxiously desirous to prevent any further effusion of French
blood, have given plenary powers to arrange the terms of a convention
to S.A.R.  M. le Baron de Damas, Field-Marshal and Under-Chief of
Staff, and General de Gilly and Adjutant Lefevre, Chevalier of the
Legion of Honour, and Chief of the Staff of the first Army Corps;
who, having shown each other their respective credentials, have
agreed on the following terms:--

"Art.  1.  The royal army is to be disbanded; and the National Guards
which are enrolled in it, under whatever name they may have been
levied, will return to their homes, after laying down their arms.
Safe conducts will be provided, and the general of division
commanding-in-chief guarantees that they shall never be molested for
anything they may have said or done in connection with the events
preceding the present convention.

"The officers will retain their swords; the troops of the line who
form part of this army will repair to such garrisons as may be
assigned to them.

"Art. 2.  The general officers, superior staff officers and others of
all branches of the service, and the chiefs and subordinates of the
administrative departments, of whose names a list will be furnished
to the general-in-chief, will retire to their homes and there await
the orders of His Majesty the Emperor.

"Art. 3.  Officers of every rank who wish to resign their commissions
are competent to do so.  They will receive passports for their homes.

"Art. 4.  The funds of the army and the lists of the paymaster-
general will be handed over at once to commissioners appointed for
that purpose by the commander-in-chief.

"Art. 5.  The above articles apply to the corps commanded by Mgr. le
Duc d'Angouleme in person, and also to those who act separately but
under his orders, and as forming part of the royal army of the South.

"Art. 6.  H.R.H. will post to Cette, where the vessels necessary for
him and his suite will be waiting to take him wherever he may desire.
Detachments of the Imperial Army will be placed at all the relays on
the road to protect His Royal Highness during the journey, and the
honours due to his rank will be everywhere paid him, if he so desire.

"Art. 7.  All the officers and other persons of His Royal Highness'
suite who desire to follow him will be permitted to do so, and they
may either embark with him at once or later, should their private
affairs need time for arrangement.

"Art. 8.  The present treaty will be kept secret until His Royal
Highness have quitted the limits of the empire.

"Executed in duplicate and agreed upon between the above-mentioned
plenipotentiaries the 8th day of April in the year 1815, with the
approval of the general commanding-in-chief, and signed,

"At the headquarters at Pont-Saint-Esprit on the day and year above
written

"(Signed) LEFEVRE
Adjutant and Chief of Staff of the
First Corps of the Imperial Army
of the South

"(Signed) BARON DE DAMAS
Field-Marshal and Under-Chief of
Staff

"The present convention is approved of by the General of Division
Commanding-in-Chief the Imperial Army of the South.

"(Signed) GILLY"


After some discussion between General Gilly and General Grouchy, the
capitulation was carried into effect.  On the 16th April, at eight
o'clock in the morning, the Duc d'Angouleme arrived at Cette, and
went on board the Swedish vessel Scandinavia, which, taking advantage
of a favourable wind, set sail the same day.

Early in the morning of the 9th an officer of high rank had been sent
to La Palud to issue safe-conducts to the troops, who according to
Article I of the capitulation were to return home "after laying down
their arms."  But during the preceding day and night some of the
royal volunteers had evaded this article by withdrawing with their
arms and baggage.  As this infraction of the terms led to serious
consequences, we propose, in order to establish the fact, to cite the
depositions of three royal volunteers who afterwards gave evidence.

"On leaving the army of the Duc d'Angouleme after the capitulation,"
says Jean Saunier, "I went with my officers and my corps to
Saint-Jean-des-Anels.  From there we marched towards Uzes.  In the
middle of a forest, near a village, the name of which I have
forgotten, our General M. de Vogue told us that we were all to return
to our own homes.  We asked him where we should deposit the flag.
Just then Commandant Magne detached it from the staff and put it in
his pocket.  We then asked the general where we should deposit our
arms; he replied, that we had better keep them, as we should probably
find use for them before long, and also to take our ammunition with
us, to ensure our safety on the road.

"From that time on we all did what we thought best: sixty-four of us
remained together, and took a guide to enable us to avoid Uzes."


Nicholas Marie, labourer, deposed as follows:

"On leaving the army of the Duc d'Angouleme after the capitulation, I
went with my officers and my corps to Saint-Jean-des-Anels.  We
marched towards Uzes, but when we were in the middle of a forest,
near a village the name of which I have forgotten, our general, M. de
Vogue, told us that we were to go to our own homes as soon as we
liked.  We saw Commandant Magne loose the flag from its staff, roll
it up and put it in his pocket.  We asked the general what we were to
do with our arms; he replied that we were to keep both them and our
ammunition, as we should find them of use.  Upon this, our chiefs
left us, and we all got away as best we could."

"After the capitulation of the Duc d'Angouleme I found myself,"
deposes Paul Lambert, lace-maker of Nimes, "in one of several
detachments under the orders of Commandant Magne and General Vogue.
In the middle of a forest near a village, the name of which I do not
know, M. de Vogue and the other officer, told us we might go home.
The flag was folded up, and M. Magne put it in his pocket.  We asked
our chiefs what we were to do with our arms.  M. de Vogue told us
that we had better keep them, as we should need them before very
long; and in any case it would be well to have them with us on the
road, lest anything should happen to us."

The three depositions are too much alike to leave room for any doubt.
The royal volunteers contravened Article I of the convention.

Being thus abandoned by their chiefs, without general and without
flag, M. de Vogue's soldiers asked no further counsel of anyone but
themselves, and, as one of them has already told us, sixty-four of
them joined together to hire a guide who was to show them how to get
by Uzes without going through it, for they were afraid of meeting
with insult there.  The guide brought them as far as Montarem without
anyone opposing their passage or taking notice of their arms.

Suddenly a coachman named Bertrand, a confidential servant of Abbe
Rafin, former Grand-Vicar of Alais, and of Baroness Arnaud-Wurmeser
(for the abbe administered the estate of Aureillac in his own name
and that of the baroness), galloped into the village of
Arpaillargues, which was almost entirely Protestant and consequently
Napoleonist, announcing that the miquelets (for after one hundred and
ten years the old name given to the royal troops was revived) were on
the way from Montarem, pillaging houses, murdering magistrates,
outraging women, and then throwing them out of the windows.  It is
easy to understand the effect of such a story.  The people gathered
together in groups; the mayor and his assistant being absent,
Bertrand was taken before a certain Boucarut, who on receiving his
report ordered the generale to be beaten and the tocsin to be rung.
Then the consternation became general: the men seized their muskets,
the women and children stones and pitchforks, and everyone made ready
to face a danger which only existed in the imagination of Bertrand,
for there was not a shadow of foundation for the story he had told.

While the village was in this state of feverish excitement the royal
volunteers came in sight.  Hardly were they seen than the cry, "There
they are!  There they are!" arose on all sides, the streets were
barricaded with carts, the tocsin rang out with redoubled frenzy, and
everyone capable of carrying arms rushed to the entrance of the
village.

The volunteers, hearing the uproar and seeing the hostile
preparations, halted, and to show that their intentions were
peaceful, put their shakos on their musket stocks and waved them
above their heads, shouting that no one need fear, for they would do
no harm to anyone.  But alarmed as they were by the terrible stories
told by Bertrand, the villagers shouted back that they could not
trust to such assurances, and that if they wanted to pass through the
village they must first give up their weapons.  It may easily be
imagined that men who had broken the convention in order to keep
their weapons were not likely to give them up to these villagers--in
fact, they obstinately refused to let them out of their hands, and by
doing so increased the suspicions of the people.  A parley of a very
excited character took place between M. Fournier for the royal guards
and M. Boucarut, who was chosen spokesman by the villagers.  From
words they came to deeds: the miquelets tried to force their way
through, some shots were fired, and two miquelets, Calvet and
Fournier, fell.  The others scattered, followed by a lively
discharge, and two more miquelets were slightly wounded.  Thereupon
they all took to flight through the fields on either side of the
road, pursued for a short distance by the villagers, but soon
returned to examine the two wounded men, and a report was drawn up by
Antoine Robin, advocate and magistrate of the canton of Uzes, of the
events just related.

This accident was almost the only one of its kind which happened
during the Hundred Days: the two parties remained face to face,
threatening but self-controlled.  But let there be no mistake: there
was no peace; they were simply awaiting a declaration of war.  When
the calm was broken, it was from Marseilles that the provocation
came.  We shall efface ourselves for a time and let an eye-witness
speak, who being a Catholic cannot be suspected of partiality for the
Protestants.

"I was living in Marseilles at the time of Napoleon's landing, and I
was a witness of the impression which the news produced upon
everyone.  There was one great cry; the enthusiasm was universal; the
National Guard wanted to join him to the last man, but Marshal
Massena did not give his consent until it was too late, for Napoleon
had already reached the mountains, and was moving with such swiftness
that it would have been impossible to overtake him.  Next we heard of
his triumphal entry into Lyons, and of his arrival in Paris during
the night.  Marseilles submitted like the rest of France; Prince
d'Essling was recalled to the capital, and Marshal Brune, who
commanded the 6th corps of observation, fixed his headquarters at
Marseilles.

"With quite incomprehensible fickleness, Marseilles, whose name
during the Terror had been, as one may say, the symbol of the most
advanced opinions, had become almost entirely Royalist in 1815.
Nevertheless, its inhabitants saw without a murmur the tricolour flag
after a year's absence floating once more above the walls.  No
arbitrary interference on the part of the authorities, no threats,
and no brawling between the citizens and the soldiers, troubled the
peace of old Phocea; no revolution ever took place with such
quietness and facility.

"It must, however, be said, that Marshal Brune was just the man to
accomplish such a transformation without friction; in him the
frankness and loyalty of an old soldier were combined with other
qualities more solid than brilliant.  Tacitus in hand, he looked on
at modern revolutions as they passed, and only interfered when the,
voice of his country called him to her defence.  The conqueror of
Harlem and Bakkun had been for four years forgotten in retirement, or
rather in exile, when the same voice which sent him away recalled
him, and at the summons Cincinnatus left his plough and grasped his
weapons.  Physically he was at this period a man of about fifty-five,
with a frank and open face framed by large whiskers; his head was
bald except for a little grizzled hair at the temples; he was tall
and active, and had a remarkably soldierly bearing.

"I had been brought into contact with him by a report which one of my
friends and I had drawn up on the opinions of the people of the
South, and of which he had asked to have a copy.  In a long
conversation with us, he discussed the subject with the impartiality
of a man who brings an open mind to a debate, and he invited us to
come often to see him.  We enjoyed ourselves so much in his society
that we got into the habit of going to his house nearly every
evening.

"On his arrival in the South an old calumny which had formerly
pursued him again made its appearance, quite rejuvenated by its long
sleep.  A writer whose name I have forgotten, in describing the
Massacres of the Second of September and the death of the unfortunate
Princesse de Lamballe, had said, 'Some people thought they recognised
in the man who carried her head impaled on a pike, General Brune in
disguise,' and this accusation; which had been caught up with
eagerness under the Consulate, still followed him so relentlessly in
1815, that hardly a day passed without his receiving an anonymous
letter, threatening him with the same fate which had overtaken the
princess.  One evening while we were with him such a letter arrived,
and having read it he passed it on to us.  It was as follows:

"'Wretch,--We are acquainted with all your crimes, for which you will
soon receive the chastisement you well deserve.  It was you who
during the revolution brought about the death of the Princesse de
Lamballe; it was you who carried her head on a pike, but your head
will be impaled on something longer.  If you are so rash as to be
present at the review of the Allies it is all up with you, and your
head will be stuck on the steeple of the Accoules.  Farewell,
SCOUNDREL!'

"We advised him to trace this calumny to its source, and then to take
signal vengeance on the authors.  He paused an instant to reflect,
and then lit the letter at a candle, and looking at it thoughtfully
as it turned to ashes in his hand, said,--Vengeance!  Yes, perhaps by
seeking that I could silence the authors of these slanders and
preserve the public tranquillity which they constantly imperil.  But
I prefer persuasion to severity.  My principle is, that it is better
to bring men's heads back to a right way of thinking than to cut them
off, and to be regarded as a weak man rather than as a bloodthirsty
one.'

"The essence of Marshal Brune's character was contained in these
words.

"Public tranquillity was indeed twice endangered at Marseilles during
the Hundred Days, and both times in the same manner.  The garrison
officers used to gather at a coffee-house in the place Necker, and
sing songs suggested by passing events.  This caused an attack by the
townspeople, who broke the windows by throwing stones, some of which
struck the officers.  These rushed out, crying, 'To arms!'  The
townspeople were not slow to respond, but the commandant ordered the
'geneydle' to beat, sent out numerous patrols, and succeeded in
calming the excitement and restoring quietness without any
casualties.

"The day of the Champ du Mai orders for a general illumination were
given, and that the tricolour flag should be displayed from the
windows.  The greater number of the inhabitants paid no attention to
the desires of the authorities, and the officers being annoyed at
this neglect, indulged in reprehensible excesses, which, however,
resulted in nothing mare serious than some broken windows belonging
to houses which had not illuminated, and in some of the householders
being forced to illuminate according to order.

"In Marseilles as in the rest of France, people began to despair of
the success of the royal cause, and those who represented this cause,
who were very numerous at Marseilles, gave up annoying the military
and seemed to resign themselves to their fate.  Marshal Brune had
left the city to take up his post on the frontier, without any of the
dangers with which he was threatened having come across his path.

"The 25th of June arrived, and the news of the successes obtained at
Fleurus and at Ligny seemed to justify the hopes of the soldiers,
when, in the middle of the day, muttered reports began to spread in
the town, the distant reverberations of the cannon of Waterloo.  The
silence of the leaders, the uneasiness of the soldiers, the delight
of the Royalists, foretold the outbreak of a new struggle, the,
results of which it was easy to anticipate.  About four o'clock in
the afternoon, a man, who had probably got earlier information than
his fellow-townspeople, tore off his tricoloured cockade and trampled
it under foot, crying, "Long live the king!"  The angry soldiers
seized him and were about to drag him to the guard-house, but the
National Guards prevented them, and their interference led to a
fight.  Shouts were heard on all sides, a large ring was formed round
the soldiers, a few musket shots heard, others answered, three or
four men fell, and lay there weltering in their blood.  Out of this
confused uproar the word "Waterloo" emerged distinct; and with this
unfamiliar name pronounced for the first time in the resounding voice
of history, the news of the defeat of the French army and the triumph
of the Allies spread apace.  Then General Verdier, who held the chief
command in the absence of Marshal Brune, tried to harangue the
people, but his voice was drowned by the shouts of the mob who had
gathered round a coffee-house where stood a bust of the emperor,
which they insisted should be given up to them.  Verdier, hoping to
calm, what he took to be a simple street row, gave orders that the
bust should be brought out, and this concession, so significant on
the part of a general commanding in the emperor's name, convinced the
crowd that his cause was lost.  The fury of the populace grew greater
now that they felt that they could indulge it with impunity; they ran
to the Town Hall, and tearing down and burning the tricoloured,
raised the white flag.  The roll of the generale, the clang of the
tocsin were heard, the neighbouring villages poured in their
populations and increased the throng in the streets; single acts of
violence began to occur, wholesale massacres were approaching.  I had
arrived in the town with my friend M____ the very beginning of the
tumult, so we had seen the dangerous agitation and excitement grow
under our eyes, but we were still ignorant of its true cause, when,
in the rue de Noailles, we met an acquaintance, who, although his
political opinions did not coincide with ours, had always shown
himself very friendly to us.  'Well,' said I, 'what news?'  'Good for
me and bad for you,' he answered;' I advise you to go away at once.'
Surprised and somewhat alarmed at these words, we begged him to
explain.  'Listen,' said he; 'there are going to be riots in the
town; it is well known that you used to go to Brune's nearly every
evening, and that you are in consequence no favourite with your
neighbours; seek safety in the country.' I addressed some further
question to him, but, turning his back on me, he left me without
another word.

"M_____ and I were still looking at each other in stupefaction, when
the increasing uproar aroused us to a sense that if we desired to
follow the advice just given we had not a moment to lose. We hastened
to my house, which was situated in the Allees de Meilhan. My wife was
just going out, but I stopped her.

"'We are not safe here,' I said; 'we must get away into the country.'

"'But where can we go?'

"'Wherever luck takes us. Let us start.'

"She was going to put on her bonnet, but I told her to leave it
behind; for it was most important that no one should think we
suspected anything, but were merely going for a stroll.  This
precaution saved us, for we learned the next day that if our
intention to fly had been suspected we should have been stopped.

"We walked at random, while behind us we heard musket shots from
every part of the town.  We met a company of soldiers who were
hurrying to the relief of their comrades, but heard later that they
had not been allowed to pass the gate.

"We recollected an old officer of our acquaintance who had quitted
the service and withdrawn from the world some years before, and had
taken a place in the country near the village of Saint-Just; we
directed our course towards his house.

"'Captain,' said I to him, 'they are murdering each other in the
town, we are pursued and without asylum, so we come to you.'  'That's
right, my children,' said he; 'come in and welcome.  I have never
meddled with political affairs, and no one can have anything against
me.  No one will think of looking for you here.'

"The captain had friends in the town, who, one after another, reached
his house, and brought us news of all that went on during that
dreadful day.  Many soldiers had been killed, and the Mamelukes had
been annihilated.  A negress who had been in the service of these
unfortunates had been taken on the quay.  'Cry "Long live the king!"'
shouted the mob.  'No,' she replied.  'To Napoleon I owe my daily
bread; long live Napoleon!'  A bayonet-thrust in the abdomen was the
answer.  'Villains!' said she, covering the wound with her hand to
keep back the protruding entrails.  'Long live Napoleon!'  A push
sent her into the water; she sank, but rose again to the surface, and
waving her hand, she cried for the last time, 'Long live Napoleon!' a
bullet shot putting an end to her life.

"Several of the townspeople had met with shocking deaths.  For
instance, M. Angles, a neighbour of mine, an old man and no
inconsiderable scholar, having unfortunately, when at the palace some
days before, given utterance before witnesses to the sentiment that
Napoleon was a great man, learned that for this crime he was about to
be arrested.  Yielding to the prayers of his family, he disguised
himself, and, getting into a waggon, set off to seek safety in the
country.  He was, however, recognised and brought a prisoner to the
place du Chapitre, where, after being buffeted about and insulted for
an hour by the populace, he was at last murdered.

"It may easily be imagined that although no one came to disturb us we
did not sleep much that night.  The ladies rested on sofas or in
arm-chairs without undressing, while our host, M_____ and myself took
turns in guarding the door, gun in hand.

"As soon as it was light we consulted what course we should take: I
was of the opinion that we ought to try to reach Aix by unfrequented
paths; having friends there, we should be able to procure a carriage
and get to Nimes, where my family lived.  But my wife did not agree
with me.  'I must go back to town for our things,' said she; 'we have
no clothes but those on our backs.  Let us send to the village to ask
if Marseilles is quieter to-day than yesterday.'  So we sent off a
messenger.

"The news he brought back was favourable; order was completely
restored.  I could not quite believe this, and still refused to let
my wife return to the town unless I accompanied her.  But in that
everyone was against me: my presence would give rise to dangers which
without me had no existence.  Where were the miscreants cowardly
enough to murder a woman of eighteen who belonged to no-party and had
never injured anyone?  As for me, my opinions were well known.
Moreover, my mother-in-law offered to accompany her daughter, and
both joined in persuading me that there was no danger.  At last I was
forced to consent, but only on one condition.

"'I cannot say,' I observed, 'whether there is any foundation for the
reassuring tidings we have heard, but of one thing you may be sure:
it is now seven o'clock in the morning, you can get to Marseilles in
an hour, pack your trunks in another hour, and return in a third; let
us allow one hour more for unforeseen delays. If you are not back by
eleven o'clock, I shall believe something has happened, and take
steps accordingly.'  'Very well,' said my wife; 'if I am not back by
then, you may think me dead, and do whatever you think best.'  And so
she and her mother left me.

"An hour later, quite different news came to hand.  Fugitives,
seeking like ourselves safety in the country, told us that the
rioting, far from ceasing, had increased; the streets were encumbered
with corpses, and two people had been murdered with unheard-of
cruelty.

"An old man named Bessieres, who had led a simple and blameless life,
and whose only crime was that he had served under the Usurper,
anticipating that under existing circumstances this would be regarded
as a capital crime, made his will, which was afterwards found among
his papers.  It began with the following words:

"'As it is possible that during this revolution I may meet my death,
as a partisan of Napoleon, although I have never loved him, I give
and bequeath, etc., etc.

"The day before, his brother-in-law, knowing he had private enemies,
had come to the house and spent the night trying to induce him to
flee, but all in vain.  But the next morning, his house being
attacked, he yielded, and tried to escape by the back door.  He was
stopped by some of the National Guard, and placed himself under their
protection.

"They took him to the Cours St. Louis, where, being hustled by the
crowd and very ineffectually defended by the Guards, he tried to
enter the Cafe Mercantier, but the door was shut in his face.  Being
broken by fatigue, breathless, and covered with dust and sweat, he
threw himself on one of the benches placed against the wall, outside
the house.  Here he was wounded by a musket bullet, but not killed.
At the sight of his blood shrieks of joy were heard, and then a young
man with a pistol in each hand forced his way through the throng and
killed the old man by two shots fired point blank in his face.

"Another still more atrocious murder took place in the course of the
same morning.  A father and son, bound back to back, were delivered
over to the tender mercies of the mob.  Stoned and beaten and covered
with each other's blood, for two long hours their death-agony
endured, and all the while those who could not get near enough to
strike were dancing round them.

"Our time passed listening to such stories; suddenly I saw a friend
running towards the house.  I went to meet him.  He was so pale that
I hardly dared to question him.  He came from the city, and had been
at my house to see what had become of me.  There was no one in it,
but across the door lay two corpses wrapped in a blood-stained sheet
which he had not dared to lift.

"At these terrible words nothing could hold me back.  I set off for
Marseilles.  M_____ who would not consent to let me return alone,
accompanied me.  In passing through the village of Saint-Just we
encountered a crowd of armed peasants in the main street who appeared
to belong to the free companies.  Although this circumstance was
rather alarming, it would have been dangerous to turn back, so we
continued our way as if we were not in the least uneasy.  They
examined our bearing and our dress narrowly, and then exchanged some
sentences in a low, voice, of which we only caught the word
austaniers.  This was the name by which the Bonapartists were called
by the peasants, and means 'eaters of chestnuts,' this article of
food being brought from Corsica to France.  However, we were not
molested in any way, for as we were going towards the city they did
not think we could be fugitives.  A hundred yards beyond the village
we came up with a crowd of peasants, who were, like us, on the way to
Marseilles.  It was plain to see that they had just been pillaging
some country house, for they were laden with rich stuffs, chandeliers
and jewels.  It proved to be that of M. R____, inspector of reviews.
Several carried muskets.  I pointed out to my companion a stain of
blood on the trousers of one of the men, who began to laugh when he
saw what we were looking at.  Two hundred yards outside the city I
met a woman who had formerly been a servant in my house.  She was
very much astonished to see me, and said, 'Go away at once; the
massacre is horrible, much worse than yesterday.'

"'But my wife,' I cried, 'do you know anything about her?'

"'No, sir,' she replied; 'I was going to knock at the door, but some
people asked me in a threatening manner if I could tell them where
the friend of that rascal Brine was, as they were going to take away
his appetite for bread.  So take my advice,' she continued, 'and go
back to where you came from.'

"This advice was the last I could make up my mind to follow, so we
went on, but found a strong guard at the gate, and saw that it would
be impossible to get through without being recognised.  At the same
time, the cries and the reports of firearms from within were coming
nearer; it would therefore have been to court certain death to
advance, so we retraced our steps.  In passing again through the
village of Saint-Just we met once more our armed peasants.  But this
time they burst out into threats on seeing us, shouting, 'Let us kill
them!  Let us kill them!'  Instead of running away, we approached
them, assuring them that we were Royalists.  Our coolness was so
convincing that we got through safe and sound.

"On getting back to the captain's I threw myself on the sofa, quite
overcome by the thought that only that morning my wife had been
beside me under my protection, and that I had let her go back to the
town to a cruel and inevitable death.  I felt as if my heart would
break, and nothing that our host and my friend could say gave me the
slightest comfort.  I was like a madman, unconscious of everything
round me.

"M_____  went out to try to pick up some news, but in an instant we
heard him running back, and he dashed into the room, calling out

"'They are coming!  There they are!'

"'Who are coming?' we asked.

"'The assassins!'

"My first feeling, I confess, was one of joy.  I pounced upon a pair
of double-barrelled pistols, resolved not to let myself be
slaughtered like a sheep.  Through the window I could see some men
climbing over the wall and getting down into the garden.  We had just
sufficient time to escape by a back staircase which led to a door,
through which we passed, shutting it behind us.  We found ourselves
on a road, at the other side of which was a vineyard.  We crossed the
road and crept under the vines, which completely concealed us.

"As we learned later, the captain's house had been denounced as a
Bonapartist nest, and the assassins had hoped to take it by surprise;
and, indeed, if they had come a little sooner we had been lost, for
before we had been five minutes in our hiding-place the murderers
rushed out on the road, looking for us in every direction, without
the slightest suspicion that we were not six yards distant.  Though
they did not see us I could see them, and I held my pistols ready
cocked, quite determined to kill the first who came near.  However,
in a short time they went away.

" As soon as they were out of hearing we began to consider our
situation and weigh our chances.  There was no use in going back to
the captain's, for he was no longer there, having also succeeded in
getting away.  If we were to wander about the country we should be
recognised as fugitives, and the fate that awaited us as such was at
that moment brought home to us, for a few yards away we suddenly
heard the shrieks of a man who was being murdered.  They were the
first cries of agony I had ever heard, and for a few moments, I
confess, I was frozen with terror.  But soon a violent reaction took
place within me, and I felt that it would be better to march straight
to meet peril than to await its coming, and although I knew the
danger of trying to go through Saint-Just again, I resolved to risk
it, and to get to Marseilles at all costs.  So, turning to M____, I
said:

"'You can remain here without danger until the evening, but I am
going to Marseilles at once; for I cannot endure this uncertainty any
longer.  If I find Saint-Just clear, I shall come back and rejoin
you, but if not I shall get away as best I can alone.'

"Knowing the danger that we were running, and how little chance there
was that we should ever see each other again, he held out his hand to
me, but I threw myself into his arms and gave him a last embrace.

"I started at once: when I reached Saint-Just I found the freebooters
still there; so I walked up to them, trolling a melody, but one of
them seized me by the collar and two others took aim at me with their
muskets.

"If ever in my life I shouted 'Long live the king!' with less
enthusiasm than the cry deserves, it was then: to assume a rollicking
air, to laugh with cool carelessness when there is nothing between
you and death but the more or less strong pressure of a highwayman's
finger on the trigger of a musket, is no easy task; but all this I
accomplished, and once more got through the village with a whole skin
indeed, but with the unalterable resolution to blow my brains out
rather than again try such an experiment.

"Having now a village behind me which I had vowed never to re-enter,
and there being no road available by which I could hope to get round
Marseilles, the only course open to me was to make my way into the
city.  At that moment this was a thing of difficulty, for many small
bodies of troops, wearing the white cockade, infested the approaches.
I soon perceived that the danger of getting in was as great as ever,
so I determined to walk up and down till night, hoping the darkness
would come to my aid; but one of the patrols soon gave me to
understand that my prowling about had aroused suspicion, and ordered
me either to go on to the city, in which by all accounts there was
small chance of safety for me, or back to the village; where certain
death awaited me.  A happy inspiration flashed across my mind, I
would get some refreshment, and seeing an inn near by, I went in and
ordered a mug of beer, sitting down near the window, faintly hoping
that before the necessity for a final decision arrived, someone who
knew me would pass by.  After waiting half an hour, I did indeed see
an acquaintance--no other than M_____, whom I had left in the
vineyard.  I beckoned him, and he joined me.  He told me that, being
too impatient to await my return, he had soon made up his mind to
follow me, and by joining a band of pillagers was lucky enough to get
safely through Saint-Just.  We consulted together as to what we had
better do next, and having applied to our host, found he could supply
us with a trusty messenger, who would carry the news of our
whereabouts to my brother-in-law.  After an anxious wait of three
hours, we saw him coming.  I was about to run out to meet him, but
M____ held me back, pointing out the danger of such a step; so we sat
still our eyes fixed on the approaching figure.  But when my
brother-in-law reached the inn, I could restrain my impatience no
longer, but rushing out of the room met him on the stairs.

"'My wife?' I cried.  'Have you seen my wife?'

"'She is at my house,' was the reply, and with a cry of joy I threw
myself into his arms.

"My wife, who had been threatened, insulted, and roughly treated
because of my opinions, had indeed found safety at my
brother-in-law's.

"Night was coming on.  My brother-in-law, who wore the uniform of the
National Guard, which was at that moment a safeguard, took us each by
an arm, and we passed the barrier without anyone asking us who we
were.  Choosing quiet streets, we reached his house unmolested; but
in fact the whole city was quiet, for the carnage was practically at
an end.

"My wife safe!  this thought filled my heart with joy almost too
great to bear.

"Her adventures were the following:

"My wife and her mother had gone to our house, as agreed upon, to
pack our trunks.  As they left their rooms, having accomplished their
task, they found the landlady waiting on the staircase, who at once
overwhelmed my wife with a torrent of abuse.

"The husband, who until then had known nothing of their tenant's
return, hearing the noise, came out of his room, and, seizing his
wife by the arm, pulled her in and shut the door.  She, however,
rushed to the window, and just as my wife and her mother reached the
street, shouted to a free band who were on guard across the way,
'Fire!  they are Bonapartists!'  Fortunately the men, more merciful
than the woman, seeing two ladies quite alone, did not hinder their
passage, and as just then my brother-in-law came by, whose opinions
were well known and whose uniform was respected, he was allowed to
take them under his protection and conduct them to his house in
safety.

"A young man, employed at the Prefecture, who had called at my house
the day before, I having promised to help him in editing the Journal
des Bouches-du-Rhone, was not so lucky.  His occupation and his visit
to me laid him under suspicion of possessing dangerous opinions, and
his friends urged him to fly; but it was too late.  He was attacked
at the corner of the rue de Noailles, and fell wounded by a stab from
a dagger.  Happily, however, he ultimately recovered.

"The whole day was passed in the commission of deeds still more
bloody than those of the day before; the sewers ran blood, and every
hundred yards a dead body was to be met.  But this sight, instead of
satiating the thirst for blood of the assassins, only seemed to
awaken a general feeling of gaiety.  In the evening the streets
resounded with song and roundelay, and for many a year to come that
which we looked back on as 'the day of the massacre' lived in the
memory of the Royalists as 'the day of the farce.'

"As we felt we could not live any longer in the midst of such scenes,
even though, as far as we were concerned, all danger was over, we set
out for Nimes that same evening, having been offered the use of a
carriage.

"Nothing worthy of note happened on the road to Orgon, which we
reached next day; but the isolated detachments of troops which we
passed from time to time reminded us that the tranquillity was
nowhere perfect.  As we neared the town we saw three men going about
arm in arm; this friendliness seemed strange to us after our recent
experiences, for one of them wore a white cockade, the second a
tricolour, and the third none at all, and yet they went about on the
most brotherly terms, each awaiting under a different banner the
outcome of events.  Their wisdom impressed me much, and feeling I had
nothing to fear from such philosophers, I went up to them and
questioned them, and they explained their hopes to me with the
greatest innocence, and above all, their firm determination to belong
to what ever party got the upper hand.  As we drove into Orgon we saw
at a glance that the whole town was simmering with excitement.
Everybody's face expressed anxiety.  A man who, we were told, was the
mayor, was haranguing a group.  As everyone was listening, with the
greatest attention, we drew near and asked them the cause of the
excitement.

"'Gentlemen,' said he, 'you ought to know the news: the king is in
his capital, and we have once more hoisted the white flag, and there
has not been a single dispute to mar the tranquillity of the day; one
party has triumphed without violence, and the other has submitted
with resignation.  But I have just learned that a band of vagabonds,
numbering about three hundred, have assembled on the bridge over the
Durance, and are preparing to raid our little town to-night,
intending by pillage or extortion to get at what we possess.  I have
a few guns left which I am about to distribute, and each man will
watch over the safety of all.'

"Although he had not enough arms to go round, he offered to supply
us, but as I had my double-barrelled pistols I did not deprive him of
his weapons.  I made the ladies go to bed, and, sitting at their
door, tried to sleep as well as I could, a pistol in each hand.  But
at every instant the noise of a false alarm sounded through the town,
and when day dawned my only consolation was that no one else in Orgon
had slept any better than I.

"The next day we continued our journey to Tarascon, where new
excitements awaited us.  As we got near the town we heard the tocsin
clanging and drums beating the generale.  We were getting so
accustomed to the uproar that we were not very much astonished.
However, when we got in we asked what was going on, and we were told
that twelve thousand troops from Nimes had marched on Beaucaire and
laid it waste with fire and sword.  I insinuated that twelve thousand
men was rather a large number for one town to furnish, but was told
that that included troops from the Gardonninque and the Cevennes.
Nimes still clung to the tricolour, but Beaucaire had hoisted the
white flag, and it was for the purpose of pulling it down and
scattering the Royalists who were assembling in numbers at Beaucaire
that Nimes had sent forth her troops on this expedition.  Seeing that
Tarascon and Beaucaire are only separated by the Rhone, it struck me
as peculiar that such quiet should prevail on one bank, while such
fierce conflict was raging on the other.  I did not doubt that
something had happened, but not an event of such gravity as was
reported.  We therefore decided to push on to Beaucaire, and when we
got there we found the town in the most perfect order.  The
expedition of twelve thousand men was reduced to one of two hundred,
which had been easily repulsed, with the result that of the
assailants one had been wounded and one made prisoner.  Proud of this
success, the people of Beaucaire entrusted us with a thousand
objurgations to deliver to their inveterate enemies the citizens of
Nimes.

"If any journey could give a correct idea of the preparations for
civil war and the confusion which already prevailed in the South, I
should think that without contradiction it would be that which we
took that day.  Along the four leagues which lie between Beaucaire
and Nimes were posted at frequent intervals detachments of troops
displaying alternately the white and the tricoloured cockade.  Every
village upon our route except those just outside of Nimes had
definitely joined either one party or the other, and the soldiers,
who were stationed at equal distances along the road, were now
Royalist and now Bonapartist.  Before leaving Beaucaire we had all
provided ourselves, taking example by the men we had seen at Orgon,
with two cockades, one white, and one tricoloured, and by peeping out
from carriage windows we were able to see which was worn by the
troops we were approaching in time to attach a similar one to our
hats before we got up to them, whilst we hid the other in our shoes;
then as we were passing we stuck our heads, decorated according to
circumstances, out of the windows, and shouted vigorously, 'Long live
the king!' or 'Long live the emperor!' as the case demanded.  Thanks
to this concession to political opinions on the highway, and in no
less degree to the money which we gave by way of tips to everybody
everywhere, we arrived at length at the barriers of Nimes, where we
came up with the National Guards who had been repulsed by the
townspeople of Beaucaire.

"This is what had taken place just before we arrived in the city:

"The National Guard of Nimes and the troops of which the garrison was
composed had resolved to unite in giving a banquet on Sunday, the
28th of June, to celebrate the success of the French army.  The news
of the battle of Waterloo travelled much more quickly to Marseilles
than to Nimes, so the banquet took place without interruption.  A
bust of Napoleon was carried in procession all over the town, and
then the regular soldiers and the National Guard devoted the rest of
the day to rejoicings, which were followed by no excess.

"But the day was not quite finished before news came that numerous
meetings were taking place at Beaucaire, so although the news of the
defeat at Waterloo reached Nimes on the following Tuesday, the troops
which we had seen returning at the gates of the city had been
despatched on Wednesday to disperse these assemblies.  Meantime the
Bonapartists, under the command of General Gilly, amongst whom was a
regiment of chasseurs, beginning to despair of the success of their
cause, felt that their situation was becoming very critical,
especially as they learnt that the forces at Beaucaire had assumed
the offensive and were about to march upon Nimes.  As I had had no
connection with anything that had taken place in the capital of the
Gard, I personally had nothing to fear; but having learned by
experience how easily suspicions arise, I was afraid that the
ill-luck which had not spared either my friends or my family might
lead to their being accused of having received a refugee from
Marseilles, a word which in itself had small significance, but which
in the mouth of an enemy might be fatal.  Fears for the future being
thus aroused by my recollections of the past, I decided to give up
the contemplation of a drama which might become redoubtable, asked to
bury myself in the country with the firm intention of coming back to
Nimes as soon as the white flag should once more float from its
towers.

"An old castle in the Cevennes, which from the days when the
Albigenses were burnt, down to the massacre of La Bagarre, had
witnessed many a revolution and counter revolution, became the asylum
of my wife, my mother, M_____ , and myself.  As the peaceful
tranquillity of our life there was unbroken by any event of interest,
I shall not pause to dwell on it.  But at length we grew weary, for
such is man, of our life of calm, and being left once for nearly a
week without any news from outside, we made that an excuse for
returning to Nimes in order to see with our own eyes how things were
going on.

"When we were about two leagues on our way we met the carriage of a
friend, a rich landed proprietor from the city; seeing that he was in
it, I alighted to ask him what was happening at Nimes.  'I hope you
do not think of going there,' said he, 'especially at this moment;
the excitement is intense, blood has already flowed, and a
catastrophe is imminent.'  So back we went to our mountain castle,
but in a few days became again a prey to the same restlessness, and,
not being able to overcome it, decided to go at all risks and see for
ourselves the condition of affairs; and this time, neither advice nor
warning having any effect, we not only set out, but we arrived at our
destination the same evening.

"We had not been misinformed, frays having already taken place in the
streets which had heated public opinion.  One man had been killed on
the Esplanade by a musket shot, and it seemed as if his death would
be only the forerunner of many.  The Catholics were awaiting with
impatience the arrival of those doughty warriors from Beaucaire on
whom they placed their chief reliance.  The Protestants went about in
painful silence, and fear blanched every face.  At length the white
flag was hoisted and the king proclaimed without any of the disorders
which had been dreaded taking place, but it was plainly visible that
this calm was only a pause before a struggle, and that on the
slightest pretext the pent-up passions would break loose again.

"Just at this time the memory of our quiet life in the mountains
inspired us with a happy idea.  We had learned that the obstinate
resolution of Marshal Brune never to acknowledge Louis XVIII as king
had been softened, and that the marshal had been induced to hoist the
white flag at Toulon, while with a cockade in his hat he had formally
resigned the command of that place into the hands of the royal
authorities.

"Henceforward in all Provence there was no spot where he could live
unmarked.  His ultimate intentions were unknown to us, indeed his
movements seemed to show great hesitation on his part, so it occurred
to us to offer him our little country house as a refuge where he
could await the arrival of more peaceful times.  We decided that
M____ and another friend of ours who had just arrived from Paris
should go to him and make the offer, which he would at once accept
all the more readily because it came from the hearts which were
deeply devoted to him.  They set out, but to my great surprise
returned the same day.  They brought us word that Marshal Brune had
been assassinated at Avignon.

"At first we could not believe the dreadful news, and took it for one
of those ghastly rumours which circulate with such rapidity during
periods of civil strife; but we were not left long in uncertainty,
for the details of the catastrophe arrived all too soon."




CHAPTER VIII

For some days Avignon had its assassins, as Marseilles had had them,
and as Nimes was about to have them; for some days all Avignon
shuddered at the names of five men--Pointu, Farges, Roquefort,
Naudaud, and Magnan.

Pointu was a perfect type of the men of the South, olive-skinned and
eagle-eyed, with a hook nose, and teeth of ivory.  Although he was
hardly above middle height, and his back was bent from bearing heavy
burdens, his legs bowed by the pressure of the enormous masses which
he daily carried, he was yet possessed of extraordinary strength and
dexterity.  He could throw over the Loulle gate a 48-pound cannon
ball as easily as a child could throw its ball.  He could fling a
stone from one bank of the Rhone to the other where it was two
hundred yards wide.  And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards
while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim
that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the
air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker
than a man's thigh.  When to these accomplishments are added an equal
skill with the musket, the pistol, and the quarter-staff, a good deal
of mother wit, a deep hatred for Republicans, against whom he had
vowed vengeance at the foot of the scaffold on which his father and
mother had perished, an idea can be formed of the terrible chief of
the assassins of Avignon, who had for his lieutenants, Farges the
silk-weaver, Roquefort the porter, Naudaud the baker, and Magnan the
secondhand clothes dealer.

Avignon was entirely in the power of these five men, whose brutal
conduct the civil and military authorities would not or could not
repress, when word came that Marshal Brune, who was at Luc in command
of six thousand troops, had been summoned to Paris to give an account
of his conduct to the new Government.

The marshal, knowing the state of intense excitement which prevailed
in the South, and foreseeing the perils likely to meet him on the
road, asked permission to travel by water, but met with an official
refusal, and the Duc de Riviere, governor of Marseilles, furnished
him with a safe-conduct.  The cut-throats bellowed with joy when they
learned that a Republican of '89, who had risen to the rank of
marshal under the Usurper, was about to pass through Avignon.  At the
same time sinister reports began to run from mouth to mouth, the
harbingers of death.  Once more the infamous slander which a hundred
times had been proved to be false, raised its voice with dogged
persistence, asserting that Brune, who did not arrive at Paris until
the 5th of September, 1792, had on the 2nd, when still at Lyons,
carried the head of the Princesse de Lamballe impaled on a pike.
Soon the news came that the marshal had just escaped assassination at
Aix, indeed he owed his safety to the fleetness of his horses.
Pointu, Forges, and Roquefort swore that they would manage things
better at Avignon.

By the route which the marshal had chosen there were only two ways
open by which he could reach Lyons: he must either pass through
Avignon, or avoid it by taking a cross-road, which branched off the
Pointet highway, two leagues outside the town.  The assassins thought
he would take the latter course, and on the 2nd of August, the day on
which the marshal was expected, Pointu, Magnan, and Naudaud, with
four of their creatures, took a carriage at six o'clock in the
morning, and, setting out from the Rhone bridge, hid themselves by
the side of the high road to Pointet.

When the marshal reached the point where the road divided, having
been warned of the hostile feelings so rife in Avignon, he decided to
take the cross-road upon which Pointu and his men were awaiting him;
but the postillion obstinately refused to drive in this direction,
saying that he always changed horses at Avignon, and not at Pointet.
One of the marshal's aides-de-camp tried, pistol in hand, to force
him to obey; but the marshal would permit no violence to be offered
him, and gave him orders to go on to Avignon.

The marshal reached the town at nine o'clock in the morning, and
alighted at the Hotel du Palais Royal, which was also the post-house.
While fresh horses were being put to and the passports and safe-
conduct examined at the Loulle gate, the marshal entered the hotel to
take a plate of soup.  In less than five minutes a crowd gathered
round the door, and M. Moulin the proprietor noticing the sinister
and threatening expression many of the faces bore, went to the
marshal's room and urged him to leave instantly without waiting for
his papers, pledging his word that he would send a man on horseback
after him, who would overtake him two or three leagues beyond the
town, and bring him his own safe-conduct and the passports of his
aides-de-camp.  The marshal came downstairs, and finding the horses
ready, got into the carriage, on which loud murmurs arose from the
populace, amongst which could be distinguished the terrible word
'zaou!'  that excited cry of the Provencal, which according to the
tone in which it is uttered expresses every shade of threat, and
which means at once in a single syllable, "Bite, rend, kill,
murder!"

The marshal set out at a gallop, and passed the town gates
unmolested, except by the howlings of the populace, who, however,
made no attempt to stop him.  He thought he had left all his enemies
behind, but when he reached the Rhone bridge he found a group of men
armed with muskets waiting there, led by Farges and Roquefort.  They
all raised their guns and took aim at the marshal, who thereupon
ordered the postillion to drive back.  The order was obeyed, but when
the carriage had gone about fifty yards it was met by the crowd from
the "Palais Royal," which had followed it, so the postillion stopped.
In a moment the traces were cut, whereupon the marshal, opening the
door, alighted, followed by his valet, and passing on foot through
the Loulle gate, followed by a second carriage in which were his
aides-de-camp, he regained the "Palais Royal," the doors of which
were opened to him and his suite, and immediately secured against all
others.

The marshal asked to be shown to a room, and M. Moulin gave him
No. 1, to the front.  In ten minutes three thousand people filled the
square; it was as if the population sprang up from the ground.  Just
then the carriage, which the marshal had left behind, came up, the
postillion having tied the traces, and a second time the great yard
gates were opened, and in spite of the press closed again and
barricaded by the porter Vernet, and M. Moulin himself, both of whom
were men of colossal strength.  The aides-de-camp, who had remained
in the carriage until then, now alighted, and asked to be shown to
the marshal; but Moulin ordered the porter to conceal them in an
outhouse.  Vernet taking one in each hand, dragged them off despite
their struggles, and pushing them behind some empty barrels, over
which he threw an old piece of carpet, said to them in a voice as
solemn as if he were a prophet, "If you move, you are dead men," and
left them.  The aides-de-camp remained there motionless and silent.

At that moment M. de Saint-Chamans, prefect of Avignon, who had
arrived in town at five o'clock in the morning, came out into the
courtyard.  By this time the crowd was smashing the windows and
breaking in the street door.  The square was full to overflowing,
everywhere threatening cries were heard, and above all the terrible
zaou, which from moment to moment became more full of menace.
M. Moulin saw that if they could not hold out until the troops under
Major Lambot arrived, all was lost; he therefore told Vernet to
settle the business of those who were breaking in the door, while he
would take charge of those who were trying to get in at the window.
Thus these two men, moved by a common impulse and of equal courage,
undertook to dispute with a howling mob the possession of the blood
for which it thirsted.

Both dashed to their posts, one in the hall, the other in the
dining-room, and found door and windows already smashed, and several
men in the house.  At the sight of Vernet, with whose immense
strength they were acquainted, those in the hall drew back a step,
and Vernet, taking advantage of this movement, succeeded in ejecting
them and in securing the door once more.  Meantime M. Moulin, seizing
his double-barrelled gun, which stood in the chimney-corner, pointed
it at five men who had got into the dining-room, and threatened to
fire if they did not instantly get out again.  Four obeyed, but one
refused to budge; whereupon Moulin, finding himself no longer
outnumbered, laid aside his gun, and, seizing his adversary round the
waist, lifted him as if he were a child and flung him out of the
window.  The man died three weeks later, not from the fall but from
the squeeze.

Moulin then dashed to the window to secure it, but as he laid his
hand on it he felt his head seized from behind and pressed violently
down on his left shoulder; at the same instant a pane was broken into
splinters, and the head of a hatchet struck his right shoulder.
M. de Saint-Chamans, who had followed him into the room, had seen the
weapon thrown at Moulin's head, and not being able to turn aside the
iron, had turned aside the object at which it was aimed.  Moulin
seized the hatchet by the handle and tore it out of the hands of him
who had delivered the blow, which fortunately had missed its aim.  He
then finished closing the window, and secured it by making fast the
inside shutters, and went upstairs to see after the marshal.

Him he found striding up and down his room, his handsome and noble
face as calm as if the voices of all those shouting men outside were
not demanding his death.  Moulin made him leave No. 1 for No. 3,
which, being a back room and looking out on the courtyard, seemed to
offer more chances of safety than the other.  The marshal asked for
writing materials, which Moulin brought, whereupon the marshal sat
down at a little table and began to write.

Just then the cries outside became still more uproarious.  M. de
Saint-Chamans had gone out and ordered the crowd to disperse,
whereupon a thousand people had answered him with one voice, asking
who he was that he should give such an order.  He announced his rank
and authority, to which the answer was, "We only know the prefect by
his clothes."  Now it had unfortunately happened that M. de Chamans
having sent his trunks by diligence they had not yet arrived, and
being dressed in a green coat; nankeen trousers, and a pique vest, it
could hardly be expected that in such a suit he should overawe the
people under the circumstances; so, when he got up on a bench to
harangue the populace, cries arose of "Down with the green coat!  We
have enough of charlatans like that!" and he was forced to get down
again.  As Vernet opened the door to let him in, several men took
advantage of the circumstance to push in along with him; but Vernet
let his fist fall three times, and three men rolled at his feet like
bulls struck by a club.  The others withdrew.  A dozen champions such
as Vernet would have saved the marshal.  Yet it must not be forgotten
that this man was a Royalist, and held the same opinions as those
against whom he fought; for him as for them the marshal was a mortal
enemy, but he had a noble heart, and if the marshal were guilty he
desired a trial and not a murder.  Meantime a certain onlooker had
heard what had been said to M. de Chamans about his unofficial
costume, and had gone to put on his uniform.  This was M. de Puy, a
handsome and venerable old man, with white hair, pleasant expression,
and winning voice.  He soon came back in his mayor's robes, wearing
his scarf and his double cross of St. Louis and the Legion of Honour.
But neither his age nor his dignity made the slightest impression on
these people; they did not even allow him to get back to the hotel
door, but knocked him down and trampled him under foot, so that he
hardly escaped with torn clothes and his white hair covered with dust
and blood.  The fury of the mob had now reached its height.

At this juncture the garrison of Avignon came in sight; it was
composed of four hundred volunteers, who formed a battalion known as
the Royal Angouleme.  It was commanded by a man who had assumed the
title of Lieutenant-General of the Emancipating Army of Vaucluse.
These forces drew up under the windows of the "Palais Royal."  They
were composed almost entirely of Provenceaux, and spoke the same
dialect as the people of the lower orders.  The crowd asked the
soldiers for what they had come, why they did not leave them to
accomplish an act of justice in peace, and if they intended to
interfere.  "Quite the contrary," said one of the soldiers; "pitch
him out of the window, and we will catch him on the points of our
bayonets."  Brutal cries of joy greeted this answer, succeeded by a
short silence, but it was easy to see that under the apparent calm
the crowd was in a state of eager expectation.  Soon new shouts were
heard, but this time from the interior of the hotel; a small band of
men led by Forges and Roquefort had separated themselves from the
throng, and by the help of ladders had scaled the walls and got on
the roof of the house, and, gliding down the other side, had dropped
into the balcony outside the windows of the rooms where the marshal
was writing.

Some of these dashed through the windows without waiting to open
them, others rushed in at the open door.  The marshal, thus taken by
surprise, rose, and not wishing that the letter he was writing to the
Austrian commandant to claim his protection should fall into the
hands of these wretches, he tore it to pieces.  Then a man who
belonged to a better class than the others, and who wears to-day the
Cross of the Legion of Honour, granted to him perhaps for his conduct
on this occasion, advanced towards the marshal, sword in hand, and
told him if he had any last arrangements to make, he should make them
at once, for he had only ten minutes to live.

"What are you thinking of?" exclaimed Forges.  "Ten minutes!  Did he
give the Princesse de Lamballe ten minutes?" and he pointed his
pistol at the marshal's breast; but the marshal striking up the
weapon, the shot missed its aim and buried itself in the ceiling.

"Clumsy fellow!" said the marshal, shrugging his shoulders, "not to
be able to kill a man at such close range."

"That's true," replied Roquefort in his patois.  "I'll show you how
to do it"; and, receding a step, he took aim with his carbine at his
victim, whose back was partly towards him.  A report was heard, and
the marshal fell dead on the spot, the bullet which entered at the
shoulder going right through his body and striking the opposite wall.

The two shots, which had been heard in the street, made the howling
mob dance for joy.  One cowardly fellow, called Cadillan, rushed out
on one of the balconies which looked on the square, and, holding a
loaded pistol in each hand, which he had not dared to discharge even
into the dead body of the murdered man, he cut a caper, and, holding
up the innocent weapons, called out, "These have done the business!"
But he lied, the braggart, and boasted of a crime which was committed
by braver cutthroats than he.

Behind him came the general of the "Emancipating Army of Vaucluse,"
who, graciously saluting the crowd, said, "The marshal has carried
out an act of justice by taking his own life."  Shouts of mingled
joy, revenge, and hatred rose from the crowd, and the king's attorney
and the examining magistrate set about drawing up a report of the
suicide.

Now that all was over and there was no longer any question of saving
the marshal, M. Moulin desired at least to save the valuables which
he had in his carriage.  He found in a cash box 40,000 francs, in the
pockets a snuff-box set with diamonds, and a pair of pistols and two
swords; the hilt of one of these latter was studded with precious
stones, a gift from the ill-starred Selim.  M. Moulin returned across
the court, carrying these things.  The Damascus blade was wrenched
from his hands, and the robber kept it five years as a trophy, and it
was not until the year 1820 that he was forced to give it up to the
representative of the marshal's widow.  Yet this man was an officer,
and kept his rank all through the Restoration, and was not dismissed
the army till 1830.  When M. Moulin had placed the other objects in
safety, he requested the magistrate to have the corpse removed, as he
wished the crowds to disperse, that he might look after the aides-de
camp.  While they were undressing the marshal, in order to certify
the cause of death, a leathern belt was found on him containing 5536
francs.  The body was carried downstairs by the grave-diggers without
any opposition being offered, but hardly had they advanced ten yards
into the square when shouts of "To the Rhone! to the Rhone!"
resounded on all sides.  A police officer who tried to interfere was
knocked down, the bearers were ordered to turn round; they obeyed,
and the crowd carried them off towards the wooden bridge.  When the
fourteenth arch was reached, the bier was torn from the bearers'
hands, and the corpse was flung into the river.  "Military honours!"
shouted some one, and all who had guns fired at the dead body, which
was twice struck.  "Tomb of Marshal Brune" was then written on the
arch, and the crowd withdrew, and passed the rest of the day in
holiday-making.

Meanwhile the Rhone, refusing to be an accomplice in such a crime,
bore away the corpse, which the assassins believed had been swallowed
up for ever.  Next day it was found on the sandy shore at Tarascon,
but the news of the murder had preceded it, and it was recognised by
the wounds, and pushed back again into the waters, which bore it
towards the sea.

Three leagues farther on it stopped again, this time by a grassy
bank, and was found by a man of forty and another of eighteen.  They
also recognised it, but instead of shoving it back into the current,
they drew it up gently on the bank and carried it to a small property
belonging to one of them, where they reverently interred it.  The
elder of the two was M. de Chartruse, the younger M. Amedee Pichot.

The body was exhumed by order of the marshal's widow, and brought to
her castle of Saint-Just, in Champagne; she had it embalmed, and
placed in a bedroom adjoining her own, where it remained, covered
only by a veil, until the memory of the deceased was cleansed from
the accusation of suicide by a solemn public trial and judgment.
Then only it was finally interred, along with the parchment
containing the decision of the Court of Riom.

The ruffians who killed Marshal Brune, although they evaded the
justice of men, did not escape the vengeance of God: nearly every one
of them came to a miserable end.  Roquefort and Farges were attacked
by strange and hitherto unknown diseases, recalling the plagues sent
by God on the peoples whom He desired to punish in bygone ages.  In
the case of Farges, his skin dried up and became horny, causing him
such intense irritation, that as the only means of allaying it he had
to be kept buried up to the neck while still alive.  The disease
under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat in the marrow,
for his bones by degrees lost all solidity and power of resistance,
so that his limbs refused to bear his weight, and he went about the
streets crawling like a serpent.  Both died in such dreadful torture
that they regretted having escaped the scaffold, which would have
spared them such prolonged agony.

Pointu was condemned to death, in his absence, at the Assizes Court
of La Drome, for having murdered five people, and was cast off by his
own faction.  For some time his wife, who was infirm and deformed,
might be seen going from house to house asking alms for him, who had
been for two months the arbiter of civil war and assassination.  Then
came a day when she ceased her quest, and was seen sitting, her head
covered by a black rag: Pointu was dead, but it was never known where
or how.  In some corner, probably, in the crevice of a rock or in the
heart of the forest, like an old tiger whose talons have been clipped
and his teeth drawn.

Naudaud and Magnan were sentenced to the galleys for ten years.
Naudaud died there, but Magnan finished his time and then became a
scavenger, and, faithful to his vocation as a dealer of death, a
poisoner of stray dogs.

Some of these cut-throats are still living, and fill good positions,
wearing crosses and epaulets, and, rejoicing in their impunity,
imagine they have escaped the eye of God.

We shall wait and see!




CHAPTER IX

It was on Saturday that the white flag was hoisted at Nimes.  The
next day a crowd of Catholic peasants from the environs marched into
the city, to await the arrival of the Royalist army from Beaucaire.
Excitement was at fever heat, the desire of revenge filled every
breast, the hereditary hatred which had slumbered during the Empire
again awoke stronger than ever.  Here I may pause to say that in the
account which follows of the events which took place about this time,
I can only guarantee the facts and not the dates: I relate everything
as it happened; but the day on which it happened may sometimes have
escaped my memory, for it is easier to recollect a murder to which
one has been an eye-witness, than to recall the exact date on which
it happened.

The garrison of Nimes was composed of one battalion of the 13th
Regiment of the line, and another battalion of the 79th Regiment,
which not being up to its full war-strength had been sent to Nimes to
complete its numbers by enlistment.  But after the battle of Waterloo
the citizens had tried to induce the soldiers to desert, so that of
the two battalions, even counting the officers, only about two
hundred men remained.

When the news of the proclamation of Napoleon II reached Nimes,
Brigadier-General Malmont, commandant of the department, had him
proclaimed in the city without any disturbance being caused thereby.
It was not until some days later that a report began to be circulated
that a royal army was gathering at Beaucaire, and that the populace
would take advantage of its arrival to indulge in excesses.  In the
face of this two-fold danger, General Malmont had ordered the regular
troops, and a part of the National Guard of the Hundred Days, to be
drawn up under arms in the rear of the barracks upon an eminence on
which he had mounted five pieces of ordnance.  This disposition was
maintained for two days and a night, but as the populace remained
quiet, the troops returned to the barracks and the Guards to their
homes.

But on Monday a concourse of people, who had heard that the army from
Beaucaire would arrive the next day, made a hostile demonstration
before the barracks, demanding with shouts and threats that the five
cannons should be handed over to them.  The general and the officers
who were quartered in the town, hearing of the tumult, repaired at
once to the barracks, but soon came out again, and approaching the
crowd tried to persuade it to disperse, to which the only answer they
received was a shower of bullets.  Convinced by this, as he was well
acquainted with the character of the people with whom he had to deal,
that the struggle had begun in earnest and must be fought out to the
bitter end, the general retreated with his officers, step by step, to
the barracks, and having got inside the gates, closed and bolted
them.

He then decided that it was his duty to repulse force by force, for
everyone was determined to defend, at no matter what cost, a position
which, from the first moment of revolt, was fraught with such peril.
So, without waiting for orders, the soldiers, seeing that some of
their windows had been broken by shots from without, returned the
fire, and, being better marksmen than the townspeople, soon laid many
low.  Upon this the alarmed crowd retired out of musket range, and
entrenched themselves in some neighbouring houses.

About nine o'clock in the evening, a man bearing something resembling
a white flag approached the walls and asked to speak to the general.
He brought a message inquiring on what terms the troops would consent
to evacuate Nimes.  The general sent back word that the conditions
were, that the troops should be allowed to march out fully armed and
with ail their baggage; the five guns alone would be left behind.
When the forces reached a certain valley outside the city they would
halt, that the men might be supplied with means sufficient to enable
them either to rejoin the regiments to which they belonged, or to
return to their own homes.

At two o'clock A. M. the same envoy returned, and announced to the
general that the conditions had been accepted with one alteration,
which was that the troops, before marching out, should lay down their
arms.  The messenger also intimated that if the offer he had brought
were not quickly accepted--say within two hours--the time for
capitulation would have gone by, and that he would not be answerable
for what the people might then do in their fury.  The general
accepted the conditions as amended, and the envoy disappeared.

When the troops heard of the agreement, that they should be disarmed
before being allowed to leave the town, their first impulse was to
refuse to lay down their weapons before a rabble which had run away
from a few musket shots; but the general succeeded in soothing their
sense of humiliation and winning their consent by representing to
them that there could be nothing dishonourable in an action which
prevented the children of a common fatherland from shedding each
other's blood.

The gendarmerie, according to one article of the treaty, were to
close in at, the rear of the evacuating column; and thus hinder the
populace from molesting the troops of which it was composed.  This
was the only concession obtained in return for the abandoned arms,
and the farce in question was already drawn up in field order,
apparently waiting to escort the troops out of the city.

At four o'clock P.M. the troops got ready, each company stacking its
arms in the courtyard before: marching out; but hardly had forty or
fifty men passed the gates than fire was opened on them at such close
range that half of them were killed or disabled at the first volley.
Upon this, those who were still within the walls closed the courtyard
gates, thus cutting off all chance of retreat from their comrades.
In the event; however, it turned out that several of the latter
contrived to escape with their lives and that they lost nothing
through being prevented from returning; for as soon as the mob saw
that ten or twelve of their victims had slipped through their hands
they made a furious attack on the barracks, burst in the gates, and
scaled the walls with such rapidity, that the soldiers had no time to
repossess themselves of their muskets, and even had they succeeded in
seizing them they would have been of little use, as ammunition was
totally wanting.  The barracks being thus carried by assault, a
horrible massacre ensued, which lasted for three hours.  Some of the
wretched men, being hunted from room to room, jumped out of the first
window they could reach, without stopping to measure its height from
the ground, and were either impaled on the bayonets held in readiness
below, or, falling on the pavement, broke their limbs and were
pitilessly despatched.

The gendarmes, who had really been called out to protect the retreat
of the garrison, seemed to imagine they were there to witness a
judicial execution, and stood immovable and impassive while these
horrid deeds went on before their eyes.  But the penalty of this
indifference was swiftly exacted, for as soon as the soldiers were
all done with, the mob, finding their thirst for blood still
unslacked, turned on the gendarmes, the greater number of whom were
wounded, while all lost their horses, and some their lives.

The populace was still engaged at its bloody task when news came that
the army from Beaucaire was within sight of the town, and the
murderers, hastening to despatch some of the wounded who still showed
signs of life, went forth to meet the long expected reinforcements.

Only those who saw the advancing army with their own eyes can form
any idea of its condition and appearance, the first corps excepted.
This corps was commanded by M. de Barre, who had put himself at its
head with the noble purpose of preventing, as far as he could,
massacre and pillage.  In this he was seconded by the officers under
him, who were actuated by the same philanthropic motives as their
general in identifying themselves with the corps.  Owing to their
exertions, the men advanced in fairly regular order, and good
discipline was maintained.  All the men carried muskets.

But the first corps was only a kind of vanguard to the second, which
was the real army, and a wonderful thing to see and hear.  Never were
brought together before or since so many different kinds of howl, so
many threats of death, so many rags; so many odd weapons, from the
matchlock of the time of the Michelade to the steel-tipped goad of
the bullock drovers of La Camargue, so that when the Nimes mob; which
in all conscience was howling and ragged enough, rushed out to offer
a brotherly welcome to the strangers, its first feeling was one of
astonishment and dismay as it caught sight of the motley crew which
held out to it the right hand of fellowship.

The new-comers soon showed that it was through necessity and not
choice that their outer man presented such a disreputable appearance;
for they were hardly well within the gates before demanding that the
houses of the members of the old Protestant National Guard should be
pointed out to them.

This being done, they promptly proceeded to exact from each household
a musket, a coat, a complete kit, or a sum of money, according to
their humour, so that before evening those who had arrived naked and
penniless were provided with complete uniforms and had money in their
pockets.  These exactions were levied under the name of a
contribution, but before the day was ended naked and undisguised
pillage began.

Someone asserted that during the assault on the barracks a certain
individual had fired out of a certain house on the assailants.  The
indignant people now rushed to the house indicated, and soon left
nothing of it in existence but its walls.  A little later it was
clearly proved that the individual accused was quite innocent of the
crime laid to his charge.

The house of a rich merchant lay in the path of the advancing army.
A cry arose that the owner was a Bonapartist, and nothing more was
needed.  The house was broken into and pillaged, and the furniture
thrown out of the windows.

Two days later it turned out that not only was the merchant no
Bonapartist, but that his son had been one of those who had
accompanied the Duc d'Angouleme to Cette when he left the country.
The pillagers excused themselves by saying they had been misled by a
resemblance between two names, and this excuse, as far as appears,
was accepted as valid by the authorities.

It was not long before the populace of Nimes began to think they
might as well follow the example set them by their brothers from
Beaucaire.  In twenty-four hours free companies were formed, headed
by Trestaillons, Trupheny, Graffan, and Morinet.  These bands
arrogated to themselves the title of National Guard, and then what
took place at Marseilles in the excitement of the moment was repeated
at Nimes with deliberation and method, inspired by hate and the
desire of vengeance.  A revolt broke out which followed the ordinary
course: first pillage, then fire, then murder, laid waste the city.

M. V_____'s house, which stood in the middle of the town, was sacked
and then burnt to the ground, without a hand being raised to prevent
the crime.

M. T_____'s house, on the road to Montpellier, was sacked and wrecked
and a bonfire made of the furniture, round which the crowd danced; as
if it had been an occasion of public rejoicing.  Then cries were
raised for the proprietor, that he might be killed, and as he could
not be found the baffled fury of the mob vented itself on the dead.
A child three months buried was dragged from its grave, drawn by the
feet through the sewers and wayside puddles, and then flung on a
dung-heap; and, strange to say, while incendiarism and sacrilege thus
ran riot, the mayor of the place slept so sound that when he awoke he
was "quite astonished," to use his own expression, to hear what had
taken place during the night.

This expedition completed, the same company which had brought this
expedition to a successful issue next turned their attention to a
small country house occupied by a widow, whom I had often begged to
take refuge with us.  But, secure in her insignificance, she had
always declined our offers, preferring to live solitary and retired
in her own home.  But the freebooters sought her out, burst in her
doors, drove her away with blows and insults, destroyed her house and
burnt her furniture.  They then proceeded to the vault in which lay
the remains of her family, dragged them out of their coffins and
scattered them about the fields.  The next day the poor
woman-ventured back, collected the desecrated remains with pious
care, and replaced them in the vault.  But this was counted to her as
a crime; the company returned, once more cast forth the contents of
the coffins, and threatened to kill her should she dare to touch them
again.  She was often seen in the days that followed shedding bitter
tears and watching over the sacred relics as they lay exposed on the
ground.

The name of this widow was Pepin, and the scene of the sacrilege was
a small enclosure on the hill of the Moulins-a-Vent.

Meantime the people in the Faubourg des Bourgades had invented a new
sort of game, or rather, had resolved to vary the serious business of
the drama that was being enacted by the introduction of comic scenes.
They had possessed themselves of a number of beetles such as
washerwomen use, and hammered in long nails, the points of which
projected an inch on the other side in the form of a fleur-de-lis.
Every Protestant who fell into their hands, no matter what his age or
rank, was stamped with the bloody emblem, serious wounds being
inflicted in many cases.

Murders were now becoming common.  Amongst other names of victims
mentioned were Loriol, Bigot, Dumas, Lhermet, Heritier, Domaison,
Combe, Clairon, Begomet, Poujas, Imbert, Vigal, Pourchet, Vignole.
Details more or less shocking came to light as to the manner in which
the murderers went to work.  A man called Dalbos was in the custody
of two armed men; some others came to consult with them.  Dalbos
appealed for mercy to the new-comers.  It was granted, but as he
turned to go he was shot dead.  Another of the name of Rambert tried
to escape by disguising himself as a woman, but was recognised and
shot down a few yards outside his own door.  A gunner called Saussine
was walking in all security along the road to Uzes, pipe in mouth,
when he was met by five men belonging to Trestaillon's company, who
surrounded him and stabbed him to the heart with their knives.  The
elder of two brothers named Chivas ran across some fields to take
shelter in a country house called Rouviere, which, unknown to him,
had been occupied by some of the new National Guard.  These met him
on the threshold and shot him dead.

Rant was seized in his own house and shot.  Clos was met by a
company, and seeing Trestaillons, with whom he had always been
friends, in its ranks, he went up to him and held out his hand;
whereupon Trestaillons drew a pistol from his belt and blew his
brains out.  Calandre being chased down the rue des Soeurs-Grises,
sought shelter in a tavern, but was forced to come out, and was
killed with sabres.  Courbet was sent to prison under the escort of
some men, but these changed their minds on the way as to his
punishment, halted, and shot him dead in the middle of the street.

A wine merchant called Cabanot, who was flying from Trestaillons, ran
into a house in which there was a venerable priest called Cure
Bonhomme.  When the cut-throat rushed in, all covered with blood, the
priest advanced and stopped him, crying:

"What will happen, unhappy man, when you come to the confessional
with blood-stained hands?"

"Pooh!" replied Trestaillons, "you must put on your wide gown; the
sleeves are large enough to let everything pass."

To the short account given above of so many murders I will add the
narrative of one to which I was an eye-witness, and which made the
most terrible impression on me of, anything in my experience.

It was midnight.  I was working beside my wife's bed; she was just
becoming drowsy, when a noise in the distance caught our attention.
It gradually became more distinct, and drums began to beat the
'generale' in every direction.  Hiding my own alarm for fear of
increasing hers, I answered my wife, who was asking what new thing
was about to happen, that it was probably troops marching in or out
of garrison.  But soon reports of firearms, accompanied by an uproar
with which we were so familiar that we could no longer mistake its
meaning, were heard outside.  Opening my window, I heard
bloodcurdling imprecations, mixed with cries of "Long live the king!"
going on.  Not being able to remain any longer in this uncertainty, I
woke a captain who lived in the same house.  He rose, took his arms,
and we went out together, directing our course towards the point
whence the shouts seemed to come.  The moon shone so bright that we
could see everything almost as distinctly as in broad daylight.

A concourse of people was hurrying towards the Cours yelling like
madmen; the greater number of them, half naked, armed with muskets,
swords, knives, and clubs, and swearing to exterminate everything,
waved their weapons above the heads of men who had evidently been
torn from their houses and brought to the square to be put to death.
The rest of the crowd had, like ourselves, been drawn thither by
curiosity, and were asking what was going on.  "Murder is abroad,"
was the answer; "several people have been killed in the environs, and
the patrol has been fired on."  While this questioning was going on
the noise continued to increase.  As I had really no business to be
on a spot where such things were going on, and feeling that my place
was at my wife's side, to reassure her for the present and to watch
over her should the rioters come our way, I said good-bye to the
captain, who went on to the barracks, and took the road back to the
suburb in which I lived.

I was not more than fifty steps from our house when I heard loud
talking behind me, and, turning, saw gun barrels glittering in the
moonlight.  As the speakers seemed to be rapidly approaching me, I
kept close in the shadow of the houses till I reached my own door,
which I laid softly to behind me, leaving myself a chink by which I
could peep out and watch the movements of the group which was drawing
near.  Suddenly I felt something touch my hand; it was a great
Corsican dog, which was turned loose at night, and was so fierce that
it was a great protection to our house.  I felt glad to have it at my
side, for in case of a struggle it would be no despicable ally.

Those approaching turned out to be three armed men leading a fourth,
disarmed and a prisoner.  They all stopped just opposite my door,
which I gently closed and locked, but as I still wished to see what
they were about, I slipped into the garden, which lay towards the
street, still followed by my dog.  Contrary to his habit, and as if
he understood the danger, he gave a low whine instead of his usual
savage growl.  I climbed into a fig tree the branches of which
overhung the street, and, hidden by the leaves, and resting my hands
on the top of the wall, I leaned far enough forward to see what the
men were about.

They were still on the same spot, but there was a change in their
positions.  The prisoner was now kneeling with clasped hands before
the cut-throats, begging for his life for the sake of his wife and
children, in heartrending accents, to which his executioners replied
in mocking tones, "We have got you at last into our hands, have we?
You dog of a Bonapartist, why do you not call on your emperor to come
and help you out of this scrape?" The unfortunate man's entreaties
became more pitiful and their mocking replies more pitiless.  They
levelled their muskets at him several times, and then lowered them,
saying; "Devil take it, we won't shoot yet; let us give him time to
see death coming," till at last the poor wretch, seeing there was no
hope of mercy, begged to be put out of his misery.

Drops of sweat stood on my forehead.  I felt my pockets to see if I
had nothing on me which I could use as a weapon, but I had not even a
knife.  I looked at my dog; he was lying flat at the foot of the
tree, and appeared to be a prey to the most abject terror.  The
prisoner continued his supplications, and the assassins their threats
and mockery.  I climbed quietly down out of the fig tree, intending
to fetch my pistols.  My dog followed me with his eyes, which seemed
to be the only living things about him.  Just as my foot touched the
ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and
prolonged howl.  Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could
be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out.  The
poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the
assassins were reloading their muskets as they walked away.

Being anxious to see if it was too late to help the man whom I had
not been able to save, I went out into the street and bent over him.
He was bloody, disfigured, dying, but was yet alive, uttering dismal
groans.  I tried to lift him up, but soon saw that the wounds which
he had received from bullets fired at close range were both mortal,
one being in the head, and the other in the loins.  Just then a
patrol, of the National Guard turned round the corner of the street.
This, instead of being a relief, awoke me to a sense of my danger,
and feeling I could do nothing for the wounded man, for the death
rattle had already begun, I entered my house, half shut the door, and
listened.

"Qui vive?" asked the corporal.

"Idiot!" said someone else, "to ask 'Qui vive?' of a dead man!"

"He is not dead," said a third voice; "listen to him singing"; and
indeed the poor fellow in his agony was giving utterance to dreadful
groans.

"Someone has tickled him well," said a fourth, "but what does it
matter?  We had better finish the job."

Five or six musket shots followed, and the groans ceased.

The name of the man who had just expired was Louis Lichaire; it was
not against him, but against his nephew, that the assassins had had a
grudge, but finding the nephew out when they burst into the house,
and a victim being indispensable, they had torn the uncle from the
arms of his wife, and, dragging him towards the citadel, had killed
him as I have just related.

Very early next morning I sent to three commissioners of police, one
after the other, for permission to have the corpse carried to the
hospital, but these gentlemen were either not up or had already gone
out, so that it was not until eleven o'clock and after repeated
applications that they condescended to give me the needed
authorisation.

Thanks to this delay, the whole town came to see the body of the
unfortunate man.  Indeed, the day which followed a massacre was
always kept as a holiday, everyone leaving his work undone and coming
out to stare at the slaughtered victims.  In this case, a man wishing
to amuse the crowd took his pipe out of his mouth and put it between
the teeth of the corpse--a joke which had a marvellous success, those
present shrieking with laughter.

Many murders had been committed during the night; the companies had
scoured the streets singing some doggerel, which one of the bloody
wretches, being in poetic vein, had composed, the chorus of which
was--,

    "Our work's well done,
     We spare none!"

Seventeen fatal outrages were committed, and yet neither the reports
of the firearms nor the cries of the victims broke the peaceful
slumbers of M, le Prefet and M. le Commissaire General de la Police.
But if the civil authorities slept, General Lagarde, who had shortly
before come to town to take command of the city in the name of the
king, was awake.  He had sprung from his bed at the first shot,
dressed himself, and made a round of the posts; then sure that
everything was in order, he had formed patrols of chasseurs, and had
himself, accompanied by two officers only, gone wherever he heard
cries for help.  But in spite of the strictness of his orders the
small number of troops at his disposition delayed the success of his
efforts, and it was not until three o'clock in the morning that he
succeeded in securing Trestaillons.  When this man was taken he was
dressed as usual in the uniform of the National Guard, with a cocked
hat and captain's epaulets.  General Lagarde ordered the gens d'armes
who made the capture to deprive him of his sword and carbine, but it
was only after a long struggle that they could carry out this order,
for Trestaillons protested that he would only give up his carbine
with his life.  However, he was at last obliged to yield to numbers,
and when disarmed was removed to the barracks; but as there could be
no peace in the town as long as he was in it, the general sent him to
the citadel of Montpellier next morning before it was light.

The disorders did not, however, cease at once.  At eight o'clock A.M.
they were still going on, the mob seeming to be animated by the
spirit of Trestaillons, for while the soldiers were occupied in a
distant quarter of the town a score of men broke into the house of a
certain Scipion Chabrier, who had remained hidden from his enemies
for a long time, but who had lately returned home on the strength of
the proclamations published by General Lagarde when he assumed the
position of commandant of the town.  He had indeed been sure that the
disturbances in Nimes were over, when they burst out with redoubled
fury on the 16th of October; on the morning of the 17th he was
working quietly at home at his trade of a silk weaver, when, alarmed
by the shouts of a parcel of cut-throats outside his house, he tried
to escape.  He succeeded in reaching the "Coupe d'Or," but the
ruffians followed him, and the first who came up thrust him through
the thigh with his bayonet.  In consequence of this wound he fell
from top to bottom of the staircase, was seized and dragged to the
stables, where the assassins left him for dead, with seven wounds in
his body.

This was, however, the only murder committed that day in the town,
thanks to the vigilance and courage of General Lagarde.

The next day a considerable crowd gathered, and a noisy deputation
went to General Lagarde's quarters and insolently demanded that
Trestaillons should be set at liberty.  The general ordered them to
disperse, but no attention was paid to this command, whereupon he
ordered his soldiers to charge, and in a moment force accomplished
what long-continued persuasion had failed to effect.  Several of the
ringleaders were arrested and taken to prison.

Thus, as we shall see, the struggle assumed a new phase: resistance
to the royal power was made in the name of the royal power, and both
those who broke or those who tried to maintain the public peace used
the same cry, "Long live the king!"

The firm attitude assumed by General Lagarde restored Nimes to a
state of superficial peace, beneath which, however, the old enmities
were fermenting.  An occult power, which betrayed itself by a kind of
passive resistance, neutralised the effect of the measures taken by
the military commandant.  He soon became cognisant of the fact that
the essence of this sanguinary political strife was an hereditary
religious animosity, and in order to strike a last blow at this, he
resolved, after having received permission from the king, to grant
the general request of the Protestants by reopening their places of
worship, which had been closed for more than four months, and
allowing the public exercise of the Protestant religion, which had
been entirely suspended in the city for the same length of time.

Formerly there had been six Protestant pastors resident in Nimes, but
four of them, had fled; the two who remained were MM. Juillerat and
Olivier Desmonts, the first a young man, twenty-eight years of age,
the second an old man of seventy.

The entire weight of the ministry had fallen during this period of
proscription on M. Juillerat, who had accepted the task and
religiously fulfilled it.  It seemed as if a special providence had
miraculously protected him in the midst of the many perils which
beset his path.  Although the other pastor, M. Desmonts, was
president of the Consistory, his life was in much less danger; for,
first, he had reached an age which almost everywhere commands
respect, and then he had a son who was a lieutenant in, one of the
royal corps levied at Beaucaire, who protected him by his name when
he could not do so by his presence.  M. Desmonts had therefore little
cause for anxiety as to his safety either in the streets of Nimes or
on the road between that and his country house.

But, as we have said, it was not so with M. Juillerat.  Being young
and active, and having an unfaltering trust in God, on him alone
devolved all the sacred duties of his office, from the visitation of
the sick and dying to the baptism of the newly born.  These latter
were often brought to him at night to be baptized, and he consented,
though unwillingly, to make this concession, feeling that if he
insisted on the performance of the rite by day he would compromise
not only his own safety but that of others.  In all that concerned
him personally, such as consoling the dying or caring for the
wounded, he acted quite openly, and no danger that he encountered on
his way ever caused him to flinch from the path of duty.

One day, as M. Juillerat was passing through the rue des Barquettes
on his way to the prefecture to transact some business connected with
his ministry, he saw several men lying in wait in a blind alley by
which he had to pass.  They had their guns pointed at him.  He
continued his way with tranquil step and such an air of resignation
that the assassins were overawed, and lowered their weapons as he
approached, without firing a single shot.  When M. Juillerat reached
the prefecture, thinking that the prefect ought to be aware of
everything connected with the public order, he related this incident
to M. d'Arbaud-Jouques, but the latter did not think the affair of
enough importance to require any investigation.

It was, as will be seen, a difficult enterprise to open once again
the Protestant places of worship, which had been so long closed, in
present circumstances, and in face of the fact that the civil
authorities regarded such a step with disfavour, but General Lagarde
was one of those determined characters who always act up to their
convictions.  Moreover, to prepare people's minds for this stroke of
religious policy, he relied on the help of the Duc d'Angouleme, who
in the course of a tour through the South was almost immediately
expected at Nimes.

On the 5th of November the prince made his entry into the city, and
having read the reports of the general to the King Louis XVIII, and
having received positive injunctions from his uncle to pacify the
unhappy provinces which he was about to visit, he arrived full of the
desire to displays whether he felt it or not, a perfect impartiality;
so when the delegates from the Consistory were presented to him, not
only did he receive them most graciously, but he was the first to
speak of the interests of their faith, assuring them that it was only
a few days since he had learned with much regret that their religious
services had been; suspended since the 16th of July.  The delegates
replied that in such a time of agitation the closing of their places
of worship was, a measure of prudence which they had felt ought to be
borne, and which had been borne, with resignation.  The prince
expressed his approval of this attitude with regard to the past, but
said that his presence was a guarantee for the future, and that on
Thursday the 9th inst. the two meeting-houses should be reopened and
restored to their proper use.  The Protestants were alarmed at,
having a favour accorded to them which was much more than they would
have dared to ask and for which they were hardly prepared.  But the
prince reassured them by saying that all needful measures would be
taken to provide against any breach of the public peace, and at the
same time invited M. Desmonts, president, and M. Roland-Lacoste,
member of the Consistory, to dine with him.

The next deputation to arrive was a Catholic one, and its object was
to ask that Trestaillons might be set at liberty.  The prince was so
indignant at this request that his only answer was to turn his back
on those who proffered it.

The next day the duke, accompanied by General Lagarde, left for
Montpellier; and as it was on the latter that the Protestants placed
their sole reliance for the maintenance of those rights guaranteed
for the future by the word of the prince, they hesitated to take any
new step in his absence, and let the 9th of November go by without
attempting to resume public worship, preferring to wait for the
return of their protector, which took place on Saturday evening the
11th of November.

When the general got back, his first thought was to ask if the
commands of the prince had been carried out, and when he heard that
they had not, without waiting to hear a word in justification of the
delay, he sent a positive order to the president of the Consistory to
open both places of worship the next morning.

Upon this, the president carrying self-abnegation and prudence to
their extreme limits, went to the general's quarters, and having
warmly thanked him, laid before him the dangers to which he would
expose himself by running counter to the opinions of those who had
had their own way in the city for the last four months.  But General
Lagarde brushed all these considerations aside: he had received an
order from the prince, and to a man of his military cast of mind no
course was open but to carry that order out.

Nevertheless, the president again expressed his doubts and fears.

"I will answer with my head," said the general, "that nothing
happens."  Still the president counselled prudence, asking that only
one place of worship at first be opened, and to this the general gave
his consent.

This continued resistance to the re-establishment of public worship
on the part of those who most eagerly desired it enabled the general
at last to realise the extent of the danger which would be incurred
by the carrying out of this measure, and he at once took all possible
precautions.  Under the pretext that he was going to-have a general
review, he brought the entire civil and military forces of Nimes
under his authority, determined, if necessary, to use the one to
suppress the other.  As early as eight o'clock in the morning a guard
of gens d'armes was stationed at the doors of the meeting-house,
while other members of the same force took up their positions in the
adjacent streets.  On the other hand, the Consistory had decided that
the doors were to be opened an hour sooner than usual, that the bells
were not to be rung, and that the organ should be silent.

These precautions had both a good and a bad side.  The gens d'armes
at the door of the meetinghouse gave if not a promise of security at
least a promise of support, but they showed to the citizens of the
other party what was about to be done; so before nine o'clock groups
of Catholics began to form, and as it happened to be Sunday the
inhabitants of the neighbouring villages arriving constantly by twos
and threes soon united these groups into a little army.  Thus the
streets leading to the church being thronged, the Protestants who
pushed their way through were greeted with insulting remarks, and
even the president of the Consistory, whose white, hair and dignified
expression had no effect upon the mob, heard the people round him
saying, "These brigands of Protestants are going again to their
temple, but we shall soon give them enough of it."

The anger of the populace soon grows hot; between the first bubble
and the boiling-point the interval is short.  Threats spoken in a low
voice were soon succeeded by noisy objurgations.  Women, children,
and men brake out into yells, "Down with the broilers!" (for this was
one of the names by which the Protestants were designated).  "Down
with the broilers!  We do not want to see them using our churches:
let them give us back our churches; let them give us back our
churches, and go to the desert.  Out with them!  Out with them! To
the desert!  To the desert!"

As the crowd did not go beyond words, however insulting, and as the
Protestants were long inured to much worse things, they plodded along
to their meeting-house, humble and silent, and went in, undeterred by
the displeasure they aroused, whereupon the service commenced.

But some Catholics went in with them, and soon the same shouts which
had been heard without were heard also within.  The general, however,
was on the alert, and as soon as the shouts arose inside the gens
d'armes entered the church and arrested those who had caused the
disturbance.  The crowds tried to rescue them on their way to prison,
but the general appeared at the head of imposing forces, at the sight
of which they desisted.  An apparent cam succeeded the tumult, and
the public worship went on without further interruption.

The general, misled by appearances, went off himself to attend a
military mass, and at eleven o'clock returned to his quarters for
lunch.  His absence was immediately perceived and taken advantage of.
In the: twinkling of an eye, the crowds, which had dispersed,
gathered together in even greater numbers and the Protestants, seeing
themselves once more in danger, shut the doors from within, while the
gens d'armes guarded them without.  The populace pressed so closely
round the gens d'armes, and assumed such a threatening attitude, that
fearing he and his men would not be able to hold their own in such a
throng, the captain ordered M. Delbose, one of his officers, to ride
off and warn the general.  He forced his way through the crowd with
great trouble, and went off at a gallop.  On seeing this, the people
felt there was no time to be lost; they knew of what kind the general
was, and that he would be on the spot in a quarter of an hour.  A
large crowd is invincible through its numbers; it has only to press
forward, and everything gives way, men, wood, iron.  At this moment
the crowd, swayed by a common impulse, swept forward, the gens
d'armes and their horses were crushed against the wall, doors gave
way, and instantly with a tremendous roar a living wave flooded the
church.  Cries of terror and frightful imprecations were heard on all
sides, everyone made a weapon of whatever came to hand, chairs and
benches were hurled about, the disorder was at its height; it seemed
as if the days of the Michelade and the Bagarre were about to return,
when suddenly the news of a terrible event was spread abroad, and
assailants and assailed paused in horror.  General Lagarde had just
been assassinated.

As the crowd had foreseen, no sooner did the messenger deliver his
message than the general sprang on his horse, and, being too brave,
or perhaps too scornful, to fear such foes, he waited for no escort,
but, accompanied by two or three officers, set off at full gallop
towards the scene of the tumult.  He had passed through the narrow
streets which led to the meeting-house by pushing the crowd aside
with his horse's chest, when, just as he got out into the open
square, a young man named Boisson, a sergeant in the Nimes National
Guard, came up and seemed to wish to speak to him.  The general
seeing a man in uniform, bent down without a thought of danger to
listen to what he had to say, whereupon Boisson drew a pistol out and
fired at him.  The ball broke the collar-bone and lodged in the neck
behind the carotid artery, and the general fell from his horse.

The news of this crime had a strange and unexpected effect; however
excited and frenzied the crowd was, it instantly realised the
consequences of this act.  It was no longer like the murder of
Marshal Brune at Avignon or General Ramel at Toulouse, an act of
vengeance on a favourite of Napoleon, but open and armed rebellion
against the king.  It was not a simple murder, it was high treason.

A feeling of the utmost terror spread through the town; only a few
fanatics went on howling in the church, which the Protestants,
fearing still greater disasters, had by this time resolved to
abandon.  The first to come out was President Olivier Desmonts,
accompanied by M. Vallongues, who had only just arrived in the city,
but who had immediately hurried to the spot at the call of duty.

M. Juillerat, his two children in his arms, walked behind them,
followed by all the other worshippers.  At first the crowd,
threatening and ireful, hooted and threw stones at them, but at the
voice of the mayor and the dignified aspect of the president they
allowed them to pass.  During this strange retreat over eighty
Protestants were wounded, but not fatally, except a young girl called
Jeannette Cornilliere, who had been so beaten and ill-used that she
died of her injuries a few days later.

In spite of the momentary slackening of energy which followed the
assassination of General Lagarde, the Catholics did not remain long
in a state of total inaction.  During the rest of the day the excited
populace seemed as if shaken by an earthquake.  About six o'clock in
the evening, some of the most desperate characters in the town
possessed themselves of a hatchet, and, taking their way to the
Protestant church, smashed the doors, tore the pastors' gowns, rifled
the poor-box, and pulled the books to pieces.  A detachment of troops
arrived just in time to prevent their setting the building on fire.

The next day passed more quietly.  This time the disorders were of
too important a nature for the prefect to ignore, as he had ignored
so many bloody acts in the past; so in due time a full report was
laid before the king.  It became know the same evening that General
Lagarde was still living, and that those around him hoped that the
wound would not prove mortal.  Dr. Delpech, who had been summoned
from Montpellier, had succeeded in extracting the bullet, and though
he spoke no word of hope, he did not expressly declare that the case
was hopeless.

Two days later everything in the town had assumed its ordinary
aspect, and on the 21st of November the king issued the following
edict:--

"Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and of Navarre,

"To all those to whom these presents shall come, greeting:

"An abominable crime has cast a stain on Our city of Nimes.
A seditious mob has dared to oppose the opening of the Protestant
place of worship, in contempt of the constitutional charter, which
while it recognises the Catholic religion as the religion of the
State, guarantees to the other religious bodies protection and
freedom of worship.  Our military commandant, whilst trying to
disperse these crowds by gentle means before having resort to force,
was shot down, and his assassin has till now successfully evaded the
arm of the law.  If such an outrage were to remain unpunished, the
maintenance of good government and public order would be impossible,
and Our ministers would be guilty of neglecting the law.

"Wherefore We have ordered and do order as follows:

"Art. 1.  Proceedings shall be commenced without delay by Our
attorney, and the attorney-general, against the perpetrator of the
murderous attack on the person of Sieur Lagarde, and against the
authors, instigators, and accomplices of the insurrection which took
place in the city of Nimes on the 12th of the present month.

"Art. 2.  A sufficient number of troops shall be quartered in the
said city, and shall remain there at the cost of the inhabitants,
until the assassin and his accomplices have been produced before a
court of law.

"Art. 3.  All those citizens whose names are not entitled to be on
the roll of the National Guard shall be disarmed.

"Our Keeper of the Seals, Our Minister of War, Our Minister of the
Interior, and Our Minister of Police, are entrusted with the
execution of this edict.

"Given at Paris at Our Castle of the Tuileries on the 2lst of
November in the year of grace 1815, and of Our reign the 21st.

"(Signed) Louis"


Boissin was acquitted.

This was the last crime committed in the South, and it led
fortunately to no reprisals.

Three months after the murderous attempt to which he had so nearly
fallen a victim, General Lagarde left Nimes with the rank of
ambassador, and was succeeded as prefect by M. d'Argont.

During the firm, just, and independent administration of the latter,
the disarming of the citizens decreed by the royal edict was carried
out without bloodshed.

Through his influence, MM. Chabot-Latour, Saint-Aulaire, and Lascour
were elected to the Chamber of Deputies in place of MM. De Calviere,
De Vogue, and De Trinquelade.

And down to the present time the name of M. d'Argont is held in
veneration at Nimes, as if he had only quitted the city yesterday.




End of Project Gutenberg's Etext Massacres of the South, by Dumas, Pere






MARY STUART

1587

by Alexandre Dumas, Pere




CHAPTER I

Some royal names are predestined to misfortune: in France, there is
the name "Henry".  Henry I was poisoned, Henry II was killed in a
tournament, Henry III and Henry IV were assassinated.  As to Henry V,
for whom the past is so fatal already, God alone knows what the
future has in store for him.

In Scotland, the unlucky name is "Stuart".  Robert I, founder of the
race, died at twenty-eight of a lingering illness.  Robert II, the
most fortunate of the family, was obliged to pass a part of his life,
not merely in retirement, but also in the dark, on account of
inflammation of the eyes, which made them blood-red.  Robert III
succumbed to grief, the death of one son and the captivity of other.
James I was stabbed by Graham in the abbey of the Black Monks of
Perth.  James II was killed at the siege of Roxburgh, by a splinter
from a burst cannon.  James III was assassinated by an unknown hand
in a mill, where he had taken refuge during the battle of Sauchie.
James IV, wounded by two arrows and a blow from a halberd, fell
amidst his nobles on the battlefield of Flodden.  James V died of
grief at the loss of his two sons, and of remorse for the execution
of Hamilton.  James VI, destined to unite on his head the two crowns
of Scotland and England, son of a father who had been assassinated,
led a melancholy and timorous existence, between the scaffold of his
mother, Mary Stuart, and that of his son, Charles I.  Charles II
spent a portion of his life in exile.  James II died in it.  The
Chevalier Saint-George, after having been proclaimed King of Scotland
as James VIII, and of England and Ireland as James III, was forced to
flee, without having been able to give his arms even the lustre of a
defeat.  His son, Charles Edward, after the skirmish at Derby and the
battle of Culloden, hunted from mountain to mountain, pursued from
rock to rock, swimming from shore to shore, picked up half naked by a
French vessel, betook himself to Florence to die there, without the
European courts having ever consented to recognise him as a
sovereign.  Finally, his brother, Henry Benedict, the last heir of
the Stuarts, having lived on a pension of three thousand pounds
sterling, granted him by George III, died completely forgotten,
bequeathing to the House of Hanover all the crown jewels which James
II had carried off when he passed over to the Continent in 1688--a
tardy but complete recognition of the legitimacy of the family which
had succeeded his.

In the midst of this unlucky race, Mary Stuart was the favourite of
misfortune.  As Brantome has said of her, "Whoever desires to write
about this illustrious queen of Scotland has, in her, two very, large
subjects, the one her life, the other her death," Brantome had known
her on one of the most mournful occasions of her life--at the moment
when she was quitting France for Scotland.

It was on the 9th of August, 1561, after having lost her mother and
her husband in the same year, that Mary Stuart, Dowager of France and
Queen of Scotland at nineteen, escorted by her uncles, Cardinals
Guise and Lorraine, by the Duke and Duchess of Guise, by the Duc
d'Aumale and M. de Nemours, arrived at Calais, where two galleys were
waiting to take her to Scotland, one commanded by M. de Mevillon and
the other by Captain Albize.  She remained six days in the town.  At
last, on the 15th of the month, after the saddest adieus to her
family, accompanied by Messieurs d'Aumale, d'Elboeuf, and Damville,
with many nobles, among whom were Brantome and Chatelard, she
embarked in M. Mevillon's galley, which was immediately ordered to
put out to sea, which it did with the aid of oars, there not being
sufficient wind to make use of the sails.

Mary Stuart was then in the full bloom of her beauty, beauty even
more brilliant in its mourning garb--a beauty so wonderful that it
shed around her a charm which no one whom she wished to please could
escape, and which was fatal to almost everyone.  About this time,
too, someone made her the subject of a song, which, as even her
rivals confessed, contained no more than the truth.  It was, so it
was said, by M. de Maison-Fleur, a cavalier equally accomplished in
arms and letters: Here it is:--

"In robes of whiteness, lo,
Full sad and mournfully,
Went pacing to and fro
Beauty's divinity;
A shaft in hand she bore
>From Cupid's cruel store,
And he, who fluttered round,
Bore, o'er his blindfold eyes
And o'er his head uncrowned,
A veil of mournful guise,
Whereon the words were wrought:
'You perish or are caught.'"

Yes, at this moment, Mary Stuart, in her deep mourning of white, was
more lovely than ever; for great tears were trickling down her
cheeks, as, weaving a handkerchief, standing on the quarterdeck, she
who was so grieved to set out, bowed farewell to those who were so
grieved to remain.

At last, in half an hour's time, the harbour was left behind; the
vessel was out at sea.  Suddenly, Mary heard loud cries behind her: a
boat coming in under press of sail, through her pilot's ignorance had
struck upon a rock in such a manner that it was split open, and after
having trembled and groaned for a moment like someone wounded, began
to be swallowed up, amid the terrified screams of all the crew.
Mary, horror-stricken, pale, dumb, and motionless, watched her
gradually sink, while her unfortunate crew, as the keel disappeared,
climbed into the yards and shrouds, to delay their death-agony a few
minutes; finally, keel, yards, masts, all were engulfed in the
ocean's gaping jaws.  For a moment there remained some black specks,
which in turn disappeared one after another; then wave followed upon
wave, and the spectators of this horrible tragedy, seeing the sea
calm and solitary as if nothing had happened, asked themselves if it
was not a vision that had appeared to them and vanished.

"Alas!" cried Mary, falling on a seat and leaning both arms an the
vessel's stern, "what a sad omen for such a sad voyage!"  Then, once
more fixing on the receding harbour her eyes, dried for a moment by
terror, and beginning to moisten anew, "Adieu, France!" she murmured,
"adieu, France!" and for five hours she remained thus, weeping and
murmuring, "Adieu, France! adieu, France!"

Darkness fell while she was still lamenting; and then, as the view
was blotted out and she was summoned to supper, "It is indeed now,
dear France," said she, rising, "that I really lose you, since
jealous night heaps mourning upon mourning, casting a black veil
before my sight.  Adieu then, one last time, dear France; for never
shall I see you more."

With these words, she went below, saying that she was the very
opposite of Dido, who, after the departure of AEneas, had done
nothing but look at the waves, while she, Mary, could not take her
eyes off the land.  Then everyone gathered round her to try to divert
and console her.  But she, growing sadder, and not being able to
respond, so overcome was she with tears, could hardly eat; and,
having had a bed got ready on the stern deck, she sent for the
steersman, and ordered him if he still saw land at daybreak, to come
and wake her immediately.  On this point Mary was favoured; for the
wind having dropped, when daybreak came the vessel was still within
sight of France.

It was a great joy when, awakened by the steersman, who had not
forgotten the order he had received, Mary raised herself on her
couch, and through the window that she had had opened, saw once more
the beloved shore.  But at five o'clock in the morning, the wind
having freshened, the vessel rapidly drew farther away, so that soon
the land completely disappeared.  Then Mary fell back upon her bed,
pale as death, murmuring yet once again--"Adieu, France! I shall see
thee no more."

Indeed, the happiest years of her life had just passed away in this
France that she so much regretted.  Born amid the first religious
troubles, near the bedside of her dying father, the cradle mourning
was to stretch for her to the grave, and her stay in France had been
a ray of sunshine in her night.  Slandered from her birth, the report
was so generally spread abroad that she was malformed, and that she
could not live to grow up, that one day her mother, Mary of Guise,
tired of these false rumours, undressed her and showed her naked to
the English ambassador, who had come, on the part of Henry VIII, to
ask her in marriage for the Prince of Wales, himself only five years
old.  Crowned at nine months by Cardinal Beaton, archbishop of St.
Andrews, she was immediately hidden by her mother, who was afraid of
treacherous dealing in the King of England, in Stirling Castle.  Two
years later, not finding even this fortress safe enough, she removed
her to an island in the middle of the Lake of Menteith, where a
priory, the only building in the place, provided an asylum for the
royal child and for four young girls born in the same year as
herself, having like her the sweet name which is an anagram of the
word "aimer," and who, quitting her neither in her good nor in her
evil fortune, were called the "Queen's Marys".  They were Mary
Livingston, Mary Fleming, Mary Seyton, and Mary Beaton.  Mary stayed
in this priory till Parliament, having approved her marriage with the
French dauphin, son of Henry II, she was taken to Dumbarton Castle,
to await the moment of departure.  There she was entrusted to M. de
Breze, sent by Henry II to-fetch her.  Having set out in the French
galleys anchored at the mouth of the Clyde, Mary, after having been
hotly pursued by the English fleet, entered Brest harbour, 15th
August, 1548, one year after the death of Francis!  Besides the
queen's four Marys, the vessels also brought to France three of her
natural brothers, among whom was the Prior of St. Andrews, James
Stuart, who was later to abjure the Catholic faith, and with the
title of Regent, and under the name of the Earl of Murray, to become
so fatal to poor Mary.  From Brest, Mary went to St.  Germain-en-
Laye, where Henry II, who had just ascended the throne, overwhelmed
her with caresses, and then sent her to a convent where the heiresses
of the noblest French houses were brought up.  There Mary's happy
qualities developed.  Born with a woman's heart and a man's head,
Mary not only acquired all the accomplishments which constituted the
education of a future queen, but also that real knowledge which is
the object of the truly learned.

Thus, at fourteen, in the Louvre, before Henry II, Catherine de
Medici, and the whole court, she delivered a discourse in Latin of
her own composition, in which she maintained that it becomes women to
cultivate letters, and that it is unjust and tyrannical to deprive
flowery of their perfumes, by banishing young girls from all but
domestic cares.  One can imagine in what manner a future queen,
sustaining such a thesis, was likely to be welcomed in the most
lettered and pedantic court in Europe.  Between the literature of
Rabelais and Marot verging on their decline, and that of Ronsard and
Montaigne reaching their zenith, Mary became a queen of poetry, only
too happy never to have to wear another crown than that which
Ronsard, Dubellay, Maison-Fleur, arid Brantome placed daily on her
head.  But she was predestined.  In the midst of those fetes which a
waning chivalry was trying to revive came the fatal joust of
Tournelles: Henry II, struck by a splinter of a lance for want of a
visor, slept before his time with his ancestors, and Mary Stuart
ascended the throne of France, where, from mourning for Henry, she
passed to that for her mother, and from mourning for her mother to
that for her husband.  Mary felt this last loss both as woman and as
poet; her heart burst forth into bitter tears and plaintive
harmonies.  Here are some lines that she composed at this time:--

"Into my song of woe,
Sung to a low sad air,
My cruel grief I throw,
For loss beyond compare;
In bitter sighs and tears
Go by my fairest years.

Was ever grief like mine
Imposed by destiny?
Did ever lady pine,
In high estate, like me,
Of whom both heart and eye
Within the coffin lie?

Who, in the tender spring
And blossom of my youth,
Taste all the sorrowing
Of life's extremest ruth,
And take delight in nought
Save in regretful thought.

All that was sweet and gay
Is now a pain to see;
The sunniness of day
Is black as night to me;
All that was my delight
Is hidden from my sight.

My heart and eye, indeed,
One face, one image know,
The which this morrnful weed
On my sad face doth show,
Dyed with the violet's tone
That is the lover's own.

Tormented by my ill,
I go from place to place,
But wander as I will
My woes can nought efface;
My most of bad and good
I find in solitude.

But wheresoe'er I stay,
In meadow or in copse,
Whether at break of day
Or when the twilight drops,
My heart goes sighing on,
Desiring one that's gone.

If sometimes to the skies
My weary gaze I lift,
His gently shining eyes
Look from the cloudy drift,
Or stooping o'er the wave
I see him in the grave.

Or when my bed I seek,
And-sleep begins to steal,
Again I hear him speak,
Again his touch I feel;
In work or leisure, he
Is ever near to me.

No other thing I see,
However fair displayed,
By which my heart will be
A tributary made,
Not having the perfection
Of that, my lost affection.

Here make an end, my verse,
Of this thy sad lament,
Whose burden shall rehearse
Pure love of true intent,
Which separation's stress
Will never render less."


"It was then," says Brantorne, "that it was delightful to see her;
for the whiteness of her countenance and of her veil contended
together; but finally the artificial white yielded, and the snow-like
pallor of her face vanquished the other.  For it was thus," he adds,
"that from the moment she became a widow, I always saw her with her
pale hue, as long as I had the honour of seeing her in France, and
Scotland, where she had to go in eighteen months' time, to her very
great regret, after her widowhood, to pacify her kingdom, greatly
divided by religious troubles.  Alas! she had neither the wish nor
the will for it, and I have often heard her say so, with a fear of
this journey like death; for she preferred a hundred times to dwell
in France as a dowager queen, and to content herself with Touraine
and Poitou for her jointure, than to go and reign over there in her
wild country; but her uncles, at least some of them, not all, advised
her, and even urged her to it, and deeply repented their error."

Mary was obedient, as we have seen, and she began her journey under
such auspices that when she lost sight of land she was like to die.
Then it was that the poetry of her soul found expression in these
famous lines:

"Farewell, delightful land of France,
     My motherland,
     The best beloved!
Foster-nurse of my young years!
Farewell, France, and farewell my happy days!
The ship that separates our loves
Has borne away but half of me;
One part is left thee and is throe,
And I confide it to thy tenderness,
That thou may'st hold in mind the other part."'

[Translator's note.-It has not been found possible to make a rhymed
version of these lines without sacrificing the simplicity which is
their chief charm.]


This part of herself that Mary left in France was the body of the
young king, who had taken with him all poor Mary's happiness into his
tomb.

Mary had but one hope remaining, that the sight of the English fleet
would compel her little squadron to turn back; but she had to fulfil
her destiny.  This same day, a fog, a very unusual occurrence in
summer-time, extended all over the Channel, and caused her to escape
the fleet; for it was such a dense fog that one could not see from
stern to mast.  It lasted the whole of Sunday, the day after the
departure, and did not lift till the following day, Monday, at eight
o'clock in the morning.  The little flotilla, which all this time had
been sailing haphazard, had got among so many reefs that if the fog
had lasted some minutes longer the galley would certainly have
grounded on some rock, and would have perished like the vessel that
had been seen engulfed on leaving port.  But, thanks to the fog's
clearing, the pilot recognised the Scottish coast, and, steering his
four boats with great skill through ail the dangers, on the 20th
August he put in at Leith, where no preparation had been made for the
queen's reception.  Nevertheless, scarcely had she arrived there than
the chief persons of the town met together and came to felicitate
her.  Meanwhile, they hastily collected some wretched nags, with
harness all falling in pieces, to conduct the queen to Edinburgh.

At sight of this, Mary could not help weeping again; for she thought
of the splendid palfreys and hackneys of her French knights and
ladies, and at this first view Scotland appeared to-her in all its
poverty.  Next day it was to appear to her in all its wildness.

After having passed one night at Holyrood Palace, "during which,"
says Brantome, "five to six hundred rascals from the town, instead of
letting her sleep, came to give her a wild morning greeting on
wretched fiddles and little rebecks," she expressed a wish to hear
mass.  Unfortunately, the people of Edinburgh belonged almost
entirely to the Reformed religion; so that, furious at the queen's
giving such a proof of papistry at her first appearance, they entered
the church by force, armed with knives, sticks and stones, with the
intention of putting to death the poor priest, her chaplain.  He left
the altar, and took refuge near the queen, while Mary's brother, the
Prior of St. Andrews, who was more inclined from this time forward to
be a soldier than an ecclesiastic, seized a sword, and, placing
himself between the people and the queen, declared that he would kill
with his own hand the first man who should take another step.  This
firmness, combined with the queen's imposing and dignified air,
checked the zeal of the Reformers.

As we have said, Mary had arrived in the midst of all the heat of the
first religious wars.  A zealous Catholic, like all her family on the
maternal side, she inspired the Huguenots with the gravest fears:
besides, a rumour had got about that Mary, instead of landing at
Leith, as she had been obliged by the fog, was to land at Aberdeen.
There, it was said, she would have found the Earl of Huntly, one of
the peers who had remained loyal to the Catholic faith, and who, next
to the family of Hamilton, was, the nearest and most powerful ally of
the royal house.  Seconded by him and by twenty thousand soldiers
from the north, she would then have marched upon Edinburgh, and have
re-established the Catholic faith throughout Scotland.  Events were
not slow to prove that this accusation was false.

As we have stated, Mary was much attached to the Prior of St.
Andrews, a son of James V and of a noble descendant of the Earls of
Mar, who had been very handsome in her youth, and who, in spite of
the well-known love for her of James V, and the child who had
resulted, had none the less wedded Lord Douglas of Lochleven, by whom
she had had two other sons, the elder named William and the younger
George, who were thus half-brothers of the regent.  Now, scarcely had
she reascended the throne than Mary had restored to the Prior of St.
Andrews the title of Earl of Mar, that of his maternal ancestors, and
as that of the Earl of Murray had lapsed since the death of the
famous Thomas Randolph, Mary, in her sisterly friendship for James
Stuart, hastened to add, this title to those which she had already
bestowed upon him.

But here difficulties and complications arose; for the new Earl of
Murray, with his character, was not a man to content himself with a
barren title, while the estates which were crown property since the
extinction of the male branch of the old earls, had been gradually
encroached upon by powerful neighbours, among whom was the famous
Earl of Huntly, whom we have already mentioned: the result was that,
as the queen judged that in this quarter her orders would probably
encounter opposition, under pretext of visiting her possessions in
the north, she placed herself at the head of a small army, commanded
by her brother, the Earl of Mar and Murray.

The Earl of Huntly was the less duped by the apparent pretext of this
expedition, in that his son, John Cordon, for some abuse of his
powers, had just been condemned to a temporary imprisonment.  He,
notwithstanding, made every possible submission to the queen, sending
messengers in advance to invite-her to rest in his castle; and
following up the messengers in person, to renew his invitation viva
voce.  Unfortunately, at the very moment when he was about to join
the queen, the governor of Inverness, who was entirely devoted to
him, was refusing to allow Mary to enter this castle, which was a
royal one.  It is true that Murray, aware that it does not do to
hesitate in the face of such rebellions, had already had him executed
for high treason.

This new act of firmness showed Huntly that the young queen was not
disposed to allow the Scottish lords a resumption of the almost
sovereign power humbled by her father; so that, in spite of the
extremely kind reception she accorded him, as he learned while in
camp that his son, having escaped from prison, had just put himself
at the head of his vassals, he was afraid that he should be thought,
as doubtless he was, a party to the rising, and he set out the same
night to assume command of his troops, his mind made up, as Mary only
had with her seven to eight thousand men, to risk a battle, giving
out, however, as Buccleuch had done in his attempt to snatch James V
from the hands of the Douglases, that it was not at the queen he was
aiming, but solely at the regent, who kept her under his tutelage and
perverted her good intentions.

Murray, who knew that often the entire peace of a reign depends on
the firmness one displays at its beginning, immediately summoned all
the northern barons whose estates bordered on his, to march against
Huntly.  All obeyed, for the house of Cordon was already so powerful
that each feared it might become still more so; but, however, it was
clear that if there was hatred for the subject there was no great
affection for the queen, and that the greater number came without
fixed intentions and with the idea of being led by circumstances.

The two armies encountered near Aberdeen.  Murray at once posted the
troops he had brought from Edinburgh, and of which he was sure, on
the top of rising ground, and drew up in tiers on the hill slope all
his northern allies.  Huntly advanced resolutely upon them, and
attacked his neighbours the Highlanders, who after a short resistance
retired in disorder.  His men immediately threw away their lances,
and, drawing their swords, crying, "Cordon, Cordon!" pursued the
fugitives, and believed they had already gained the battle, when they
suddenly ran right against the main body of Murray's army, which
remained motionless as a rampart of iron, and which, with its long
lances, had the advantage of its adversaries, who were armed only
with their claymores.  It was then the turn of the Cordons to draw
back, seeing which, the northern clans rallied and returned to the
fight, each soldier having a sprig of heather in his cap that his
comrades might recognise him.  This unexpected movement determined
the day: the Highlanders ran down the hillside like a torrent,
dragging along with them everyone who could have wished to oppose
their passage.  Then Murray seeing that the moment had come for
changing the defeat into a rout, charged with his entire cavalry:
Huntly, who was very stout and very heavily armed, fell and was
crushed beneath the horses' feet; John Cordon, taken prisoner in his
flight, was executed at Aberdeen three days afterwards; finally, his
brother, too young to undergo the same fate at this time, was shut up
in a dungeon and executed later, the day he reached the age of
sixteen.

Mary had been present at the battle, and the calm and courage she
displayed had made a lively impression on her wild defenders, who all
along the road had heard her say that she would have liked to be a
man, to pass her days on horseback, her nights under a tent, to wear
a coat of mail, a helmet, a buckler, and at her side a broadsword.

Mary made her entry into Edinburgh amid general enthusiasm; for this
expedition against the Earl of Huntly, who was a Catholic, had been
very popular among the inhabitants, who had no very clear idea of the
real motives which had caused her to undertake it: They were of the
Reformed faith, the earl was a papist, there was an enemy the less;
that is all they thought about.  Now, therefore; the Scotch, amid
their acclamations, whether viva voce or by written demands,
expressed the wish that their queen, who was without issue by Francis
II, should re-marry: Mary agreed to this, and, yielding to the
prudent advice of those about her, she decided to consult upon this
marriage Elizabeth, whose heir she was, in her title of granddaughter
of Henry VII, in the event of the Queen of England's dying without
posterity.  Unfortunately, she had not always acted with like
circumspection; for at the death of Mary Tudor, known as Bloody.
Mary, she had laid claim to the throne of Henry VIII, and, relying on
the illegitimacy of Elizabeth's birth, had with the dauphin assumed
sovereignty over Scotland, England, and Ireland, and had had coins
struck with this new title, and plate engraved with these new
armorial bearings.

Elizabeth was nine years older than Mary--that is to say, that at
this time she had not yet attained her thirtieth year; she was not
merely her rival as queen, then, but as woman.  As regards education,
she could sustain comparison with advantage; for if she had less
charm of mind, she had more solidity of judgment: versed in politics,
philosophy, history; rhetoric, poetry and music, besides English, her
maternal tongue, she spoke and wrote to perfection Greek, Latin,
French, Italian and Spanish; but while Elizabeth excelled Mary on
this point, in her turn Mary was more beautiful, and above all more
attractive, than her rival.  Elizabeth had, it is true, a majestic
and agreeable appearance, bright quick eyes, a dazzlingly white
complexion; but she had red hair, a large foot,--[Elizabeth bestowed
a pair of her shoes on the University of Oxford; their size would
point to their being those of a man of average stature.]--and a
powerful hand, while Mary, on the contrary, with her beautiful ashy-
fair hair,--[Several historians assert that Mary Stuart had black
hair; but Brantome, who had seen it, since, as we have said, he
accompanied her to Scotland, affirms that it was fair.  And, so
saying, he (the executioner) took off her headdress, in a
contemptuous manner, to display her hair already white, that while
alive, however, she feared not to show, nor yet to twist and frizz as
in the days when it was so beautiful and so fair.]--her noble open
forehead, eyebrows which could be only blamed for being so regularly
arched that they looked as if drawn by a pencil, eyes continually
beaming with the witchery of fire, a nose of perfect Grecian outline,
a mouth so ruby red and gracious that it seemed that, as a flower
opens but to let its perfume escape, so it could not open but to give
passage to gentle words, with a neck white and graceful as a swan's,
hands of alabaster, with a form like a goddess's and a foot like a
child's, Mary was a harmony in which the most ardent enthusiast for
sculptured form could have found nothing to reproach.

This was indeed Mary's great and real crime: one single imperfection
in face or figure, and she would not have died upon the scaffold.
Besides, to Elizabeth, who had never seen her, and who consequently
could only judge by hearsay, this beauty was a great cause of
uneasiness and of jealousy, which she could not even disguise, and
which showed itself unceasingly in eager questions.  One day when she
was chatting with James Melville about his mission to her court,
Mary's offer to be guided by Elizabeth in her choice of a husband,--a
choice which the queen of England had seemed at first to wish to see
fixed on the Earl of Leicester,--she led the Scotch ambassador into a
cabinet, where she showed him several portraits with labels in her
own handwriting: the first was one of the Earl of Leicester.  As this
nobleman was precisely the suitor chosen by Elizabeth, Melville asked
the queen to give it him to show to his mistress; but Elizabeth
refused, saying that it was the only one she had.  Melville then
replied, smiling, that being in possession of the original she might
well part with the copy; but Elizabeth would on no account consent.
This little discussion ended, she showed him the portrait of Mary
Stuart, which she kissed very tenderly, expressing to Melville a
great wish to see his mistress.  "That is very easy, madam," he
replied: "keep your room, on the pretext that you are indisposed, and
set out incognito for Scotland, as King James V set out for France
when he wanted to see Madeleine de Valois, whom he afterwards
married."

"Alas!" replied Elizabeth, "I would like to do so, but it is not so
easy as you think.  Nevertheless, tell your queen that I love her
tenderly, and that I wish we could live more in friendship than we
have done up to the present".  Then passing to a subject which she
seemed to have wanted to broach for a long time, "Melville," she
continued, "tell me frankly, is my sister as beautiful as they say?"

"She has that reputation," replied Melville; "but I cannot give your
Majesty any idea of hex beauty, having no point of comparison."

"I will give you one," the queen said.  "Is she more beautiful than
I?"

"Madam," replied Melville, "you are the most beautiful woman in
England, and Mary Stuart is the most beautiful woman in Scotland."

"Then which of the two is the taller?" asked Elizabeth, who was not
entirely satisfied by this answer, clever as it was.

"My mistress, madam," responded Melville; "I am obliged to confess
it."

"Then she is too tall," Elizabeth said sharply, "for I am tall
enough.  And what are her favourite amusements?" she continued.

"Madam," Melville replied, "hunting, riding, performing on the lute
and the harpischord."

"Is she skilled upon the latter?" Elizabeth inquired.  "Oh yes,
madam," answered Melville; "skilled enough for a queen."

There the conversation stopped; but as Elizabeth was herself an
excellent musician, she commanded Lord Hunsdon to bring Melville to
her at a time when she was at her harpischord, so that he could hear
her without her seeming to have the air of playing for him.  In fact,
the same day, Hunsdon, agreeably to her instructions, led the
ambassador into a gallery separated from the queen's apartment merely
by tapestry, so that his guide having raised it.  Melville at his
leisure could hear Elizabeth, who did not turn round until she had
finished the piece, which, however, she was playing with much skill.
When she saw Melville, she pretended to fly into a passion, and even
wanted to strike him; but her anger calmed down by little and little
at the ambassador's compliments, and ceased altogether when he
admitted that Mary Stuart was not her equal.  But this was not all:
proud of her triumph, Elizabeth desired also that Melville should see
her dance.  Accordingly, she kept back her despatches for two days
that he might be present at a ball that she was giving.  These
despatches, as we have said, contained the wish that Mary Stuart
should espouse Leicester; but this proposal could not be taken
seriously.  Leicester, whose personal worth was besides sufficiently
mediocre, was of birth too inferior to aspire to the hand of the
daughter of so many kings; thus Mary replied that such an alliance
would not become her.  Meanwhile, something strange and tragic came
to pass.




CHAPTER II

Among the lords who had followed Mary Stuart to Scotland was, as we
have mentioned, a young nobleman named Chatelard, a true type of the
nobility of that time, a nephew of Bayard on his mother's side, a
poet and a knight, talented and courageous, and attached to Marshal
Damville, of whose household he formed one.  Thanks to this high
position, Chatelard, throughout her stay in France, paid court to
Mary Stuart, who, in the homage he rendered her in verse, saw nothing
more than those poetical declarations of gallantry customary in that
age, and with which she especially was daily overwhelmed.  But it
happened that about the time when Chatelard was most in love with the
queen she was obliged to leave France, as we have said.  Then Marshal
Damville, who knew nothing of Chatelard's passion, and who himself,
encouraged by Mary's kindness, was among the candidates to succeed
Francis II as husband, set out for Scotland with the poor exile,
taking Chatelard with him, and, not imagining he would find a rival
in him, he made a confidant of him, and left him with Mary when he
was obliged to leave her, charging the young poet to support with her
the interests of his suit.  This post as confidant brought Mary and
Chatelard more together; and, as in her capacity as poet, the queen
treated him like a brother, he made bold in his passion to risk all
to obtain another title.  Accordingly, one evening he got into Mary
Stuart's room, and hid himself under the bed; but at the moment when
the queen was beginning to undress, a little dog she had began to
yelp so loudly that her women came running at his barking, and, led
by this indication, perceived Chatelard.  A woman easily pardons a
crime for which too great love is the excuse: Mary Stuart was woman
before being queen--she pardoned.

But this kindness only increased Chatelard's confidence: he put down
the reprimand he had received to the presence of the queen's women,
and supposed that if she had been alone she would have forgiven him
still more completely; so that, three weeks after, this same scene
was repeated.  But this time, Chatelard, discovered in a cupboard,
when the queen was already in bed, was placed under arrest.

The moment was badly chosen: such a scandal, just when the queen was
about to re-marry, was fatal to Mary, let alone to Chatelard.  Murray
took the affair in hand, and, thinking that a public trial could
alone save his sister's reputation, he urged the prosecution with
such vigour, that Chatelard, convicted of the crime of lese-majeste,
was condemned to death.  Mary entreated her brother that Chatelard
might be sent back to France; but Murray made her see what terrible
consequences such a use of her right of pardon might have, so that
Mary was obliged to let justice take its course: Chatelard was led to
execution.  Arrived on the scaffold, which was set up before the
queen's palace, Chatelard, who had declined the services of a priest,
had Ronsard's Ode on Death read; and when the reading, which he
followed with evident pleasure, was ended, he turned--towards the
queen's windows, and, having cried out for the last time, "Adieu,
loveliest and most cruel of princesses!" he stretched out his neck to
the executioner, without displaying any repentance or uttering any
complaint.  This death made all the more impression upon Mary, that
she did not dare to show her sympathy openly.

Meanwhile there was a rumour that the queen of Scotland was
consenting to a new marriage, and several suitors came forward,
sprung from the principal reigning families of Europe: first, the
Archduke Charles, third son of the Emperor of Germany; then the Duke
of Anjou, who afterwards became Henry III.  But to wed a foreign
prince was to give up her claims to the English crown.  So Mary
refused, and, making a merit of this to Elizabeth, she cast her eyes
on a relation of the latter's, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, son of the
Earl of Lennox.  Elizabeth, who had nothing plausible to urge against
this marriage, since the Queen of Scotland not only chose an
Englishman for husband, but was marrying into her own family, allowed
the Earl of Lennox and his son to go to the Scotch court, reserving
it to herself, if matters appeared to take a serious turn, to recall
them both--a command which they would be constrained to obey, since
all their property was in England.

Darnley was eighteen years of age: he was handsome, well-made,
elegant; he talked in that attractive manner of the young nobles of
the French and English courts that Mary no longer heard since her
exile in Scotland; she let herself be deceived by these appearances,
and did not see that under this brilliant exterior Darnley hid utter
insignificance, dubious courage, and a fickle and churlish character.
It is true that he came to her under the auspices of a man whose
influence was as striking as the risen fortune which gave him the
opportunity to exert it.  We refer to David Rizzio.

David Rizzio, who played such a great part in the life of Mary
Stuart, whose strange favour for him has given her enemies, probably
without any cause, such cruel weapons against her, was the son of a
Turin musician burdened with a numerous family, who, recognising in
him a pronounced musical taste, had him instructed in the first
principles of the art.  At the age of fifteen he had left his
father's house and had gone on foot to Nice, where the Duke of Savoy
held his court; there he entered the service of the Duke of Moreto,
and this lord having been appointed, some years afterwards, to the
Scottish embassy, Rizzio followed him to Scotland.  As this young man
had a very fine voice, and accompanied on the viol and fiddle songs
of which both the airs and the words were of his own composition, the
ambassador spoke of him to Mary, who wished to see him.  Rizzio, full
of confidence in himself, and seeing in the queen's desire a road to
success, hastened to obey her command, sang before her, and pleased
her.  She begged him then of Moreto, making no more of it than if she
had asked of him a thoroughbred dog or a well-trained falcon.  Moreta
presented him to her, delighted at finding such an opportunity to pay
his court; but scarcely was Rizzio in her service than Mary
discovered that music was the least of his gifts, that he possessed,
besides that, education if not profound at least varied, a supple
mind, a lively imagination, gentle ways, and at the same time much
boldness and presumption.  He reminded her of those Italian artists
whom she had seen at the French court, and spoke to her the tongue of
Marot and Ronsard, whose most beautiful poems he knew by heart: this
was more than enough to please Mary Stuart.  In a short time he
became her favourite, and meanwhile the place of secretary for the
French despatches falling vacant, Rizzio was provided for with it.

Darnley, who wished to succeed at all costs, enlisted Rizzio in his
interests, unconscious that he had no need of this support; and as,
on her side, Mary, who had fallen in love with him at first sight,
fearing some new intrigue of Elizabeth's, hastened on this union so
far as the proprieties permitted, the affair moved forward with
wonderful rapidity; and in the midst of public rejoicing, with the
approbation of the nobility, except for a small minority, with Murray
at its head, the marriage was solemnised under the happiest auspices,
29th July 1565.  Two days before, Darnley and his father, the Earl of
Lennox, had received a command to return to London, and as they had
not obeyed it, a week after the celebration of the marriage they
learned that the Countess of Lennox, the only one of the family
remaining in Elizabeth's power, had been arrested and taken to the
Tower.  Thus Elizabeth, in spite of her dissimulation, yielding to
that first impulse of violence that she always had such trouble to
overcome, publicly displayed her resentment.

However, Elizabeth was not the woman to be satisfied with useless
vengeance: she soon released the countess, and turned her eyes
towards Murray, the most discontented of the nobles in opposition,
who by this marriage was losing all his personal influence.  It was
thus easy for Elizabeth to put arms in his hand.  In fact, when he
had failed in his first attempt to seize Darnley, he called to his
aid the Duke of Chatellerault, Glencairn, Argyll, and Rothes, and
collecting what partisans they could, they openly rebelled against
the queen.  This was the first ostensible act of that hatred which
was afterwards so fatal to Mary.

The queen, on her side, appealed to her nobles, who in response
hastened to rally to her, so that in a month's time she found herself
at the head of the finest army that ever a king of Scotland had
raised.  Darnley assumed the command of this magnificent assembly,
mounted on a superb horse, arrayed in gilded armour; and accompanied
by the queen, who, in a riding habit, with pistols at her saddle-bow,
wished to make the campaign with him, that she might not quit his
side for a moment.  Both were young, both were handsome, and they
left Edinburgh amidst the cheers of the people and the army.

Murray and his accomplices did not even try to stand against them,
and the campaign consisted of such rapid and complex marches and
counter-marches, that this rebellion is called the Run-about Raid-
that is to say, the run in every sense of the word.  Murray and the
rebels withdrew into England, where Elizabeth, while seeming to
condemn their unlucky attempt, afforded them all the assistance they
needed.

Mary returned to Edinburgh delighted at the success of her two first
campaigns, not suspecting that this new good fortune was the last she
would have, and that there her short-lived prosperity would cease.
Indeed, she soon saw that in Darnley she had given herself not a
devoted and very attentive husband, as she had believed, but an
imperious and brutal master, who, no longer having any motive for
concealment, showed himself to her just as he was, a man of
disgraceful vices, of which drunkenness and debauchery was the least.
Accordingly, serious differences were not long in springing up in
this royal household.

Darnley in wedding Mary had not become king, but merely the queen's
husband.  To confer on him authority nearly equalling a regent's, it
was necessary that Mary should grant him what was termed the crown
matrimonial--a crown Francis II had worn during his short royalty,
and that Mary, after Darnley's conduct to herself, had not the
slightest intention of bestowing on him.  Thus, to whatever
entreaties he made, in whatever form they were wrapped, Mary merely
replied with an unvaried and obstinate refusal.  Darnley, amazed at
this force of will in a young queen who had loved him enough to raise
him to her, and not believing that she could find it in herself,
sought in her entourage for some secret and influential adviser who
might have inspired her with it.  His suspicions fell on Rizzio.

In reality, to whatever cause Rizzio owed his power (and to even the
most clear-sighted historians this point has always remained
obscure), be it that he ruled as lover, be it that he advised as
minister, his counsels as long as he lived were always given for the
greater glory of the queen.  Sprung from so low, he at least wished
to show himself worthy, of having risen so high, and owing everything
to Mary, he tried to repay her with devotion.  Thus Darnley was not
mistaken, and it was indeed Rizzio who, in despair at having helped
to bring about a union which he foresaw must become so unfortunate,
gave Mary the advice not to give up any of her power to one who
already possessed much more than he deserved, in possessing her
person.

Darnley, like all persons of both weak and violent character,
disbelieved in the persistence of will in others, unless this will
was sustained by an outside influence.  He thought that in ridding
himself of Rizzio he could not fail to gain the day, since, as he
believed, he alone was opposing the grant of this great desire of
his, the crown matrimonial.  Consequently, as Rizzio was disliked by
the nobles in proportion as his merits had raised him above them, it
was easy for Darnley to organise a conspiracy, and James Douglas of
Morton, chancellor of the kingdom, consented to act as chief.

This is the second time since the beginning of our narrative that we
inscribe this name Douglas, so often pronounced, in Scottish history,
and which at this time, extinct in the elder branch, known as the
Black Douglases, was perpetuated in the younger branch, known as the
Red Douglases.  It was an ancient, noble, and powerful family, which,
when the descent in the male line from Robert Bruce had lapsed,
disputed the royal title with the first Stuart, and which since then
had constantly kept alongside the throne, sometimes its support,
sometimes its enemy, envying every great house, for greatness made it
uneasy, but above all envious of the house of Hamilton, which, if not
its equal, was at any rate after itself the next most powerful.

During the whole reign of James V, thanks to the hatred which the
king bore them, the Douglases had: not only lost all their influence,
but had also been exiled to England.  This hatred was on account of
their having seized the guardianship of the young prince and kept him
prisoner till he was fifteen.  Then, with the help of one of his
pages, James V had escaped from Falkland, and had reached Stirling,
whose governor was in his interests.  Scarcely was he safe in the
castle than he made proclamation that any Douglas who should approach
within a dozen miles of it would be prosecuted for high treason.
This was not all: he obtained a decree from Parliament, declaring
them guilty of felony, and condemning them to exile; they remained
proscribed, then, during the king's lifetime, and returned to
Scotland only upon his death.  The result was that, although they had
been recalled about the throne, and though, thanks to the past
influence of Murray, who, one remembers, was a Douglas on the
mother's side, they filled the most important posts there, they had
not forgiven to the daughter the enmity borne them by the father.

This was why James Douglas, chancellor as he was, and consequently
entrusted with the execution of the laws, put himself at the head of
a conspiracy which had for its aim the violation of all laws; human
and divine.

Douglas's first idea had been to treat Rizzio as the favourites of
James III had been treated at the Bridge of Lauder--that is to say,
to make a show of having a trial and to hang him afterwards.  But
such a death did not suffice for Darnley's vengeance; as above
everything he wished to punish the queen in Rizzio's person, he
exacted that the murder should take place in her presence.

Douglas associated with himself Lord Ruthven, an idle and dissolute
sybarite, who under the circumstances promised to push his devotion
so far as to wear a cuirass; then, sure of this important accomplice,
he busied himself with finding other agents.

However, the plot was not woven with such secrecy but that something
of it transpired; and Rizzio received several warnings that he
despised.  Sir James Melville, among others, tried every means to
make him understand the perils a stranger ran who enjoyed such
absolute confidence in a wild, jealous court like that of Scotland.
Rizzio received these hints as if resolved not to apply them to
himself; and Sir James Melville, satisfied that he had done enough to
ease his conscience, did not insist further.  Then a French priest,
who had a reputation as a clever astrologer, got himself admitted to
Rizzio, and warned him that the stars predicted that he was in deadly
peril, and that he should beware of a certain bastard above all.
Rizzio replied that from the day when he had been honoured with his
sovereign's confidence, he had sacrificed in advance his life to his
position; that since that time, however, he had had occasion to
notice that in general the Scotch were ready to threaten but slow to
act; that, as to the bastard referred to, who was doubtless the Earl
of Murray, he would take care that he should never enter Scotland far
enough for his sword to reach him, were it as long as from Dumfries
to Edinburgh; which in other words was as much as to say that Murray
should remain exiled in England for life, since Dumfries was one of
the principal frontier towns.

Meanwhile the conspiracy proceeded, and Douglas and Ruthven, having
collected their accomplices and taken their measures, came to Darnley
to finish the compact.  As the price of the bloody service they
rendered the king, they exacted from him a promise to obtain the
pardon of Murray and the nobles compromised with him in the affair of
the "run in every sense".  Darnley granted all they asked of him, and
a messenger was sent to Murray to inform him of the expedition in
preparation, and to invite him to hold himself in readiness to
reenter Scotland at the first notice he should receive.  Then, this
point settled, they made Darnley sign a paper in which he
acknowledged himself the author and chief of the enterprise.  The
other assassins were the Earl of Morton, the Earl of Ruthven, George
Douglas the bastard of Angus, Lindley, and Andrew, Carew.  The
remainder were soldiers, simple murderers' tools, who did not even
know what was afoot.  Darnley reserved it for himself to appoint the
time.

Two days after these conditions were agreed upon, Darnley having been
notified that the queen was alone with Rizzio, wished to make himself
sure of the degree of her favour enjoyed by the minister.  He
accordingly went to her apartment by a little door of which he always
kept the key upon him; but though the key turned in the lock, the
door did not open.  Then Darnley knocked, announcing himself; but
such was the contempt into which he had fallen with the queen, that
Mary left him outside, although, supposing she had been alone with
Rizzio, she would have had time to send him away.  Darnley, driven to
extremities by this, summoned Morton, Ruthven, Lennox, Lindley, and
Douglas's bastard, and fixed the assassination of Rizzio for two days
later.

They had just completed all the details, and had, distributed the
parts that each must play in this bloody tragedy, when suddenly, and
at the moment when they least expected it, the door opened and, Mary
Stuart appeared on the threshold.

"My lords," said she, "your holding these secret counsels is useless.
I am informed of your plots, and with God's help I shall soon apply a
remedy".

With these words, and before the conspirators hid had time to collect
themselves, she shut the door again, and vanished like a passing but
threatening vision.  All remained thunderstruck.  Morton was the
first to find his tongue.

"My lords," said he, "this is a game of life and death, and the
winner will not be the cleverest or the strongest, but the readiest.
If we do not destroy this man, we are lost.  We must strike him down,
this very evening, not the day after to-morrow."

Everyone applauded, even Ruthven, who, still pale and feverish from
riotous living, promised not to be behindhand.  The only point
changed, on Morton's suggestion, was that the murder should take
place next day; for, in the opinion of all, not less than a day's
interval was needed to collect the minor conspirators, who numbered
not less than five hundred.

The next day, which was Saturday, March 9th, 1566, Mary Stuart, who
had inherited from her father, James V, a dislike of ceremony and the
need of liberty, had invited to supper with her six persons, Rizzio
among the number.  Darnley, informed of this in the morning,
immediately gave notice of it to the conspirators, telling them that
he himself would let them into the palace between six and seven
o'clock in the evening.  The conspirators replied that they would be
in readiness.

The morning had been dark and stormy, as nearly all the first days of
spring are in Scotland, and towards evening the snow and wind
redoubled in depth and violence.  So Mary had remained shut up with
Rizzio, and Darnley, who had gone to the secret door several times,
could hear the sound of instruments and the voice of the favourite,
who was singing those sweet melodies which have come down to our
time, and which Edinburgh people still attribute to him.  These songs
were for Mary a reminder of her stay in France, where the artists in
the train of the Medicis had already brought echoes from Italy; but
for Darnley they were an insult, and each time he had withdrawn
strengthened in his design.

At the appointed time, the conspirators, who had been given the
password during the day, knocked at the palace gate, and were
received there so much the more easily that Darnley himself, wrapped
in a great cloak, awaited them at the postern by which they were
admitted.  The five hundred soldiers immediately stole into an inner
courtyard, where they placed themselves under some sheds, as much to
keep themselves from the cold as that they might not be seen on the
snow-covered ground.  A brightly lighted window looked into this
courtyard; it was that of the queen's study: at the first signal give
them from this window, the soldiers were to break in the door and go
to the help of the chief conspirators.

These instructions given, Darnley led Morton, Ruthven, Lennox,
Lindley, Andrew Carew, and Douglas's bastard into the room adjoining
the study, and only separated from it by a tapestry hanging before
the door.  From there one could overhear all that was being said, and
at a single bound fall upon the guests.

Darnley left them in this room, enjoining silence; then, giving them
as a signal to enter the moment when they should hear him cry, "To
me, Douglas!" he went round by the secret passage, so that seeing him
come in by his usual door the queen's suspicions might not be roused
by his unlooked-for visit.

Mary was at supper with six persons, having, say de Thou and
Melville, Rizzio seated on her right; while, on the contrary,
Carapden assures us that he was eating standing at a sideboard.  The
talk was gay and intimate; for all were giving themselves up to the
ease one feels at being safe and warm, at a hospitable board, while
the snow is beating against the windows and the wind roaring in the
chimneys.  Suddenly Mary, surprised that the most profound silence
had succeeded to the lively and animated flow of words among her
guests since the beginning of supper, and suspecting, from their
glances, that the cause of their uneasiness was behind her, turned
round and saw Darnley leaning on the back of her chair.  The queen
shuddered; for although her husband was smiling when looking at
Rizzio, this smile lead assumed such a strange expression that it was
clear that something terrible was about to happen.  At the same
moment, Mary heard in the next room a heavy, dragging step drew near
the cabinet, then the tapestry was raised, and Lord Ruthven, in
armour of which he could barely support the weight, pale as a ghost,
appeared on the threshold, and, drawing his sword in silence, leaned
upon it.

The queen thought he was delirious.

"What do you want, my lord?" she said to him; "and why do you come to
the palace like this?"

"Ask the king, madam," replied Ruthven in an indistinct voice. "It is
for him to answer."

"Explain, my lord," Mary demanded, turning again towards Darnley;
"what does such a neglect of ordinary propriety mean?"

"It means, madam," returned Darnley, pointing to Rizzio, "that that
man must leave here this very minute."

"That man is mine, my lord," Mary said, rising proudly, "and
consequently takes orders only from me."

"To me, Douglas!" cried Darnley.

At these words, the conspirators, who for some moments had drawn
nearer Ruthven, fearing, so changeable was Darnley's character, lest
he had brought them in vain and would not dare to utter the signal
--at these words, the conspirators rushed into the room with such
haste that they overturned the table.  Then David Rizzio, seeing that
it was he alone they wanted, threw himself on his knees behind the
queen, seizing the hem of her robe and crying in Italian, "Giustizia!
giustizia!"  Indeed, the queen, true to her character, not allowing
herself to be intimidated by this terrible irruption, placed herself
in front of Rizzio and sheltered him behind her Majesty.  But she
counted too much on the respect of a nobility accustomed to struggle
hand to hand with its kings for five centuries.  Andrew Carew held a
dagger to her breast and threatened to kill her if she insisted on
defending any longer him whose death was resolved upon.  Then
Darnley, without consideration for the queen's pregnancy, seized her
round the waist and bore her away from Rizzio, who remained on his
knees pale and trembling, while Douglas's bastard, confirming the
prediction of the astrologer who had warned Rizzio to beware of a
certain bastard, drawing the king's own dagger, plunged it into the
breast of the minister, who fell wounded, but not dead.  Morton
immediately took him by the feet and dragged him from the cabinet
into the larger room, leaving on the floor that long track of blood
which is still shown there; then, arrived there, each rushed upon him
as upon a quarry, and set upon the corpse, which they stabbed in
fifty-six places.  Meanwhile Darnley held the queen, who, thinking
that all was not over, did not cease crying for mercy.  But Ruthven
came back, paler than at first, and at Darnley's inquiry if Rizzio
were dead, he nodded in the affirmative; then, as he could not bear
further fatigue in his convalescent state, he sat down, although the
queen, whom Darnley had at last released, remained standing on the
same spot.  At this Mary could not contain herself.

"My lord," cried she, "who has given you permission to sit down in my
presence, and whence comes such insolence?"

"Madam," Ruthven answered, "I act thus not from insolence, but from
weakness; for, to serve your husband, I have just taken more exercise
than my doctors allow".  Then turning round to a servant, "Give me a
glass of wine," said he, showing Darnley his bloody dagger before
putting it back in its sheath, "for here is the proof that I have
well earned it".  The servant obeyed, and Ruthven drained his glass
with as much calmness as if he had just performed the most innocent
act.

"My lord," the queen then said, taking a step towards him, "it may be
that as I am a woman, in spite of my desire and my will, I never find
an opportunity to repay you what you are doing to me;  but," she
added, energetically striking her womb with her hand, "he whom I bear
there, and whose life you should have respected, since you respect my
Majesty so little, will one day revenge me for all these insults".
Then, with a gesture at once superb and threatening, she withdrew by
Darnley's door, which she closed behind her.

At that moment a great noise was heard in the queen's room.  Huntly,
Athol, and Bothwell, who, we are soon about to see, play such an
important part in the sequel of this history, were supping together
in another hall of the palace, when suddenly they had heard outcries
and the clash of arms, so that they had run with all speed.  When
Athol, who came first, without knowing whose it was, struck against
the dead body of Rizzio, which was stretched at the top of the
staircase, they believed, seeing someone assassinated, that the lives
of the king and queen were threatened, and they had drawn their
swords to force the door that Morton was guarding.  But directly
Darnley understood what was going on, he darted from the cabinet,
followed by Ruthven, and showing himself to the newcomers--

"My lords," he said, "the persons of the queen and myself are safe,
and nothing has occurred here but by our orders.  Withdraw, then; you
will know more about it in time.  As to him," he added, holding up
Rizzio's head by the hair, whilst the bastard of Douglas lit up the
face with a torch so that it could be recognised, "you see who it is,
and whether it is worth your while to get into trouble for him".

And in fact, as soon as Huntly, Athol, and Bothwell had recognised
the musician-minister, they sheathed their swords, and, having
saluted the king, went away.

Mary had gone away with a single thought in her heart, vengeance.
But she understood that she could not revenge herself at one and the
same time on her husband and his companions: she set to work, then,
with all the charms of her wit and beauty to detach the kind from his
accomplices.  It was not a difficult task: when that brutal rage
which often carried Darnley beyond all bounds was spent, he was
frightened himself at the crime he had committed, and while the
assassins, assembled by Murray, were resolving that he should have
that greatly desired crown matrimonial, Darnley, as fickle as he was
violent, and as cowardly as he was cruel, in Mary's very room, before
the scarcely dried blood, made another compact, in which he engaged
to deliver up his accomplices.  Indeed, three days after the event
that we have just related, the murderers learned a strange piece of
news--that Darnley and Mary, accompanied by Lord Seyton, had escaped
together from Holyrood Palace.  Three days later still, a
proclamation appeared, signed by Mary and dated from Dunbar, which
summoned round the queen, in her own name and the king's, all the
Scottish lords and barons, including those who had been compromised
in the affair of the "run in every sense," to whom she not only
granted full and complete pardon, but also restored her entire
confidence.  In this way she separated Murray's cause from that of
Morton and the other assassins, who, in their turn, seeing that there
was no longer any safety for them in Scotland, fled to England, where
all the queen's enemies were always certain to find a warm welcome,
in spite of the good relations which reigned in appearance between
Mary and Elizabeth.  As to Bothwell, who had wanted to oppose the
assassination, he was appointed Warden of all the Marches of the
Kingdom.

Unfortunately for her honour, Mary, always more the woman than the
queen, while, on the contrary, Elizabeth was always more the queen
than the woman, had no sooner regained her power than her first royal
act was to exhume Rizzio, who had been quietly buried on the
threshold of the chapel nearest Holyrood Palace, and to have him
removed to the burial-place of the Scottish kings, compromising
herself still more by the honours she paid him dead than by the
favour she had granted him living.

Such an imprudent demonstration naturally led to fresh quarrels
between Mary and Darnley: these quarrels were the more bitter that,
as one can well understand, the reconciliation between the husband
and wife, at least on the latter's side, had never been anything but
a pretence; so that, feeling herself in a stronger position still on
account of her pregnancy, she restrained herself no longer, and,
leaving Darnley, she went from Dunbar to Edinburgh Castle, where on
June 19th, 1566, three months after the assassination of Rizzio, she
gave birth to a son who afterwards became James VI.




CHAPTER III

Directly she was delivered, Mary sent for James Melville, her usual
envoy to Elizabeth, and charged him to convey this news to the Queen
of England, and to beg her to be godmother to the royal child at the
same time.  On arriving in London, Melville immediately presented
himself at the palace; but as there was a court ball, he could not
see the queen, and contented himself with making known the reason for
his journey to the minister Cecil, and with begging him to ask his
mistress for an audience next day.  Elizabeth was dancing in a
quadrille at the moment when Cecil, approaching her, said in a low
voice, "Queen Mary of Scotland has just given birth to a son".  At
these words she grew frightfully pale, and, looking about her with a
bewildered air, and as if she were about to faint, she leaned against
an arm-chair; then, soon, not being able to stand upright, she sat
down, threw back her head, and plunged into a mournful reverie.  Then
one of the ladies of her court, breaking through the circle which had
formed round the queen, approached her, ill at ease, and asked her of
what she was thinking so sadly.  "Ah! madam," Elizabeth replied
impatiently, "do you not know that Mary Stuart has given birth to a
son, while I am but a barren stock, who will die without offspring?"

Yet Elizabeth was too good a politician, in spite of her liability to
be carried away by a first impulse, to compromise herself by a longer
display of her grief.  The ball was not discontinued on that account,
and the interrupted quadrille was resumed and finished.

The next day, Melville had his audience.  Elizabeth received him to
perfection, assuring him of all the pleasure that the news he brought
had caused her, and which, she said, had cured her of a complaint
from which she had suffered for a fortnight.  Melville replied that
his mistress had hastened to acquaint her with her joy, knowing that
she had no better friend; but he added that this joy had nearly cost
Mary her life, so grievous had been her confinement.  As he was
returning to this point for the third time, with the object of still
further increasing the queen of England's dislike to marriage--

"Be easy, Melville," Elizabeth answered him; "you need not insist
upon it.  I shall never marry; my kingdom takes the place of a
husband for me, and my subjects are my children.  When I am dead, I
wish graven on my tombstone: 'Here lies Elizabeth, who reigned so
many years, and who died a virgin.'"

Melville availed himself of this opportunity to remind Elizabeth of
the desire she had shown to see Mary, three or four years before; but
Elizabeth said, besides her country's affairs, which necessitated her
presence in the heart of her possessions, she did not care, after all
she had heard said of her rival's beauty, to expose herself to a
comparison disadvantageous to her pride.  She contented herself,
then, with choosing as her proxy the Earl of Bedford, who set out
with several other noblemen for Stirling Castle, where the young
prince was christened with great pomp, and received the name of
Charles James.

It was remarked that Darnley did not appear at this ceremony, and
that his absence seemed to scandalise greatly the queen of England's
envoy.  On the contrary, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, had the
most important place there.

This was because, since the evening when Bothwell, at Mary's cries,
had run to oppose the murder of Rizzio, he had made great way in the
queen's favour; to her party he himself appeared to be really
attached, to the exclusion of the two others, the king's and the Earl
of Murray's.  Bothwell was already thirty-five years old, head of the
powerful family of Hepburn, which had great influence in East Lothian
and the county of Berwick; for the rest, violent, rough, given to
every kind of debauchery, and capable of anything to satisfy an
ambition that he did not even give himself the trouble to hide.  In
his youth he had been reputed courageous, but for long he had had no
serious opportunity to draw the sword.

If the king's authority had been shaken by Rizzio's influence, it was
entirely upset by Bothwell's.  The great nobles, following the
favourite's example, no longer rose in the presence of Darnley, and
ceased little by little to treat him as their equal: his retinue was
cut down, his silver plate taken from him, and some officers who
remained about him made him buy their services with the most bitter
vexations.  As for the queen, she no longer even took the trouble to
conceal her dislike for him, avoiding him without consideration, to
such a degree that one day when she had gone with Bothwell to Alway,
she left there again immediately, because Darnley came to join her.
The king, however, still had patience; but a fresh imprudence of
Mary's at last led to the terrible catastrophe that, since the
queen's liaison with Bothwell, some had already foreseen.

Towards the end of the month of October, 1566, while the queen was
holding a court of justice at Jedburgh, it was announced to her that
Bothwell, in trying to seize a malefactor called John Elliot of Park,
had been badly wounded in the hand; the queen, who was about to
attend the council, immediately postponed the sitting till next day,
and, having ordered a horse to be saddled, she set out for Hermitage
Castle, where Bothwell was living, and covered the distance at a
stretch, although it was twenty miles, and she had to go across
woods, marshes, and rivers; then, having remained some hours tete-d-
tete with him, she set out again with the same sped for Jedburgh, to
which she returned in the night.

Although this proceeding had made a great deal of talk, which was
inflamed still more by the queen's enemies, who chiefly belonged to
the Reformed religion, Darnley did not hear of it till nearly two
months afterwards--that is to say, when Bothwell, completely
recovered, returned with the queen to Edinburgh.

Then Darnley thought that he ought not to put up any longer with such
humiliations.  But as, since his treason to his accomplices, he had
not found in all Scotland a noble who would have drawn the sword for
him, he resolved to go and seek the Earl of Lennox, his father,
hoping that through his influence he could rally the malcontents, of
whom there were a great number since Bothwell had been in favour.
Unfortunately, Darnley, indiscreet and imprudent as usual, confided
this plan to some of his officers, who warned Bothwell of their
master's intention.  Bothwell did not seem to oppose the journey in
any way; but Darnley was scarcely a mile from Edinburgh when he felt
violent pains none the less, he continued his road, and arrived very
ill at Glasgow.  He immediately sent for a celebrated doctor, called
James Abrenets, who found his body covered with pimples, and declared
without any hesitation that he had been poisoned.  However, others,
among them Walter Scott, state that this illness was nothing else
than smallpox.

Whatever it may have been, the queen, in the presence of the danger
her husband ran, appeared to forget her resentment, and at the risk
of what might prove troublesome to herself, she went to Darnley,
after sending her doctor in advance.  It is true that if one is to
believe in the following letters, dated from Glasgow, which Mary is
accused of having written to Bothwell, she knew the illness with
which he was attacked too well to fear infection.  As these letters
are little known, and seem to us very singular we transcribe them
here; later we shall tell how they fell into the power of the
Confederate lords, and from their hands passed into Elizabeth's, who,
quite delighted, cried on receiving them, "God's death, then I hold
her life and honour in my hands!"


FIRST LETTER

"When I set out from the place where I had left my heart, judge in
what a condition I was, poor body without a soul: besides, during the
whole of dinner I have not spoken to anyone, and no one has dared to
approach me, for it was easy to see that there was something amiss.
When I arrived within a league of the town, the Earl of Lennox sent
me one of his gentlemen to make me his compliments, and to excuse
himself for not having come in person; he has caused me to be
informed, moreover, that he did not dare to present himself before me
after the reprimand that I gave Cunningham.  This gentleman begged
me, as if of his own accord, to examine his master's conduct, to
ascertain if my suspicions were well founded.  I have replied to him
that fear was an incurable disease, that the Earl of Lennox would not
be so agitated if his conscience reproached him with nothing, and
that if some hasty words had escaped me, they were but just reprisals
for the letter he had written me.

"None of the inhabitants visited me, which makes me think they are
all in his interests; besides, they speak of him very favourably, as
well as of his son.  The king sent for Joachim yesterday, and asked
him why I did not lodge with him, adding that my presence would soon
cure him, and asked me also with what object I had come: if it were
to be reconciled with him; if you were here; if I had taken Paris and
Gilbert as secretaries, and if I were still resolved to dismiss
Joseph?  I do not know who has given him such accurate information.
There is nothing, down to the marriage of Sebastian, with which he
has not made himself acquainted.  I have asked him the meaning of one
of his letters, in which he complains of the cruelty of certain
people. He replied that he was--stricken, but that my presence caused
him so much joy that he thought he should die of it.  He reproached
me several times for being dreamy; I left him to go to supper; he
begged me to return: I went back.  Then he told me the story of his
illness, and that he wished to make a will leaving me everything,
adding that I was a little the cause of his trouble, and that he
attributed it to my coldness.  'You ask me,' added he, 'who are the
people of whom I complain: it is of you, cruel one, of you, whom I
have never been able to appease by my tears and my repentance.  I
know that I have offended you, but not on the matter that you
reproach me with: I have also offended some of your subjects, but
that you have forgiven me.  I am young, and you say that I always
relapse into my faults; but cannot a young man like me, destitute of
experience, gain it also, break his promises, repent directly, and in
time improve?  If you will forgive me yet once more, I will promise
to offend you never again.  All the favour I ask of you is that we
should live together like husband and wife, to have but one bed and
one board: if you are inflexible, I shall never rise again from here.
I entreat you, tell me your decision: God alone knows what I suffer,
and that because I occupy myself with you only, because I love and
adore only you.  If I have offended you sometimes, you must bear the
reproach; for when someone offends me, if it were granted me to
complain to you, I should not confide my griefs to others; but when
we are on bad terms, I am obliged to keep them to myself, and that
maddens me.'

"He then urged me strongly to stay with him and lodge in his house;
but I excused myself, and replied that he ought to be purged, and
that he could not be, conveniently, at Glasgow; then he told me that
he knew I had brought a letter for him, but that he would have
preferred to make the journey with me.  He believed, I think, that I
meant to send him to some prison: I replied that I should take him to
Craigmiller, that he would find doctors there, that I should remain
near him, and that we should be within reach of seeing my son.  He
has answered that he will go where I wish to take him, provided that
I grant him what he has asked.  He does not, however, wish to be seen
by anyone.

"He has told me more than a hundred pretty things that I cannot
repeat to you, and at which you yourself would be surprised: he did
not want to let me go; he wanted to make me sit up with him all
night.  As for me, I pretended to believe everything, and I seemed to
interest myself really in him.  Besides, I have never seen him so
small and humble; and if I had not known how easily his heart
overflows, and how mine is impervious to every other arrow than those
with which you have wounded it, I believe that I should have allowed
myself to soften; but lest that should alarm you, I would die rather
than give up what I have promised you.  As for you, be sure to act in
the same way towards those traitors who will do all they can to
separate you from me.  I believe that all those people have been cast
in the same mould: this one always has a tear in his eye; he bows
down before everyone, from the greatest to the smallest; he wishes to
interest them in his favour, and make himself pitied.  His father
threw up blood to-day through the nose and mouth; think what these
symptoms mean.  I have not seen him yet, for he keeps to the house.
The king wants me to feed him myself; he won't eat unless I do.  But,
whatever I may do, you will be deceived by it no more than I shall be
deceiving myself.  We are united, you and I, to two kinds of very
detestable people [Mary means Miss Huntly, Bothwell's wife, whom he
repudiated, at the king's death, to marry the queen.]: that hell may
sever these knots then, and that heaven may form better ones, that
nothing can break, that it may make of us the most tender and
faithful couple that ever was; there is the profession of faith in
which I would die.

"Excuse my scrawl: you must guess more than the half of it, but I
know no help for this.  I am obliged to write to you hastily while
everyone is asleep here: but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my
watch; for I cannot sleep like the others, not being able to sleep as
I would like--that is to say, in your arms.

"I am going to get into bed; I shall finish my letter tomorrow: I
have too many things to tell to you, the night is too far advanced:
imagine my despair.  It is to you I am writing, it is of myself that
I converse with you, and I am obliged to make an end.

"I cannot prevent myself, however, from filling up hastily the rest
of my paper.  Cursed be the crazy creature who torments me so much!
Were it not for him, I could talk to you of more agreeable things: he
is not greatly changed; and yet he has taken a great deal o f %t.
But he has nearly killed me with the fetid smell of his breath; for
now his is still worse than your cousin's: you guess that this is a
fresh reason for my not approaching him; on the contrary, I go away
as far as I can, and sit on a chair at the foot of his bed.

"Let us see if I forget anything.

     "His father's messenger on the road;
     The question about Joachim;
     The-state of my house;
     The people of my suite;
     Subject of my arrival;
     Joseph;
     Conversation between him and me;
     His desire to please me and his repentance;
     The explanation of his letter;
     Mr. Livingston.

"Ah! I was forgetting that.  Yesterday Livingston during supper told
de Rere in a low voice to drink to the health of one I knew well, and
to beg me to do him the honour.  After supper, as I was leaning on
his shoulder near the fire, he said to me, 'Is it not true that there
are visits very agreeable for those who pay them and those who
receive them?  But, however satisfied they seem with your arrival, I
challenge their delight to equal the grief of one whom you have left
alone to-day, and who will never be content till he sees you again.'
I asked him of whom he wished to speak to me.  He then answered me by
pressing my arm: 'Of one of those who have not followed you; and
among those it is easy for you to guess of whom I want to speak.'

"I have worked till two o'clock at the bracelet; I have enclosed a
little key which is attached by two strings: it is not as well worked
as I should like, but I have not had time to make it better; I will
make you a finer one on the first occasion.  Take care that it is not
seen on you; for I have worked at it before everyone, and it would be
recognised to a certainty.

"I always return, in spite of myself, to the frightful attempt that
you advise.  You compel me to concealments, and above all to
treacheries that make me shudder; I would rather die, believe me,
than do such things; for it makes my heart bleed.  He does not want
to follow me unless I promise him to have the selfsame bed and board
with him as before, and not to abandon him so often.  If I consent to
it, he says he will do all I wish, and will follow me everywhere; but
he has begged me to put off my departure for two days.  I have
pretended to agree to all he wishes; but I have told him not to speak
of our reconciliation to anyone, for fear it should make some lords
uneasy.  At last I shall take him everywhere I wish....  Alas! I have
never deceived anyone; but what would I not do to please you?
Command, and whatever happens, I shall obey.  But see yourself if one
could not contrive some secret means in the shape of a remedy.  He
must purge himself at Craigmiller and take baths there; he will be
some days without going out.  So far as I can see, he is very uneasy;
but he has great trust in what I tell him: however, his confidence
does not go so far as to allow him to open his mind to me.  If you
like, I will tell him every thing: I can have no pleasure in
deceiving someone who is trusting.  However, it will be just as you
wish: do not esteem me the less for that.  It is you advised it;
never would vengeance have taken me so far.  Sometimes he attacks me
in a very sensitive place, and he touches me to the quick when he
tells me that his crimes are known, but that every day greater ones
are committed that one uselessly attempts to hide, since all crimes,
whatsoever they be, great or small, come to men's knowledge and form
the common subject of their discourse.  He adds sometimes, in
speaking to me of Madame de Rere, 'I wish her services may do you
honour.'  He has assured me that many people thought, and that he
thought himself, that I was not my own mistress; this is doubtless
because I had rejected the conditions he offered me.  Finally, it is
certain that he is very uneasy about you know what, and that he even
suspects that his life is aimed at.  He is in despair whenever the
conversation turns on you, Livingston, and my brother.  However, he
says neither good nor ill of absent people; but, on the contrary, he
always avoids speaking of them.  His father keeps to the house: I
have not seen him yet.  A number of the Hamiltons are here, and
accompany me everywhere; all the friends of the other one follow me
each time I go to see him.  He has begged me to be at his rising to-
morrow.  My messenger will tell you the rest.

"Burn my letter: there would be danger in keeping it.  Besides, it is
hardly worth the trouble, being filled only with dark thoughts.

"As for you, do not be offended if I am sad and uneasy to-day, that
to please you I rise above honour, remorse, and dangers.  Do not take
in bad part what I tell you, and do not listen to the malicious
explanations of your wife's brother; he is a knave whom you ought not
to hear to the prejudice of the most tender and most faithful
mistress that ever was.  Above all, do not allow yourself to be moved
by that woman: her sham tears are nothing in comparison with the real
tears that I shed, and with what love and constancy make me suffer at
succeeding her; it is for that alone that in spite of myself I betray
all those who could cross my love.  God have mercy on me, and send
you all the prosperity that a humble and tender friend who awaits
from you soon another reward wishes you.  It is very late; but it is
always with regret that I lay down my pen when I write to you;
however, I shall not end my letter until I shall have kissed your
hands.  Forgive me that it is so ill-written: perhaps I do so
expressly that you may be obliged to re-read it several times: I have
transcribed hastily what I had written down on my tablets, and my
paper has given out.  Remember a tender friend, and write to her
often: love me as tenderly as I love you, and remember

     "Madame de Rere's words;
     The English;
     His mother;
     The Earl of Argyll;
     The Earl of Bothwell;
     The Edinburgh dwelling."


SECOND LETTER

"It seems that you have forgotten me during your absence, so much the
more that you had promised me, at setting out, to let me know in
detail everything fresh that should happen.  The hope of receiving
your news was giving me almost as much delight as your return could
have brought me: you have put it off longer than you promised me.  As
for me, although you do not write, I play my part always.  I shall
take him to Craigmiller on Monday, and he will spend the whole of
Wednesday there.  On that day I shall go to Edinburgh to be bled
there, unless you arrange otherwise at least.  He is more cheerful
than usual, and he is better than ever.

"He says everything he can to persuade me that he loves me; he has a
thousand attentions for me, and he anticipates me in everything: all
that is so pleasant for me, that I never go to him but the pain in my
side comes on again, his company weighs on me so much.  If Paris
brought me what I asked him, I should be soon cured.  If you have not
yet returned when I go you know where, write to me, I beg you, and
tell me what you wish me to do; for if you do not manage things
prudently, I foresee that the whole burden will fall on me: look into
everything and weigh the affair maturely.  I send you my letter by
Beaton, who will set out the day which has been assigned to Balfour.
It only remains for me to beg you to inform me of your journey.

"Glasgow, this Saturday morning."


THIRD LETTER

"I stayed you know where longer than I should have done, if it had
not been to get from him something that the bearer of these presents
will tell you it was a good opportunity for covering up our designs:
I have promised him to bring the person you know to-morrow.  Look
after the rest, if you think fit.  Alas! I have failed in our
agreement, for you have forbidden me to write to you, or to despatch
a messenger to you.  However, I do not intend to offend you: if you
knew with what fears I am agitated, you would not have yourself so
many doubts and suspicions.  But I take them in good part, persuaded
as I am that they have no other cause than love--love that I esteem
more than anything on earth.

"My feelings and my favours are to me sure warrants for that love,
and answer to me for your heart; my trust is entire on this head: but
explain yourself, I entreat you, and open your soul to me; otherwise,
I shall fear lest, by the fatality of my star, and by the too
fortunate influence of the stars on women less tender and less
faithful than I, I may be supplanted in your heart as Medea was in
Jason's; not that I wish to compare you to a lover as unfortunate as
Jason, and to parallel myself with a monster like Medea, although you
have enough influence over me to force me to resemble her each time
our love exacts it, and that it concerns me to keep your heart, which
belongs to me, and which belongs to me only.  For I name as belonging
to me what I have purchased with the tender and constant love with
which I have burned for you, a love more alive to-day than ever, and
which will end only with my life; a love, in short, which makes me
despise both the dangers and the remorse which will be perhaps its
sad sequel.  As the price of this sacrifice, I ask you but one
favour, it is to remember a spot not far from here: I do not exact
that you should keep your promise to-morrow; but I want to see you to
disperse your suspicions.  I ask of God only one thing: it is that He
should make you read my heart, which is less mine than yours, and
that He should guard you from every ill, at least during my life:
this life is dear to me only in so far as it pleases you, and as I
please you myself.  I am going to bed: adieu; give me your news to-
morrow morning; for I shall be uneasy till I have it.  Like a bird
escaped from its cage, or the turtle-dove which has lost her mate, I
shall be alone, weeping your absence, short as it may be.  This
letter, happier than I, will go this evening where I cannot go,
provided that the messenger does not find you asleep, as I fear.  I
have not dared to write it in the presence of Joseph, of Sebastian,
and of Joachim, who had only just left me when I began it."


Thus, as one sees, and always supposing these letters to be genuine,
Mary had conceived for Bothwell one of those mad passions, so much
the stronger in the women who are a prey to them, that one the less
understands what could have inspired them.  Bothwell was no longer
young, Bothwell was not handsome, and yet Mary sacrificed for him a
young husband, who was considered one of the handsomest men of his
century.  It was like a kind of enchantment.  Darnley, the sole
obstacle to the union, had been already condemned for a long time, if
not by Mary, at least by Bothwell; then, as his strong constitution
had conquered the poison, another kind of death was sought for.

The queen, as she announces in her letter to Bothwell, had refused to
bring back Darnley with her, and had returned alone to Edinburgh.
Arrived there, she gave orders for the king to be moved, in his turn,
in a litter; but instead of taking him to Stirling or Holyrood, she
decided to lodge him in the abbey of the Kirk of Field.  The king
made some objections when he knew of this arrangement; however, as he
had no power to oppose it, he contented himself with complaining of
the solitude of the dwelling assigned him; but the queen made answer
that she could not receive him at that moment, either at Holyrood or
at Stirling, for fear, if his illness were infectious, lest he might
give it to his son: Darnley was then obliged to make the best of the
abode allotted him.

It was an isolated abbey, and little calculated by its position to
dissipate the fears that the king entertained; for it was situated
between two ruined churches and two cemeteries: the only house, which
was distant about a shot from a cross-bow, belonged to the Hamiltons,
and as they were Darnley's mortal enemies the neighbourhood was none
the more reassuring: further, towards the north, rose some wretched
huts, called the "Thieves' cross-roads".  In going round his new
residence, Darnley noticed that three holes, each large enough for a
man to get through, had been made in the walls; he asked that these
holes, through which ill-meaning persons could get in, should be
stopped up: it was promised that masons should be sent; but nothing
was done, and the holes remained open.

The day after his arrival at Kirk of Field, the king saw a light in
that house near his which lie believed deserted; next day he asked
Alexander Durham whence it came, and he heard that the Archbishop of
St. Andrew's had left his palace in Edinburgh and had housed there
since the preceding evening, one didn't know why: this news still
further increased the king's uneasiness; the Archbishop of St.
Andrew's was one of his most declared enemies.

The king, little by little abandoned by all his servants lived on the
first floor of an isolated pavilion, having about him only this same
Alexander Durham, whom we have mentioned already, and who was his
valet.  Darnley, who had quite a special friendship for him, and who
besides, as we have said, feared some attack on his life at every
moment, had made him move his bed into his own apartment, so that
both were sleeping in the same room.

On the night of the 8th February, Darnley awoke Durham: he thought he
heard footsteps in the apartment beneath him.  Durham rose, took a
sword in one hand, a taper in the other, and went down to the ground
floor; but although Darnley was quite certain he had not been
deceived, Durham came up again a moment after, saying he had seen no
one.

The morning of the next day passed without bringing anything fresh.
The queen was marrying one of her servants named Sebastian: he was an
Auvergnat whom she had brought with her from France, and whom she
liked very much.  However, as the king sent word that he had not seen
her for two days, she left the wedding towards six o'clock in the
evening, and came to pay him a visit, accompanied by the Countess of
Argyll and the Countess of Huntly.  While she was there, Durham, in
preparing his bed, set fire to his palliasse, which was burned as
well as a part of the mattress; so that, having thrown them out of
the window all in flames, for fear lest the fire should reach the
rest of the furniture, he found himself without a bed, and asked
permission to return to the town to sleep; but Darnley, who
remembered his terror the night before, and who was surprised at the
promptness that had made Durham throw all his bedding out of the
window, begged him not to go away, offering him one of his
mattresses, or even to take him into his own bed.  However, in spite
of this offer, Durham insisted, saying that he felt unwell, and that
he should like to see a doctor the same evening.  So the queen
interceded for Durham, and promised Darnley to send him another valet
to spend the night with him: Darnley was then obliged to yield, and,
making Mary repeat that she would send him someone, he gave Durham
leave for that evening.  At that moment Paris; of whom the queen
speaks in her letters, came in: he was a young Frenchman who had been
in Scotland for some years, and who, after having served with
Bothwell and Seyton, was at present with the queen.  Seeing him, she
got up, and as Darnley still wished to keep her--

"Indeed, my lord, it is impossible," said she, "to come and see you.
I have left this poor Sebastian's wedding, and I must return to it;
for I promised to came masked to his ball."

The king dared not insist; he only reminded her of the promise that
she had made to send him a servant: Mary renewed it yet once again,
and went away with her attendants.  As for Durham, he had set out the
moment he received permission.

It was nine o'clock in the evening.  Darnley, left alone, carefully
shut the doors within, and retired to rest, though in readiness to
rise to let in the servant who should come to spend the night with
him.  Scarcely was he in bed than the same noise that he had heard
the night before recommenced; this time Darnley listened with all the
attention fear gives, and soon he had no longer any doubt but that
several men were walking about beneath him.  It was useless to call,
it was dangerous to go out; to wait was the only course that remained
to the king.  He made sure again that the doors were well fastened,
put his sword under his pillow, extinguished his lamp for fear the
light might betray him, and awaited in silence for his servant's
arrival; but the hours passed away, and the servant did not come.
At one o'clock in the morning, Bothwell, after having talked some
while with the queen, in the presence of the captain of the guard,
returned home to change his dress; after some minutes, he came out
wrapped up in the large cloak of a German hussar, went through the
guard-house, and had the castle gate opened.  Once outside, he took
his way with all speed to Kirk of Field, which he entered by the
opening in the wall: scarcely had he made a step in the garden than
he met James Balfour, governor of the castle.

"Well," he said to him, "how far have we got?

"Everything is ready," replied Balfour, "and we were waiting for you
to set fire to the fuse".  "That is well," Bothwell answered--"but
first I want to make sure that he is in his room."

At these words, Bothwell opened the pavilion door with a false key,
and, having groped his way up the stairs; he went to listen at
Darnley's door.  Darnley, hearing no further noise, had ended by
going to sleep; but he slept with a jerky breathing which pointed to
his agitation.  Little mattered it to Bothwell what kind of sleep it
was, provided that he was really in his room.  He went down again in
silence, then, as he had come up, and taking a lantern from one of
the conspirators, he went himself into the lower room to see if
everything was in order: this room was full of barrels of powder, and
a fuse ready prepared wanted but a spark to set the whole on fire.
Bothwell withdrew, then, to the end of the garden with Balfour,
David, Chambers, and three or four others, leaving one man to ignite
the fuse.  In a moment this man rejoined them.

There ensued some minutes of anxiety, during which the five men
looked at one another in silence and as if afraid of themselves;
then, seeing that nothing exploded, Bothwell impatiently turned round
to the engineer, reproaching him for having, no doubt through fear,
done his work badly.  He assured his master that he was certain
everything was all right, and as Bothwell, impatient, wanted to
return to the house himself, to make sure, he offered to go back and
see how things stood.  In fact, he went back to the pavilion, and,
putting his head through a kind of air-hole, he saw the fuse, which
was still burning.  Some seconds afterwards, Bothwell saw him come
running back, making a sign that all was going well; at the same
moment a frightful report was heard, the pavilion was blown to
pieces, the town and the firth were lit up with a clearness exceeding
the brightest daylight; then everything fell back into night, and the
silence was broken only by the fall of stones and joists, which came
down as fast as hail in a hurricane.

Next day the body of the king was found in a garden in the
neighbourhood: it had been saved from the action of the fire by the
mattresses on which he was lying, and as, doubtless, in his terror he
had merely thrown himself on his bed wrapped in his dressing-gown and
in his slippers, and as he was found thus, without his slippers,
which were flung some paces away, it was believed that he had been
first strangled, then carried there; but the most probable version
was that the murderers simply relied upon powder--an auxiliary
sufficiently powerful in itself for them to have no fear it would
fail them.

Was the queen an accomplice or not?  No one has ever known save
herself, Bothwell, and God; but, yes or no, her conduct, imprudent
this time as always, gave the charge her enemies brought against her,
if not substance, at least an appearance of truth.  Scarcely had she
heard the news than she gave orders that the body should be brought
to her, and, having had it stretched out upon a bench, she looked at
it with more curiosity than sadness; then the corpse, embalmed, was
placed the same evening, without pomp, by the side of Rizzio's.

Scottish ceremonial prescribes for the widows of kings retirement for
forty days in a room entirely closed to the light of day: on the
twelfth day Mary had the windows opened, and on the fifteenth set out
with Bothwell for Seaton, a country house situated five miles from
the capital, where the French ambassador, Ducroc, went in search of
her, and made her remonstrances which decided her to return to
Edinburgh; but instead of the cheers which usually greeted her
coming, she was received by an icy silence, and a solitary woman in
the crowd called out, "God treat her as she deserves!"

The names of the murderers were no secret to the people.  Bothwell
having brought a splendid coat which was too large for him to a
tailor, asking him to remake it to his measure, the man recognised it
as having belonged to the king.  "That's right," said he; "it is the
custom for the executioner to inherit from the-condemned".
Meanwhile, the Earl of Lennox, supported by the people's murmurs,
loudly demanded justice for his son's death, and came forward as the
accuser of his murderers.  The queen was then obliged, to appease
paternal clamour and public resentment, to command the Earl of
Argyll, the Lord Chief justice of the kingdom, to make
investigations; the same day that this order was given, a
proclamation was posted up in the streets of Edinburgh, in which the
queen promised two thousand pounds sterling to whoever would make
known the king's murderers.  Next day, wherever this letter had been
affixed, another placard was found, worded thus:

"As it has been proclaimed that those who should make known the
king's murderers should have two thousand pounds sterling, I, who
have made a strict search, affirm that the authors of the murder are
the Earl of Bothwell, James Balfour, the priest of Flisk, David,
Chambers, Blackmester, Jean Spens, and the queen herself."

This placard was torn down; but, as usually happens, it had already
been read by the entire population.

The Earl of Lennox accused Bothwell, and public opinion, which also
accused him, seconded the earl with such violence, that Mary was
compelled to bring him to trial: only every precaution was taken to
deprive the prosecutor of the power of convicting the accused.  On
the 28th March, the Earl of Lennox received notice that the 12th
April was fixed for the trial: he was granted a fortnight to collect
decisive proofs against the most powerful man in all Scotland; but
the Earl of Lennox, judging that this trial was a mere mockery, did
not appear.  Bothwell, on the contrary, presented himself at the
court, accompanied by five thousand partisans and two hundred picked
fusiliers, who guarded the doors directly he had entered; so that he
seemed to be rather a king who is about to violate the law than an
accused who comes to submit to it.  Of course there happened what was
certain to happen--that is to say, the jury acquitted Bothwell of the
crime of which everyone, the judges included, knew him to be guilty.

The day of the trial, Bothwell had this written challenge placarded:

"Although I am sufficiently cleared of the murder of the king, of
which I have been falsely accused, yet, the better to prove my
innocence, I am, ready to engage in combat with whomsoever will dare
to maintain that I have killed the king."

The day after, this reply appeared:

"I accept the challenge, provided that you select neutral ground."

However, judgment had been barely given, when rumours of a marriage
between the queen and the Earl of Bothwell were abroad.  However
strange and however mad this marriage, the relations of the two
lovers were so well known that no one doubted but that it was true.
But as everyone submitted to Bothwell, either through fear or through
ambition, two men only dared to protest beforehand against this
union: the one was Lord Herries, and the other James Melville.

Mary was at Stirling when Lord Herries, taking advantage of
Bothwell's momentary absence, threw himself at her feet, imploring
her not to lose her honour by marrying her husband's murderer, which
could not fail to convince those who still doubted it that she was
his accomplice.  But the queen, instead of thanking Herries for this
devotion, seemed very much surprised at his boldness, and scornfully
signing to him to rise, she coldly replied that her heart was silent
as regarded the Earl of Bothwell, and that, if she should ever re-
marry, which was not probable, she would neither forget what she owed
to her people nor what she owed to herself.

Melville did not allow himself to be discouraged by this experience,
and pretended, to have received a letter that one of his friends,
Thomas Bishop, had written him from England.  He showed this letter
to the queen; but at the first lines Mary recognised the style, and
above all the friendship of her ambassador, and giving the letter to
the Earl of Livingston, who was present, "There is a very singular
letter," said she.  "Read it.  It is quite in Melvine's manner."

Livingston glanced through the letter, but had scarcely read the half
of it when he took Melville by the hand, and drawing him into the
embrasure of a window

"My dear Melville," said he, "you were certainly mad when you just
now imparted this letter to the queen: as soon as the Earl of
Bothwell gets wind of it, and that will not be long, he will have you
assassinated.  You have behaved like an honest man, it is true; but
at court it is better to behave as a clever man.  Go away, then, as
quickly as possible; it is I who recommend it."

Melville did not require to be told twice, and stayed away for a
week.  Livingston was not mistaken: scarcely had Bothwell returned to
the queen than he knew all that had passed.  He burst out into curses
against Melville, and sought for him everywhere; but he could not
find him.

This beginning of opposition, weak as it was, none the less
disquieted Bothwell, who, sure of Mary's love, resolved to make short
work of things.  Accordingly, as the queen was returning from
Stirling to Edinburgh some days after the scenes we have just
related, Bothwell suddenly appeared at the Bridge of Grammont with a
thousand horsemen, and, having disarmed the Earl of Huntly,
Livingston, and Melville, who had returned to his mistress, he seized
the queen's horse by the bridle, and with apparent violence he forced
Mary to turn back and follow him to Dunbar; which the queen did
without any resistance--a strange thing for one of Mary's character.

The day following, the Earls of Huntly, Livingston, Melville, and the
people in their train were set at liberty; then, ten days afterwards,
Bothwell and the queen, perfectly reconciled, returned to Edinburgh
together.

Two days after this return, Bothwell gave a great dinner to the
nobles his partisans in a tavern.  When the meal was ended, on the
very same table, amid half-drained glasses and empty bottles,
Lindsay, Ruthven, Morton, Maitland, and a dozen or fifteen other
noblemen signed a bond which not only set forth that upon their souls
and consciences Bothwell was innocent, but which further denoted him
as the most suitable husband for the queen.  This bond concluded with
this sufficiently strange declaration:

"After all, the queen cannot do otherwise, since the earl has carried
her off and has lain with her."

Yet two circumstances were still opposed to this marriage: the first,
that Bothwell had already been married three times, and that his
three wives were living; the second, that having carried off the
queen, this violence might cause to be regarded as null the alliance
which she should contract with him: the first of these objections was
attended to, to begin with, as the one most difficult to solve.

Bothwell's two first wives were of obscure birth, consequently he
scorned to disquiet himself about them; but it was not so with the
third, a daughter of that Earl of Huntly who been trampled beneath
the horses' feet, and a sister of Gordon, who had been decapitated.
Fortunately for Bothwell, his past behaviour made his wife long for a
divorce with an eagerness as great as his own.  There was not much
difficulty, then, in persuading her to bring a charge of adultery
against her husband.  Bothwell confessed that he had had criminal
intercourse with a relative of his wife, and the Archbishop of St.
Andrews, the same who had taken up his abode in that solitary house
at Kirk of Field to be present at Darnley's death, pronounced the
marriage null.  The case was begun, pushed on, and decided in ten
days.

As to the second obstacle, that of the violence used to the queen,
Mary undertook to remove it herself; for, being brought before the
court, she declared that not only did she pardon Bothwell for his
conduct as regarded her, but further that, knowing him to be a good
and faithful subject, she intended raising him immediately to new
honours.  In fact, some days afterwards she created him Duke of
Orkney, and on the 15th of the same month--that is to say, scarcely
four months after the death of Darnley--with levity that resembled
madness, Mary, who had petitioned for a dispensation to wed a
Catholic prince, her cousin in the third degree, married Bothwell, a
Protestant upstart, who, his divorce notwithstanding, was still
bigamous, and who thus found himself in the position of having four
wives living, including the queen.

The wedding was dismal, as became a festival under such outrageous
auspices.  Morton, Maitland, and some base flatterers of Bothwell
alone were present at it.  The French ambassador, although he was a
creature of the House of Guise, to which the queen belonged, refused
to attend it.

Mary's delusion was short-lived: scarcely was she in Bothwell's power
than she saw what a master she had given herself.  Gross, unfeeling,
and violent, he seemed chosen by Providence to avenge the faults of
which he had been the instigator or the accomplice.  Soon his fits of
passion reached such a point, that one day, no longer able to endure
them, Mary seized a dagger from Erskine, who was present with
Melville at one of these scenes, and would have struck herself,
saying that she would rather die than continue living unhappily as
she did; yet, inexplicable as it seems, in spite of these miseries,
renewed without ceasing, Mary, forgetting that she was wife and
queen, tender and submissive as a child, was always the first to be
reconciled with Bothwell.

Nevertheless, these public scenes gave a pretext to the nobles, who
only sought an opportunity for an outbreak.  The Earl of Mar, the
young prince's tutor, Argyll, Athol, Glencairn, Lindley, Boyd, and
even Morton and Maitland themselves, those eternal accomplices of
Bothwell, rose, they said, to avenge the death of the king, and to
draw the son from hands which had killed the father and which were
keeping the mother captive.  As to Murray, he had kept completely in
the background during all the last events; he was in the county of
Fife when the king was assassinated, and three days before the trial
of Bothwell he had asked and obtained from his sister permission to
take a journey on the Continent.

The insurrection took place in such a prompt and instantaneous
manner, that the Confederate lords, whose plan was to surprise and
seize both Mary and Bothwell, thought they would succeed at the first
attempt.

The king and queen were at table with Lord Borthwick, who was
entertaining them, when suddenly it was announced that a large body
of armed men was surrounding the castle: Bothwell and Mary suspected
that they were aimed at, and as they had no means of resistance,
Bothwell dressed himself as a squire, Mary as a page, and both
immediately taking horse, escaped by one door just as the
Confederates were coming in by the other.  The fugitives withdrew to
Dunbar.

There they called together all Bothwell's friends, and made them sign
a kind of treaty by which they undertook to defend the queen and her
husband.  In the midst of all this, Murray arrived from France, and
Bothwell offered the document to him as to the others; but Murray
refused to put his signature to it, saying that it was insulting him
to think he need be bound by a written agreement when it was a
question of defending his sister and his queen.  This refusal having
led to an altercation between him and Bothwell, Murray, true to his
system of neutrality, withdrew into his earldom, and let affairs
follow without him the fatal decline they had taken.

In the meantime the Confederates, after having failed at Borthwick,
not feeling strong enough to attack Bothwell at Dunbar, marched upon
Edinburgh, where they had an understanding with a man of whom
Bothwell thought himself sure.  This man was James Balfour, governor
of the citadel, the same who had presided over the preparation of the
mine which had blown up Darnley, and whom Bothwell had, met on
entering the garden at Kirk of Field.  Not only did Balfour deliver
Edinburgh Castle into the hands of the Confederates, but he also gave
them a little silver coffer of which the cipher, an "F" crowned,
showed that it had belonged to Francis II; and in fact it was a gift
from her first husband, which the queen had presented to Bothwell.
Balfour stated that this coffer contained precious papers, which in
the present circumstances might be of great use to Mary's enemies.
The Confederate lords opened it, and found inside the three genuine
or spurious letters that we have quoted, the marriage contract of
Mary and Bothwell, and twelve poems in the queen's handwriting.  As
Balfour had said, therein lay, for her enemies, a rich and precious
find, which was worth more than a victory; for a victory would yield
them only the queen's life, while Balfour's treachery yielded them
her honour.




CHAPTER IV

Meanwhile Bothwell had levied some troops, and thought himself in a
position to hold the country: accordingly, he set out with his army,
without even waiting for the Hamiltons, who were assembling their
vassals, and June 15th, 1567, the two opposed forces were face to
face.  Mary, who desired to try to avoid bloodshed, immediately sent
the French ambassador to the Confederate lords to exhort them to lay
aside their arms; but they replied "that the queen deceived herself
in taking them for rebels; that they were marching not against her,
but against Bothwell."  Then the king's friends did what they could
to break off the negotiations and give battle: it was already too
late; the soldiers knew that they were defending the cause of one
man, and that they were going to fight for a woman's caprice, and not
for the good of the country: they cried aloud, then, that "since
Bothwell alone was aimed at, it was for Bothwell to defend his
cause".  And he, vain and blustering as usual, gave out that he was
ready to prove his innocence in person against whomsoever would dare
to maintain that he was guilty.  Immediately everyone with any claim
to nobility in the rival camp accepted the challenge; and as the
honour was given to the bravest, Kirkcaldy of Grange, Murray of
Tullibardine, and Lord Lindsay of Byres defied him successively.
But, be it that courage failed him, be it that in the moment of
danger he did not himself believe in the justice of his cause, he,
to escape the combat, sought such strange pretexts that the queen
herself was ashamed; and his most devoted friends murmured.

Then Mary, perceiving the fatal humour of men's minds, decided not to
run the risk of a battle.  She sent a herald to Kirkcaldy of Grange,
who was commanding an outpost, and as he was advancing without
distrust to converse with the queen, Bothwell, enraged at his own
cowardice, ordered a soldier to fire upon him; but this time Mary
herself interposed, forbidding him under pain of death to offer the
least violence.  In the meanwhile, as the imprudent order given by
Bothwell spread through the army, such murmurs burst forth that he
clearly saw that his cause was for ever lost.

That is what the queen thought also; for the result of her conference
with Lord Kirkcaldy was that she should abandon Bothwell's cause, and
pass over into the camp of the Confederates, on condition that they
would lay down their arms before her and bring her as queen to
Edinburgh.  Kirkcaldy left her to take these conditions to the
nobles, and promised to return next day with a satisfactory answer.
But at the moment of leaving Bothwell, Mary was seized again with
that fatal love for him that she was never able to surmount, and felt
herself overcome with such weakness, that, weeping bitterly, and
before everyone, she wanted Kirkcaldy to be told that she broke off
all negotiations; however, as Bothwell had understood that he was no
longer safe in camp, it was he who insisted that things should remain
as they were; and, leaving Mary in tears, he mounted, and setting off
at full speed, he did not stop till he reached Dunbar.

Next day, at the time appointed, the arrival of Lord Kirkcaldy of
Grange was announced by the trumpeters preceding him.  Mary mounted
directly and went to meet him; them, as he alighted to greet her, "My
lord;" said she, "I surrender to you, on the conditions that you have
proposed to me on the part of the nobles, and here is my hand as a
sign of entire confidence".  Kirkcaldy then knelt down, kissed, the
queen's hand respectfully; and, rising, he took her horse by the
bridle and led it towards the Confederates' camp.
Everyone of any rank in the army received her with such marks of
respect as entirely to satisfy her; but it was not so at all with the
soldiers and common people.  Hardly had the queen reached the second
line, formed by them, than great murmurs arose, and several voices
cried, "To the stake, the adulteress! To the stake, the parricide!"
However, Mary bore these outrages stoically enough but a more
terrible trial yet was in store for her.  Suddenly she saw rise
before her a banner, on which was depicted on one side the king dead
and stretched out in the fatal garden, and on the other the young
prince kneeling, his hands joined and his eyes raised to heaven, with
this inscription, "O Lord! judge and revenge my cause!"  Mary reined
in her horse abruptly at this sight, and wanted to turn back; but she
had scarcely moved a few paces when the accusing banner again blocked
her passage.  Wherever she went, she met this dreadful apparition.
For two hours she had incessantly under her eyes the king's corpse
asking vengeance, and the young prince her son praying God to punish
the murderers.  At last she could endure it no longer, and, crying
out, she threw herself back, having completely lost consciousness,
and would have fallen, if someone had not caught hold of her.
In the evening she entered Edinburgh, always preceded by the cruel
banner, and she already had rather the air of a prisoner than of a
queen; for, not having had a moment during the day to attend to her
toilet, her hair was falling in disorder about her shoulders, her
face was pale and showed traces of tears; and finally, her clothes
were covered with dust and mud.  As she proceeded through the town,
the hootings of the people and the curses of the crowd followed her.
At last, half dead with fatigue, worn out with grief, bowed down with
shame, she reached the house of the Lord Provost; but scarcely had
she got there when the entire population of Edinburgh crowded into
the square, with cries that from time to time assumed a tone of
terrifying menace.  Several times, then, Mary wished to go to the
window, hoping that the sight of her, of which she had so often
proved the influence, would disarm this multitude; but each time she
saw this banner unfurling itself like a bloody curtain between
herself and the people--a terrible rendering of their feelings.

However, all this hatred was meant still more for Bothwell than for
her: they were pursuing Bothwell in Darnley's widow.  The curses were
for Bothwell: Bothwell was the adulterer, Bothwell was the murderer,
Bothwell was the coward; while Mary was the weak, fascinated woman,
who, that same evening, gave afresh proof of her folly.

In fact, directly the falling night had scattered the crowd and a
little quiet was regained, Mary, ceasing to be uneasy on her own
account, turned immediately to Bothwell, whom she had been obliged to
abandon, and who was now proscribed and fleeing; while she, as she
believed, was about to reassume her title and station of queen.  With
that eternal confidence of the woman in her own love, by which she
invariably measures the love of another, she thought that Bothwell's
greatest distress was to have lost, not wealth and power, but to have
lost herself.  So she wrote him a long letter, in which, forgetful of
herself, she promised him with the most tender expressions of love
never to desert him, and to recall him to her directly the breaking
up of the Confederate lords should give her power to do so; then,
this letter written, she called a soldier, gave him a purse of gold,
and charged him to take this letter to Dunbar, where Bothwell ought
to be, and if he were already gone, to follow him until he came up
with him.

Then she went to bed and slept more calmly; for, unhappy as she was,
she believed she had just sweetened misfortunes still greater than
hers.

Next day the queen was awakened by the step of an armed man who
entered her room.  Both astonished and frightened at this neglect of
propriety, which could augur nothing good, Mary sat up in bed, and
parting the curtains, saw standing before her Lord Lindsay of Byres:
she knew he was one of her oldest friends, so she asked him in a
voice which she vainly tried to make confident, what he wanted of her
at such a time.

"Do you know this writing, madam?" Lord Lindsay asked in a rough
voice, presenting to the queen the letter she had written to Bothwell
at night, which the soldier had carried to the Confederate lords,
instead of taking to its address.

"Yes, doubtless, my lord," the queen answered; "but am I already a
prisoner, then, that my correspondence is intercepted? or is it no
longer allowed to a wife to write to her husband?"

"When the husband is a traitor," replied Lindsay, "no, madam, it is
no longer allowed to a wife to write to her husband--at least,
however, if this wife have a part in his treason; which seems to me,
besides, quite proved by the promise you make to this wretch to
recall him to you."

"My lord," cried Mary, interrupting Lindsay, "do you forget that you
are speaking to your queen."

"There was a time, madam," Lindsay replied, "when I should have
spoken to you in a more gentle voice, and bending the knee, although
it is not in the nature of us old Scotch to model ourselves on your
French courtiers; but for some time, thanks to your changing loves,
you have kept us so often in the field, in harness, that our voices
are hoarse from the cold night air, and our stiff knees can no longer
bend in our armour: you must then take me just as I am, madam; since
to-day, for the welfare of Scotland, you are no longer at liberty to
choose your favourites."

Mary grew frightfully pale at this want of respect, to which she was
not yet accustomed; but quickly containing her anger, as far as
possible--

"But still, my lord," said she, "however disposed I may be to take
you as you are, I must at least know by what right you come here.
That letter which you are holding in your hand would lead me to think
it is as a spy, if the ease with which you enter my room without
being asked did not make me believe it is as a gaoler.  Have the
goodness, then, to inform me by which of these two names I must call
you."

"Neither by one nor the other, madam; for I am simply your fellow-
traveller, chef of the escort which is to take you to Lochleven
Castle, your future residence.  And yet, scarcely have I arrived
there than I shall be obliged to leave you to go and assist the
Confederate lords choose a regent for the kingdom."

"So," said Mary, "it was as prisoner and not as queen that I
surrendered to Lord Kirkcaldy.  It seems to me that things were
agreed upon otherwise; but I am glad to see how much time Scotch
noblemen need to betray their sworn undertakings".

"Your Grace forgets that these engagements were made on one
condition," Lindsay answered.

"On which?" Mary asked.

"That you should separate for ever from your husband's murderer; and
there is the proof," he added, showing the letter, "that you had
forgotten your promise before we thought of revoking ours."

"And at what o'clock is my departure fixed?" said Mary, whom this
discussion was beginning to fatigue.

"At eleven o'clock, madam."

"It is well, my lord; as I have no desire to make your lordship wait,
you will have the goodness, in withdrawing, to send me someone to
help me dress, unless I am reduced to wait upon myself."

And, in pronouncing these words, Mary made a gesture so imperious,
that whatever may have been Lindsay's wish to reply, he bowed and
went out.  Behind him entered Mary Seyton.




CHAPTER V

At the time appointed the queen was ready: she had suffered so much
at Edinburgh that she left it without any regret.  Besides, whether
to spare her the humiliations of the day before, or to conceal her
departure from any partisans who might remain to her, a litter had
been made ready.  Mary got into it without any resistance, and after
two hours' journey she reached Duddington; there a little vessel was
waiting for her, which set sail directly she was on board, and next
day at dawn she disembarked on the other side of the Firth of Forth
in the county of Fife.

Mary halted at Rosythe Castle only just long enough to breakfast, and
immediately recommenced her journey; for Lord Lindsay had declared
that he wished to reach his destination that same evening.  Indeed,
as the sun was setting, Mary perceived gilded with his last rays the
high towers of Lochleven Castle, situated on an islet in the midst of
the lake of the same name.

No doubt the royal prisoner was already expected at Lochleven Castle,
for, on reaching the lake side, Lord Lindsay's equerry unfurled his
banner, which till then had remained in its case, and waved it from
right to left, while his master blew a little hunting bugle which he
wore hanging from his neck.  A boat immediately put off from the
island and came towards the arrivals, set in motion by four vigorous
oarsmen, who had soon propelled it across the space which separated
it from the bank.  Mary silently got into it, and sat down at the
stern, while Lord Lindsay and his equerry stood up before her; and as
her guide did not seem any more inclined to speak than she was
herself to respond, she had plenty of time to examine her future
dwelling.

The castle, or rather the fortress of Lochleven, already somewhat
gloomy in its situation and architecture, borrowed fresh mournfulness
still from the hour at which it appeared to the queen's gaze.  It
was, so far as she could judge amid the mists rising from the lake,
one of those massive structures of the twelfth century which seem, so
fast shut up are they, the stone armour of a giant.  As she drew
near, Mary began to make out the contours of two great round towers,
which flanked the corners and gave it the severe character of a state
prison.  A clump of ancient trees enclosed by a high wall, or rather
by a rampart, rose at its north front, and seemed vegetation in
stone, and completed the general effect of this gloomy abode, while,
on the contrary, the eye wandering from it and passing from islands
to islands, lost itself in the west, in the north, and in the south,
in the vast plain of Kinross, or stopped southwards at the jagged
summits of Ben Lomond, whose farthest slopes died down on the shores
of the lake.

Three persons awaited Mary at the castle door: Lady Douglas, William
Douglas her son, and a child of twelve who was called Little Douglas,
and who was neither a son nor a brother of the inhabitants of the
castle, but merely a distant relative.  As one can imagine, there
were few compliments between Mary and her hosts; and the queen,
conducted to her apartment, which was on the first floor, and of
which the windows overlooked the lake, was soon left with Mary
Seyton, the only one of the four Marys who had been allowed to
accompany her.

However, rapid as the interview had been, and short and measured the
words exchanged between the prisoner and her gaolers, Mary had had
time, together with what she knew of them beforehand, to construct
for herself a fairly accurate idea of the new personages who had just
mingled in her history.

Lady Lochleven, wife of Lord William Douglas, of whom we have already
said a few words at the beginning of this history, was a woman of
from fifty-five to sixty years of age, who had been handsome enough
in her youth to fix upon herself the glances of King James V, and who
had had a son by him, who was this same Murray whom we have already
seen figuring so often in Mary's history, and who, although his birth
was illegitimate, had always been treated as a brother by the queen.

Lady Lochleven had had a momentary hope, so great was the king's love
for her, of becoming his wife, which upon the whole was possible, the
family of Mar, from which she was descended, being the equal of the
most ancient and the noblest families in Scotland.  But, unluckily,
perhaps slanderously, certain talk which was circulating among the
young noblemen of the time came to James's ears; it was said that
together with her royal lover the beautiful favourite had another,
whom she had chosen, no doubt from curiosity, from the very lowest
class.  It was added that this Porterfeld, or Porterfield, was the
real father of the child who had already received the name of James
Stuart, and whom the king was educating as his son at the monastery
of St.  Andrews.  These rumours, well founded or not, had therefore
stopped James V at the moment when, in gratitude to her who had given
him a son, he was on the point of raising her to the rank of queen;
so that, instead of marrying her himself, he had invited her to
choose among the nobles at court; and as she was very handsome, and
the king's favour went with the marriage, this choice, which fell on
Lord William Douglas of Lochleven, did not meet with any resistance
on his part.  However, in spite of this direct protection, that James
V preserved for her all his life, Lady Douglas could never forget
that she had fingered higher fortune; moreover, she had a hatred for
the one who, according to herself, had usurped her place, and poor
Mary had naturally inherited the profound animosity that Lady Douglas
bore to her mother, which had already come to light in the few words
that the two women had exchanged.  Besides, in ageing, whether from
repentance for her errors or from hypocrisy, Lady Douglas had become
a prude and a puritan; so that at this time she united with the
natural acrimony of her character all the stiffness of the new
religion she had adopted.

William Douglas, who was the eldest son of Lord Lochleven, on his
mother's side half-brother of Murray, was a man of from thirty-five
to thirty-six years of age, athletic, with hard and strongly
pronounced features, red-haired like all the younger branch, and who
had inherited that paternal hatred that for a century the Douglases
cherished against the Stuarts, and which was shown by so many plots,
rebellions, and assassinations.  According as fortune had favoured or
deserted Murray, William Douglas had seen the rays of the fraternal
star draw near or away from him; he had then felt that he was living
in another's life, and was devoted, body and soul, to him who was his
cause of greatness or of abasement.  Mary's fall, which must
necessarily raise Murray, was thus a source of joy for him, and the
Confederate lords could not have chosen better than in confiding the
safe-keeping of their prisoner to the instinctive spite of Lady
Douglas and to the intelligent hatred of her son.

As to Little Douglas, he was, as we have said, a child of twelve, for
some months an orphan, whom the Lochlevens had taken charge of, and
whom they made buy the bread they gave him by all sorts of harshness.
The result was that the child, proud and spiteful as a Douglas, and
knowing, although his fortune was inferior, that his birth was equal
to his proud relatives, had little by little changed his early
gratitude into lasting and profound hatred: for one used to say that
among the Douglases there was an age for loving, but that there was
none for hating.  It results that, feeling his weakness and
isolation, the child was self-contained with strength beyond his
years, and, humble and submissive in appearance, only awaited the
moment when, a grown-up young man, he could leave Lochleven, and
perhaps avenge himself for the proud protection of those who dwelt
there.  But the feelings that we have just expressed did not extend
to all the members of the family: as much as from the bottom of his
heart the little Douglas detested William and his mother, so much he
loved George, the second of Lady Lochleven's sons, of whom we have
not yet spoken, because, being away from the castle when the queen
arrived, we have not yet found an opportunity to present him to our
readers.

George, who at this time might have been about twenty-five or twenty-
six years old, was the second son of Lord Lochleven; but by a
singular chance, that his mother's adventurous youth had caused Sir
William to interpret amiss, this second son had none of the
characteristic features of the Douglases' full cheeks, high colour,
large ears, and red hair.  The result was that poor George, who, on
the contrary, had been given by nature pale cheeks, dark blue eyes,
and black hair, had been since coming into the world an object of
indifference to his father and of dislike to his elder brother.  As
to his mother, whether she were indeed in good faith surprised like
Lord Douglas at this difference in race, whether she knew the cause
and inwardly reproached herself, George had never been, ostensibly at
least, the object of a very lively maternal affection; so the young
man, followed from his childhood by a fatality that he could not
explain, had sprung up like a wild shrub, full of sap and strength,
but uncultivated and solitary.  Besides, from the time when he was
fifteen, one was accustomed to his motiveless absences, which the
indifference that everyone bore him made moreover perfectly
explicable; from time to time, however, he was seen to reappear at
the castle, like those migratory birds which always return to the
same place but only stay a moment, then take their way again without
one's knowing towards what spot in the world they are directing their
flight.

An instinct of misfortune in common had drawn Little Douglas to
George.  George, seeing the child ill-treated by everyone, had
conceived an affection for him, and Little Douglas, feeling himself
loved amid the atmosphere of indifference around him, turned with
open arms and heart to George: it resulted from this mutual liking
that one day, when the child had committed I do not know what fault,
and that William Douglas raised the whip he beat his dogs with to
strike him, that George, who was sitting on a stone, sad and
thoughtful, had immediately sprung up, snatched the whip from his
brother's hands and had thrown it far from him.  At this insult
William had drawn his sword, and George his, so that these two
brothers, who had hated one another for twenty years like two
enemies, were going to cut one another's throats, when Little
Douglas, who had picked up the whip, coming back and kneeling before
William, offered him the ignominious weapon, saying

"Strike, cousin; I have deserved it."

This behaviour of the child had caused some minutes' reflection to
the two young men, who, terrified at the crime they were about to
commit, had returned their swords to their scabbards and had each
gone away in silence.  Since this incident the friendship of George
and Little Douglas had acquired new strength, and on the child's side
it had become veneration.

We dwell upon all these details somewhat at length, perhaps, but no
doubt our readers will pardon us when they see the use to be made of
them.

This is the family, less George, who, as we have said, was absent at
the time of her arrival, into the midst of which the queen had
fallen, passing in a moment from the summit of power to the position
of a prisoner; for from the day following her arrival Mary saw that
it was by such a title she was an inmate of Lochleven Castle.  In
fact, Lady Douglas presented herself before her as soon as it was
morning, and with an embarrassment and dislike ill disguised beneath
an appearance of respectful indifference, invited Mary to follow her
and take stock of the several parts of the fortress which had been
chosen beforehand for her private use.  She then made her go through
three rooms, of which one was to serve as her bedroom, the second as
sitting-room, and the third as ante-chamber; afterwards, leading the
way down a spiral staircase, which looked into the great hall of the
castle, its only outlet, she had crossed this hall, and had taken
Mary into the garden whose trees the queen had seen topping the high
walls on her arrival: it was a little square of ground, forming a
flower-bed in the midst of which was an artificial fountain.  It was
entered by a very low door, repeated in the opposite wall; this
second door looked on to the lake and, like all the castle doors,
whose keys, however, never left the belt or the pillow of William
Douglas, it was guarded night and day by a sentinel.  This was now
the whole domain of her who had possessed the palaces, the plains,
and the mountains of an entire kingdom.

Mary, on returning to her room, found breakfast ready, and William
Douglas standing near the table he was going to fulfil about the
queen the duties of carver and taster.

In spite of their hatred for Mary, the Douglases would have
considered it an eternal blemish on their honour if any accident
should have befallen the queen while she was dwelling in their
castle; and it was in order that the queen herself should not
entertain any fear in this respect that William Douglas, in his
quality of lord of the manor, had not only desired to carve before
the queen, but even to taste first in her presence, all the dishes
served to her, as well as the water and the several wines to be
brought her.  This precaution saddened Mary more than it reassured
her; for she understood that, while she stayed in the castle, this
ceremony would prevent any intimacy at table.  However, it proceeded
from too noble an intention for her to impute it as a crime to her
hosts: she resigned herself, then, to this company, insupportable as
it was to her; only, from that day forward, she so cut short her
meals that all the time she was at Lochleven her longest dinners
barely lasted more than a quarter of an hour.

Two days after her arrival, Mary, on sitting down to table for
breakfast, found on her plate a letter addressed to her which had
been put there by William Douglas.  Mary recognised Murray's
handwriting, and her first feeling was one of joy; for if a ray of
hope remained to her, it came from her brother, to whom she had
always been perfectly kind, whom from Prior of St.  Andrew's she had
made an earl in bestowing on him the splendid estates which formed
part of the old earldom of Murray, and to whom, which was of more
importance, she had since pardoned, or pretended to pardon, the part
he had taken in Rizzio's assassination.

Her astonishment was great, then, when, having opened the letter, she
found in it bitter reproaches for her conduct, an exhortation to do
penance, and an assurance several times repeated that she should
never leave her prison.  He ended his letter in announcing to her
that, in spite of his distaste for public affairs, he had been
obliged to accept the regency, which he had done less for his country
than for his sister, seeing that it was the sole means he had of
standing in the way of the ignominious trial to which the nobles
wished to bring her, as author, or at least as chief accomplice, of
Darnley's death.  This imprisonment was then clearly a great good
fortune for her, and she ought to thank Heaven for it, as an
alleviation of the fate awaiting her if he had not interceded for
her.

This letter was a lightning stroke for Mary: only, as she did not
wish to give her enemies the delight of seeing her suffer, she
contained her grief, and, turning to William Douglas--

"My lord," said she, "this letter contains news that you doubtless
know already, for although we are not children by the same mother, he
who writes to me is related to us in the same degree, and will not
have desired to write to his sister without writing to his brother at
the same time; besides, as a good son, he will have desired to
acquaint his mother with the unlooked-for greatness that has befallen
him."

"Yes, madam," replied William, "we know since yesterday that, for the
welfare of Scotland, my brother has been named regent; and as he is a
son as respectful to his mother as he is devoted to his country, we
hope that he will repair the evil that for five years favourites of
every sort and kind have done to both."

"It is like a good son, and at the same time like a courteous host,
to go back no farther into the history of Scotland," replied Mary
Stuart," and not to make the daughter blush for the father's errors;
for I have heard say that the evil which your lordship laments was
prior to the time to which you assign it, and that King James V also
had formerly favourites, both male and female.  It is true that they
add that the ones as ill rewarded his friendship as the others his
love.  In this, if you are ignorant of it, my lord, you can be
instructed, if he is still living, by a certain.  Porterfeld or
Porterfield, I don't know which, understanding these names of the
lower classes too ill to retain and pronounce them, but about which,
in my stead, your noble mother could give you information."

With these words, Mary Stuart rose, and, leaving William Douglas
crimson with rage, she returned into her bedroom, and bolted the door
behind her.

All that day Mary did not come down, remaining at her window, from
which she at least enjoyed a splendid view over the plains and
village of Kinross; but this vast extent only contracted her heart
the more, when, bringing her gaze back from the horizon to the
castle, she beheld its walls surrounded on all sides by the deep
waters of the lake, on whose wide surface a single boat, where Little
Douglas was fishing, was rocking like a speck.  For some moments
Mary's eyes mechanically rested on this child, whom she had already
seen upon her arrival, when suddenly a horn sounded from the Kinross
side.  At the same moment Little Douglas threw away his line, and
began to row towards the shore whence the signal had come with skill
and strength beyond his years.  Mary, who had let her gaze rest on
him absently, continued to follow him with her eyes, and saw him make
for a spot on the shore so distant that the boat seemed to her at
length but an imperceptible speck; but soon it reappeared, growing
larger as it approached, and Mary could then observe that it was
bringing back to the castle a new passenger, who, having in his turn
taken the oars, made the little skiff fly over the tranquil water of
the lake, where it left a furrow gleaming in the last rays of the
sun.  Very soon, flying on with the swiftness of a bird, it was near
enough for Mary to see that the skilful and vigorous oarsman was a
young man from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, with long
black hair, clad in a close coat of green cloth, and wearing a
Highlander's cap, adorned with an eagle's feather; then, as with his
back turned to the window he drew nearer, Little Douglas, who was
leaning on his shoulder, said a few words which made him turn round
towards the queen: immediately Mary, with an instinctive movement
rather than with the dread of being an object of idle curiosity, drew
back, but not so quickly, however, but that she had been able to see
the handsome pale face of the unknown, who, when she returned to the
window, had disappeared behind one of the corners of the castle.

Everything is a cause of conjecture to a prisoner: it seemed to Mary
that this young man's face was not unknown to her, and that he had
seen her already; but though great the care with which she questioned
her memory, she could not recall any distinct remembrance, so much so
that the queen ended in thinking it the play of her imagination, or
that some vague and distinct resemblance had deceived her.

However, in spite of Mary, this idea had taken an important place in
her mind: she incessantly saw this little boat skimming the water,
and the young man and the child who were in it drawing near her, as
if to bring her help.  It followed that, although there had been
nothing real in all these captive's dreams, she slept that night a
calmer sleep than she had yet done since she had been in Lochleven
Castle.

Next day, on rising, Mary ran to her window: the weather was fine,
and everything seemed to smile on her, the water, the heavens and the
earth.  But, without being able to account for the restraining
motive, she did not want to go down into the ga den before breakfast.
When the door opened, 'she turned quickly round: it was, as on the
day before, William Douglas, who came to fulfil his duty as taster.

The breakfast was a short and silent one; then, as soon as Douglas
had withdrawn, Mary descended in her turn: in crossing the courtyard
she saw two horses ready saddled, which pointed to the near departure
of a master and a squire.  Was it the young man with the black hair
already setting out again?  This is what Mary did not dare or did not
wish to ask.  She consequently went her way, and entered the garden:
at the first glance she took it in in its full extent; it was
deserted.

Mary walked there a moment; then, soon tiring of the promenade, she
went up again to her room: in passing back through the courtyard she
had noticed that the horses were no longer there.  Directly she
returned into her apartment, she went then to the window to see if
she could discover anything upon the lake to guide her in her
conjectures: a boat was in fact receding, and in this boat were the
two horses and the two horsemen; one was William Douglas, the other a
simple squire from the house.

Mary continued watching the boat until it had touched the shore.
Arrived there, the two horsemen got out, disembarked their horses,
and went away at full gallop, taking the same road by which the queen
had come; so that, as the horses were prepared for a long journey,
Mary thought that William Douglas was going to Edinburgh.  As to the
boat, scarcely had it landed its two passengers on the opposite shore
than it returned towards the castle.

At that moment Mary Seyton announced to the queen that Lady Douglas
was asking permission to visit her.

It was the second time, after long hatred on Lady Douglas's part and
contemptuous indifference on the queen's, that the two women were
face to face; therefore the queen, with that instinctive impulse of
coquetry which urges women, in whatever situation they find
themselves, to desire to be beautiful, above all for women, made a
sign to Mary Seyton, and, going to a little mirror fastened to the
wall in a heavy Gothic frame, she arranged her curls, and readjusted
the lace of her collar; then; having seated herself in the pose most
favourable to her, in a great arm-chair, the only one in her sitting-
room, she said smilingly to Mary Seyton that she might admit Lady
Douglas, who was immediately introduced.

Mary's expectation was not disappointed: Lady Douglas, in spite of
her hatred for James Vs daughter, and mistress of herself as she
thought she as, could not prevent herself from showing by a movement
of surprise the impression that this marvelous beauty was making on
her: she thought she should find Mary crushed by her unhappiness,
pallid from her fatigues, humbled by captivity, and she saw hers
calm, lovely, and haughty as usual.  Mary perceived the effect that
she was producing, and addressing herself with an ironical smile
partly to Mary Seyton, who was leaning on the back of her chair, and
partly to her who was paying her this unforeseen visit

"We are fortunate to-day," said she, "for we are going as it seems to
enjoy the society of our good hostess, whom we thank besides for
having kindly maintained with us the empty ceremony of announcing
herself--a ceremony with which, having the keys of our apartment, she
could have dispensed."

"If my presence is inconvenient to your grace," replied Lady
Lochleven, "I am all the more sorry for it, as circumstances will
oblige me to impose it twice daily, at least during the absence of my
son, who is summoned to Edinburgh by the regent; this is of what I
came to inform your grace, not with the empty ceremonial of the
court, but with the consideration which Lady Lochleven owes to
everyone who has received hospitality in her castle."

"Our good hostess mistakes our intention," Mary answered, with
affected good-nature; "and the regent himself can bear witness to the
pleasure we have always had in bringing nearer to us the persons who
can recall to us, even indirectly, our well-beloved father, James V.
It will be therefore unjustly that Lady Douglas will interpret in a
manner disagreeable to herself our surprise at seeing her; and the
hospitality that she offers us so obligingly does not promise us, in
spite of her goodwill, sufficient distractions that we should deprive
ourselves of those that her visits cannot fail to procure us."

"Unfortunately, madam," replied Lady Lochleven, whom Mary was keeping
standing before her, "whatever pleasure I myself derive from these
visits, I shall be obliged to deprive myself of, except at the times
I have mentioned. I am now too old to bear fatigue, and I have,
always been too proud to endure sarcasms."

"Really, Seyton," cried Mary, seeming to recollect herself, "we had
not dreamed that Lady Lochleven, having won her right to a stool at
the court of the king my father, would have need to preserve it in
the prison of the queen his daughter.  Bring forward a seat, Seyton,
that we be not deprived so soon, and by a failure of memory on our
part, of our gracious hostess's company; or even," went on Mary,
rising and pointing out her own seat to Lady Lochleven, who was
making a motion to withdraw, "if a stool does not suit you, my lady,
take this easy-chair: you will not be the first member of your family
to sit in my place."

At this last allusion, which recalled to her Murray's usurpation,
Lady Lochleven was no doubt about to make some exceedingly bitter
reply, when the young man with the dark hair appeared on the
threshold, without being announced, and, advancing towards Lady
Lochleven, without saluting Mary--

"Madam," said he, bowing to the former, "the boat which took my
brother has just returned, and one of the men in it is charged with a
pressing charge that Lord William forgot to make to you himself."

Then, saluting the old lady with the same respect, he immediately
went out of the room, without even glancing at the queen, who, hurt
by this impertinence, turned round to Mary Seyton, and, with her
usual calm--

"What have they told us, Seyton, of injurious rumours which were
spread about our worthy hostess apropos of a child with a pale face
and dark hair?  If this child, as I have every reason to believe, has
become the young man who just went out of the room, I am ready to
affirm to all the incredulous that he is a true Douglas, if not for
courage, of which we cannot judge, then for insolence, of which he
has just given us proofs.  Let us return, darling," continued the
queen, leaning on Mary Seyton's arm;" for our good hostess, out of
courtesy, might think herself obliged to keep us company longer,
while we know that she is impatiently awaited elsewhere."

With these words, Mary went into her bedroom; while the old lady,
still quite stunned with the shower of sarcasms that the queen had
rained on her, withdrew, murmuring, "Yes, yes, he is a Douglas, and
with God's help he will prove it, I hope."

The queen had had strength as long as she was sustained by her
enemy's presence, but scarcely was she alone than she sank into a
chair, and no longer having any witness of her weakness than Mary
Seyton, burst into tears.  Indeed, she had just been cruelly wounded:
till then no man had come near her who had not paid homage either to
the majesty of her rank or to the beauty of her countenance.  But
precisely he, on whom she had reckoned, without knowing why, with
instinctive hopes, insulted her at one and the same time in her
double pride of queen and woman: thus she remained shut up till
evening.

At dinner-time, just as Lady Lochleven had informed Mary, she
ascended to the queen's apartment, in her dress of honour, and
preceding four servants who were carrying the several dishes
composing the prisoner's repast, and who, in their turn, were
followed by the old castle steward, having, as on days of great
ceremony, his gold chain round his neck and his ivory stick in his
hand.  The servants' placed the dishes on the table, and waited in
silence for the moment when it should please the queen to come out of
her room; but at this moment the door opened, and in place of the
queen Mary Seyton appeared.

"Madam," said she on entering, "her grace was indisposed during the
day, and will take nothing this evening; it will be useless, then,
for you to wait longer."

"Permit me to hope," replied Lady Lochleven, "that she will change
her decision; in any case, see me perform my office."

At these words, a servant handed Lady Lochleven bread and salt on a
silver salver, while the old steward, who, in the absence of William
Douglas, fulfilled the duties of carver, served to her on a plate of
the same metal a morsel from each of the dishes that had been
brought; then, this transaction ended

"So the queen will not appear to-day?" Lady Lochleven inquired.

"It is her Majesty's resolve," replied Mary Seyton.

"Our presence is then needless," said the old lady; "but in any case
the table is served, and if her grace should have need of anything
else, she would have but to name it."

With these words, Lady Lochleven, with the same stiffness and the
same dignity with which she had come, withdrew, followed by her four
servants and her steward.

As Lady Lochleven had foreseen, the queen, yielding to the entreaties
of Mary Seyton, came out of her room at last, towards eight o'clock
in the evening, sat down to table, and, served by the only maid of
honour left her, ate a little; then, getting up, she went to the
window.

It was one of those magnificent summer evenings on which the whole of
nature seems making holiday: the sky was studded with stars, which
were reflected in the lake, and in their midst, like a more fiery
star, the flame of the chafing-dish shone, burning at the stern of a
little boat: the queen, by the gleam of the light it shed, perceived
George Douglas and Little Douglas, who were fishing.  However great
her wish to profit by this fine evening to breathe the pure night
air, the sight of this young man who had so grossly insulted her this
very day made such a keen impression on her that she shut her window
directly, and, retiring into her room, went to bed, and made her
companion in captivity read several prayers aloud; then, not being
able to sleep, so greatly was she agitated, she rose, and throwing on
a mantle went again to the window the boat had disappeared.

Mary spent part of the night gazing into the immensity of the
heavens, or into the depths of the lake; but in spite of the nature
of the thoughts agitating her, she none the less found very great
physical alleviation in contact with this pure air and in
contemplation of this peaceful and silent night: thus she awoke next
day calmer and more resigned.  Unfortunately, the sight of Lady
Lochleven, who presented herself at breakfast-time, to fulfil her
duties as taster, brought back her irritability.  Perhaps, however,
things would have gone on smoothly if Lady Lochleven, instead of
remaining standing by the sideboard, had withdrawn after having
tasted the various dishes of the courses; but this insisting on
remaining throughout the meal, which was at bottom a mark of respect,
seemed to the queen unbearable tyranny.

"Darling," said she, speaking to Mary Seyton, "have you already
forgotten that our good hostess complained yesterday of the fatigue
she felt inn standing?  Bring her, then, one of the two stools
which compose our royal furniture, and take care that it is not the
one with the leg broken".  "If the furniture of Lochleven Castle is
in such bad condition, madam," the old lady replied, "it is the fault
of the kings of Scotland: the poor Douglases for nearly a century
have had such a small part of their sovereigns' favour, that they
have not been able to keep up the splendour of their ancestors to the
level of that of private individuals, and because there was in
Scotland a certain musician, as I am informed, who spent their income
for a whole year in one month."

"Those who know how to take so well, my lady," the queen answered,
"have no need of being given to: it seems to me the Douglases have
lost nothing by waiting, and there is not a younger son of this noble
family who might not aspire to the highest alliances; it is truly
vexatious that our sister the queen of England has taken a vow of
virginity; as is stated."

"Or rather," interrupted Lady Lochleven, "that the Queen of Scotland
is not a widow by her third husband.  But," continued the old lady,
pretending to recollect herself, "I do not say that to reproach your
grace.  Catholics look upon marriage as a sacrament, and on this head
receive it as often as they can."

"This, then," returned Mary, "is the difference between them and the
Huguenots; for they, not having the same respect for it, think it is
allowed them to dispense with it in certain circumstances."

At this terrible sarcasm Lady Lochleven took a step towards Mary
Stuart, holding in her hand the knife which she had just been using
to cut off a piece of meat brought her to taste; but the queen rose
up with so great a calm and with such majesty, that either from
involuntary respect or shame of her first impulse, she let fall the
weapon she was holding, and not finding anything sufficiently strong
in reply to express her feelings, she signed to the servants to
follow her, and went out of the apartment with all the dignity that
anger permitted her to summon to her aid.

Scarcely had Lady Lochleven left the room than the queen sat down
again, joyful and triumphant at the victory she had just gained, and
ate with a better appetite than she had yet done since she was a
prisoner, while Mary Seyton deplored in a low tone and with all
possible respect this fatal gift of repartee that Mary had received,
and which, with her beauty, was one of the causes of all her
misfortunes; but the queen did nothing but laugh at all her
observations, saying she was curious to see the figure her good
hostess would cut at dinnertime.

After breakfast, the queen went down into the garden: her satisfied
pride had restored some of her cheerfulness, so much so that, seeing,
while crossing the hall, a mandolin lying forgotten on a chair, she
told Mary Seyton to take it, to see, she said, if she could recall
her old talent.  In reality the queen was one of the best musicians
of the time, and played admirably, says Brantome, on the lute and
viol d'amour, an instrument much resembling the mandolin.

Mary Seyton obeyed.

Arrived in the garden, the queen sat down in the deepest shade, and
there, having tuned her instrument, she at first drew from it lively
and light tones, which soon darkened little by little, at the same
time that her countenance assumed a hue of deep melancholy.  Mary
Seyton looked at her with uneasiness, although for a long time she
had been used to these sudden changes in her mistress's humour, and
she was about to ask the reason of this gloomy veil suddenly spread
over her face, when, regulating her harmonies, Mary began to sing in
a low voice, and as if for herself alone, the following verses:--

    "Caverns, meadows, plains and mounts,
     Lands of tree and stone,
     Rivers, rivulets and founts,
     By which I stray alone,
     Bewailing as I go,
     With tears that overflow,
     Sing will I
     The miserable woe
     That bids me grieve and sigh.

     Ay, but what is here to lend
     Ear to my lament?
     What is here can comprehend
     My dull discontent?
     Neither grass nor reed,
     Nor the ripples heed,
     Flowing by,
     While the stream with speed
     Hastens from my eye.


     Vainly does my wounded heart
     Hope, alas, to heal;
     Seeking, to allay its smart,
     Things that cannot feel.
     Better should my pain
     Bitterly complain,
     Crying shrill,
     To thee who dost constrain
     My spirit to such ill.

     Goddess, who shalt never die,
     List to what I say;
     Thou who makest me to lie
     Weak beneath thy sway,
     If my life must know
     Ending at thy blow,
     Cruellest!
     Own it perished so
     But at thy behest.

     Lo! my face may all men see
     Slowly pine and fade,
     E'en as ice doth melt and flee
     Near a furnace laid.
     Yet the burning ray
     Wasting me away
     Passion's glow,
     Wakens no display
     Of pity for my woe.

     Yet does every neighbour tree,
     Every rocky wall,
     This my sorrow know and see;
     So, in brief, doth all
     Nature know aright
     This my sorry plight;
     Thou alone
     Takest thy delight
     To hear me cry and moan.

     But if it be thy will,
     To see tormented still
     Wretched me,
     Then let my woful ill
     Immortal be."


This last verse died away as if the queen were exhausted, and at the
same time the mandolin slipped from her hands, and would have fallen
to the ground had not Mary Seyton thrown herself on her knees and
prevented it.  The young girl remained thus at her mistress's feet
for some time, gazing at her silently, and as she saw that she was
losing herself more and more in gloomy reverie--

"Have those lines brought back to your Majesty some sad remembrance?"
she asked hesitatingly.

"Oh, yes," answered the queen; "they reminded me of the unfortunate
being who composed them."

"And may I, without indiscretion, inquire of your grace who is their
author?"

"Alas! he was a noble, brave, and handsome young man, with a faithful
heart and a hot head, who would defend me to-day, if I had defended
him then; but his boldness seemed to me rashness, and his fault a
crime.  What was to be done?  I did not love him.  Poor Chatelard! I
was very cruel to him."

"But you did not prosecute him, it was your brother; you did not
condemn him, the judges did."

"Yes, yes; I know that he too was Murray's victim, and that is no
doubt the reason that I am calling him to mind just now.  But I was
able to pardon him, Mary, and I was inflexible; I let ascend the
scaffold a man whose only crime was in loving me too well; and now I
am astonished and complain of being abandoned by everyone.  Listen,
darling, there is one thing that terrifies me: it is, that when I
search within myself I find that I have not only deserved my fate,
but even that God did not punish me severely enough."

"What strange thoughts for your grace!" cried Mary; "and see where
those unlucky lines which returned to your mind have led you, the
very day when you were beginning to recover a little of your
cheerfulness."

"Alas!" replied the queen, shaking her head and uttering a deep sigh,
"for six years very few days have passed that I have not repeated
those lines to myself, although it may be for the first time to-day
that I repeat them aloud.  He was a Frenchman too, Mary: they have
exiled from me, taken or killed all who came to me from France.  Do
you remember that vessel which was swallowed up before our eyes when
we came out of Calais harbour?  I exclaimed then that it was a sad
omen: you all wanted to reassure me.  Well, who was right, now, you
or I?"

The queen was in one of those fits of sadness for which tears are the
sole remedy; so Mary Seyton, perceiving that not only would every
consolation be vain, but also unreasonable, far from continuing to
react against her mistress's melancholy, fully agreed with her: it
followed that the queen, who was suffocating, began to weep, and that
her tears brought her comfort; then little by little she regained
self-control, and this crisis passed as usual, leaving her firmer and
more resolute than ever, so that when she went up to her room again
it was impossible to read the slightest alteration in her
countenance.

The dinner-hour was approaching, and Mary, who in the morning was
looking forward impatiently to the enjoyment of her triumph over Lady
Lochleven, now saw her advance with uneasiness: the mere idea of
again facing this woman, whose pride one was always obliged to oppose
with insolence, was, after the moral fatigues of the day, a fresh
weariness.  So she decided not to appear for dinner, as on the day
before: she was all the more glad she had taken this resolution, that
this time it was not Lady Lochleven who came to fulfil the duties
enjoined on a member of the family to make the queen easy, but George
Douglas, whom his mother in her displeasure at the morning scene sent
to replace her.  Thus, when Mary Seyton told the queen that she saw
the young man with dark hair cross the courtyard on his way to her,
Mary still further congratulated herself on her decision; for this
young man's insolence had wounded her more deeply than all his
mother's haughty insults.  The queen was not a little astonished,
then, when in a few minutes Mary Seyton returned and informed her
that George Douglas, having sent away the servants, desired the
honour of speaking to her on a matter of importance.  At first the
queen refused; but Mary Seyton told her that the young man's air and
manner this time were so different from what she had seen two days
before, that she thought her mistress would be wrong to refuse his
request.

The queen rose then, and with the pride and majesty habitual to her,
entered the adjoining room, and, having taken three steps, stopped
with a disdainful air, waiting for George to address her.

Mary Seyton had spoken truly: George Douglas was now another man.
To-day he seemed to be as respectful and timid as the preceding day
he had seemed haughty and proud.  He, in his turn, made a step
towards the queen; but seeing Mary Seyton standing behind her--

"Madam," said he, "I wished to speak with your Majesty alone: shall I
not obtain this favour?"

"Mary Seyton is not a stranger to me, Sir: she is my sister, my
friend; she is more than all that, she is my companion in captivity."

"And by all these claims, madam, I have the utmost veneration for
her; but what I have to tell you cannot be heard by other ears than
yours.  Thus, madam, as the opportunity furnished now may perhaps
never present itself again, in the name of what is dearest to you,
grant me what I ask."

There was such a tone of respectful prayer in George's voice that
Mary turned to the young girl, and, making her a friendly sign with
her hand--

"Go, then, darling," said she; "but be easy, you will lose nothing by
not hearing.  Go."

Mary Seyton withdrew; the queen smilingly looked after her, till the
door was shut; then, turning to George--

"Now, sir," said she, "we are alone, speak."

But George, instead of replying, advanced to the queen, and, kneeling
on one knee, drew from his breast a paper which he presented to her.
Mary took it with amazement, unfolded it, glancing at Douglas, who
remained in the same posture, and read as follows:

We, earls, lords, and barons, in consideration that our queen is
detained at Lochleven, and that her faithful subjects cannot have
access to her person; seeing, on the other hand, that our duty
pledges us to provide for her safety, promise and swear to employ all
reasonable means which will depend on us to set her at liberty again
on conditions compatible with the honour of her Majesty, the welfare
of the kingdom, and even with the safety of those who keep her in
prison, provided that they consent to give her up; that if they
refuse, we declare that we are prepared to make use of ourselves, our
children, our friends, our servants, our vassals, our goods, our
persons, and our lives, to restore her to liberty, to procure the
safety of the prince, and to co-operate in punishing the late king's
murderers.  If we are assailed for this intent, whether as a body or
in private, we promise to defend ourselves, and to aid one another,
under pain of infamy and perjury.  So may God help us.

"Given with our own hands at Dumbarton,

"St.  Andrews, Argyll, Huntly, Arbroath, Galloway, Ross, Fleming,
Herries, Stirling, Kilwinning, Hamilton, and Saint-Clair, Knight."


"And Seyton!" cried Mary, "among all these signatures, I do not see
that of my faithful Seyton."

Douglas, still kneeling, drew from his breast a second paper, and
presented it to the queen with the same marks of respect.  It
contained only these few words:

"Trust George Douglas; for your Majesty has no more devoted friend in
the entire kingdom.

"SEYTON."


Mary lowered her eyes to Douglas with an expression which was hers
only; then, giving him her hand to raise him--

"Ah!" said she, with a sigh more of joy than of sadness, "now I see
that God, in spite of my faults, has not yet abandoned me.  But how
is it, in this castle, that you, a Douglas.... oh! it is incredible!"

"Madam," replied George, "seven years have passed since I saw you in
France for the first time, and for seven years I have loved you".
Mary moved; but Douglas put forth his hand and shook his head with an
air of such profound sadness, that she understood that she might hear
what the young man had to say.  He continued: "Reassure yourself,
madam; I should never have made this confession if, while explaining
my conduct to you, this confession would not have given you greater
confidence in me.  Yes, for seven years I have loved you, but as one
loves a star that one can never reach, a madonna to whom one can only
pray; for seven years I have followed you everywhere without you ever
having paid attention to me, without my saying a word or making a
gesture to attract your notice.  I was on the knight of Mevillon's
galley when you crossed to Scotland; I was among the regent's
soldiers when you beat Huntly; I was in the escort which accompanied
you when you went to see the sick king at Glasgow; I reached
Edinburgh an hour after you had left it for Lochleven; and then it
seemed to me that my mission was revealed to me for the first time,
and that this love for which till then, I had reproached myself as a
crime, was on the contrary a favour from God.  I learned that the
lords were assembled at Dumbarton: I flew thither.  I pledged my
name, I pledged my honour, I pledged my life; and I obtained from
them, thanks to the facility I had for coming into this fortress, the
happiness of bringing you the paper they have just signed.  Now,
madam, forget all I have told you, except the assurance of my
devotion and respect: forget that I am near you; I am used to not
being seen: only, if you have need of my life, make a sign; for seven
years my life has been yours."

"Alas!" replied Mary, "I was complaining this morning of no longer
being loved, and I ought to complain, on the contrary, that I am
still loved; for the love that I inspire is fatal and mortal.  Look
back, Douglas, and count the tombs that, young as I am, I have
already left on my path--Francis II, Chatelard, Rizzio, Darnley....
Oh to attach one's self to my fortunes more than love is needed now
heroism and devotion are requisite so much the more that, as you have
said, Douglas, it is love without any possible reward.  Do you
understand?"

"Oh, madam, madam," answered Douglas, "is it not reward beyond my
deserts to see you daily, to cherish the hope that liberty will be
restored to you through me, and to have at least, if I do not give it
you, the certainty of dying in your sight?"

"Poor young man!" murmured Mary, her eyes raised to heaven, as if she
were reading there beforehand the fate awaiting her new defender.

"Happy Douglas, on the contrary," cried George, seizing the queen's
hand and kissing it with perhaps still more respect than love, "happy
Douglas! for in obtaining a sigh from your Majesty he has already
obtained more than he hoped."

"And upon what have you decided with my friends?" said the queen,
raising Douglas, who till then had remained on his knees before her.

"Nothing yet," George replied; "for we scarcely had time to see one
another.  Your escape, impossible without me, is difficult even with
me;  and your Majesty has seen that I was obliged publicly to fail in
respect, to obtain from my mother the confidence which gives me the
good fortune of seeing you to-day: if this confidence on my mother's
or my brother's part ever extends to giving up to me the castle keys,
then you are saved!  Let your Majesty not be surprised at anything,
then: in the presence of others, I shall ever be always a Douglas,
that is an enemy; and except your life be in danger, madam, I shall
not utter a word, I shall not make a gesture which might betray the
faith that I have sworn you; but, on your side, let your grace know
well, that present or absent, whether I am silent or speak, whether I
act or remain inert, all will be in appearance only, save my
devotion.  Only," continued Douglas, approaching the window and
showing to the queen a little house on Kinross hill,--"only, look
every evening in that direction, madam, and so long as you see a
light shine there, your friends will be keeping watch for you, and
you need not lose hope."

"Thanks, Douglas, thanks," said the queen; "it does one good to meet
with a heart like yours from time to time--oh! thanks."

"And now, madam," replied the young man, "I must leave your Majesty;
to remain longer with you would be to raise suspicions, and a single
doubt of me, think of it well, madam, and that light which is your
sole beacon is extinguished, and all returns into night."

With these words, Douglas bowed more respectfully than he had yet
done, and withdrew, leaving Mary full of hope, and still more full of
pride; for this time the homage that she had just received was
certainly for the woman and not for the queen.

As the queen had told him, Mary Seyton was informed of everything,
even the love of Douglas, and, the two women impatiently awaited the
evening to see if the promised star would shine on the horizon.
Their hope was not in vain: at the appointed time the beacon was lit.
The queen trembled with joy, for it was the confirmation of her
hopes, and her companion could not tear her from the window, where
she remained with her gaze fastened on the little house in Kinross.
At last she yielded to Mary Seyton's prayers, and consented to go to
bed; but twice in the night she rose noiselessly to go to the window:
the light was always shining, and was not extinguished till dawn,
with its sisters the stars.

Next day, at breakfast, George announced to the queen the return of
his brother, William Douglas: he arrived the same evening; as to
himself, George, he had to leave Lochleven next morning, to confer
with the nobles who had signed the declaration, and who had
immediately separated to raise troops in their several counties.  The
queen could not attempt to good purpose any escape but at a time when
she would be sure of gathering round her an army strong enough to
hold the country; as to him, Douglas, one was so used to his silent
disappearances and to his unexpected returns, that there was no
reason to fear that his departure would inspire any suspicion.

All passed as George had said: in the evening the sound of a bugle
announced the arrival of William Douglas; he had with him Lord
Ruthven, the son of him who had assassinated Rizzio, and who, exiled
with Morton after the murder, died in England of the sickness with
which he was already attacked the day of the terrible catastrophe in
which we have seen him take such a large share.  He preceded by one
day Lord Lindsay of Byres and Sir Robert Melville, brother of Mary's
former ambassador to Elizabeth: all three were charged with a mission
from the regent to the queen.

On the following day everything fell back into the usual routine, and
William Douglas reassumed his duties as carver.  Breakfast passed
without Mary's having learned anything of George's departure or
Ruthven's arrival.  On rising from the table she went to her window:
scarcely was she there than she heard the sound of a horn echoing on
the shores of the lake, and saw a little troop of horsemen halt,
while waiting for the boat to came and take those who were going to
the castle.

The distance was too great for Mary to recognise any of the visitors;
but it was clear, from the signs of intelligence exchanged between
the little troop and the inhabitants of the fortress, that the
newcomers were her enemies.  This was a reason why the queen, in her
uneasiness, should not lose sight for a moment of the boat which was
going to fetch them.  She saw only two men get into it; and
immediately it put off again for the castle.

As the boat drew nearer, Mary's presentiments changed to real fears,
for in one of the men coming towards her she thought she made out
Lord Lindsay of Byres, the same who, a week before, had brought her
to her prison.  It was indeed he himself, as usual in a steel helmet
without a visor, which allowed one to see his coarse face designed to
express strong passions, and his long black beard with grey hairs
here and there, which covered his chest: his person was protected, as
if it were in time of war, with his faithful suit of armour, formerly
polished and well gilded, but which, exposed without ceasing to rain
and mist, was now eaten up with rust; he had slung on his back, much
as one slings a quiver, a broadsword, so heavy that it took two hands
to manage it, and so long that while the hilt reached the left
shoulder the point reached the right spur: in a word, he was still
the same soldier, brave to rashness but brutal to insolence,
recognising nothing but right and force, and always ready to use
force when he believed himself in the right.

The queen was so much taken up with the sight of Lord Lindsay of
Byres, that it was only just as the boat reached the shore that she
glanced at his companion and recognised Robert Melville: this was
some consolation, for, whatever might happen, she knew that she
should find in him if not ostensible at least secret sympathy.
Besides, his dress, by which one could have judged him equally with
Lord Lindsay, was a perfect contrast to his companion's.  It
consisted of a black velvet doublet, with a cap and a feather of the
same hue fastened to it with a gold clasp; his only weapon, offensive
or defensive, was a little sword, which he seemed to wear rather as a
sign of his rank than for attack or defence.  As to his features and
his manners, they were in harmony with this peaceful appearance: his
pale countenance expressed both acuteness and intelligence; his quick
eye was mild, and his voice insinuating; his figure slight and a
little bent by habit rather than by years, since he was but forty-
five at this time, indicated an easy and conciliatory character.

However, the presence of this man of peace, who seemed entrusted with
watching over the demon of war, could not reassure the queen, and as
to get to the landing-place, in front of the great door of the
castle, the boat had just disappeared behind the corner of a tower,
she told Mary Seyton to go down that she might try to learn what
cause brought Lord Lindsay to Lochleven, well knowing that with the
force of character with which she was endowed, she need know this
cause but a few minutes beforehand, whatever it might be, to give her
countenance that calm and that majesty which she had always found to
influence her enemies.

Left alone, Mary let her glance stray back to the little house in
Kinross, her sole hope; but the distance was too great to distinguish
anything; besides, its shutters remained closed all day, and seemed
to open only in the evening, like the clouds, which, having covered
the sky for a whole morning, scatter at last to reveal to the lost
sailor a solitary star.  She had remained no less motionless, her
gaze always fixed on the same object, when she was drawn from this
mute contemplation by the step of Mary Seyton.

"Well, darling?" asked the queen, turning round.

"Your Majesty is not mistaken," replied the messenger: "it really was
Sir Robert Melville and Lord Lindsay; but there came yesterday with
Sir William Douglas a third ambassador, whose name, I am afraid, will
be still more odious to your Majesty than either of the two I have
just pronounced."

"You deceive yourself, Mary," the queen answered: "neither the name
of Melville nor that of Lindsay is odious to me.  Melville's, on the
contrary, is, in my present circumstances, one of those which I have
most pleasure in hearing; as to Lord Lindsay's, it is doubtless not
agreeable to me, but it is none the less an honourable name, always
borne by men rough and wild, it is true, but incapable of treachery.
Tell me, then, what is this name, Mary; for you see I am calm and
prepared."

"Alas! madam," returned Mary, "calm and prepared as you may be,
collect all your strength, not merely to hear this name uttered, but
also to receive in a few minutes the man who bears it; for this name
is that of Lord Ruthven."

Mary Seyton had spoken truly, and this name had a terrible influence
upon the queen; for scarcely had it escaped the young girl's lips
than Mary Stuart uttered a cry, and turning pale, as if she were
about to faint, caught hold of the window-ledge.

Mary Seyton, frightened at the effect produced by this fatal name,
immediately sprang to support the queen; but she, stretching one hand
towards her, while she laid the other on her heart

"It is nothing," said she; "I shall be better in a moment.  Yes,
Mary, yes, as you said, it is a fatal name and mingled with one of my
most bloody memories.  What such men are coming to ask of me must be
dreadful indeed.  But no matter, I shall soon be ready to receive my
brother's ambassadors, for doubtless they are sent in his name.  You,
darling, prevent their entering, for I must have some minutes to
myself: you know me; it will not take me long."

With these words the queen withdrew with a firm step to her
bedchamber.

Mary Seyton was left alone, admiring that strength of character which
made of Mary Stuart, in all other respects so completely woman-like,
a man in the hour of danger.  She immediately went to the door to
close it with the wooden bar that one passed between two iron rings,
but the bar had been taken away, so that there was no means of
fastening the door from within.  In a moment she heard someone coming
up the stairs, and guessing from the heavy, echoing step that this
must be Lord Lindsay, she looked round her once again to see if she
could find something to replace the bar, and finding nothing within
reach, she passed her arm through the rings, resolved to let it be
broken rather than allow anyone to approach her mistress before it
suited her.  Indeed, hardly had those who were coming up reached the
landing than someone knocked violently, and a harsh voice cried:

"Come, come, open the door; open directly."

"And by what right," said Mary Seyton, "am I ordered thus insolently
to open the Queen of Scotland's door?"

"By the right of the ambassador of the regent to enter everywhere in
his name.  I am Lord Lindsay, and I am come to speak to Lady Mary
Stuart."

"To be an ambassador," answered Mary Seyton, "is not to be exempted
from having oneself announced in visiting a woman, and much more a
queen; and if this ambassador is, as he says, Lord Lindsay, he will
await his sovereign's leisure, as every Scottish noble would do in
his place."

"By St. Andrew!" cried Lord Lindsay, "open, or I will break in the
door."

"Do nothing to it, my lord, I entreat you," said another voice, which
Mary recognised as Meville's.  "Let us rather wait for Lord Ruthven,
who is not yet ready."

"Upon my soul," cried Lindsay, shaking the door, "I shall not wait a
second".  Then, seeing that it resisted, "Why did you tell me, then,
you scamp," Lindsay went on, speaking to the steward, "that the bar
had been removed?

"It is true," replied he.

"Then," returned Lindsay, "with what is this silly wench securing the
door?"

"With my arm, my lord, which I have passed through the rings, as a
Douglas did for King James I, at a time when Douglases had dark hair
instead of red, and were faithful instead of being traitors."

"Since you know your history so well," replied Lindsay, in a rage,"
you should remember that that weak barrier did not hinder Graham,
that Catherine Douglas's arm was broken like a willow wand, and that
James I was killed like a dog."

"But you, my lord," responded the courageous young girl, "ought also
to know the ballad that is still sung in our time--

"'Now, on Robert Gra'am,
The king's destroyer, shame!
To Robert Graham cling
Shame, who destroyed our king.'"

"Mary," cried the queen, who had overheard this altercation from her
bedroom,--"Mary, I command you to open the door directly: do you
hear?"

Mary obeyed, and Lord Lindsay entered, followed by Melville, who
walked behind him, with slow steps and bent head.  Arrived in the
middle of the second room, Lord Lindsay stopped, and, looking round
him--

"Well, where is she, then?" he asked; "and has she not already kept
us waiting long enough outside, without making us wait again inside?
Or does she imagine that, despite these walls and these bars, she is
always queen

"Patience, my lord," murmured Sir Robert: "you see that Lord Ruthven
has not come yet, and since we can do nothing without him, let us
wait."

"Let wait who will," replied Lindsay, inflamed with anger; "but it
will not be I, and wherever she may be, I shall go and seek her."

With these words, he made some steps towards Mary Stuart's bedroom;
but at the same moment the queen opened the door, without seeming
moved either at the visit or at the insolence of the visitors, and so
lovely and so full of majesty, that each, even Lindsay himself, was
silent at her appearance, and, as if in obedience to a higher power,
bowed respectfully before her.

"I fear I have kept you waiting, my lord," said the queen, without
replying to the ambassador's salutation otherwise than by a slight
inclination of the head; "but a woman does not like to receive even
enemies without having spent a few minutes over her toilet.  It is
true that men are less tenacious of ceremony," added she, throwing a
significant glance at Lord Lindsay's rusty armour and soiled and
pierced doublet.  "Good day, Melville," she continued, without paying
attention to some words of excuse stammered by Lindsay; "be welcome
in my prison, as you were in my palace; for I believe you as devoted
to the one as to the other".

Then, turning to Lindsay, who was looking interrogatively at the
door, impatient as he was for Ruthven to come--

"You have there, my lord," said she, pointing to the sword he carried
over his shoulder, "a faithful companion, though it is a little
heavy: did you expect, in coming here, to find enemies against whom
to employ it?  In the contrary case, it is a strange ornament for a
lady's presence.  But no matter, my lord, I, am too much of a Stuart
to fear the sight of a sword, even if it were naked, I warn you."

"It is not out of place here, madam," replied Lindsay, bringing it
forward and leaning his elbow on its cross hilt, "for it is an old
acquaintance of your family."

"Your ancestors, my lord, were brave and loyal enough for me not to
refuse to believe what you tell me.  Besides, such a good blade must
have rendered them good service."

"Yes, madam, yes, surely it has done so, but that kind of service
that kings do not forgive.  He for whom it was made was Archibald
Bell-the-Cat, and he girded himself with it the day when, to justify
his name, he went to seize in the very tent of King James III, your
grandfather, his un worthy favourites, Cochran, Hummel, Leonard, and
Torpichen, whom he hanged on Louder Bridge with the halters of his
soldiers' horses.  It was also with this sword that he slew at one
blow, in the lists, Spens of Kilspindie, who had insulted him in the
presence of King James IV, counting on the protection his master
accorded him, and which did not guard him against it any more than
his shield, which it split in two.  At his master's death, which took
place two years after the defeat of Flodden, on whose battlefield he
left his two sons and two hundred warriors of the name of Douglas, it
passed into the hands of the Earl of Angus, who drew it from the
scabbard when he drove the Hamiltons out of Edinburgh, and that so
quickly and completely that the affair was called the 'sweeping of
the streets.'  Finally, your father James V saw it glisten in the
fight of the bridge over the Tweed, when Buccleuch, stirred up by
him, wanted to snatch him from the guardianship of the Douglases, and
when eighty warriors of the name of Scott remained on the
battlefield."

"But," said the queen, "how is it that this weapon, after such
exploits, has not remained as a trophy in the Douglas family?  No
doubt the Earl of Angus required a great occasion to decide him to-
renounce in your favour this modern Excalibur". [History of Scotland,
by Sir Walter Scott.--"The Abbott": historical part.]

"Yes, no doubt, madam, it was upon a great occasion," replied
Lindsay, in spite of the imploring signs made by Melville, "and this
will have at least the advantage of the others, in being sufficiently
recent for you to remember.  It was ten days ago, on the battlefield
of Carberry Hill, madam, when the infamous Bothwell had the audacity
to make a public challenge in which he defied to single combat
whomsoever would dare to maintain that he was not innocent of the
murder of the king your husband.  I made him answer then, I the
third, that he was an assassin.  And as he refused to fight with the
two others under the pretext that they were only barons, I presented
myself in my turn, I who am earl and lord.  It was on that occasion
that the noble Earl of Morton gave me this good sword to fight him to
the death.  So that, if he had been a little more presumptuous or a
little less cowardly, dogs and vultures would be eating at this
moment the pieces that, with the help of this good sword, I should
have carved for them from that traitor's carcass."

At these words, Mary Seyton and Robert Melville looked at each other
in terror, for the events that they recalled were so recent that they
were, so to speak, still living in the queen's heart; but the queen,
with incredible impassibility and a smile of contempt on her lips--


"It is easy, my lord," said she, "to vanquish an enemy who does not
appear in the lists; however, believe me, if Mary had inherited the
Stuarts' sword as she has inherited their sceptre, your sword, long
as it is, would yet have seemed to you too short.  But as you have
only to relate to us now, my lord, what you intended doing, and not
what you have done, think it fit that I bring you back to something
of more reality; for I do not suppose you have given yourself the
trouble to come here purely and simply to add a chapter to the little
treatise Des Rodomontades Espagnolles by M. de Brantome."

"You are right, madam," replied Lindsay, reddening with anger, "and
you would already know the object of our mission if Lord Ruthven did
not so ridiculously keep us waiting.  But," added he, "have patience;
the matter will not be long now, for here he is."

Indeed, at that moment they heard steps mounting the staircase and
approaching the room, and at the sound of these steps, the queen, who
had borne with such firmness Lindsay's insults, grew so perceptibly
paler, that Melville, who did not take his eyes off her,--put out his
hand towards the arm-chair as if to push it towards her; but the
queen made a sign that she had no need of it, and gazed at the door
with apparent calm.  Lord Ruthven appeared; it was the first time
that she had seen the son since Rizzio had been assassinated by the
father.

Lord Ruthven was both a warrior and a statesman, and at this moment
his dress savoured of the two professions: it consisted of a close
coat of embroidered buff leather, elegant enough to be worn as a
court undress, and on which, if need were, one could buckle a
cuirass, for battle: like his father, he was pale; like his father,
he was to die young, and, even more than his father, his countenance
wore that ill-omened melancholy by which fortune-tellers recognise
those who are to die a violent death.

Lord Ruthven united in himself the polished dignity of a courtier and
the inflexible character of a minister; but quite resolved as he was
to obtain from Mary Stuart, even if it were by violence, what he had
come to demand in the regent's name, he none the less made her, on
entering, a cold but respectful greeting, to which the queen
responded with a courtesy; then the steward drew up to the empty arm-
chair a heavy table on which had been prepared everything necessary
for writing, and at a sign from the two lords he went out, leaving
the queen and her companion alone with the three ambassadors.  Then
the queen, seeing that this table and this arm-chair were put ready
for her, sat down; and after a moment, herself breaking this silence
more gloomy than any word could have been

"My lords," said she, "you see that I wait: can it be that this
message which you have to communicate to me is so terrible that two
soldiers as renowned as Lord Lindsay and Lord Ruthven hesitate at the
moment of transmitting it?"

"Madam," answered Ruthven, "I am not of a family, as you know, which
ever hesitates to perform a duty, painful as it may be; besides, we
hope that your captivity has prepared you to hear what we have to
tell you on the part of the Secret Council."

"The Secret Council!" said the queen.  "Instituted by me, by what
right does it act without me?  No matter, I am waiting for this
message: I suppose it is a petition to implore my mercy for the men
who have dared to reach to a power that I hold only from God."

"Madam," replied Ruthven, who appeared to have undertaken the painful
role of spokesman, while Lindsay, mute and impatient, fidgeted with
the hilt of his long sword, "it is distressing to me to have to
undeceive you on this point: it is not your mercy that I come to ask;
it is, on the contrary, the pardon of the Secret Council that I come
to offer you."

"To me, my lord, to me!" cried Mary: "subjects offer pardon to their
queen! Oh! it is such a new and wonderful thing, that my amazement
outweighs my indignation, and that I beg you to continue, instead of
stopping you there, as perhaps I ought to do."

"And I obey you so much the more willingly, madam," went on Ruthven
imperturbably, "that this pardon is only granted on certain
conditions, stated in these documents, destined to re-establish the
tranquillity of the State, so cruelly compromised by the errors that
they are going to repair."

"And shall I be permitted, my lord, to read these documents, or must
I, allured by my confidence in those who present them to me, sign
them with my eyes shut?"

"No, madam," Ruthven returned; "the Secret Council desire, on the
contrary, that you acquaint yourself with them, for you must sign
them freely."

"Read me these documents, my lord; for such a reading is, I think,
included in the strange duties you have accepted."

Lord Ruthven took one of the two papers that he had in his hand, and
read with the impassiveness of his usual voice the following:

"Summoned from my tenderest youth to the government of the kingdom
and to the crown of Scotland, I have carefully attended to the
administration; but I have experienced so much fatigue and trouble
that I no longer find my mind free enough nor my strength great
enough to support the burden of affairs of State: accordingly, and as
Divine favour has granted us a son whom we desire to see during our
lifetime bear the crown which he has acquired by right of birth, we
have resolved to abdicate, and we abdicate in his favour, by these
presents, freely and voluntarily, all our rights to the crown and to
the government of Scotland, desiring that he may immediately ascend
the throne, as if he were called to it by our natural death, and not
as the effect of our own will; and that our present abdication may
have a more complete and solemn effect, and that no one should put
forward the claim of ignorance, we give full powers to our trusty and
faithful cousins, the lords Lindsay of Byres and William Ruthven, to
appear in our name before the nobility, the clergy, and the burgesses
of Scotland, of whom they will convoke an assembly at Stirling, and
to there renounce, publicly and solemnly, on our part, all our claims
to the crown and to the government of Scotland.

"Signed freely and as the testimony of one of our last royal wishes,
in our castle of Lochleven, the ___ June 1567".  (The date was left
blank.)

There was a moment's silence after this reading, then

"Did you hear, madam?" asked Ruthven.

"Yes," replied Mary Stuart,--" yes, I have heard rebellious words
that I have not understood, and I thought that my ears, that one has
tried to accustom for some time to a strange language, still deceived
me, and that I have thought for your honour, my lord William Ruthven,
and my lord Lindsay of Byres."

"Madam," answered Lindsay, out of patience at having kept silence so
long, "our honour has nothing to do with the opinion of a woman who
has so ill known how to watch over her own."

"My lord!" said Melville, risking a word.

"Let him speak, Robert," returned the queen.  "We have in our
conscience armour as well tempered as that with which Lord Lindsay is
so prudently covered, although, to the shame of justice, we no longer
have a sword.  Continue, my lord," the queen went on, turning to Lord
Ruthven: "is this all that my subjects require of me?  A date and a
signature?  Ah! doubtless it is too little; and this second paper,
which you have kept in order to proceed by degrees, probably contains
some demand more difficult to grant than that of yielding to a child
scarcely a year old a crown which belongs to me by birthright, and to
abandon my sceptre to take a distaff."

"This other paper," replied Ruthven, without letting himself be
intimidated by the tone of bitter irony adopted by the queen, "is the
deed by which your Grace confirms the decision of the Secret Council
which has named your beloved brother, the Earl of Murray, regent of
the kingdom."

"Indeed!" said Mary.  "The Secret Council thinks it needs my
confirmation to an act of such slight importance?  And my beloved
brother, to bear it without remorse, needs that it should be I who
add a fresh title to those of Earl of Mar and of Murray that I have
already bestowed upon him?  But one cannot desire anything more
respectful and touching than all this, and I should be very wrong to
complain.  My lords," continued the queen, rising and changing her
tone, "return to those who have sent you, and tell them that to such
demands Mary Stuart has no answer to give."

"Take care, madam," responded Ruthven; "for I have told you it is
only on these conditions that your pardon can be granted you."

"And if I refuse this generous pardon," asked Mary, "what will
happen?"

"I cannot pronounce beforehand, madam; but your Grace has enough
knowledge of the laws, and above all of the history of Scotland and
England, to know that murder and adultery are crimes for which more
than one queen has been punished with death."

"And upon what proofs could such a charge be founded, my lord?
Pardon my persistence, which takes up your precious time; but I am
sufficiently interested in the matter to be permitted such a
question."

"The proof, madam?" returned Ruthven.  "There is but one, I know; but
that one is unexceptionable: it is the precipitate marriage of the
widow of the assassinated with the chief assassin, and the letters
which have been handed over to us by James Balfour, which prove that
the guilty persons had united their adulterous hearts before it was
permitted them to unite their bloody hands."

"My lord," cried the queen, "do you forget a certain repast given in
an Edinburgh tavern, by this same Bothwell, to those same noblemen
who treat him to-day as an adulterer and a murderer; do you forget
that at the end of that meal, and on the same table at which it had
been given, a paper was signed to invite that same woman, to whom to-
day you make the haste of her new wedding a crime, to leave off a
widow's mourning to reassume a marriage robe? for if you have
forgotten it, my lords, which would do no more honour to your
sobriety than to your memory, I undertake to show it to you, I who
have preserved it; and perhaps if we search well we shall find among
the signatures the names of Lindsay of Byres and William Ruthven.
O noble Lord Herries," cried Mary, "loyal James Melville, you alone
were right then, when you threw yourselves at my feet, entreating me
not to conclude this marriage, which, I see it clearly to-day, was
only a trap set for an ignorant woman by perfidious advisers or
disloyal lords."

"Madam," cried Ruthven, in spite of his cold impassivity beginning to
lose command of himself, while Lindsay was giving still more noisy
and less equivocal signs of impatience, "madam, all these discussions
are beside our aim: I beg you to return to it, then, and inform us
if, your life and honour guaranteed, you consent to abdicate the
crown of Scotland."

"And what safeguard should I have that the promises you here make me
will be kept?"

"Our word, madam," proudly replied Ruthven.

"Your word, my lord, is a very feeble pledge to offer, when one so
quickly forgets one's signature: have you not some trifle to add to
it, to make me a little easier than I should be with it alone?"

"Enough, Ruthven, enough," cried Lindsay.  "Do you not see that for
an hour this woman answers our proposals only by insults?"

"Yes, let us go," said Ruthven; "and thank yourself only, madam, for
the day when the thread breaks which holds the sword suspended over
your head."

"My lords," cried Melville, "my lords, in Heaven's name, a little
patience, and forgive something to her who, accustomed to command, is
today forced to obey."

"Very well," said Lindsay, turning round, "stay with her, then, and
try to obtain by your smooth words what is refused to our frank and
loyal demand.  In a quarter of an hour we shall return: let the
answer be ready in a quarter of an hour!"

With these words, the two noblemen went out, leaving Melville with
the queen; and one could count their footsteps, from the noise that
Lindsay's great sword made, in resounding on each step of the
staircase.

Scarcely were they alone than Melville threw himself at the queen's
feet.

"Madam," said he," you remarked just now that Lord Herries and my
brother had given your Majesty advice that you repented not having
followed; well, madam, reflect on that I in my turn give you; for it
is more important than the other, for you will regret with still more
bitterness not having listened to it.  Ah! you do not know what may
happen, you are ignorant of what your brother is capable."

"It seems to me, however," returned the queen, "that he has just
instructed me on that head: what more will he do than he has done
already?  A public trial! Oh! it is all I ask: let me only plead my
cause, and we shall see what judges will dare to condemn me."

"But that is what they will take good care not to do, madam; for they
would be mad to do it when they keep you here in this isolated
castle, in the care of your enemies, having no witness but God, who
avenges crime, but who does not prevent it.  Recollect, madam, what
Machiavelli has said, 'A king's tomb is never far from his prison.'
You come of a family in which one dies young, madam, and almost
always of a sudden death: two of your ancestors perished by steel,
and one by poison."

"Oh, if my death were sudden and easy," cried Mary, "yes, I should
accept it as an expiation for my faults; for if I am proud when I
compare myself with others, Melville, I am humble when I judge
myself.  I am unjustly accused of being an accomplice of Darnley's
death, but I am justly condemned for having married Bothwell."

"Time presses, madam; time presses," cried Melville, looking at the
sand, which, placed on the table, was marking the time.  "They are
coming back, they will be here in a minute; and this time you must
give them an answer.  Listen, madam, and at least profit by your
situation as much as you can.  You are alone here with one woman,
without friends, without protection, without power: an abdication
signed at such a juncture will never appear to your people to have
been freely given, but will always pass as having been torn from you
by force; and if need be, madam, if the day comes when such a solemn
declaration is worth something, well, then you will have two
witnesses of the violence done you: the one will be Mary Seyton, and
the other," he added in a low voice and looking uneasily about him,--
"the other will be Robert Melville."

Hardly had he finished speaking when the footsteps of the two nobles
were again heard on the staircase, returning even before the quarter
of an hour had elapsed; a moment afterwards the door opened, and
Ruthven appeared, while over his shoulder was seen Lindsay's head.

"Madam," said Ruthven, "we have returned.  Has your Grace decided?
We come for your answer."

"Yes," said Lindsay, pushing aside Ruthven, who stood in his way, and
advancing to the table,--" yes, an answer, clear, precise, positive,
and without dissimulation."

"You are exacting, my lord," said the queen: "you would scarcely have
the right to expect that from me if I were in full liberty on the
other side of the lake and surrounded with a faithful escort; but
between these walls, behind these bars, in the depths of this
fortress, I shall not tell you that I sign voluntarily, lest you
should not believe it.  But no matter, you want my signature; well, I
am going to give it to you.  Melville, pass me the pen."

"But I hope," said Lord Ruthven, "that your Grace is not counting on
using your present position one day in argument to protest against
what you are going to do?"

The queen had already stooped to write, she had already set her hand
to the paper, when Ruthven spoke to her.  But scarcely had he done
so, than she rose up proudly, and letting fall the pen, "My lord,"
said she, "what you asked of me just now was but an abdication pure
and simple, and I was going to sign it.  But if to this abdication is
joined this marginal note, then I renounce of my own accord, and as
judging myself unworthy, the throne of Scotland.  I would not do it
for the three united crowns that I have been robbed of in turn."

"Take care, madam," cried Lord Lindsay, seizing the queen's wrist
with his steel gauntlet and squeezing it with all his angry strength
--"take care, for our patience is at an end, and we could easily end
by breaking what would not bend."

The queen remained standing, and although a violent flush had passed
like a flame over her countenance, she did not utter a word, and did
not move: her eyes only were fixed with such a great expression of
contempt on those of the rough baron, that he, ashamed of the passion
that had carried him away, let go the hand he had seized and took a
step back.  Then raising her sleeve and showing the violet marks made
on her arm by Lord Lindsay's steel gauntlet,

"This is what I expected, my lords," said she, "and nothing prevents
me any longer from signing; yes, I freely abdicate the throne and
crown of Scotland, and there is the proof that my will has not been
forced."

With these words, she took the pen and rapidly signed the two
documents, held them out to Lord Ruthven, and bowing with great
dignity, withdrew slowly into her room, accompanied by Mary Seyton.
Ruthven looked after her, and when she had disappeared, "It doesn't
matter," he said; "she has signed, and although the means you
employed, Lindsay, may be obsolete enough in diplomacy, it is not the
less efficacious, it seems."

"No joking, Ruthven," said Lindsay; "for she is a noble creature, and
if I had dared, I should have thrown myself at her feet to ask her
forgiveness."

"There is still time," replied Ruthven, "and Mary, in her present
situation, will not be severe upon you: perhaps she has resolved to
appeal to the judgment of God to prove her innocence, and in that
case a champion such as you might well change the face of things."

"Do not joke, Ruthven," Lindsay answered a second time, with more
violence than the first; "for if I were as well convinced of her
innocence as I am of her crime, I tell you that no one should touch a
hair of her head, not even the regent."

"The devil! my lord," said Ruthven.  "I did not know you were so
sensitive to a gentle voice and a tearful eye; you know the story of
Achilles' lance, which healed with its rust the wounds it made with
its edge: do likewise my lord, do likewise."

"Enough, Ruthven, enough," replied Lindsay; "you are like a corselet
of Milan steel, which is three times as bright as the steel armour of
Glasgow, but which is at the same time thrice as hard: we know one
another, Ruthven, so an end to railleries or threats; enough, believe
me, enough."

And after these words, Lord Lindsay went out first, followed by
Ruthven and Melville, the first with his head high and affecting an
air of insolent indifference, and the second, sad, his brow bent, and
not even trying to disguise the painful impression which this scene
had made on him.' ["History of Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott.--'The
Abbott": historical part.]




CHAPTER VI

The queen came out of her room only in the evening, to take her place
at the window which looked over the lake: at the usual time she saw
the light which was henceforth her sole hope shine in the little
house in Kinross; for a whole long month she had no other consolation
than seeing it, every night, fixed and faithful.

At last, at the end of this time, and as she was beginning to despair
of seeing George Douglas again, one morning, on opening the window,
she uttered a cry.  Mary Seyton ran to her, and the queen, without
having strength to speak, showed her in the middle of the lake the
tiny boat at anchor, and in the boat Little Douglas and George, who
were absorbed in fishing, their favourite amusement.  The young man
had arrived the day before, and as everyone was accustomed to his
unexpected returns, the sentinel had not even blown the horn, and the
queen had not known that at last a friend had come.

However, she was three days yet without seeing this friend otherwise
than she had just done-that is, on the lake.  It is true that from
morning till evening he did not leave that spot, from which he could
view the queen's windows and the queen herself, when, to gaze at a
wider horizon, she leaned her face against the bars.  At last, on the
morning of the fourth day, the queen was awakened by a great noise of
dogs and horns: she immediately ran to the window, for to a prisoner
everything is an event, and she saw William Douglas, who was
embarking with a pack of hounds and some huntsmen.  In fact, making a
truce, for a day, with his gaoler's duties, to enjoy a pleasure more
in harmony with his rank and birth, he was going to hunt in the woods
which cover the last ridge of Ben Lomond, and which, ever sinking,
die down on the banks of the lake.

The queen trembled with delight, for she hoped that Lady Lochleven
would maintain her ill-will, and that then George would replace his
brother: this hope was not disappointed.  At the usual time the queen
heard the footsteps of those who were bringing her her breakfast; the
door opened, and she saw George Douglas enter, preceded by the
servants who were carrying the dishes.  George barely bowed; but the
queen, warned by him not to be surprised at anything, returned him
his greeting with a disdainful air; then the servants performed their
task and went out, as they were accustomed.

"At last," said the queen, "you are back again, then."

George motioned with his finger, went to the door to listen if all
the servants had really gone away, and if no one had remained to spy.
Then, returning more at ease, and bowing respectfully--

"Yes, madam," returned he; "and, Heaven be thanked, I bring good
news."

"Oh, tell me quickly!" cried the queen; "for staying in this castle
is hell.  You knew that they came, did you not, and that they made me
sign an abdication?"

"Yes, madam," replied Douglas; "but we also knew that your signature
had been obtained from you by violence alone, and our devotion to
your Majesty is increased thereby, if possible."

"But, after all, what have you done?"

"The Seytons and the Hamiltons, who are, as your Majesty knows, your
most faithful servants,"--Mary turned round, smiling, and put out her
hand to Mary Seyton,--" have already," continued George, "assembled
their troops, who keep themselves in readiness for the first signal;
but as they alone would not be sufficiently numerous to hold the
country, we shall make our way directly to Dumbarton, whose governor
is ours, and which by its position and its strength can hold out long
enough against all the regent's troops to give to the faithful hearts
remaining to you time to come and join us."

"Yes, yes," said the queen; "I see clearly what we shall do once we
get out of this; but how are we to get out?"

"That is the occasion, madam," replied Douglas, "for which your
Majesty must call to your aid that courage of which you have given
such great proofs."

"If I have need only of courage and coolness," replied the queen, "be
easy; neither the one nor the other will fail me."

"Here is a file," said George, giving Mary Seyton that instrument
which he judged unworthy to touch the queen's hands, "and this
evening I shall bring your Majesty cords to construct a ladder.  You
will cut through one of the bars of this window, it is only at a
height of twenty feet; I shall come up to you, as much to try it as
to support you; one of the garrison is in my pay, he will give us
passage by the door it is his duty to guard, and you will be free."

"And when will that be?" cried the queen.

"We must wait for two things, madam," replied Douglas: "the first, to
collect at Kinross an escort sufficient for your Majesty's safety;
the second, that the turn for night watch of Thomas Warden should
happen to be at an isolated door that we can reach without being
seen."

"And how will you know that?  Do you stay at the castle, then?"

"Alas! no, madam," replied George; "at the castle I am a useless and
even a dangerous fried for you, while once beyond the lake I can
serve you in an effectual manner."

"And how will you know when Warden's turn to mount guard has come?"

"The weathercock in the north tower, instead of turning in the wind
with the others, will remain fixed against it."

"But I, how shall I be warned?"

"Everything is already provided for on that side: the light which
shines each night in the little house in Kinross incessantly tells
you that your friends keep watch for you; but when you would like to
know if the hour of your deliverance approaches or recedes, in your
turn place a light in this window.  The other will immediately
disappear; then, placing your hand on your breast, count your
heartbeats: if you reach the number twenty without the light
reappearing, nothing is yet settled; if you only reach ten, the
moment approaches; if the light does not leave you time to count
beyond five, your escape is fixed for the following night; if it
reappears no more, it is fixed for the same evening; then the owl's
cry, repeated thrice in the courtyard, will be the signal; let down
the ladder when you hear it".

"Oh, Douglas," cried the queen, "you alone could foresee and
calculate everything thus.  Thank you, thank you a hundred times!"
And she gave him her hand to kiss.

A vivid red flushed the young man's cheeks; but almost directly
mastering his emotion, he kneeled down, and, restraining the
expression of that love of which he had once spoken to the queen,
while promising her never more to speak of it, he took the hand that
Mary extended, and kissed it with such respect that no one could have
seen in this action anything but the homage of devotion and fidelity.

Then, having bowed to the queen, he went out, that a longer stay with
her should not give rise to any suspicions.

At the dinner-hour Douglas brought, as he had said, a parcel of cord.
It was not enough, but when evening came Mary Seyton was to unroll it
and let fall the end from the window, and George would fasten the
remainder to it: the thing was done as arranged, and without any
mishap, an hour after the hunters had returned.

The following day George left the castle.

The queen and Mary Seyton lost no time in setting about the rope
ladder, and it was finished on the third day.  The same evening, the
queen in her impatience, and rather to assure herself of her
partisans' vigilance than in the hope that the time of her
deliverance was so near, brought her lamp to the window: immediately,
and as George Douglas had told her, the light in the little house at
Kinross disappeared: the queen then laid her hand on her heart and
counted up to twenty-two; then the light reappeared; they were ready
for everything, but nothing was yet settled.  For a week the queen
thus questioned the light and her heart-beats without their number
changing; at last, on the eighth day, she counted only as far as ten;
at the eleventh the light reappeared.

The queen believed herself mistaken: she did not dare to hope what
this announced.  She withdrew the lamp; then, at the end of a quarter
of an hour, showed it again: her unknown correspondent understood.
with his usual intelligence that a fresh trial was required of him,
and the light in the little house disappeared in its turn.  Mary
again questioned the pulsations of her heart, and, fast as it leaped,
before the twelfth beat the propitious star was shining on the
horizon: there was no longer any doubt; everything was settled.

Mary could not sleep all night: this persistency of her partisans
inspired her with gratitude to the point of tears.  The day came, and
the queen several times questioned her companion to assure herself
that it was not all a dream; at every sound it seemed to her that the
scheme on which her liberty hung was discovered, and when, at
breakfast and at dinner time, William Douglas entered as usual, she
hardly dared look at him, for fear of reading on his face the
announcement that all was lost.

In the evening the queen again questioned the light: it made the same
answer; nothing had altered; the beacon was always one of hope.

For four days it thus continued to indicate that the moment of escape
was at hand; on the evening of the fifth, before the queen had
counted five beats, the light reappeared: the queen leaned upon Mary
Seyton; she was nearly fainting, between dread and 'delight.  Her
escape was fixed for the next evening.

The queen tried once more, and obtained the same reply: there was no
longer a doubt; everything was ready except the prisoner's courage,
for it failed her for a moment, and if Mary Seyton had not drawn up a
seat in time, she would have fallen prone; but, the first moment
over, she collected herself as usual, and was stronger and more
resolute than ever.

Till midnight the queen remained at the window, her eyes fixed on
that star of good omen: at last Mary Seyton persuaded her to go to
bed, offering, if she had no wish to sleep, to read her some verses
by M. Ronsard, or some chapters from the Mer des Histoires; but Mary
had no desire now for any profane reading, and had her Hours read,
making the responses as she would have done if she had been present
at a mass said by a Catholic priest: towards dawn, however, she grew
drowsy, and as Mary Seyton, for her part, was dropping with fatigue,
she fell asleep directly in the arm-chair at the head of the queen's
bed.

Next day she awoke, feeling that someone was tapping her on the
shoulder: it was the queen, who had already arisen.

"Come and see, darling," said she,--"come and see the fine day that
God is giving us.  Oh! how alive is Nature! How happy I shall be to
be once more free among those plains and mountains! Decidedly, Heaven
is on our side."

"Madam," replied Mary, "I would rather see the weather less fine: it
would promise us a darker night; and consider, what we need is
darkness, not light."

"Listen," said the queen; "it is by this we are going to see if God
is indeed for us; if the weather remains as it is, yes, you are
right, He abandons us; but if it clouds over, oh! then, darling, this
will be a certain proof of His protection, will it not?"

Mary Seyton smiled, nodding that she adopted her mistress's
superstition; then the queen, incapable of remaining idle in her
great preoccupation of mind, collected the few jewels that she had
preserved, enclosed them in a casket, got ready for the evening a
black dress, in order to be still better hidden in the darkness: and,
these preparations made, she sat down again at the window,
ceaselessly carrying her eyes from the lake to the little house in
Kinross, shut up and dumb as usual.

The dinner-hour arrived: the queen was so happy that she received
William Douglas with more goodwill than was her wont, and it was with
difficulty she remained seated during the time the meal lasted; but
she restrained herself, and William Douglas withdrew, without seeming
to have noticed her agitation.

Scarcely had he gone than Mary ran to the window; she had need of
air, and her gaze devoured in advance those wide horizons which she
was about to cross anew; it seemed to her that once at liberty she
would never shut herself up in a palace again, but would wander about
the countryside continually: then, amid all these tremors of delight,
from time to time she felt unexpectedly heavy at heart.  She then
turned round to Mary Seyton, trying to fortify her strength with
hers, and the young girl kept up her hopes, but rather from duty than
from conviction.

But slow as they seemed to the queen, the hours yet passed: towards
the afternoon some clouds floated across the blue sky; the queen
remarked upon them joyfully to her companion; Mary Seyton
congratulated her upon them, not on account of the imaginary omen
that the queen sought in them, but because of the real importance
that the weather should be cloudy, that darkness might aid them in
their flight.  While the two prisoners were watching the billowy,
moving vapours, the hour of dinner arrived; but it was half an hour
of constraint and dissimulation, the more painful that, no doubt in
return for the sort of goodwill shown him by the queen in the
morning, William Douglas thought himself obliged, in his turn, to
accompany his duties with fitting compliments, which compelled the
queen to take a more active part in the conversation than her
preoccupation allowed her; but William Douglas did not seem in any
way to observe this absence of mind, and all passed as at breakfast.

Directly he had gone the queen ran to the window: the few clouds
which were chasing one another in the sky an hour before had
thickened and spread, and--all the blue was blotted out, to give
place to a hue dull and leaden as pewter.  Mary Stuart's
presentiments were thus realised: as to the little house in Kinross,
which one could still make out in the dusk, it remained shut up, and
seemed deserted.

Night fell: the light shone as usual; the queen signalled, it
disappeared.  Mary Stuart waited in vain; everything remained in
darkness: the escape was for the same evening.  The queen heard eight
o'clock, nine o'clock, and ten o'clock strike successively.  At ten
o'clock the sentinels were relieved; Mary Stuart heard the patrols
pass beneath her windows, the steps of the watch recede: then all
returned to silence.  Half an hour passed away thus; suddenly the
owl's cry resounded thrice, the queen recognised George Douglas's
signal: the supreme moment had come.

In these circumstances the queen found all her strength revive: she
signed to Mary Seyton to take away the bar and to fix the rope
ladder, while, putting out the lamp, she felt her way into the
bedroom to seek the casket which contained her few remaining jewels.
When she came back, George Douglas was already in the room.

"All goes well, madam," said he.  "Your friends await you on the
other side of the lake, Thomas Warden watches at the postern, and God
has sent us a dark night."

The queen, without replying, gave him her hand.  George bent his knee
and carried this hand to his lips; but on touching it, he felt it
cold and trembling.

"Madam," said he, "in Heaven's name summon all your courage, and do
not let yourself be downcast at such a moment."

"Our Lady-of-Good-Help," murmured Seyton, "come to our aid!"

"Summon to you the spirit of the kings your ancestors," responded
George, "for at this moment it is not the resignation of a Christian
that you require, but the strength and resolution of a queen"

"Oh, Douglas! Douglas," cried Mary mournfully, "a fortune-teller
predicted to me that I should die in prison and by a violent death:
has not the hour of the prediction arrived?"

"Perhaps," George said, "but it is better to die as a queen than to
live in this ancient castle calumniated and a prisoner."

"You are right, George," the queen answered; "but for a woman the
first step is everything: forgive me".  Then, after a moment's pause,
"Come," said she; "I am ready."

George immediately went to the window, secured the ladder again and
more firmly, then getting up on to the sill and holding to the bars
with one hand, he stretched out the other to the queen, who, as
resolute as she had been timid a moment before, mounted on a stool,
and had already set one foot on the window-ledge, when suddenly the
cry, "Who goes there?" rang out at the foot of the tower.  The queen
sprang quickly back, partly instinctively and partly pushed by
George, who, on the contrary, leaned out of the window to see whence
came this cry, which, twice again renewed, remained twice unanswered,
and was immediately followed by a report and the flash of a firearm:
at the same moment the sentinel on duty on the tower blew his bugle,
another set going the alarm bell, and the cries, "To arms, to arms!"
and "Treason, treason!" resounded throughout the castle.

"Yes, yes, treason, treason!" cried George Douglas, leaping down into
the room.  "Yes, the infamous Warden has betrayed us!"  Then,
advancing to Mary, cold and motionless as a statue, "Courage, madam,"
said he, "courage!  Whatever happens, a friend yet remains for you in
the castle; it is Little Douglas."

Scarcely had he finished speaking when the door of the queen's
apartment opened, and William Douglas and Lady Lochleven, preceded by
servants carrying torches and armed soldiers, appeared on the
threshold: the room was immediately filled with people and light.

"Mother," said William Douglas, pointing to his brother standing
before Mary Stuart and protecting her with his body, "do you believe
me now?  Look!"

The old lady was for a moment speechless; then finding a word at
last, and taking a step forward--

"Speak, George Douglas," cried she, "speak, and clear yourself at
once of the charge which weighs on your honour; say but these words,
'A Douglas was never faithless to his trust,' and I believe you".

"Yes, mother," answered William, "a Douglas!...  but he--he is not a
Douglas."

"May God grant my old age the strength needed to bear on the part of
one of my sons such a misfortune, and on the part of the other such
an injury!" exclaimed Lady Lochleven.  "O woman born under a fatal
star," she went on, addressing the queen, "when will you cease to be,
in the Devil's hands, an instrument of perdition and death to all who
approach you?  O ancient house of Lochleven, cursed be the hour when
this enchantress crossed thy threshold!"

"Do not say that, mother, do not say that," cried George; "blessed
be, on the contrary, the moment which proves that, if there are
Douglases who no longer remember what they owe to their sovereigns,
there are others who have never forgotten it."

"Douglas! Douglas!" murmured Mary Stuart, "did I not tell you?"

"And I, madam," said George, "what did I reply then?  That it was an
honour and a duty to every faithful subject of your Majesty to die
for you."

"Well, die, then!" cried William Douglas, springing on his brother
with raised sword, while he, leaping back, drew his, and with a
movement quick as thought and eager as hatred defended himself.  But
at the same moment Mary Stuart darted between the two young people.

"Not another step, Lord Douglas," said she.  "Sheathe your sword,
George, or if you use it, let be to go hence, and against everyone
but your b other.  I still have need of your life; take care of it."

"My life, like my arm and my honour, is at your service, madam, and
from the moment you command it I shall preserve it for you."

With these words, rushing to the door with a violence and resolve
which prevented anyone's stopping him--

"Back!" cried he to the domestics who were barring the passage; "make
way for the young master of Douglas, or woe to you!".

"Stop him!" cried William.  "Seize him, dead or alive! Fire upon him!
Kill him like a dog!"

Two or three soldiers, not daring to disobey William, pretended to
pursue his brother.  Then some gunshots were heard, and a voice
crying that George Douglas had just thrown himself into the lake.

"And has he then escaped?" cried William.

Mary Stuart breathed again; the old lady raised her hands to Heaven.

"Yes, yes," murmured William,--"yes, thank Heaven for your son's
flight; for his flight covers our entire house with shame; counting
from this hour, we shall be looked upon as the accomplices of his
treason."

"Have pity on me, William!" cried Lady Lochleven, wringing her hands.
"Have compassion o your old mother! See you not that I am dying?"

With these words, she fell backwards, pale and tottering; the steward
and a servant supported er in their arms.

"I believe, my lord," said Mary Seyton, coming forward, "that your
mother has as much need of attention just now as the queen has need
of repose: do you not consider it is time for you to withdraw?"

"Yes, yes," said William, "to give you time to spin fresh webs, I
suppose, and to seek what fresh flies you can take in them?  It is
well, go on with your work; but you have just seen that it is not
easy to deceive William Douglas.  Play your game, I shall play mine".
Then turning to the servants, "Go out, all of you," said he; "and
you, mother, come."

The servants and the soldiers obeyed; then William Douglas went out
last, supporting Lady Lochleven, and the queen heard him shut behind
him and double-lock the two doors of her prison.

Scarcely was Mary alone, and certain that she was no longer seen or
heard, than all her strength deserted her, and, sinking into an arm-
chair, she burst out sobbing.

Indeed, all her courage had been needed to sustain her so far, and
the sight of her enemies alone had given her this courage; but hardly
had they gone than her situation appeared before her in all its fatal
hardship.  Dethroned, a prisoner, without another fiend in this
impregnable castle than a child to whom she had scarce given
attention, and who was the sole and last thread attaching her past
hopes to her hopes for the future, what remained to Mary Stuart of
her two thrones and her double power?  Her name, that was all; her,
name with which, free, she had doubtless stirred Scotland, but which
little by little was about to be effaced in the hearts of her
adherents, and which during her lifetime oblivion was to cover
perhaps as with a shroud.  Such an idea was insupportable to a soul
as lofty as Mary Stuart's, and to an organisation which, like that of
the flowers, has need, before everything, of air, light, and sun.

Fortunately there remained to her the best beloved of her four Marys,
who, always devoted and consoling, hastened to succour and comfort
her; but this time it was no easy matter, and the queen let her act
and speak without answering her otherwise than with sobs and tears;
when suddenly, looking through the window to which she had drawn up
her mistress's armchair--

"The light!" cried she, "madam, the light!"

At the same time she raised the queen, and with arm outstretched from
the window, she showed her the beacon, the eternal symbol of hope,
relighted in the midst of this dark night on Kinross hill: there was
no mistake possible, not a star was shining in the sky.

"Lord God, I give Thee thanks," said the queen, falling on her knees
and raising her arms to heaven with a gesture of gratitude: "Douglas
has escaped, and my friends still keep watch."

Then, after a fervent prayer, which restored to her a little
strength, the queen re-entered her room, and, tired out by her varied
successive emotions, she slept an uneasy, agitated sleep, over which
the indefatigable Mary Seyton kept watch till daybreak.

As William Douglas had said, from this time forward the queen was a
prisoner indeed, and permission to go down into the garden was no
longer granted but under the surveillance of two soldiers; but this
annoyance seemed to her so unbearable that she preferred to give up
the recreation, which, surrounded with such conditions, became a
torture.  So she shut herself up in her apartments, finding a certain
bitter and haughty pleasure in the very excess of her misfortune.




CHAPTER VII

A week after the events we have related, as nine o'clock in the
evening had just sounded from the castle bell, and the queen and Mary
Seyton were sitting at a table where they were working at their
tapestry, a stone thrown from the courtyard passed through the window
bars, broke a pane of glass, and fell into the room.  The queen's
first idea was to believe it accidental or an insult; but Mary
Seyton, turning round, noticed that the stone was wrapped up in a
paper: she immediately picked it up.  The paper was a letter from
George Douglas, conceived in these terms:

"You have commanded me to live, madam: I have obeyed, and your
Majesty has been able to tell, from the Kinross light, that your
servants continue to watch over you.  However, not to raise
suspicion, the soldiers collected for that fatal night dispersed at
dawn, and will not gather again till a fresh attempt makes their
presence necessary.  But, alas! to renew this attempt now, when your
Majesty's gaolers are on their guard, would be your ruin.  Let them
take every precaution, then, madam; let them sleep in security, while
we, we, in our devotion, shall go on watching.

"Patience and courage!"

"Brave and loyal heart!" cried Mary, "more constantly devoted to
misfortune than others are to prosperity!  Yes, I shall have patience
and courage, and so long as that light shines I shall still believe
in liberty."

This letter restored to the queen all her former courage: she had
means of communication with George through Little Douglas; for no
doubt it was he who had thrown that stone.  She hastened, in her
turn, to write a letter to George, in which she both charged him to
express her gratitude to all the lords who had signed the
protestation; and begged them, in the name of the fidelity they had
sworn to her, not to cool in their devotion, promising them, for her
part, to await the result with that patience and courage they asked
of her.

The queen was not mistaken: next day, as she was at her window,
Little Douglas came to play at the foot of the tower, and, without
raising his head, stopped just beneath her to dig a trap to catch
birds.  The queen looked to see if she were observed, and assured
that that part of the courtyard was deserted.  she let fail the stone
wrapped in her letter: at first she feared to have made a serious
error; for Little Douglas did not even turn at the noise, and it was
only after a moment, during which the prisoner's heart was torn with
frightful anxiety, that indifferently, and as if he were looking for
something else, the child laid his hand on the stone, and without
hurrying, without raising his head, without indeed giving any sign of
intelligence to her who had thrown it, he put the letter in his
pocket, finishing the work he had begun with the greatest calm, and
showing the queen, by this coolness beyond his years, what reliance
she could place in him.

>From that moment the queen regained fresh hope; but days, weeks,
months passed without bringing any change in her situation: winter
came; the prisoner saw snow spread over the plains and mountains, and
the lake afforded her, if she had only been able to pass the door, a
firm road to gain the other bank; but no letter came during all this
time to bring her the consoling news that they were busy about her
deliverance; the faithful light alone announced to her every evening
that a friend was keeping watch.

Soon nature awoke from her death-sleep: some forward sun-rays broke
through the clouds of this sombre sky of Scotland; the snow melted,
the lake broke its ice-crust, the first buds opened, the green turf
reappeared; everything came out of its prison at the joyous approach
of spring, and it was a great grief to Mary to see that she alone was
condemned to an eternal winter.

At last; one evening, she thought she observed in the motions of the
light that something fresh was happening: she had so often questioned
this poor flickering star, and she had so often let it count her
heart-beats more than twenty times, that to spare herself the pain of
disappointment, for a long time she had no longer interrogated it;
however, she resolved to make one last attempt, and, almost hopeless,
she put her light near the window, and immediately took it away;
still, faithful to the signal, the other disappeared at the same
moment, and reappeared at the eleventh heart-beat of the queen.  At
the same time, by a strange coincidence, a stone passing through the
window fell at Mary Seyton's feet.  It was, like the first, wrapped
in a letter from George: the queen took it from her companion's
hands, opened it, and read:

"The moment draws near; your adherents are assembled; summon all your
courage."

"To-morrow, at eleven o'clock in the evening, drop a cord from your
window, and draw up the packet that will be fastened to it."

There remained in the queen's apartments the rope over and above what
had served for the ladder taken away by the guards the evening of the
frustrated escape: next day, at the appointed hour, the two prisoners
shut up the lamp in the bedroom, so that no light should betray them,
and Mary Seyton, approaching the window, let down the cord.  After a
minute, she felt from its movements that something was being attached
to it.  Mary Seyton pulled, and a rather bulky parcel appeared at the
bars, which it could not pass on account of its size.  Then the queen
came to her companion's aid.  The parcel was untied, and its
contents, separately, got through easily.  The two prisoners carried
them into the bedroom, and, barricaded within, commenced an
inventory.  There were two complete suits of men's clothes in the
Douglas livery.  The queen was at a loss, when she saw a letter
fastened to the collar of one of the two coats.  Eager to know the
meaning of this enigma, she immediately opened it, and read as
follows:

"It is only by dint of audacity that her Majesty can recover her
liberty: let her Majesty read this letter, then, and punctually
follow, if she deign to adopt them, the instructions she will find
therein.

"In the daytime the keys of the castle do not leave the belt of the
old steward; when curfew is rung and he has made his rounds to make
sure that all the doors are fast shut, he gives them up to William
Douglas, who, if he stays up, fastens them to his sword-belt, or, if
he sleeps, puts them under his pillow.  For five months, Little
Douglas, whom everyone is accustomed to see working at the armourer's
forge of the castle, has been employed in making some keys like
enough to the others, once they are substituted for them, for William
to be deceived.  Yesterday Little Douglas finished the last.

"On the first favourable opportunity that her Majesty will know to be
about to present itself, by carefully questioning the light each day,
Little Douglas will exchange the false keys for the true, will enter
the queen's room, and will find her dressed, as well as Miss Mary
Seyton, in their men's clothing, and he will go before them to lead
them, by the way which offers the best chances for their escape; a
boat will be prepared and will await them.

"Till then, every evening, as much to accustom themselves to these
new costumes as to give them an appearance of having been worn, her
Majesty and Miss Mary Seyton will dress themselves in the suits,
which they must keep on from nine o'clock till midnight.  Besides, it
is possible that, without having had time to warn them, their young
guide may suddenly come to seek them: it is urgent, then, that he
find them ready.

"The garments ought to fit perfectly her Majesty and her companion,
the measure having been taken on Miss Mary Fleming and Miss Mary
Livingston, who are exactly their size.

"One cannot too strongly recommend her Majesty to summon to her aid
on the supreme occasion the coolness and courage of which she has
given such frequent proofs at other times."

The two prisoners were astounded at the boldness of this plan: at
first they looked at one another in consternation, for success seemed
impossible.  They none the less made trial of their disguise: as
George had said, it fitted each of them as if they had been measured
for it.

Every evening the queen questioned the light, as George had urged,
and that for a whole long month, during which each evening the queen
and Mary Seyton, although the light gave no fresh tidings, arrayed
themselves in their men's clothes, as had been arranged, so that they
both acquired such practice that they became as familiar to them as
those of their own sex.

At last, the 2nd May, 1568, the queen was awakened by the blowing of
a horn: uneasy as to what it announced, she slipped on a cloak and
ran to the window, where Mary Seyton joined her directly.  A rather
numerous band of horsemen had halted on the side of the lake,
displaying the Douglas pennon, and three boats were rowing together
and vying with each other to fetch the new arrivals.

This event caused the queen dismay: in her situation the least change
in the castle routine was to be feared, for it might upset all the
concerted plans.  This apprehension redoubled when, on the boats
drawing near, the queen recognised in the elder Lord Douglas, the
husband of Lady Lochleven, and the father of William and George.  The
venerable knight, who was Keeper of the Marches in the north, was
coming to visit his ancient manor, in which he had not set foot for
three years.

It was an event for Lochleven; and, some minutes after the arrival of
the boats, Mary Stuart heard the old steward's footsteps mounting the
stairs: he came to announce his master's arrival to the queen, and,
as it must needs be a time of rejoicing to all the castle inhabitants
when its master returned, he came to invite the queen to the dinner
in celebration of the event: whether instinctively or from distaste,
the queen declined.

All day long the bell and the bugle resounded: Lord Douglas, like a
true feudal lord, travelled with the retinue of a prince.  One saw
nothing but new soldiers and servants passing and repassing beneath
the queen's windows: the footmen and horsemen were wearing, moreover,
a livery similar to that which the queen and Mary Seyton had
received.

Mary awaited the night with impatience.  The day before, she had
questioned her light, and it had informed her as usual, in
reappearing at her eleventh or twelfth heart-beat, that the moment of
escape was near; but she greatly feared that Lord Douglas's arrival
might have upset everything, and that this evening's signal could
only announce a postponement.  But hardly had she seen the light
shine than she placed her lamp in the window; the other disappeared
directly, and Mary Stuart, with terrible anxiety, began to question
it.  This anxiety increased when she had counted more than fifteen
beats.  Then she stopped, cast down, her eyes mechanically fixed on
the spot where the light had been.  But her astonishment was great
when, at the end of a few minutes, she did not see it reappear, and
when, half an hour having elapsed, everything remained in darkness.
The queen then renewed her signal, but obtained no response: the
escape was for the same evening.

The queen and Mary Seyton were so little expecting this issue, that,
contrary to their custom, they had not put on their men's clothes
that evening.  They immediately flew to the queen's bed-chamber,
bolted the door behind them, and began to dress.

They had hardly finished their hurried toilette when they heard a key
turn in the lock: they immediately blew out the lamp.  Light steps
approached the door.  The two women leaned one against the other; for
they both were near falling.  Someone tapped gently.  The queen asked
who was there, and Little Douglas's voice answered in the two first
lines of an old ballad--

"Douglas, Douglas,
Tender and true."

Mary opened, directly: it was the watchword agreed upon with George
Douglas.

The child was without a light.  He stretched out his hand and
encountered the queen's: in the starlight, Mary Stuart saw him kneel
down; then she felt the imprint of his lips on her fingers.

"Is your Majesty ready to follow me?" he asked in a low tone, rising.

"Yes, my child," the queen answered: "it is for this evening, then?"

"With your Majesty's permission, yes, it is for this evening."

"Is everything ready?"

"Everything."

"What are we to do?"

"Follow me everywhere."

"My God! my God!" cried Mary Stuart, "have pity on us!" Then, having
breathed a short prayer in a low voice, while Mary Seyton was taking
the casket in which were the queen's jewels, "I am ready," said she:
"and you, darling?"

"I also," replied Mary Seyton.

"Come, then," said Little Douglas.

The two prisoners followed the child; the queen going first, and Mary
Seyton after.  Their youthful guide carefully shut again the door
behind him, so that if a warder happened to pass he would see
nothing; then he began to descend the winding stair.  Half-way down,
the noise of the feast reached them, a mingling of shouts of
laughter, the confusion of voices, and the clinking of glasses.  The
queen placed her hand on her young guide's shoulder.

"Where are you leading us?" she asked him with terror.

"Out of the castle," replied the child.

"But we shall have to pass through the great hall?"

"Without a doubt; and that is exactly what George foresaw.  Among the
footmen, whose livery your Majesty is wearing, no one will recognise
you."

"My God! my God!" the queen murmured, leaning against the wall.

"Courage, madam," said Mary Seyton in a low voice, "or we are lost."

"You are right," returned the queen; "let us go".  And they started
again still led by their guide.

At the foot of the stair he stopped, and giving the queen a stone
pitcher full of wine

"Set this jug on your right shoulder, madam," said he; "it will hide
your face from the guests, and your Majesty will give rise to less
suspicion if carrying something.  You, Miss Mary, give me that
casket, and put on your head this basket of bread.  Now, that's
right: do you feel you have strength?"

"Yes," said the queen.

"Yes," said Mary Seyton.

"Then follow me."

The child went on his way, and after a few steps the fugitives found
themselves in a kind of antechamber to the great hall, from which
proceeded noise and light.  Several servants were occupied there with
different duties; not one paid attention to them, and that a little
reassured the queen.  Besides, there was no longer any drawing back:
Little Douglas had just entered the great hall.

The guests, seated on both sides of a long table ranged according to
the rank of those assembled at it, were beginning dessert, and
consequently had reached the gayest moment of the repast.  Moreover,
the hall was so large that the lamps and candles which lighted it,
multiplied as they were, left in the most favourable half-light both
sides of the apartment, in which fifteen or twenty servants were
coming and going.  The queen and Mary Seyton mingled with this crowd,
which was too much occupied to notice them, and without stopping,
without slackening, without looking back, they crossed the whole
length of the hall, reached the other door, and found themselves in
the vestibule corresponding to the one they had passed through on
coming in.  The queen set down her jug there, Mary Seyton her basket,
and both, still led by the child, entered a corridor at the end of
which they found themselves in the courtyard.  A patrol was passing
at the moment, but he took no notice of them.

The child made his way towards the garden, still followed by the two
women.  There, for no little while, it was necessary to try which of
all the keys opened the door; it--was a time of inexpressible
anxiety.  At last the key turned in the lock, the door opened; the
queen and Mary Seyton rushed into the garden.  The child closed the
door behind them.

About two-thirds of the way across, Little Douglas held out his hand
as a sign to them to stop; then, putting down the casket and the keys
on the ground, he placed his hands together, and blowing into them,
thrice imitated the owl's cry so well that it was impossible to
believe that a human voice was uttering the sounds; then, picking up
the casket and the keys, he kept on his way on tiptoe and with an
attentive ear.  On getting near the wall, they again stopped, and
after a moment's anxious waiting they heard a groan, then something
like the sound of a falling body.  Some seconds later the owl's cry
was--answered by a tu-whit-tu-whoo.

"It is over," Little Douglas said calmly; "come."

"What is over?" asked the queen; "and what is that groan we heard?"

"There was a sentry at the door on to the lake," the child answered,
"but he is no longer there."

The queen felt her heart's blood grow cold, at the same tine that a
chilly sweat broke out to the roots of her hair; for she perfectly
understood: an unfortunate being had just lost his life on her
account.  Tottering, she leaned on Mary Seyton, who herself felt her
strength giving way.  Meanwhile Little Douglas was trying the keys:
the second opened the door.

"And the queen?" said in a low voice a man who was waiting on the
other side of the wall.

"She is following me," replied the child.

George Douglas, for it was he, sprang into the garden, and, taking
the queen's arm on one side and Mary Seyton's on the other, he
hurried them away quickly to the lake-side.  When passing through the
doorway Mary Stuart could not help throwing an uneasy look about her,
and it seemed to her that a shapeless object was lying at the bottom
of the wall, and as she was shuddering all over

"Do not pity him," said George in a low voice, "for it is a judgment
from heaven.  That man was the infamous Warden who betrayed us."

"Alas!" said the queen, "guilty as he was, he is none the less dead
on my account."

"When it concerned your safety, madam, was one to haggle over drops
of that base blood?  But silence!  This way, William, this way; let
us keep along the wall, whose shadow hides us.  The boat is within
twenty steps, and we are saved."

With these words, George hurried on the two women still more quickly,
and all four, without having been detected, reached the banks of the
lake.  'As Douglas had said, a little boat was waiting; and, on
seeing the fugitives approach, four rowers, couched along its bottom,
rose, and one of them, springing to land, pulled the chain, so that
the queen and Mary Seyton could get in.  Douglas seated them at the
prow, the child placed himself at the rudder, and George, with a
kick, pushed off the boat, which began to glide over the lake.

"And now," said he, "we are really saved; for they might as well
pursue a sea swallow on Solway Firth as try to reach us.  Row,
children, row; never mind if they hear us: the main thing is to get
into the open."

"Who goes there?" cried a voice above, from the castle terrace.

"Row, row," said Douglas, placing himself in front of the queen.

"The boat! the boat!" cried the same voice; "bring to the boat!"
Then, seeing that it continued to recede, "Treason! treason!" cried
the sentinel.  "To arms!"

At the same moment a flash lit up the lake; the report of a firearm
was heard, and a ball passed, whistling.  The queen uttered a little
cry, although she had run no danger, George, as we have said, having
placed himself in front of her, quite protecting her with his body.

The alarm bell now rang, and all the castle lights were seen moving
and glancing about, as if distracted, in the rooms.

"Courage, children!" said Douglas.  "Row as if your lives depended on
each stroke of the oar; for ere five minutes the skiff will be out
after us."

"That won't be so easy for them as you think, George," said Little
Douglas; "for I shut all the doors behind me, and some time will
elapse before the keys that I have left there open them.  As to
these," added he, showing those he had so skilfully abstracted, "I
resign them to the Kelpie, the genie of the lake, and I nominate him
porter of Lochleven Castle."

The discharge of a small piece of artillery answered William's joke;
but as the night was too dark for one to aim to such a distance as
that already between the castle and the boat, the ball ricochetted at
twenty paces from the fugitives, while the report died away in echo
after echo.  Then Douglas drew his pistol from his belt, and, warning
the ladies to have no fear, he fired in the air, not to answer by
idle bravado the castle cannonade, but to give notice to a troop of
faithful friends, who were waiting for them on the other shore of the
lake, that the queen had escaped.  Immediately, in spite of the
danger of being so near Kinross, cries of joy resounded on the bank,
and William having turned the rudder, the boat made for land at the
spot whence they had been heard.  Douglas then gave his hand to the
queen, who sprang lightly ashore, and who, falling on her knees,
immediately began to give thanks to God for her happy deliverance.

On rising, the queen found herself surrounded by her most faithful
servants--Hamilton, Herries, and Seyton, Mary's father.  Light-headed
with joy, the queen extended her hands to them, thanking them with
broken words, which expressed her intoxication and her gratitude
better than the choicest phrases could have done, when suddenly,
turning round, she perceived George Douglas, alone and melancholy.
Then, going to him and taking him by the hand--

"My lords," said she, presenting George to them, and pointing to
William, "behold my two deliverers: behold those to whom, as long as
I live, I shall preserve gratitude of which nothing will ever acquit
me."

"Madam," said Douglas, "each of us has only done what he ought, and
he who has risked most is the happiest.  But if your Majesty will
believe me, you will not lose a moment in needless words."

"Douglas is right," said Lord Seyton.  "To horse! to horse!"

Immediately, and while four couriers set out in four different
directions to announce to the queen's friends her happy escape, they
brought her a horse saddled for her, which she mounted with her usual
skill; then the little troop, which, composed of about twenty
persons, was escorting the future destiny of Scotland, keeping away
from the village of Kinross, to which the castle firing had doubtless
given the alarm, took at a gallop the road to Seyton's castle, where
was already a garrison large enough to defend the queen from a sudden
attack.

The queen journeyed all night, accompanied on one side by Douglas, on
the other by Lord Seyton; then, at daybreak, they stopped at the gate
of the castle of West Niddrie, belonging to Lord Seyton, as we have
said, and situated in West Lothian.  Douglas sprang from his horse to
offer his hand to Mary Stuart; but Lord Seyton claimed his privilege
as master of the house.  The queen consoled Douglas with a glance,
and entered the fortress.

"Madam," said Lord Seyton, leading her into a room prepared for her
for nine months, "your Majesty must have need of repose, after the
fatigue and the emotions you have gone through since yesterday
morning; you may sleep here in peace, and disquiet yourself for
nothing: any noise you may hear will be made by a reinforcement of
friends which we are expecting.  As to our enemies, your Majesty has
nothing to fear from them so long as you inhabit the castle of a
Seyton."

The queen again thanked all her deliverers, gave her hand to Douglas
to kiss one last time, kissed Little William on the forehead, and
named him her favourite page for the future; then, profiting by the
advice given her, entered her room where Mary Seyton, to the
exclusion of every other woman, claimed the privilege of performing
about her the duties with which she had been charged during their
eleven months' captivity in Lochleven Castle.

On opening her eyes, Mary Stuart thought she had had one of those
dreams so gainful to prisoners, when waking they see again the bolts
on their doors and the bars on their windows.  So the queen, unable
to believe the evidence of her senses, ran, half dressed, to the
window.  The courtyard was filled with soldiers, and these soldiers
all friends who had hastened at the news of her escape; she
recognised the banners of her faithful friends, the Seytons, the
Arbroaths, the Herries, and the Hamiltons, and scarcely had she been
seen at the window than all these banners bent before her, with the
shouts a hundred times repeated of "Long live Mary of Scotland! Long
live our queen!"  Then, without giving heed to the disarray of her
toilet, lovely and chaste with her emotion and her happiness, she
greeted them in her turn, her eyes full of tears; but this time they
were tears of joy.  However, the queen recollected that she was
barely covered, and blushing at having allowed herself to be thus
carried away in her ecstasy, she abruptly drew back, quite rosy with
confusion.

Then she had an instant's womanly fright: she had fled from Lochleven
Castle in the Douglas livery, and without either the leisure or the
opportunity for taking women's clothes with her.  But she could not
remain attired as a man; so she explained her uneasiness to Mary
Seyton, who responded by opening the closets in the queen's room.
They were furnished, not only with robes, the measure for which, like
that of the suit, had been taken from Mary Fleming, but also with all
the necessaries for a woman's toilet.  The queen was astonished: it
was like being in a fairy castle.

"Mignonne," said she, looking one after another at the robes, all the
stuffs of which were chosen with exquisite taste, "I knew your father
was a brave and loyal knight, but I did not think him so learned in
the matter of the toilet.  We shall name him groom of the wardrobe."

"Alas! madam," smilingly replied Mary Seyton, "you are not mistaken:
my father has had everything in the castle furbished up to the last
corselet, sharpened to the last sword, unfurled to the last banner;
but my father, ready as he is to die for your Majesty, would not have
dreamed for an instant of offering you anything but his roof to rest
under, or his cloak to cover you.  It is Douglas again who has
foreseen everything, prepared everything--everything even to
Rosabelle, your Majesty's favourite steed, which is impatiently
awaiting in the stable the moment when, mounted on her, your Majesty
will make your triumphal re-entry into Edinburgh."

"And how has he been able to get her back again?" Mary asked.
"I thought that in the division of my spoils Rosabelle had fallen to
the fair Alice, my brother's favourite sultana?"

"Yes, yes," said Mary Seyton, "it was so; and as her value was known,
she was kept under lock and key by an army of grooms; but Douglas is
the man of miracles, and, as I have told you, Rosabelle awaits your
Majesty."

"Noble Douglas!" murmured the queen, with eyes full of tears; then,
as if speaking to herself, "And this is precisely one of those
devotions that we can never repay.  The others will be happy with
honours, places, money; but to Douglas what matter all these things?"

"Come, madam, come," said Mary Seyton, "God takes on Himself the
debts of kings; He will reward Douglas.  As to your Majesty, reflect
that they are waiting dinner for you.  I hope," added she, smiling,
"that you will not affront my father as you did Lord Douglas
yesterday in refusing to partake of his feast on his fortunate home-
coming."

"And luck has come to me for it, I hope," replied Mary.  "But you are
right, darling: no more sad thoughts; we will consider when we have
indeed become queen again what we can do for Douglas."

The queen dressed and went down.  As Mary Seyton had told her, the
chief noblemen of her party, already gathered round her, were waiting
for her in the great hall of the castle.  Her arrival was greeted
with acclamations of the liveliest enthusiasm, and she sat down to
table, with Lord Seyton on her right hand, Douglas on her left, and
behind her Little William, who the same day was beginning his duties
as page.

Next morning the queen was awakened by the sound of trumpets and
bugles: it had been decided the day before that she should set out
that day for Hamilton, where reinforcements were looked for.  The
queen donned an elegant riding-habit, and soon, mounted on Rosabelle,
appeared amid her defenders.  The shouts of joy redoubled: her
beauty, her grace, and her courage were admired by everyone.  Mary
Stuart became her own self once more, and she felt spring up in her
again the power of fascination she had always exercised on those who
came near her.  Everyone was in good humour, and the happiest of all
was perhaps Little William, who for the first time in his life had
such a fine dress and such a fine horse.

Two or three thousand men were awaiting the queen at Hamilton, which
she reached the same evening; and during the night following her
arrival the troops increased to six thousand.  The 2nd of May she was
a prisoner, without another friend but a child in her prison, without
other means of communication with her adherents than the flickering
and uncertain light of a lamp, and three days afterwards--that is to
say, between the Sunday and the Wednesday--she found herself not only
free, but also at the head of a powerful confederacy, which counted
at its head nine earls, eight peers, nine bishops, and a number of
barons and nobles renowned among the bravest of Scotland.

The advice of the most judicious among those about the queen was to
shut herself up in the strong castle of Dumbarton, which, being
impregnable, would give all her adherents time to assemble together,
distant and scattered as they were: accordingly, the guidance of the
troops who were to conduct the queen to that town was entrusted to
the Earl of Argyll, and the 11th of May she took the road with an
army of nearly ten thousand men.

Murray was at Glasgow when he heard of the queen's escape: the place
was strong; he decided to hold it, and summoned to him his bravest
and most devoted partisans.  Kirkcaldy of Grange, Morton, Lindsay of
Byres, Lord Lochleven, and William Douglas hastened to him, and six
thousand of the best troops in the kingdom gathered round them, while
Lord Ruthven in the counties of Berwick and Angus raised levies with
which to join them.

The 13th May, Morton occupied from daybreak the village of Langside,
through which the queen must pass to get to Dumbarton.  The news of
the occupation reached the queen as the two armies were yet seven
miles apart.  Mary's first instinct was to escape an engagement: she
remembered her last battle at Carberry Hill, at the end of which she
had been separated from Bothwell and brought to Edinburgh; so she
expressed aloud this opinion, which was supported by George Douglas,
who, in black armour, without other arms, had continued at the
queen's side.

"Avoid an engagement!" cried Lord Seyton, not daring to answer his
sovereign, and replying to George as if this opinion had originated
with him.  "We could do it, perhaps, if we were one to ten; but we
shall certainly not do so when we are three to two.  You speak a
strange tongue, my young master," continued he, with some contempt;
"and you forget, it seems to me, that you are a Douglas and that you
speak to a Seyton."

"My lord," returned George calmly, "when we only hazard the lives of
Douglases and Seytons, you will find me, I hope, as ready to fight as
you, be it one to ten, be it three to two; but we are now answerable
for an existence dearer to Scotland than that of all the Seytons and
all the Douglases.  My advice is then to avoid battle."

"Battle! battle!" cried all the chieftains.

"You hear, madam?" said Lord Seyton to Mary Stuart: "I believe that
to wish to act against such unanimity would be dangerous.  In
Scotland, madam, there is an ancient proverb which has it that 'there
is most prudence in courage.'"

"But have you not heard that the regent has taken up an advantageous
position?" the queen said.

"The greyhound hunts the hare on the hillside as well as in the
plain," replied Seyton: "we will drive him out, wherever he is."

"Let it be as you desire, then, my lords.  It shall not be said that
Mary Stuart returned to the scabbard the sword her defenders had
drawn for her."

Then, turning round to Douglas

"George," she said to him, "choose a guard of twenty men for me, and
take command of them: you will not quit me."

George bent low in obedience, chose twenty from among the bravest
men, placed the queen in their midst, and put himself at their head;
then the troops, which had halted, received the order to continue
their road.  In two hours' time the advance guard was in sight of the
enemy; it halted, and the rest of the army rejoined it.

The queen's troops then found themselves parallel with the city of
Glasgow, and the heights which rose in front of them were already
occupied by a force above which floated, as above that of Mary, the
royal banners of Scotland, On the other side, and on the opposite
slope, stretched the village of Langside, encircled with enclosures
and gardens.  The road which led to it, and which followed all the
variations of the ground, narrowed at one place in such a way that
two men could hardly pass abreast, then, farther on, lost itself in a
ravine, beyond which it reappeared, then branched into two, of which
one climbed to the village of Langside, while the other led to
Glasgow.

On seeing the lie of the ground, the Earl of Argyll immediately
comprehended the importance of occupying this village, and, turning
to Lord Seyton, he ordered him to gallop off and try to arrive there
before the enemy, who doubtless, having made the same observation as
the commander of the royal forces, was setting in motion at that very
moment a considerable body of cavalry.

Lord Seyton called up his men directly, but while he was ranging them
round his banner, Lord Arbroath drew his sword, and approaching the
Earl of Argyll

"My lord," said he, "you do me a wrong in charging Lord Seyton to
seize that post: as commander of the vanguard, it is to me this
honour belongs.  Allow me, then, to use my privilege in claiming it."

"It is I who received the order to seize it; I will seize it!" cried
Seyton.

"Perhaps," returned Lord Arbroath, "but not before me!"

"Before you and before every Hamilton in the world!" exclaimed
Seyton, putting his horse to the gallop and rushing down into the
hollow road

"Saint Bennet! and forward!"

"Come, my faithful kinsmen!" cried Lord Arbroath, dashing forward on
his side with the same object; "come, my men-at-arms! For God and the
queen!"

The two troops precipitated themselves immediately in disorder and
ran against one another in the narrow way, where, as we have said,
two men could hardly pass abreast.  There was a terrible collision
there, and the conflict began among friends who should have been
united against the enemy.  Finally, the two troops, leaving behind
them some corpses stifled in the press, or even killed by their
companions, passed through the defile pell-mell and were lost sight
of in the ravine.  But during this struggle Seyton and Arbroath had
lost precious time, and the detachment sent by Murray, which had
taken the road by Glasgow, had reached the village beforehand; it was
now necessary not to take it, but to retake it.

Argyll saw that the whole day's struggle would be concentrated there,
and, understanding more and more the importance of the village,
immediately put himself at the head of the body of his army,
commanding a rearguard of two thousand men to remain there and await
further orders to take part in the fighting.  But whether the captain
who commanded them had ill understood, or whether he was eager to
distinguish himself in the eyes of the queen, scarcely had Argyll
vanished into the ravine, at the end of which the struggle had
already commenced between Kirkcaldy of Grange and Morton on the one
side, and on the other between Arbroath and Seyton, than, without
regarding the cries of Mary Stuart, he set off in his turn at a
gallop, leaving the queen without other guard than the little escort
of twenty men which Douglas had chosen for her.  Douglas sighed.

"Alas!" said the queen, hearing him, "I am not a soldier, but there
it seems to me is a battle very badly begun."

"What is to be done?" replied Douglas.  "We are every one of us
infatuated, from first to last, and all these men are behaving to-day
like madmen or children."

"Victory! victory!" said the queen; "the enemy is retreating,
fighting.  I see the banners of Seyton and Arbroath floating near the
first houses in the village.  Oh! my brave lords," cried she,
clapping her hands.  "Victory! victory!"

But she stopped suddenly on perceiving a body of the enemy's army
advancing to charge the victors in flank.

"It is nothing, it is nothing," said Douglas; "so long as there is
only cavalry we have nothing much to fear, and besides the Earl of
Argyll will fall in in time to aid them."

"George," said Little William.

"Well?" asked Douglas.

"Don't you see?  "the child went on, stretching out his arms towards
the enemy's force, which was coming on at a gallop.

"What?"

"Each horseman carries a footman armed with an arquebuse behind him,
so that the troop is twice as numerous as it appears."

"That's true; upon my soul, the child has good sight.  Let someone go
at once full gallop and take news of this to the Earl or Argyll."

"I! I!" cried Little William.  "I saw them first; it is my right to
bear the tidings."

"Go, then, my child," said Douglas; "and may God preserve thee!"

The child flew, quick as lightning, not hearing or feigning not to
hear the queen, who was recalling him.  He was seen to cross the
gorge and plunge into the hollow road at the moment when Argyll was
debouching at the end and coming to the aid of Seyton and Arbroath.
Meanwhile, the enemy's detachment had dismounted its infantry, which,
immediately formed up, was scattering on the sides of the ravine by
paths impracticable for horses.

"William will come too late!" cried Douglas, "or even, should he
arrive in time, the news is now useless to them.  Oh madmen, madmen
that we are!  This is how we have always lost all our battles!"

"Is the battle lost, then?" demanded Mary, growing pale.

"No, madam, no," cried Douglas; "Heaven be thanked, not yet; but
through too great haste we have begun badly."

"And William?" said Mary Stuart.

"He is now serving his apprenticeship in arms; for, if I am not
mistaken, he must be at this moment at the very spot where those
marksmen are making such quick firing."

"Poor child!" cried the queen; "if ill should befall him, I shall
never console myself."

"Alas! madam," replied Douglas, "I greatly fear that his first battle
is his last, and that everything is already over for him; for, unless
I mistake, there is his horse returning riderless."

"Oh, my God! my God!" said the queen, weeping, and raising her hands
to heaven, "it is then decreed that I should be fatal to all around
me!"

George was not deceived: it was William's horse coming back without
his young master and covered with blood.

"Madam," said Douglas, "we are ill placed here; let us gain that
hillock on which is the Castle of Crookstone: from thence we shall
survey the whole battlefield."

"No, not there! not there!" said the queen in terror: "within that
castle I came to spend the first days of my marriage with Darnley; it
will bring me misfortune."

"Well, beneath that yew-tree, then," said George, pointing to another
slight rise near the first; "but it is important for us to lose no
detail of this engagement.  Everything depends perhaps for your
Majesty on an ill-judged manoeuvre or a lost moment."

"Guide me, then," the queen said; "for, as for me, I no longer see
it.  Each report of that terrible cannonade echoes to the depths of
my heart."

However well placed as was this eminence for overlooking from its
summit the whole battlefield, the reiterated discharge of cannon and
musketry covered it with such a cloud of smoke that it was impossible
to make out from it anything but masses lost amid a murderous fog.
At last, when an hour had passed in this desperate conflict, through
the skirts of this sea of smoke the fugitives were seen to emerge and
disperse in all directions, followed by the victors.  Only, at that
distance, it was impossible to make out who had gained or lost the
battle, and the banners, which on both sides displayed the Scottish
arms, could in no way clear up this confusion.

At that moment there was seen coming down from the Glasgow hillsides
all the remaining reserve of Murray's army; it was coming at full
speed to engage in the fighting; but this manoeuvre might equally
well have for its object the support of defeated friends as to
complete the rout of the enemy.  However, soon there was no longer
any doubt; for this reserve charged the fugitives, amid whom it
spread fresh confusion.  The queen's army was beaten.  At the same
time, three or four horsemen appeared on the hither side of the
ravine, advancing at a gallop.  Douglas recognised them as enemies.

"Fly, madam," cried George, "fly without loss of a second; for those
who are coming upon us are followed by others.  Gain the road, while
I go to check them.  And you," added he, addressing the escort, "be
killed to the last man rather than let them take your queen."

"George! George!" cried the queen, motionless, and as if riveted to
the spot.

But George had already dashed away with all his horse's speed, and as
he was splendidly mounted, he flew across the space with lightning
rapidity, and reached the gorge before the enemy.  There he stopped,
put his lance in rest, and alone against five bravely awaited the
encounter.

As to the queen, she had no desire to go; but, on the contrary, as if
turned to stone, she remained in the same place, her eyes fastened on
this combat which was taking place at scarcely five hundred paces
from her.  Suddenly, glancing at her enemies, she saw that one of
them bore in the middle of his shield a bleeding heart, the Douglas
arms.  Then she uttered a cry of pain, and drooping her head

"Douglas against Douglas; brother against brother!" she murmured: "it
only wanted this last blow."

"Madam, madam," cried her escort, "there is not an instant to lose:
the young master of Douglas cannot hold out long thus alone against
five; let us fly! let us fly!" And two of them taking the queen's
horse by the bridle, put it to the gallop, at the moment when George,
after having beaten down two of his enemies and wounded a third, was
thrown down in his turn in the dust, thrust to the heart by a lance-
head.  The queen groaned on seeing him fall; then, as if he alone had
detained her, and as if he being killed she had no interest in
anything else, she put Rosabelle to the gallop, and as she and her
troop were splendidly mounted, they had soon lost sight of the
battlefield.

She fled thus for sixty miles, without taking any rest, and without
ceasing to weep or to sigh: at last, having traversed the counties of
Renfrew and Ayr, she reached the Abbey of Dundrennan, in Galloway,
and certain of being, for the time at least, sheltered from every
danger, she gave the order to stop.  The prior respectfully received
her at the gate of the convent.

"I bring you misfortune and ruin, father," said the queen, alighting
from her horse.

"They are welcome," replied the prior, "since they come accompanied
by duty."

The queen gave Rosabelle to the care of one of the men-at-arms who
had accompanied her, and leaning on Mary Seyton, who had not left her
for a moment, and on Lord Herries, who had rejoined her on the road,
she entered the convent.

Lord Herries had not concealed her position from Mary Stuart: the day
had been completely lost, and with the day, at least for the present,
all hope of reascending the throne of Scotland.  There remained but
three courses for the queen to take to withdraw into France, Spain or
England.  On the advice of Lord Herries, which accorded with her own
feeling, she decided upon the last; and that same night she wrote
this double missive in verse and in prose to Elizabeth:

"MY DEAR SISTER,--I have often enough begged you to receive my
tempest-tossed vessel into your haven during the storm.  If at this
pass she finds a safe harbour there, I shall cast anchor there for
ever: otherwise the bark is in God's keeping, for she is ready and
caulked for defence on her voyage against all storms.  I have dealt
openly with you, and still do so: do not take it in bad part if I
write thus; it is not in defiance of you, as it appears, for in
everything I rely on your friendship."

"This sonnet accompanied the letter:--

"One thought alone brings danger and delight;
Bitter and sweet change places in my heart,
With doubt, and then with hope, it takes its part,
Till peace and rest alike are put to flight.

Therefore, dear sister, if this card pursue
That keen desire by which I am oppressed,
To see you, 'tis because I live distressed,
Unless some swift and sweet result ensue.

Beheld I have my ship compelled by fate
To seek the open sea, when close to port,
And calmest days break into storm and gale;
Wherefore full grieved and fearful is my state,
Not for your sake, but since, in evil sort,
Fortune so oft snaps strongest rope and sail."

Elizabeth trembled with joy at receiving this double letter; for the
eight years that her enmity had been daily increasing to Mary Stuart,
she had followed her with her eyes continually, as a wolf might a
gazelle; at last the gazelle sought refuge in the wolf's den.
Elizabeth had never hoped as much: she immediately despatched an
order to the Sheriff of Cumberland to make known to Mary that she was
ready to receive her.  One morning a bugle was heard blowing on the
sea-shore: it was Queen Elizabeth's envoy come to fetch Queen Mary
Stuart.

Then arose great entreaties to the fugitive not to trust herself thus
to a rival in power, glory, and beauty; but the poor dispossessed
queen was full of confidence in her she called her good sister, and
believed herself going, free and rid of care, to take at Elizabeth's
court the place due to her rank and her misfortunes: thus she
persisted, in spite of all that could be said.  In our time, we have
seen the same infatuation seize another royal fugitive, who like Mary
Stuart confided himself to the generosity of his enemy England: like
Mary Stuart, he was cruelly punished for his confidence, and found in
the deadly climate of St. Helena the scaffold of Fotheringay.

Mary Stuart set out on her journey, then, with her little following.
Arrived at the shore of Solway Firth, she found there the Warden of
the English Marches: he was a gentleman named Lowther, who received
the queen with the greatest respect, but who gave her to understand
that he could not permit more than three of her women to accompany
her.  Mary Seyton immediately claimed her privilege: the queen held
out to her her hand.

"Alas! mignonne," said she, "but it might well be another's turn: you
have already suffered enough for me and with me."

But Mary, unable to reply, clung to her hand, making a sign with her
head that nothing in the world should part her from her mistress.
Then all who had accompanied the queen renewed their entreaties that
she should not persist in this fatal resolve, and when she was
already a third of the way along the plank placed for her to enter
the skiff, the Prior of Dundrennan, who had offered Mary Stuart such
dangerous and touching hospitality, entered the water up to his
knees, to try to detain her; but all was useless: the queen had made
up her mind.

At that, moment Lowther approached her.  "Madam," said he, "accept
anew my regrets that I cannot offer a warm welcome in England to all
who would wish to follow you there; but our queen has given us
positive orders, and we must carry them out.  May I be permitted to
remind your Majesty that the tide serves?"

"Positive orders!" cried the prior.  "Do you hear, madam?  Oh! you
are lost if you quit this shore! Back, while there is yet time! Back;
madam, in Heaven's name! To me, sir knights, to me!" he cried,
turning to Lord Herries and the other lords who had accompanied Mary
Stuart; "do not allow your queen to abandon you, were it needful to
struggle with her and the English at the same time.  Hold her back,
my lords, in Heaven's name! withhold her!"

"What means this violence, sir priest?" said the Warden of the
Marches.  "I came here at your queen's express command; she is free
to return to you, and there is no need to have recourse to force for
that".  Then, addressing the queen--

"Madam," said he, "do you consent to follow me into England in full
liberty of choice?  Answer, I entreat you; for my honour demands that
the whole world should be aware that you have followed me freely."

"Sir," replied Mary Stuart, "I ask your pardon, in the name of this
worthy servant of God and his queen, for what he may have said of
offence to you.  Freely I leave Scotland and place myself in your
hands, trusting that I shall be free either to remain in England with
my royal sister, or to return to France to my worthy relatives".
Then, turning to the priest, "Your blessing, father, and God protect
you!"

"Alas! alas!" murmured the abbot, obeying the queen, "it is not we
who are in need of God's protection, but rather you, my daughter.
May the blessing of a poor priest turn aside from you the misfortunes
I foresee!  Go, and may it be with you as the Lord has ordained in
His wisdom and in His mercy!"

Then the queen gave her hand to the sheriff, who conducted her to the
skiff, followed by Mary Seyton and two other women only.  The sails
were immediately unfurled, and the little vessel began to recede from
the shores of Galloway, to make her way towards those of Cumberland.
So long as it could be seen, they who had accompanied the queen
lingered on the beach, waving her signs of adieu, which, standing on
the deck of the shallop which was bearing her, away, she returned
with her handkerchief.  Finally, the boat disappeared, and all burst
into lamentations or into sobbing.  They were right, for the good
Prior of Dundrennan's presentiments were only too true, and they had
seen Mary Stuart for the last time.




CHAPTER VIII

On landing on the shores of England, the Queen of Scotland found
messengers from Elizabeth empowered to express to her all the regret
their mistress felt in being unable to admit her to her presence, or
to give her the affectionate welcome she bore her in her heart.  But
it was essential, they added, that first of all the queen should
clear herself of the death of Darnley, whose family, being subjects
of the Queen of England, had a right to her protection and justice.

Mary Stuart was so blinded that she did not see the trap, and
immediately offered to prove her innocence to the satisfaction of her
sister Elizabeth; but scarcely had she in her hands Mary Stuart's
letter, than from arbitress she became judge, and, naming
commissioners to hear the parties, summoned Murray to appear and
accuse his sister.  Murray, who knew Elizabeth's secret intentions
with regard to her rival, did not hesitate a moment.  He came to
England, bringing the casket containing the three letters we have
quoted, some verses and some other papers which proved that the queen
had not only been Bothwell's mistress during the lifetime of Darnley,
but had also been aware of the assassination of her husband.  On
their side, Lord Herries and the Bishop of Ross, the queen's
advocates, maintained that these letters had been forged, that the
handwriting was counterfeited, and demanded, in verification, experts
whom they could not obtain; so that this great controversy, remained
pending for future ages, and to this hour nothing is yet
affirmatively settled in this matter either by scholars or
historians.

After a five months' inquiry, the Queen of England made known to the
parties, that not having, in these proceedings, been able to discover
anything to the dishonour of accuser or accused, everything would
remain in statu quo till one or the other could bring forward fresh
proofs.

As a result of this strange decision, Elizabeth should have sent back
the regent to Scotland, and have left Mary Stuart free to go where
she would.  But, instead of that, she had her prisoner removed from
Bolton Castle to Carlisle Castle, from whose terrace, to crown her
with grief, poor Mary Stuart saw the blue mountains of her own
Scotland.

However, among the judges named by Elizabeth to examine into Mary
Stuart's conduct was Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.  Be it that he
was convinced of Mary's innocence, be it that he was urged by the
ambitious project which since served as a ground for his prosecution,
and which was nothing else than to wed Mary Stuart, to affiance his
daughter to the young king, and to become regent of Scotland, he
resolved to extricate her from her prison.  Several members of the
high nobility of England, among whom were the Earls of Westmoreland
and Northumberland, entered into the plot and under, took to support
it with all their forces.  But their scheme had been communicated to
the regent: he denounced it to Elizabeth, who had Norfolk arrested.
Warned in time, Westmoreland and Northumberland crossed the frontiers
and took refuge in the Scottish borders which were favourable to
Queen Mary.  The former reached Flanders, where he died in exile; the
latter, given up to Murray, was sent to the castle of Lochleven,
which guarded him more faithfully than it had done its royal
prisoner.  As to Norfolk, he was beheaded.  As one sees, Mary
Stuart's star had lost none of its fatal influence.

Meanwhile the regent had returned to Edinburgh, enriched with
presents from Elizabeth, and having gained, in fact, his case with
her, since Mary remained a prisoner.  He employed himself immediately
in dispersing the remainder of her adherents, and had hardly shut the
gates of Lochleven Castle upon Westmoreland than, in the name of the
young King James VI, he pursued those who had upheld his mother's
cause, and among them more particularly the Hamiltons, who since the
affair of "sweeping the streets of Edinburgh," had been the mortal
enemies of the Douglases personally; six of the chief members of this
family were condemned to death, and only obtained commutation of the
penalty into an eternal exile on the entreaties of John Knox, at that
time so powerful in Scotland that Murray dared not refuse their
pardon.

One of the amnestied was a certain Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, a man
of ancient Scottish times, wild and vindictive as the nobles in the
time of James I.  He had withdrawn into the highlands, where he had
found an asylum, when he learned that Murray, who in virtue of the
confiscation pronounced against exiles had given his lands to one of
his favourites, had had the cruelty to expel his sick and bedridden
wife from her own house, and that without giving her time to dress,
and although it was in the winter cold.  The poor woman, besides,
without shelter, without clothes, and without food, had gone out of
her mind, had wandered about thus for some time, an object of
compassion but equally of dread; for everyone had been afraid of
compromising himself by assisting her.  At last, she had returned to
expire of misery and cold on the threshold whence she had been
driven.

On learning this news, Bothwellhaugh, despite the violence of his
character, displayed no anger: he merely responded, with a terrible
smile, "It is well; I shall avenge her."

Next day, Bothwellhaugh left his highlands, and came down, disguised,
into the plain, furnished with an order of admission from the
Archbishop of St. Andrews to a house which this prelate--who, as one
remembers, had followed the queen's fortunes to the last moment--had
at Linlithgow.  This house, situated in the main street, had a wooden
balcony looking on to the square, and a gate which opened out into
the country.  Bothwellhaugh entered it at night, installed himself on
the first floor, hung black cloth on the walls so that his shadow
should not be seen from without, covered the floor with mattresses so
that his footsteps might not be heard on the ground floor, fastened a
racehorse ready saddled and bridled in the garden, hollowed out the
upper part of the little gate which led to the open country so that
he could pass through it at a gallop, armed himself with a loaded
arquebuse, and shut himself up in the room.

All these preparations had been made, one imagines, because Murray
was to spend the following day in Linlithgow.  But, secret as they
were, they were to be rendered useless, for the regent's friends
warned him that it would not be safe for him to pass through the
town, which belonged almost wholly to the Hamiltons, and advised him
to go by it.  However, Murray was courageous, and, accustomed not to
give way before a real danger, he chid nothing but laugh at a peril
which he looked upon as imaginary, and boldly followed his first
plan, which was not to go out of his way.  Consequently, as the
street into which the Archbishop of St. Andrews' balcony looked was
on his road, he entered upon it, not going rapidly and preceded by
guards who would open up a passage for him, as his friends still
counselled, but advancing at a foot's pace, delayed as he was by the
great crowd which was blocking up the streets to see him.  Arrived in
front of the balcony, as if chance had been in tune with the
murderer, the crush became so great that Murray was obliged to halt
for a moment: this rest gave Bothwellhaugh time to adjust himself for
a steady shot.  He leaned his arquebuse on the balcony, and, having
taken aim with the necessary leisure and coolness, fired.
Bothwellhaugh had put such a charge into the arquebuse, that the
ball, having passed through the regent's heart, killed the horse of a
gentleman on his right.  Murray fell directly, saying, "My God! I am
killed."

As they had seen from which window the shot was fired, the persons in
the regent's train had immediately thrown themselves against the
great door of the house which looked on to the street, and had
smashed it in; but they only arrived in time to see Bothwellhaugh fly
through the little garden gate on the horse he had got ready: they
immediately remounted the horses they had left in the street, and,
passing through the house, pursued him.  Bothwellhaugh had a good
horse and the lead of his enemies; and yet, four of them, pistol in
hand, were so well mounted that they were beginning to gain upon him.
Then Bothwellhaugh; seeing that whip and spur were not enough, drew
his dagger and used it to goad on his horse.  His horse, under this
terrible stimulus, acquired fresh vigour, and, leaping a gully
eighteen feet deep, put between his master and his pursuers a barrier
which they dared not cross.

The murderer sought an asylum in France, where he retired under the
protection of the Guises.  There, as the bold stroke he had attempted
had acquired him a great reputation, some days before the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, they made him overtures to assassinate Admiral
Coligny.  But Bothwellhaugh indignantly repulsed these proposals,
saying that he was the avenger of abuses and not an assassin, and
that those who had to complain of the admiral had only to come and
ask him how he had done, and to do as he.

As to Murray, he died the night following his wound, leaving the
regency to the Earl of Lennox, the father of Darnley: on learning the
news of his death, Elizabeth wrote that she had lost her best friend.

While these events were passing in Scotland, Mary Stuart was still a
prisoner, in spite of the pressing and successive protests of Charles
IX and Henry III.  Taking fright at the attempt made in her favour,
Elizabeth even had her removed to Sheffield Castle, round which fresh
patrols were incessantly in motion.

But days, months, years passed, and poor Mary, who had borne so
impatiently her eleven months' captivity in Lochleven Castle, had
been already led from prison to prison for fifteen or sixteen years,
in spite of her protests and those of the French and Spanish
ambassadors, when she was finally taken to Tutbury Castle and placed
under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, her last gaoler: there she found
for her sole lodging two low and damp rooms, where little by little
what strength remained to her was so exhausted that there were days
on which she could not walk, on account of the pain in all her limbs.
Then it was that she who had been the queen of two kingdoms, who was
born in a gilded cradle and brought up in silk and velvet, was forced
to humble herself to ask of her gaoler a softer bed and warmer
coverings.  This request, treated as an affair of state, gave rise to
negotiations which lasted a month, after which the prisoner was at
length granted what she asked.  And yet the unhealthiness, cold, and
privations of all kinds still did not work actively enough on that
healthy and robust organisation.  They tried to convey to Paulet what
a service he would render the Queen of England in cutting short the
existence of her who, already condemned in her rival's mind, yet
delayed to die.  But Sir Amyas Paulet, coarse and harsh as he was to
Mary Stuart, declared that, so long as she was with him she would
have nothing to fear from poison or dagger, because he would taste
all the dishes served to his prisoner, and that no one should
approach her but in his presence.  In fact, some assassins, sent by
Leicester, the very same who had aspired for a moment to the hand of
the lovely Mary Stuart, were driven from the castle directly its
stern keeper had learned with what intentions they had entered it.
Elizabeth had to be patient, then, in contenting herself with
tormenting her whom she could not kill, and still hoping that a fresh
opportunity would occur for bringing her to trial.  That opportunity,
so long delayed, the fatal star of Mary Stuart at length brought.

A young Catholic gentleman, a last scion of that ancient chivalry
which was already dying out at that time, excited by the
excommunication of Pius V, which pronounced Elizabeth fallen from her
kingdom on earth and her salvation in heaven, resolved to restore
liberty to Mary, who thenceforth was beginning to be looked upon, no
longer as a political prisoner, but as a martyr for her faith.
Accordingly, braving the law which Elizabeth had had made in 1585,
and which provided that, if any attempt on her person was meditated
by, or for, a person who thought he had claims to the crown of
England, a commission would be appointed composed of twenty-five
members, which, to the exclusion of every other tribunal, would be
empowered to examine into the offence, and to condemn the guilty
persons, whosoever they might be.  Babington, not at all discouraged
by the example of his predecessors, assembled five of his friends,
Catholics as zealous as himself, who engaged their life and honour in
the plot of which he was the head, and which had as its aim to
assassinate Elizabeth, and as a result to place Mary Stuart on the
English throne.  But this scheme, well planned as it was, was
revealed to Walsingham, who allowed the conspirators to go as far as
he thought he could without danger, and who, the day before that
fixed for the assassination, had them arrested.

This imprudent and desperate attempt delighted Elizabeth, for,
according to the letter of the law, it finally gave her rival's life
into her hands.  Orders were immediately given to Sir Amyas Paulet to
seize the prisoner's papers and to move her to Fotheringay Castle.
The gaoler, then, hypocritically relaxing his usual severity,
suggested to Mary Stuart that she should go riding, under the pretext
that she had need of an airing.  The poor prisoner, who for three
years had only seen the country through her prison bars, joyfully
accepted, and left Tutbury between two guards, mounted, for greater
security, on a horse whose feet were hobbled.  These two guards took
her to Fotheringay Castle, her new habitation, where she found the
apartment she was to lodge in already hung in black.  Mary Stuart had
entered alive into her tomb.  As to Babington and his accomplices,
they had been already beheaded.

Meanwhile, her two secretaries, Curle and Nau, were arrested, and all
her papers were seized and sent to Elizabeth, who, on her part,
ordered the forty commissioners to assemble, and proceed without
intermission to the trial of the prisoner.  They arrived at
Fotheringay the 14th October 1586; and next day, being assembled in
the great hall of the castle, they began the examination.

At first Mary refused to appear before them, declaring that she did
not recognise the commissioners as judges, they not being her peers,
and not acknowledging the English law, which had never afforded her
protection, and which had constantly abandoned her to the rule of
force.  But seeing that they proceeded none the less, and that every
calumny was allowed, no one being there to refute it, she resolved to
appear before the commissioners.  We quote the two interrogatories to
which Mary Stuart submitted as they are set down in the report of M.
de Bellievre to M. de Villeroy.  M. de Bellievre, as we shall see
later, had been specially sent by King Henry III to Elizabeth.
[Intelligence for M. Villeroy of what was done in England by M. de
Bellievre about the affairs of the Queen of Scotland, in the months
of November and December 1586 and January 1587.]

The said lady being seated at the end of the table in the said hall,
and the said commissioners about her--

The Queen of Scotland began to speak in these terms:

"I do not admit that any one of you here assembled is my peer or my
judge to examine me upon any charge.  Thus what I do, and now tell
you, is of my own free will, taking God to witness that I am innocent
and pure in conscience of the accusations and slanders of which they
wish to accuse me.  For I am a free princess and born a queen,
obedient to no one, save to God, to whom alone I must give an account
of my actions.  This is why I protest yet again that my appearance
before you be not prejudicial either to me, or to the kings, princes
and potentates, my allies, nor to my son, and I require that my
protest be registered, and I demand the record of it."

Then the chancellor, who was one of the commissioners, replied in his
turn, and protested against the protestation; then he ordered that
there should be read over to the Queen of Scotland the commission in
virtue of which they were proceeding--a commission founded on the
statutes and law of the kingdom.

But to this Mary Stuart made answer that she again protested; that
the said statutes and laws were without force against her, because
these statutes and laws are not made for persons of her condition.

To this the chancellor replied that the commission intended to
proceed against her, even if she refused to answer, and declared that
the trial should proceed; for she was doubly subject to indictment,
the conspirators having not only plotted in her favour, but also with
her consent: to which the said Queen of Scotland responded that she
had never even thought of it.

Upon this, the letters it was alleged she had written to Babington
and his answers were read to her.

Mary Stuart then affirmed that she had never seen Babington, that she
had never had any conference with him, had never in her life received
a single letter from him, and that she defied anyone in the world to
maintain that she had ever done anything to the prejudice of the said
Queen of England; that besides, strictly guarded as she was, away
from all news, withdrawn from and deprived of those nearest her,
surrounded with enemies, deprived finally of all advice, she had been
unable to participate in or to consent to the practices of which she
was accused; that there are, besides, many persons who wrote to her
what she had no knowledge of, and that she had received a number of
letters without knowing whence they came to her.

Then Babington's confession was read to her; but she replied that she
did not know what was meant; that besides, if Babington and his
accomplices had said such things, they were base men, false and
liars.

"Besides," added she, "show me my handwriting and my signature, since
you say that I wrote to Babington, and not copies counterfeited like
these which you have filled at your leisure with the falsehoods it
has pleased you to insert."

Then she was shown the letter that Babington, it was said, had
written her.  She glanced at it; then said, "I have no knowledge of
this letter".  Upon this, she was shown her reply, and she said
again, "I have no more knowledge of this answer.  If you will show me
my own letter and my own signature containing what you say, I will
acquiesce in all; but up to the present, as I have already told you,
you have produced nothing worthy of credence, unless it be the copies
you have invented and added to with what seemed good to you."

With these words, she rose, and with her eyes full of tears--

"If I have ever," said she, "consented to such intrigues, having for
object my sister's death, I pray God that He have neither pity nor
mercy on me.  I confess that I have written to several persons, that
I have implored them to deliver me from my wretched prisons, where I
languished, a captive and ill-treated princess, for nineteen years
and seven months; but it never occurred to me, even in thought, to
write or even to desire such things against the queen.  Yes, I also
confess to having exerted myself for the deliverance of some
persecuted Catholics, and if I had been able, and could yet, with my
own blood, protect them and save them from their pains, I would have
done it, and would do it for them with all my power, in order to save
them from destruction."

Then, turning to the secretary, Walsingham--

"But, my lord," said she, "from the moment I see you here, I know
whence comes this blow: you have always been my greatest enemy and my
son's, and you have moved everyone against me and to my prejudice."

Thus accused to his face, Walsingham rose.

"Madam," he replied, "I protest before God, who is my witness, that
you deceive yourself, and that I have never done anything against you
unworthy of a good man, either as an individual or as a public
personage."

This is all that was said and done that day in the proceedings, till
the next day, when the queen was again obliged to appear before the
commissioners.

And, being seated at the end of the table of the said hall, and the
said commissioners about her, she began to speak in a loud voice.

"You are not unaware, my lords and gentlemen, that I am a sovereign
queen, anointed and consecrated in the church of God, and cannot, and
ought not, for any reason whatever, be summoned to your courts, or
called to your bar, to be judged by the law and statutes that you lay
down; for I am a princess and free, and I do not owe to any prince
more than he owes to me; and on everything of which I am accused
towards my said sister, I cannot, reply if you do not permit me to be
assisted by counsel.  And if you go further, do what you will; but
from all your procedure, in reiterating my protestations, I appeal to
God, who is the only just and true judge, and to the kings and
princes, my allies and confederates."

This protestation was once more registered, as she had required of
the commissioners.  Then she was told that she had further written
several letters to the princes of Christendom, against the queen and
the kingdom of England.

"As to that," replied Mary Stuart, "it is another matter, and I do
not deny it; and if it was again to do, I should do as I have done,
to gain my liberty; for there is not a man or woman in the world, of
less rank than I, who would not do it, and who would not make use of
the help and succour of their friends to issue from a captivity as
harsh as mine was.  You charge me with certain letters from
Babington: well, I do not deny that he has written to me and that I
have replied to him; but if you find in my answers a single word
about the queen my sister, well, yes, there will be good cause to
prosecute me.  I replied to him who wrote to me that he would set me
at liberty, that I accepted his offer, if he could do it without
compromising the one or the other of us: that is all.

"As to my secretaries," added the queen, "not they, but torture spoke
by their mouths: and as to the confessions of Babington and his
accomplices, there is not much to be made of them; for now that they
are dead you can say all that seems good to you; and let who will
believe you."

With these words, the queen refused to answer further if she were not
given counsel, and, renewing her protestation, she withdrew into her
apartment; but, as the chancellor had threatened, the trial was
continued despite her absence.

However, M. de Chateauneuf, the French ambassador to London, saw
matters too near at hand to be deceived as to their course:
accordingly, at the first rumour which came to him of bringing Mary
Stuart to trial, he wrote to King Henry III, that he might intervene
in the prisoner's favour.  Henry III immediately despatched to Queen
Elizabeth an embassy extraordinary, of which M. de Bellievre was the
chief; and at the same time, having learned that James VI, Mary's
son, far from interesting himself in his mother's fate, had replied
to the French minister, Courcelles, who spoke to him of her, "I can
do nothing; let her drink what she has spilled," he wrote him the
following letter, to decide the young prince to second him in the
steps he was going to take:

"21st November, 1586.

"COURCELLES, I have received your letter of the 4th October last, in
which I have seen the discourse that the King of Scotland has held
with you concerning what you have witnessed to him of the good
affection I bear him, discourse in which he has given proof of
desiring to reciprocate it entirely; but I wish that that letter had
informed me also that he was better disposed towards the queen his
mother, and that he had the heart and the desire to arrange
everything in a way to assist her in the affliction in which she now
is, reflecting that the prison where she has been unjustly detained
for eighteen years and more has induced her to lend an ear to many
things which have been proposed to her for gaining her liberty, a
thing which is naturally greatly desired by all men, and more still
by those who are born sovereigns and rulers, who bear being kept
prisoners thus with less patience.  He should also consider that if
the Queen of England, my good sister, allows herself to be persuaded
by the counsels of those who wish that she should stain herself with
Queen Mary's blood, it will be a matter which will bring him to great
dishonour, inasmuch as one will judge that he will have refused his
mother the good offices that he should render her with the said Queen
of England, and which would have perhaps been sufficient to move her,
if he would have employed them, as warmly, and as soon as his natural
duty commanded him.  Moreover, it is to be feared for him, that, his
mother dead, his own turn may come, and that one may think of doing
as much for him, by some violent means, to make the English
succession easier to seize for those who are likely to have it after
the said Queen Elizabeth, and not only to defraud the said King of
Scotland of the claim he can put forward, but to render doubtful even
that which he has to his own crown.  I do not know in what condition
the affairs of my said sister-in-law will be when you receive this
letter; but I will tell you that in every case I wish you to rouse
strongly the said King of Scotland, with remonstrances, and
everything else which may bear on this subject, to embrace the
defence and protection of his said mother, and to express to him, on
my part, that as this will be a matter for which he will be greatly
praised by all the other kings and sovereign princes, he must be
assured that if he fails in it there will be great censure for him,
and perhaps notable injury to himself in particular.  Furthermore, as
to the state of my own affairs, you know that the queen, madam and
mother, is about to see very soon the King of Navarre, and to confer
with him on the matter of the pacification of the troubles of this
kingdom, to which, if he bear as much good affection as I do for my
part, I hope that things may come to a good conclusion, and that my
subjects will have some respite from the great evils and calamities
that the war occasions them: supplicating the Creator, Courcelles,
that He may have you in His holy keeping.

"Written at St. Germain-en-Laye, the 21st day
of November 1586.(Signed) HENRI,

"And below, BRULART."


This letter finally decided James VI to make a kind of demonstration
in his mother's favour: he sent Gray, Robert Melville, and Keith to
Queen Elizabeth.  But although London was nearer Edinburgh than was
Paris, the French envoys reached it before the Scotch.

It is true that on reaching Calais, the 27th of November, M. de
Bellievre had found a special messenger there to tell him not to lose
an instant, from M. de Chateauneuf, who, to provide for every
difficulty, had chartered a vessel ready in the harbour.  But however
great the speed these noble lords wished to make, they were obliged
to await the wind's good-will, which did not allow them to put to sea
till Friday 28th at midnight; next day also, on reaching Dover at
nine o'clock, they were so shaken by sea-sickness that they were
forced to stay a whole day in the town to recover, so that it was not
till Sunday 30th that M.  de Bellievre was able to set out in the
coach that M. Chateauneuf sent him by M.  de Brancaleon, and take the
road to London, accompanied by the gentlemen of his suite, who rode
on post-horses; but resting only a few hours on the way to make up
for lost time, they at last arrived in London, Sunday the 1st of
December at midday.  M. de Bellievre immediately sent one of the
gentlemen of his suite, named M.  de Villiers, to the Queen of
England, who was holding her court at Richmond Castle: the decree had
been secretly pronounced already six days, and submitted to
Parliament, which was to deliberate upon it with closed doors.

The French ambassadors could not have chosen a worse moment to
approach Elizabeth; and to gain time she declined to receive M. de
Villiers, returning the answer that he would himself know next day
the reason for this refusal.  And indeed, next day, the rumour spread
in London that the French Embassy had contagion, and that two of the
lords in it having died of the plague at Calais, the queen, whatever
wish she might have to be agreeable to Henry III, could not endanger
her precious existence by receiving his envoys.  Great was the
astonishment of M. de Bellievre at learning this news he protested
that the queen was led into error by a false report, and insisted on
being received.  Nevertheless, the delays lasted another six days;
but as the ambassadors threatened to depart without waiting longer,
and as, upon the whole, Elizabeth, disquieted by Spain, had no desire
to embroil herself with France, she had M. de Bellievre informed on
the morning of the 7th of December that she was ready to receive him
after dinner at Richmond Castle, together with the noblemen of his
suite.

At the appointed time the French ambassadors presented themselves at
the castle gates, and, having been brought to the queen, found her
seated on her throne and surrounded by the greatest lords in her
kingdom.  Then MM. de Chateauneuf and de Bellievre, the one the
ambassador in ordinary and the other the envoy extraordinary, having
greeted her on the part of the King of France, began to make her the
remonstrances with which they were charged.  Elizabeth replied, not
only in the same French tongue, but also in the most beautiful speech
in use at that time, and, carried away by passion, pointed out to the
envoys of her brother Henry that the Queen of Scotland had always
proceeded against her, and that this was the third time that she had
wished to attempt her life by an infinity of ways; which she had
already borne too long and with too much patience, but that never had
anything so profoundly cut her to the heart as her last conspiracy;
that event, added she with sadness, having caused her to sigh more
and to shed more tears than the loss of all her relations, so much
the more that the Queen of Scotland was her near relative and closely
connected with the King of France; and as, in their remonstrances,
MM. de Chateauneuf and de Bellievre had brought forward several
examples drawn from history, she assumed, in reply to them on this
occasion, the pedantic style which was usual with her, and told them
that she had seen and read a great many books in her life, and a
thousand more than others of her sex and her rank were wont to, but
that she had never found in them a single example of a deed like that
attempted on her--a deed pursued by a relative, whom the king her
brother could not and ought not to support in her wickedness, when it
was, on the contrary, his duty to hasten the just punishment of it:
then she added, addressing herself specially to M. de Bellievre, and
coming down again from the height of her pride to a gracious
countenance, that she greatly regretted he was not deputed for a
better occasion; that in a few days she would reply to King Henry her
brother, concerning whose health she was solicitous, as well as that
of the queen mother, who must experience such great fatigue from the
trouble she took to restore peace to her son's kingdom; and then, not
wishing to hear more, she withdrew into her room.

The envoys returned to London, where they awaited the promised reply;
but while they were expecting it unavailingly, they heard quietly the
sentence of death given against Queen Mary, which decided them to
return to Richmond to make fresh remonstrances to Queen Elizabeth.
After two or three fruitless journeys, they were at last, December
15th, admitted for the second time to the royal presence.

The queen did not deny that the sentence had been pronounced, and as
it was easy to see that she did not intend in this case to use her
right of pardon, M. de Bellievre, judging that there was nothing to
be done, asked for a safe-conduct to return to his king: Elizabeth
promised it to him within two or three days.

On the following Tuesday, the 17th of the same month of December,
Parliament as well as the chief lords of the realm were convoked at
the Palace of Westminster, and there, in full court and before all,
sentence of death was proclaimed and pronounced against Mary Stuart:
then this same sentence, with great display and great solemnity, was
read in the squares and at the cross-roads of London, whence it
spread throughout the kingdom; and upon this proclamation the bells
rang for twenty-four hours, while the strictest orders were given to
each of the inhabitants to light bonfires in front of their houses,
as is the custom in France on the Eve of St. John the Baptist.

Then, amid this sound of bells, by the light of these bonfires, M.
de Bellievre, wishing to make a last effort, in order to have nothing
with which to reproach himself, wrote the following letter to Queen
Elizabeth:

"MADAM:--We quitted your Majesty yesterday, expecting, as it had
pleased you to inform us, to receive in a few days your reply
touching the prayer that we made you on behalf of our good master,
your brother, for the Queen of Scotland, his sister in-law and
confederate; but as this morning we have been informed that the
judgment given against the said queen has been proclaimed in London,
although we had promised ourselves another issue from your clemency
and the friendship your bear to the said lord king your good brother,
nevertheless, to neglect no part of our duty, and believing in so
doing to serve the intentions of the king our master, we have not
wanted to fail to write to you this present letter, in which we
supplicate you once again, very humbly, not to refuse his Majesty the
very pressing and very affectionate prayer that he has made you, that
you will be pleased to preserve the life of the said lady Queen of
Scotland, which the said lord king will receive as the greatest
pleasure your Majesty could do him; while, on the contrary, he could
not imagine anything which would cause him more displeasure, and
which would wound him more, than if he were used harshly with regard
to the said lady queen, being what she is to him: and as, madam, the
said king our master, your good brother, when for this object he
despatched us to your Majesty, had not conceived that it was
possible, in any case, to determine so promptly upon such an
execution, we implore you, madam, very humbly, before permitting it
to go further, to grant us some time in which we can make known to
him the state of the affairs of the said Queen of Scotland, in order
that before your Majesty takes a final resolution, you may know what
it may please his very Christian Majesty to tell you and point out to
you on the greatest affair which, in our memory, has been submitted
to men's judgment.  Monsieur de Saint-Cyr, who will give these
presents to your Majesty, will bring us, if it pleases you, your good
reply.

"London, this 16th day of December 1586.

"(Signed) DE BELLIEVRE,

"And DE L'AUBESPINE CHATEAUNEUF."


The same day, M. de Saint-Cyr and the other French lords returned to
Richmond to take this letter; but the queen would not receive them,
alleging indisposition, so that they were obliged to leave the letter
with Walsingham, her first Secretary of State, who promised them to
send the queen's answer the following day.

In spite of this promise, the French lords waited two days more: at
last, on the second day, towards evening, two English gentlemen
sought out M. de Fellievre in London, and, viva voce, without any
letter to confirm what they were charged to say, announced to him, on
behalf of their queen, that in reply to the letter that they had
written her, and to do justice to the desire they had shown to obtain
for the condemned a reprieve during which they would make known the
decision to the King of France, her Majesty would grant twelve days.
As this was Elizabeth's last word, and it was useless to lose time in
pressing her further, M. de Genlis was immediately despatched to his
Majesty the King of France, to whom, besides the long despatch of M.
de Chateauneuf and de Bellievre which he was charged to remit, he was
to say 'viva voce' what he had seen and heard relative to the affairs
of Queen Mary during the whole time he had been in England.

Henry III responded immediately with a letter containing fresh
instructions for MM. de Chateauneuf and de Bellievre; but in spite of
all the haste M. de Genlis could make, he did not reach London till
the fourteenth day--that is to say, forty-eight hours after the
expiration of the delay granted; nevertheless, as the sentence had
not yet been put into execution, MM. de Bellievre and de Chateauneuf
set out at once for Greenwich Castle, some miles from London, where
the queen was keeping Christmas, to beg her to grant them an
audience, in which they could transmit to her Majesty their king's
reply; but they could obtain nothing for four or five days; however,
as they were not disheartened, and returned unceasingly to the
charge, January 6th, MM. de Bellievre and de Chateauneuf were at last
sent for by the queen.

As on the first occasion, they were introduced with all the
ceremonial in use at that time, and found Elizabeth in an audience-
chamber.  The ambassadors approached her, greeted her, and M. de
Bellievre began to address to her with respect, but at the same time
with firmness, his master's remonstrances.  Elizabeth listened to
them with an impatient air, fidgeting in her seat; then at last,
unable to control herself, she burst out, rising and growing red with
anger--

"M. de Bellievre," said she, "are you really charged by the king, my
brother, to speak to me in such a way?"

"Yes, madam," replied M.  de Bellievre, bowing; "I am expressly
commanded to do so."

"And have you this command under his hand?"  continued Elizabeth.

"Yes, madam," returned the ambassador with the same calmness; "and
the king, my master, your good brother, has expressly charged me, in
letters signed by his own hand, to make to your Majesty the
remonstrances which I have had the honour to address to you."

"Well," cried Elizabeth, no longer containing herself, "I demand of
you a copy of that letter, signed by you; and reflect that you will
answer for each word that you take away or add."

"Madam," answered M. de Bellievre, "it is not the custom of the kings
of France, or of their agents, to forge letters or documents; you
will have the copies you require to-morrow morning, and I pledge
their accuracy on my honour."

"Enough, sir, enough!" said the queen, and signing to everyone in the
room to go out, she remained nearly an hour with MM. de Chateauneuf
and de Bellievre.  No one knows what passed in that interview, except
that the queen promised to send an ambassador to the King of France,
who, she promised, would be in Paris, if not before, at least at the
same time as M. de Bellievre, and would be the bearer of her final
resolve as to the affairs of the Queen of Scotland; Elizabeth then
withdrew, giving the French envoys to understand that any fresh
attempt they might make to see her would be useless.

On the 13th of January the ambassadors received their passports, and
at the same time notice that a vessel of the queen's was awaiting
them at Dover.

The very day of their departure a strange incident occurred.  A
gentleman named Stafford, a brother of Elizabeth's ambassador to the
King of France, presented himself at M. de Trappes's, one of the
officials in the French chancellery, telling him that he was
acquainted with a prisoner for debt who had a matter of the utmost
importance to communicate to him, and that he might pay the greater
attention to it, he told him that this matter was connected with
the service of the King of France, and concerned the affairs of Queen
Mary of Scotland.   M. de Trappes, although mistrusting this overture
from the first, did not want, in case his suspicions deceived him, to
have to reproach himself for any neglect on such a pressing occasion.
He repaired, then, with; Mr. Stafford to the prison, where he who
wished to converse with him was detained.  When he was with him, the
prisoner told him that he was locked up for a debt of only twenty
crowns, and that his desire to be at liberty was so great that if
M. de Chateauneuf would pay that sum for him he would undertake to
deliver the Queen of Scotland from her danger, by stabbing Elizabeth:
to this proposal, M. de Trappes, who saw the pitfall laid for the
French ambassador, was greatly astonished, and said that he was
certain that M. de Chateauneuf would consider as very evil every
enterprise having as its aim to threaten in any way the life of Queen
Elizabeth or the peace of the realm; then, not desiring to hear more,
he returned to M. de Chateauneuf and related to him what had just
happened.  M. de Chateauneuf, who perceived the real cause of this
overture, immediately said to Mr. Stafford that he thought it strange
that a gentleman like himself should undertake with another gentleman
such treachery, and requested him to leave the Embassy at once, and
never to set foot there again.  Then Stafford withdrew, and,
appearing to think himself a lost man, he implored M. de Trappes to
allow him to cross the Channel with him and the French envoys.  M.
de Trappes referred him to M. de Chateauneuf, who answered Mr.
Stafford directly that he had not only forbidden him his house, but
also all relations with any person from the Embassy, that he must
thus very well see that his request could not be granted; he added
that if he were not restrained by the consideration he desired to
keep for his brother, the Earl of Stafford, his colleague, he would
at once denounce his treason to Elizabeth.  The same day Stafford was
arrested.

After this conference, M. de Trappes set out to rejoin his travelling
companions, who were some hours in advance of him, when, on reaching
Dover he was arrested in his turn and brought hack to prison in
London.  Interrogated the same day, M.  de Trappes frankly related
what had passed, appealing to M.  de Chateauneuf as to the truth of
what he said.

The day following there was a second interrogatory, and great was his
amazement when, on requesting that the one of the day before should
be shown him, he was merely shown, according to custom in English
law, counterfeit copies, in which were avowals compromising him as
well as M. de Chateauneuf: he objected and protested, refused to
answer or to sign anything further, and was taken back to the Tower
with redoubled precaution, the object of which was the appearance of
an important accusation.

Next day, M. de Chateauneuf was summoned before the queen, and there
confronted with Stafford, who impudently maintained that he had
treated of a plot with M. de Trappes and a certain prisoner for debt
--a plot which aimed at nothing less than endangering the Queen's
life.  M. de Chateauneuf defended himself with the warmth of
indignation, but Elizabeth had too great an interest in being
unconvinced even to attend to the evidence.  She then said to M. de
Chateauneuf that his character of ambassador alone prevented her
having him arrested like his accomplice M. de Trappes; and
immediately despatching, as she had promised, an ambassador to King
Henry III, she charged him not to excuse her for the sentence which
had just been pronounced and the death which must soon follow, but to
accuse M. de Chateauneuf of having taken part in a plot of which the
discovery alone had been able to decide her to consent to the death
of the Queen of Scotland, certain as she was by experience, that so
long as her enemy lived her existence would be hourly threatened.

On the same day, Elizabeth made haste to spread, not only in London,
but also throughout England, the rumour of the fresh danger from
which she had just escaped, so that, when, two days after the
departure of the French envoys, the Scottish ambassadors, who, as one
sees, had not used much speed, arrived, the queen answered them that
their request came unseasonably, at a time when she had just had
proof that, so long as Mary Stuart existed, her own (Elizabeth's)
life was in danger.  Robert Melville wished to reply to this; but
Elizabeth flew into a passion, saying that it was he, Melville, who
had given the King of Scotland the bad advice to intercede for his
mother, and that if she had such an adviser she would have him
beheaded.  To which Melville answered--

"That at the risk of his life he would never spare his master good
advice; and that, on the contrary, he who would counsel a son to let
his mother perish, would deserve to be beheaded."

Upon this reply, Elizabeth ordered the Scotch envoys to withdrew,
telling them that she would let them have her answer.

Three or four days passed, and as they heard nothing further, they
asked again for a parting audience to hear the last resolve of her to
whom they were sent: the queen then decided to grant it, and all
passed, as with M. de Bellievre, in recriminations and complaints.
Finally, Elizabeth asked them what guarantee they would give for her
life in the event of her consenting to pardon the Queen of Scotland.
The envoys responded that they were authorised to make pledges in the
name of the King of Scotland, their master, and all the lords of his
realm, that Mary Stuart should renounce in favour of her son all her
claims upon the English crown, and that she should give as security
for this undertaking the King of France, and all the princes and
lords, his relations and friends.

To this answer, the queen, without her usual presence of mind, cried,
"What are you saying, Melville?  That would be to arm my enemy with
two claims, while he has only one".

"Does your Majesty then regard the king, my master, as your enemy?"
replied Melville.  "He believed himself happier, madam, and thought
he was your ally."

"No, no," Elizabeth said, blushing; "it is a way of speaking: and if
you find a means of reconciling everything, gentlemen, to prove to
you, on the contrary, that I regard King James VI as my good and
faithful ally, I am quite ready to incline to mercy.  Seek, then, on
your side" added she, "while I seek on mine."

With these words, she went out of the room, and the ambassadors
retired, with the light of the hope of which she had just let them
catch a glimpse.

The same evening, a gentleman at the court sought out the Master of
Gray, the head of the Embassy, as if to pay him a civil visit, and
while conversing said to him, "That it was very difficult to
reconcile the safety of Queen Elizabeth with the life of her
prisoner; that besides, if the Queen of Scotland were pardoned, and
she or her son ever came to the English throne, there would be no
security for the lords commissioners who had voted her death; that
there was then only one way of arranging everything, that the King of
Scotland should himself give up his claims to the kingdom of England;
that otherwise, according to him, there was no security for Elizabeth
in saving the life of the Scottish queen".  The Master of Gray then,
looking at him fixedly, asked him if his sovereign had charged him to
come to him with this talk.  But the gentleman denied it, saying that
all this was on his own account and in the way of opinion.

Elizabeth received the envoys from Scotland once more, and then told
them--

"That after having well considered, she had found no way of saving
the life of the Queen of Scotland while securing her own, that
accordingly she could not grant it to them".  To this declaration,
the Master of Gray replied: "That since it was thus, he was, in this
case, ordered by his master to say that they protested in the name of
King James that all that had been done against his mother was of no
account, seeing that Queen Elizabeth had no authority over a queen,
as she was her equal in rank and birth; that accordingly they
declared that immediately after their return, and when their master
should know the result of their mission, he would assemble his
Parliament and send messengers to all the Christian princes, to take
counsel with them as to what could be done to avenge her whom they
could not save."

Then Elizabeth again flew into a passion, saying that they had
certainly not received from their king a mission to speak to her in
such a way; but they thereupon offered to give her this protest in
writing under their signatures; to which Elizabeth replied that she
would send an ambassador to arrange all that with her good friend and
ally, the King of Scotland.  But the envoys then said that their
master would not listen to anyone before their return.  Upon which
Elizabeth begged them not to go away at once, because she had not yet
come to her final decision upon this matter.  On the evening
following this audience, Lord Hingley having come to see the Master
of Gray, and having seemed to notice some handsome pistols which came
from Italy, Gray, directly he had gone, asked this nobleman's cousin
to take them to him as a gift from him.  Delighted with this pleasant
commission, the young man wished to perform it the same evening, and
went to the queen's palace, where his relative was staying, to give
him the present which he had been told to take to him.  But hardly
had he passed through a few rooms than he was arrested, searched, and
the arms he was taking were found upon him.  Although these were not
loaded, he was immediately arrested; only he was not taken to the
Tower, but kept a prisoner in his own room.

Next day there was a rumour that the Scotch ambassadors had wanted to
assassinate the queen in their turn, and that pistols, given by the
Master of Gray himself, had been found on the assassin.

This bad faith could not but open the envoys' eyes.  Convinced at
last that they could do nothing for poor Mary Stuart, they left her
to her fate, and set out next day for Scotland.

Scarcely were they gone than Elizabeth sent her secretary, Davison,
to Sir Amyas Paulet.  He was instructed to sound him again with
regard to the prisoner; afraid, in spite of herself, of a public
execution, the queen had reverted to her former ideas of poisoning or
assassination; but Sir Amyas Paulet declared that he would let no one
have access to Mary but the executioner, who must in addition be the
bearer of a warrant perfectly in order, Davison reported this answer
to Elizabeth, who, while listening to him, stamped her foot several
times, and when he had finished, unable to control herself, cried,
"God's death! there's a dainty fellow, always talking of his fidelity
and not knowing how to prove it!"

Elizabeth was then obliged to make up her mind.  She asked Davison
for the warrant; he gave it to her, and, forgetting that she was the
daughter of a queen who had died on the scaffold, she signed it
without any trace of emotion; then, having affixed to it the great
seal of England, "Go," said she, laughing, "tell Walsingham that all
is ended for Queen Mary; but tell him with precautions, for, as he is
ill, I am afraid he will die of grief when he hears it."

The jest was the more atrocious in that Walsingham was known to be
the Queen of Scotland's bitterest enemy.

Towards evening of that day, Saturday the 14th, Beale, Walsingham's
brother-in-law, was summoned to the palace!  The queen gave into his
hands the death warrant, and with it an order addressed to the Earls
of Shrewsbury, Kent, Rutland, and other noblemen in the neighbourhood
of Fotheringay, to be present at the execution.  Beale took with him
the London executioner, whom Elizabeth had had dressed in black
velvet for this great occasion; and set out two hours after he had
received his warrant.




CHAPTER IX

Queen Mary had known the decree of the commissioners these two
months.  The very day it had been pronounced she had learned the news
through her chaplain, whom they had allowed her to see this once
only.  Mary Stuart had taken advantage of this visit to give him
three letters she had just written-one for Pope Sixtus V, the other
to Don Bernard Mendoza, the third to the Duke of Guise.
Here is that last letter:--

14th December, 1586

"My Good Cousin, whom I hold dearest in the world, I bid you
farewell, being prepared to be put to death by an unjust judgment,
and to a death such as no one of our race, thanks to God, and never a
queen, and still less one of my rank, has ever suffered.  But, good
cousin, praise the Lord; for I was useless to the cause of God and of
His Church in this world, prisoner as I was; while, on the contrary,
I hope that my death will bear witness to my constancy in the faith
and to my willingness to suffer for the maintenance and the
restoration of the Catholic Church in this unfortunate island.  And
though never has executioner dipped his hand in our blood, have no
shame of it, my friend; for the judgment of heretics who have no
authority over me, a free queen, is profitable in the sight of God to
the children of His Church.  If I adhered, moreover, to what they
propose to me, I should not suffer this stroke.  All of our house
have been persecuted by this sect, witness your good father, through
whose intercession I hope to be received with mercy by the just
judge.  I commend to you, then, my poor servants, the discharge of my
debts, and the founding of some annual mass for my soul, not at your
expense, but that you may make the arrangements, as you will be
required when you learn my wishes through my poor and faithful
servants, who are about to witness my last tragedy.  God prosper you,
your wife, children, brothers and cousins, and above all our chief,
my good brother and cousin, and all his.  The blessing of God and
that which I shall give to my children be on yours, whom I do not
commend less to God than my own son, unfortunate and ill-treated as
he is.  You will receive some rings from me, which will remind you to
pray God for the soul of your poor cousin, deprived of all help and
counsel except that of the Lord, who gives me strength and courage to
alone to resist so many wolves howling after me.  To God be the
glory.

"Believe particularly what will be told you by a person who will give
you a ruby ring from me; for I take it on my conscience that the
truth will be told you of what I have charged him to tell, and
especially in what concerns my poor servants and the share of any.  I
commend this person to you for his simple sincerity and honesty, that
he may be placed in some good place.  I have chosen him as the least
partial and as the one who will most simply bring you my commands.
Ignore, I beg you, that he told you anything in particular; for envy
might injure him.  I have suffered a great deal for two years and
more, and have not been able to let you know, for an important
reason.  God be praised for all, and give you grace to persevere in
the service of His Church as long as you live, and never may this
honour pass from our race, while so many men and women are ready to
shed their blood to maintain the fight for the faith, all other
worldly considerations set aside.  And as to me, I esteem myself born
on both father's and mother's sides, that I should offer up my blood
for this cause, and I have no intention of degenerating.  Jesus,
crucified for us, and all the holy martyrs, make us by their
intercession worthy of the voluntary offering we make of our bodies
to their glory!

"From Fotheringay, this Thursday, 24th November.

"They have, thinking to degrade me, pulled down my canopy of state,
and since then my keeper has come to offer to write to their queen,
saying this deed was not done by his order, but by the advice of some
of the Council.  I have shown them instead of my arms on the said
canopy the cross of Our Lord.  You will hear all this; they have been
more gentle since.--Your affectionate cousin and perfect friend,

"MARY, Queen of Scotland, Dowager of France"

>From this day forward, when she learned the sentence delivered by the
commissioners, Mary Stuart no longer preserved any hope; for as she
knew Elizabeth's pardon was required to save her, she looked upon
herself thenceforward as lost, and only concerned herself with
preparing to die well.  Indeed, as it had happened to her sometimes,
from the cold and damp in her prisons, to become crippled for some
time in all her limbs, she was afraid of being so when they would
come to take her, which would prevent her going resolutely to the
scaffold, as she was counting on doing.  So, on Saturday the 14th
February, she sent for her doctor, Bourgoin, and asked him, moved by
a presentiment that her death was at hand, she said, what she must do
to prevent the return of the pains which crippled her.  He replied
that it would be good for her to medicine herself with fresh herbs.
"Go, then," said the queen," and ask Sir Amyas Paulet from me
permission to seek them in the fields."

Bourgoin went to Sir Amyas, who, as he himself was troubled with
sciatica, should have understood better than anyone the need of the
remedies for which the queen asked.  But this request, simple as it
was, raised great difficulties.  Sir Amyas replied that he could do
nothing without referring to his companion, Drury; but that paper and
ink might be brought, and that he, Master Bourgoin, could then make a
list of the needful plants, which they would try to procure.
Bourgoin answered that he did not know English well enough, and that
the village apothecaries did not know enough Latin, for him to risk
the queen's life for some error by himself or others.  Finally, after
a thousand hesitations, Paulet allowed Bourgoin to go out, which he
did, accompanied by the apothecary Gorjon; so that the following day
the queen was able to begin to doctor herself.

Mary Stuart's presentiments had not deceived her: Tuesday, February
17th, at about two o'clock in the afternoon, the Earls of Kent and
Shrewsbury, and Beale sent word to the queen that they desired to
speak with her.  The queen answered that she was ill and in bed, but
that if notwithstanding what they had to tell her was a matter of
importance, and they would give her a little time, she would get up.
They made answer that the communication they had to make admitted of
no delay, that they begged her then to make ready; which the queen
immediately did, and rising from her bed and cloaking herself, she
went and seated herself at a little table, on the same spot where she
was wont to be great part of the day.

Then the two earls, accompanied by Beale, Arnyas Paulet, and Drue
Drury, entered.  Behind them, drawn by curiosity, full of terrible
anxiety, came her dearest ladies and most cherished servants.  These
were, of womenkind, the Misses Renee de Really, Gilles Mowbray,
Jeanne Kennedy, Elspeth Curle, Mary Paget, and Susan Kercady; and of
men-kind, Dominique Bourgoin her doctor, Pierre Gorjon her
apothecary, Jacques Gervais her surgeon, Annibal Stewart her footman,
Dither Sifflart her butler, Jean Laudder her baker, and Martin Huet
her carver.

Then the Earl of Shrewsbury, with head bared like all those present,
who remained thus as long as they were in the queen's room, began to
say in English, addressing Mary--

"Madam, the Queen of England, my august mistress, has sent me to you,
with the Earl of Kent and Sir Robert Beale, here present, to make
known to you that after having honourably proceeded in the inquiry
into the deed of which you are accused and found guilty, an inquiry
which has already been submitted to your Grace by Lord Buckhurst, and
having delayed as long as it was in her power the execution of the
sentence, she can no longer withstand the importunity of her
subjects, who press her to carry it out, so great and loving is their
fear for her.  For this purpose we have come the bearers of a
commission, and we beg very humbly, madam, that it may please you to
hear it read."

"Read, my lord; I am listening," replied Mary Stuart, with the
greatest calmness.  Then Robert Beale unrolled the said commission,
which was on parchment, sealed with the Great Seal in yellow wax, and
read as follows:

"Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, France, and
Ireland, etc., to our beloved and faithful cousins, George, Earl of
Shrewsbury, Grand Marshal of England; Henry, Earl of Kent; Henry,
Earl of Derby; George, Earl of Cumberland; Henry, Earl of Pembroke,
greeting: [The Earls of Cumberland, Derby, and Pembroke did not
attend to the queen's orders, and were present neither at the reading
of the sentence nor at the execution.]

"Considering the sentence by us given, and others of our Council,
nobility, and judges, against the former Queen of Scotland, bearing
the name of Mary, daughter and heiress of James v, King of Scotland,
commonly called Queen of Scotland and Dowager of France, which
sentence all the estates of our realm in our last Parliament
assembled not only concluded, but, after mature deliberation,
ratified as being just and reasonable; considering also the urgent
prayer and request of our subjects, begging us and pressing us to
proceed to the publication thereof, and to carry it into execution
against her person, according as they judge it duly merited, adding
in this place that her detention was and would be daily a certain and
evident danger, not only to our life, but also to themselves and
their posterity, and to the public weal of this realm, as much on
account of the Gospel and the true religion of Christ as of the peace
and tranquillity of this State, although the said sentence has been
frequently delayed, so that even until this time we abstained from
issuing the commission to execute it: yet, for the complete
satisfaction of the said demands made by the Estates of our
Parliament, through which daily we hear that all our friends and
subjects, as well as the nobility, the wisest, greatest, and most
pious, nay, even those of inferior condition, with all humility and
affection from the care they have of our life, and consequently from
the fear they have of the destruction of the present divine and happy
state of the realm if we spare the final execution, consenting and
desiring the said execution; though the general and continual
demands, prayers, counsels, and advice were in such things contrary
to our natural inclination; yet, being convinced of the urgent weight
of their continual intercessions tending to the safety of our person,
and also to the public and private state of our realm, we have at
last consented and suffered that justice have its course, and for its
execution, considering the singular confidence we have in your
fidelity and loyalty together for the love and affection that you
have toward us, particularly to the safe-guarding of our person and
our country of which you are very noble and chief members; we summon,
and, for the discharge of it we enjoin you, that at sight of these
presents you go to the castle of Fotheringay, where the former Queen
of Scotland is, in the care of our friend and faithful servant and
counsellor, Sir Amyas Paulet, and there take into your keeping and do
that by your command execution be done on her person, in the presence
of yourselves and the said Sir Amyas Paulet, and of all the other
officers of justice whom you command to be there: in the meantime we
have for this end and this execution given warrant in such a way and
manner, and in such a time and place, and by such persons, that you
five, four, three, or two, find expedient in your discretion;
notwithstanding all laws, statutes, and ordinances whatsoever,
contrary to these presents, sealed with our Great Seal of England,
which will serve for each of you, and all those who are present, or
will make by your order anything pertaining to the execution
aforesaid full and sufficient discharge for ever.

"Done and given in our house at Greenwich, the first day of February
(10th February New Style), in the twenty-ninth year of our reign."

Mary listened to this reading with great calmness and great dignity;
then, when it was ended, making the sign of the cross--

"Welcome," said she, "to all news which comes in the name of God!
Thanks, Lord, for that You deign to put an end to all the ills You
have seen me suffer for nineteen years and more."

"Madam," said the Earl of Kent, "have no ill-will towards us on
account of your death; it was necessary to the peace of the State and
the progress of the new religion."

"So," cried Mary with delight, "so I shall have the happiness of
dying for the faith of my fathers; thus God deigns to grant me the
glory of martyrdom.  Thanks, God," added she, joining her hands with
less excitement but with more piety, "thanks that You have deigned to
destine for me such an end, of which I was not worthy.  That, O my
God, is indeed a proof of Your love, and an assurance that You will
receive me in the number of Your servants; for although this sentence
had been notified to me, I was afraid, from the manner in which they
have dealt with me for nineteen years, of not yet being so near as I
am to such a happy end, thinking that your queen would not dare to
lay a hand on me, who, by the grace of God, am a queen as she is, the
daughter of a queen as she is, crowned as she is, her near relative,
granddaughter of King Henry VII, and who has had the honour of being
Queen of France, of which I am still Dowager; and this fear was so
much the greater," added she, laying her hand on a New Testament
which was near her on the little table, "that, I swear on this holy
book, I have never attempted, consented to, or even desired the death
of my sister, the Queen of England."

"Madam," replied the Earl of Kent, taking a step towards her and
pointing to the New Testament; "this book on which you have sworn is
not genuine, since it is the papist version; consequently, your oath
cannot be considered as any more genuine than the book on which it
has been taken."

"My lord," answered the queen, "what you say may befit you, but not
me, who well know that this book is the true and faithful version of
the word of the Lord, a version made by a very wise divine, a very
good man, and approved by the Church."

"Madam," the Earl of Kent returned, "your Grace stopped at what you
were taught in your youth, without inquiry as to whether it was good
or bad: it is not surprising, then, that you have remained in your
error, for want of having heard anyone who could make known the truth
to you; this is why, as your Grace has but a few hours longer to
remain in this world, and consequently has no time to lose, with your
permission we shall send for the Dean of Peterborough, the most
learned man there is on the subject of religion, who, with his word,
will prepare you for your salvation, which you risk to our great
grief and that of our august queen, by all the papistical follies,
abominations, and childish nonsense which keep Catholics away from
the holy word of God and the knowledge of the truth."

"You mistake, my lord," replied the queen gently, "if you have
believed that I have grown up careless in the faith of my fathers,
and without seriously occupying myself with a matter so important as
religion.  I have, on the contrary, spent my life with learned and
wise men who taught me what one must learn on this subject, and I
have sustained myself by reading their works, since the means of
hearing them has been taken from me.  Besides, never having doubted
in my lifetime, doubt is not likely to seize me in my death-hour.
And there is the Earl of Shrewsbury, here present, who will tell you
that, since my arrival in England, I have, for an entire Lent, of
which I repent, heard your wisest doctors, without their arguments
having made any impression on my mind.  It will be useless, then, my
lord," she added, smiling, "to summon to one so hardened as I the
Dean of Peterborough, learned as he is.  The only thing I ask you in
exchange, my lord, and for which I shall be grateful to you beyond
expression, is that you will send me my almoner, whom you keep shut
up in this house, to console me and prepare me for death, or, in his
stead, another priest, be he who he may; if only a poor priest from a
poor village, I being no harder to please than God, and not asking
that he have knowledge, provided that he has faith."

"It is with regret, madam," replied the Earl of Kent, "that I find
myself obliged to refuse your Grace's, request; but it would be
contrary to our religion and our conscience, and we should be
culpable in doing it; this is why we again offer you the venerable
Dean of Peterborough, certain that your Grace will find more
consolation and content in him than in any bishop, priest, or vicar
of the Catholic faith."

"Thank you, my lord," said the queen again, "but I have nothing to-do
with him, and as I have a conscience free of the crime for which I am
about to die, with God's help, martyrdom will take the place of
confession for me.  And now, I will remind you, my lord, of what you
told me yourself, that I have but a few hours to live; and these few
hours, to profit me, should be passed in prayer and meditation, and
not in idle disputes."

With these words, she rose, and, bowing to the earls, Sir Robert
Beale, Amyas, and Drury, she indictated, by a gesture full of
dignity, that she wished to be alone and in peace; then, as they
prepared to go out--

"Apropos, my lords," said she, "for what o'clock should I make ready
to die?"

"For eight o'clock to-morrow, madam," answered the Earl of
Shrewsbury, stammering.

"It is well," said Mary; "but have you not some reply to make me,
from my sister Elizabeth, relative to a letter which I wrote to her
about a month ago?"

"And of what did this letter treat, if it please you, madam?  "asked
the Earl of Kent.

"Of my burial and my funeral ceremony, my lord: I asked to be
interred in France, in the cathedral church of Rheims, near the late
queen my mother."

"That may not be, madam," replied the Earl of Kent; "but do not
trouble yourself as to all these details: the queen, my august
mistress, will provide for them as is suitable.  Has your grace
anything else to ask us?"

"I would also like to know," said Mary, "if my servants will be
allowed to return, each to his own country, with the little that I
can give him; which will hardly be enough, in any case, for the long
service they have done me, and the long imprisonment they have borne
on my account."

"We have no instructions on that head, madam," the Earl of Kent said,
"but we think that an order will be given for this as for the other
things, in accordance with your wishes.  Is this all that your Grace
has to say to us?"

"Yes, my lord," replied the queen, bowing a second time, "and now you
may withdraw."

"One moment, my lords, in Heaven's name, one moment!" cried the old
physician, coming forward and throwing himself on his knees before
the two earls.

"What do you want?" asked Lord Shrewsbury.

"To point out to you, my lords," replied the aged Bourgoin, weeping,
"that you have granted the queen but a very short time for such an
important matter as this of her life.  Reflect, my lords, what rank
and degree she whom you have condemned has held among the princes of
this earth, and consider if it is well and seemly to treat her as an
ordinary condemned person of middling estate.  And if not for the
sake of this noble queen, my lords, do this for the sake of us her
poor servants, who, having had the honour of living near her so long,
cannot thus part from her so quickly and without preparation.
Besides, my lords, think of it, a woman of her state and position
ought to have some time in which to set in order her last affairs.
And what will become of her, and of us, if before dying, our mistress
has not time to regulate her jointure and her accounts and to put in
order her papers and her title-deeds?  She has services to reward and
offices of piety to perform.  She should not neglect the one or the
other.  Besides, we know that she will only concern herself with us,
and, through this, my lords, neglect her own salvation.  Grant her,
then, a few more days, my lords; and as our mistress is too proud to
ask of you such a favour, I ask you in all our names, and implore you
not to refuse to poor servants a request which your august queen
would certainly not refuse them, if they had the good fortune to be
able to lay it at her feet."

"Is it then true, madam," Sir Robert Beale asked, "that you have not
yet made a will?"

"I have not, sir," the queen answered.

"In that case, my lords," said Sir Robert Beale, turning to the two
earls, "perhaps it would be a good thing to put it off for a day or
two."

"Impossible, sir," replied the Earl of Shrewsbury: "the time is
fixed, and we cannot change anything, even by a minute, now."

"Enough, Bourgoin, enough," said the queen; "rise, I command you."

Bourgoin obeyed, and the Earl of Shrewsbury, turning to Sir Amyas
Paulet, who was behind him--

"Sir Amyas," said he, "we entrust this lady to your keeping: you will
charge yourself with her, and keep her safe till our return."

With these words he went out, followed by the Earl of Kent, Sir
Robert Beale, Amyas Paulet, and Drury, and the queen remained alone
with her servants.

Then, turning to her women with as serene a countenance as if the
event which had just taken place was of little importance

"Well, Jeanne," said she, speaking to Kennedy, "have I not always
told you, and was I not right, that at the bottom of their hearts
they wanted to do this? and did I not see clearly through all their
procedure the end they had in view, and know well enough that I was
too great an obstacle to their false religion to be allowed to live?
Come," continued she, "hasten supper now, that I may put my affairs
in order".  Then, seeing that instead of obeying her, her servants
were weeping and lamenting, "My children," said she, with a sad
smile, but without a tear in her eye, "it is no time for weeping,
quite the contrary; for if you love me, you ought to rejoice that the
Lord, in making me die for His cause, relieves me from the torments I
have endured for nineteen years.  As for me, I thank Him for allowing
me to die for the glory of His faith and His Church.  Let each have
patience, then, and while the men prepare supper, we women will pray
to God."

The men immediately went out, weeping and sobbing, and the queen and
her women fell on their knees.  When they had recited some prayers,
Mary rose, and sending for all the money she had left, she counted it
and divided it into portions, which she put into purses with the name
of the destined recipient, in her handwriting, with the money.

At that moment, supper being served, she seated herself at table with
her women as usual, the other servants standing or coming and going,
her doctor waiting on her at table as he was accustomed since her
steward had been taken from her.  She ate no more nor less than
usual, speaking, throughout supper, of the Earl of Kent, and of the
way in which he betrayed himself with respect to religion, by his
insisting on wanting to give the queen a pastor instead of a priest.
"Happily," she added, laughing, "one more skilful than he was needed
to change me".  Meanwhile Bourgoin was weeping behind the queen, for
he was thinking that he was serving her for the last time, and that
she who was eating, talking, and laughing thus, next day at the same
hour would be but a cold and insensible corpse.

When the meal was over, the queen sent for all her servants; then;
before the table was cleared of anything, she poured out a cup of
wine, rose and drank to their health, asking them if they would not
drink to her salvation.  Then she had a glass given to each one: all
kneeled down, and all, says the account from which we borrow these
details, drank, mingling their tears with the wine, and asking pardon
of the queen for any wrongs they had done her.  The queen granted it
heartily, and asked them to do as much for her, and to forget her
impatient ways, which she begged them to put down to her
imprisonment.  Then, having given them a long discourse, in which she
explained to them their duties to God, and exhorted them to persevere
in the Catholic faith, she begged them, after her death, to live
together in peace and charity, forgetting all the petty quarrels and
disputes which they had had among one another in the past.

This speech ended, the queen rose from table, and desired to go into
her wardrobe-room, to see the clothes and jewels she wished to
dispose of; but Bourgoin observed that it would be better to have all
these separate objects brought into her chamber; that there would be
a double advantage in this, she would be less tired for one thing,
and the English would not see them for another.  This last reason
decided her, and while the servants were supping, she had brought
into her ante-room, first of all, all her robes, and took the
inventory from her wardrobe attendant, and began to write in the
margin beside each item the name of the person it was to be given to.
Directly, and as fast as she did it, that person to whom it was given
took it and put it aside.  As for the things which were too personal
to her to be thus bestowed, she ordered that they should be sold, and
that the purchase-money should be used for her servants' travelling
expenses, when they returned to their own countries, well knowing how
great the cost would be and that no one would have sufficient means.
This memorandum finished, she signed it, and gave it as a discharge
to her wardrobe attendant.

Then, that done, she went into her room, where had been brought her
rings, her jewels, and her most valuable belongings; inspected them
all, one after the other, down to the very least; and distributed
them as she had done her robes, so that, present or absent, everyone
had something.  Then she furthermore gave, to her most faithful
people, the jewels she intended for the king and queen of France, for
the king her son, for the queen-mother, for Messieurs de Guise and de
Lorraine, without forgetting in this distribution any prince or
princess among her relatives.  She desired, besides, that each should
keep the things then in his care, giving her linen to the young lady
who looked after it, her silk embroideries to her who took charge of
them, her silver plate to her butler, and so on with the rest.

Then, as they were asking her for a discharge, "It is useless," said
she; "you owe an account to me only, and to-morrow, therefore, you
will no longer owe it to anyone"; but, as they pointed out that the
king her son could claim from them, "You are right," said she; and
she gave them what they asked.

That done, and having no hope left of being visited by her confessor,
she wrote him this letter:

"I have been tormented all this day on account of my religion, and
urged to receive the consolations of a heretic: you will learn,
through Bourgoin and the others, that everything they could say on
this matter has been useless, that I have faithfully made
protestation of the faith in which I wish to die.  I requested that
you should be allowed to receive my confession and to give me the
sacrament, which has been cruelly refused, as well as the removal of
my body, and the power to make my will freely; so that I cannot write
anything except through their hands, and with the good pleasure of
their mistress.  For want of seeing you, then, I confess to you my
sins in general, as I should have done in particular, begging you, in
God's name, to watch and pray this night with me, for the remission
of my sins, and to send me your absolution and forgiveness for all
the wrongs I have done you.  I shall try to see you in their
presence, as they permitted it to my steward; and if it is allowed,
before all, and on my knees, I shall ask your blessing.  Send me the
best prayers you know for this night and for to-morrow morning; for
the time is short, and I have not the leisure to write; but be calm,
I shall recommend you like the rest of my servants, and your
benefices above all will be secured to you.  Farewell, for I have not
much more time.  Send to me in writing everything you can find, best
for my salvation, in prayers and exhortations, I send you my last
little ring."

Directly she had written this letter the queen began to make her
will, and at a stroke, with her pen running on and almost without
lifting it from the paper, she wrote two large sheets, containing
several paragraphs, in which no one was forgotten, present as absent,
distributing the little she had with scrupulous fairness, and still
more according to need than according to service.  The executors she
chose were: the Duke of Guise, her first cousin; the Archbishop of
Glasgow, her ambassador; the Bishop of Ross, her chaplain in chief;
and M. du Ruysseau, her chancellor, all four certainly very worthy of
the charge, the first from his authority; the two bishops by piety
and conscience, and the last by his knowledge of affairs.  Her will
finished, she wrote this letter to the King of France:

SIR MY BROTHER-IN-LAW,--Having, by God's permission and for my sins,
I believe, thrown myself into the arms of this queen, my cousin,
where I have had much to endure for more than twenty years, I am by
her and by her Parliament finally condemned to death; and having
asked for my papers, taken from me, to make my will, I have not been
able to obtain anything to serve me, not even permission to write my
last wishes freely, nor leave that after my death my body should be
transported, as was my dearest desire, into your kingdom, where I had
had the honour of being queen, your sister and your ally.  To-day,
after dinner, without more respect, my sentence has been declared to
me, to be executed to-morrow, like a criminal, at eight o'clock in
the morning.  I have not the leisure to give you a full account of
what has occurred; but if it please you to believe my doctor and
these others my distressed servants, you will hear the truth, and
that, thanks to God, I despise death, which I protest I receive
innocent of every crime, even if I were their subject, which I never
was.  But my faith in the Catholic religion and my claims to the
crown of England are the real causes for my condemnation, and yet
they will not allow me to say that it is for religion I die, for my
religion kills theirs; and that is so true, that they have taken my
chaplain from me, who, although a prisoner in the same castle, may
not come either to console me, or to give me the holy sacrament of
the eucharist; but, on the contrary, they have made me urgent
entreaties to receive the consolations of their minister whom they
have brought for this purpose.  He who will bring you this letter,
and the rest of my servants, who are your subjects for the most part,
will bear you witness of the way in which I shall have performed my
last act.  Now it remains to me to implore you, as a most Christian
king, as my brother-in-law, as my ancient ally, and one who has so
often done me the honour to protest your friendship for me, to give
proof of this friendship, in your virtue and your charity, by helping
me in that of which I cannot without you discharge my conscience--
that is to say, in rewarding my good distressed servants, by giving
them their dues; then, in having prayers made to God for a queen who
has been called most Christian, and who dies a Catholic and deprived
of all her goods.  As to my son, I commend him to you as much as he
shall deserve, for I cannot answer for him; but as to my servants, I
commend them with clasped hands.  I have taken the liberty of sending
you two rare stones good for the health, hoping that yours may be
perfect during a long life; you will receive them as coming from your
very affectionate sister-in-law, at the point of death and giving
proof of her, good disposition towards you.

"I shall commend my servants to you in a memorandum, and will order
you, for the good of my soul, for whose salvation it will be
employed, to pay me a portion of what you owe me, if it please you,
and I conjure you for the honour of Jesus, to whom I shall pray to-
morrow at my death, that you leave me the wherewithal to found a mass
and to perform the necessary charities.

"This Wednesday, two hours after midnight--
Your affectionate and good sister,

"MARY, R...."


Of all these recommendations, the will and the letters, the queen at
once had copies made which she signed, so that, if some should be
seized by the English, the others might reach their destination.
Bourgoin pointed out to her that she was wrong to be in such a hurry
to close them, and that perhaps in two or three hours she would
remember that she had left something out.  But the queen paid no
attention, saying she was sure she had not forgotten anything, and
that if she had, she had only time now to pray and to look to her
conscience.  So she shut up all the several articles in the drawers
of a piece of furniture and gave the key to Bourgoin; then sending
for a foot-bath, in which she stayed for about ten minutes, she lay
down in bed, where she was not seen to sleep, but constantly to
repeat prayers or to remain in meditation.

Towards four o'clock in the morning, the queen, who was accustomed,
after evening prayers, to have the story of some male or female saint
read aloud to her, did not wish to depart from this habit, and, after
having hesitated among several for this solemn occasion, she chose
the greatest sinner of all, the penitent thief, saying humbly--

"If, great sinner as he was, he has yet sinned less than I, I desire
to beg of him, in remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ; to,
have pity on me in the hour of my death, as Our Lord had pity on
him."

Then, when the reading was over, she had all her handkerchiefs
brought, and chose the finest, which was of delicate cambric all
embroidered in gold, to bandage her eyes with.

At daybreak, reflecting that she had only two hours to live, she rose
and began dressing, but before she had finished, Bourgoin came into
her room, and, afraid lest the absent servants might murmur against
the queen, if by chance they were discontented at the will, and might
accuse those who had been present of having taken away from their
share to add to their own, he begged Mary to send for them all and to
read it in their presence; to which Mary agreed, and consented to do
so at once.

All the servants were then summoned, and the queen read her
testament, saying that it was done of her own free, full and entire
will, written and signed with her own hand, and that accordingly she
begged those present to give all the help in their power in seeing it
carried out without change or omission; then, having read it over,
and having received a promise from all, she gave it to Bourgoin,
charging him to send it to M.  de Guise, her chief executor, and at
the same time to forward her letters to the king and her principal
papers and memorandums: after this, she had the casket brought in
which she had put the purses which we mentioned before; she opened
them one after another, and seeing by the ticket within for whom each
was intended, she distributed them with her own hand, none of the
recipients being aware of their contents.  These gifts varied from
twenty to three hundred crowns; and to these sums she added seven
hundred livres for the poor, namely, two hundred for the poor of
England and five hundred for the poor of France; then she gave to
each man in her suite two rose nobles to be distributed in alms for
her sake, and finally one hundred and fifty crowns to Bourgoin to be
divided among them all when they should separate; and thus twenty-six
or twenty-seven people had money legacies.

The queen performed all this with great composure and calmness, with
no apparent change of countenance; so that it seemed as if she were
only preparing for a journey or change of dwelling; then she again
bade her servants farewell, consoling them and exhorting them to live
in peace, all this while finishing dressing as well and as elegantly
as she could.

Her toilet ended, the queen went from her reception-room to her ante-
room, where there was an altar set up and arranged, at which, before
he had been taken from her, her chaplain used to say mass; and
kneeling on the steps, surrounded by all her servants, she began the
communion prayers, and when they were ended, drawing from a golden
box a host consecrated by Pius V, which she had always scrupulously
preserved for the occasion of her death, she told Bourgoin to take
it, and, as he was the senior, to take the priest's place, old age
being holy and sacred; and in this manner in spite of all the
precautions taken to deprive her of it, the queen received the holy
sacrament of the eucharist.

This pious ceremony ended, Bourgoin told the queen that in her will
she had forgotten three people--Mesdemoiselles Beauregard, de
Montbrun, and her chaplain.  The queen was greatly astonished at this
oversight, which was quite involuntary, and, taking back her will,
she wrote her wishes with respect to them in the first empty margin;
then she kneeled down again in prayer; but after a moment, as she
suffered too much in this position, she rose, and Bourgoin having had
brought her a little bread and wine, she ate and drank, and when she
had finished, gave him her hand and thanked him for having been
present to help her at her last meal as he was accustomed; and
feeling stronger, she kneeled down and began to pray again.

Scarcely had she done so, than there was a knocking at the door: the
queen understood what was required of her; but as she had not
finished praying, she begged those who were come to fetch her to wait
a moment, and in a few minutes' she would be ready.

The Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, remembering the resistance she had
made when she had had to go down to the commissioners and appear
before the lawyers, mounted some guards in the ante-room where they
were waiting themselves, so that they could take her away by force if
necessary, should she refuse to come willingly, or should her
servants want to defend her; but it is untrue that the two barons
entered her room, as some have said.  They only set foot there once,
on the occasion which we have related, when they came to apprise her
of her sentence.

They waited some minutes, nevertheless, as the queen had begged them;
then, about eight o'clock, they knocked again, accompanied by the
guards; but to their great surprise the door was opened immediately,
and they found Mary on her knees in prayer.  Upon this, Sir Thomas
Andrew, who was at the time sheriff of the county of Nottingham,
entered alone, a white wand in his hand, and as everyone stayed on
their knees praying, he crossed the room with a slow step and stood
behind the queen: he waited a moment there, and as Mary Stuart did
not seem to see him--

"Madam," said he, "the earls have sent me to you."

At these words the queen turned round, and at once rising in the
middle of her prayer, "Let us go," she replied, and she made ready to
follow him; then Bourgoin, taking the cross of black wood with an
ivory Christ which was over the altar, said--

"Madam, would you not like to take this little cross?"

"Thank you for having reminded me," Mary answered; "I had intended
to, but I forgot".  Then, giving it to Annibal Stewart, her footman,
that he might present it when she should ask for it, she began to
move to the door, and on account of the great pain in her limbs,
leaning on Bourgoin, who, as they drew near, suddenly let her go,
saying--

"Madam, your Majesty knows if we love you, and all, such as we are,
are ready to obey you, should you command us to die for you; but I,
I have not the strength to lead you farther; besides, it is not
becoming that we, who should be defending you to the last drop of our
blood, should seem to be betraying you in giving you thus into the
hands of these infamous English."

"You are right, Bourgoin," said the queen; "moreover, my death would
be a sad sight for you, which I ought to spare your age and your
friendship.  Mr. Sheriff," added she, "call someone to support me,
for you see that I cannot walk."

The sheriff bowed, and signed to two guards whom he had kept hidden
behind the door to lend him assistance in case the queen should
resist, to approach and support her; which they at once did; and Mary
Stuart went on her way, preceded and followed by her servants weeping
and wringing their hands.  But at the second door other guards
stopped them, telling them they must go no farther.  They all cried
out against such a prohibition: they said that for the nineteen years
they had been shut up with the queen they had always accompanied her
wherever she went; that it was frightful to deprive their mistress of
their services at the last moment, and that such an order had
doubtless been given because they wanted to practise some shocking
cruelty on her, of which they desired no witnesses.  Bourgoin, who
was at their head, seeing that he could obtain nothing by threats or
entreaties, asked to speak with the earls; but this claim was not
allowed either, and as the servants wanted to pass by force, the
soldiers repulsed them with blows of their arquebuses; then, raising
her voice--

"It is wrong of you to prevent my servants following me," said the
queen, "and I begin to think, like them, that you have some ill
designs upon me beyond my death."

The sheriff replied, "Madam, four of your servants are chosen to
follow you, and no more; when you have come down, they will be
fetched, and will rejoin you."

"What!" said the queen, "the four chosen persons cannot even follow
me now?"

"The order is thus given by the earls," answered the sheriff, "and,
to my great regret, madam, I can do nothing."

Then the queen turned to them, and taking the cross from Annibal
Stewart, and in her other hand her book of Hours and her
handkerchief, "My children," said she, "this is one more grief to add
to our other griefs; let us bear it like Christians, and offer this
fresh sacrifice to God."

At these words sobs and cries burst forth on all sides: the unhappy
servants fell on their knees, and while some rolled on the ground,
tearing their hair, others kissed her hands, her knees, and the hem
of her gown, begging her forgiveness for every possible fault,
calling her their mother and bidding her farewell.  Finding, no
doubt, that this scene was lasting too long, the sheriff made a sign,
and the soldiers pushed the men and women back into the room and shut
the door on them; still, fast as was the door, the queen none the
less heard their cries and lamentations, which seemed, in spite of
the guards, as if they would accompany her to the scaffold.

At the stair-head, the queen found Andrew Melville awaiting her: he
was the Master of her Household, who had been secluded from her for
some time, and who was at last permitted to see her once more to say
farewell.  The queen, hastening her steps, approached him, and
kneeling down to receive his blessing, which he gave her, weeping--

"Melville," said she, without rising, and addressing him as "thou"
for the first time, "as thou hast been an honest servant to me, be
the same to my son: seek him out directly after my death, and tell
him of it in every detail; tell him that I wish him well, and that I
beseech God to send him His Holy Spirit."

"Madam," replied Melville, "this is certainly the saddest message
with which a man can be charged: no matter, I shall faithfully fulfil
it, I swear to you."

"What sayest thou, Melville?" responded the queen, rising; "and what
better news canst thou bear, on the contrary, than that I am
delivered from all my ills?  Tell him that he should rejoice, since
the sufferings of Mary Stuart are at an end; tell him that I die a
Catholic, constant in my religion, faithful to Scotland and France,
and that I forgive those who put me to death.  Tell him that I have
always desired the union of England and Scotland; tell him, finally,
that I have done nothing injurious to his kingdom, to his honour, or
to his rights.  And thus, good Melville, till we meet again in
heaven."

Then, leaning on the old man, whose face was bathed in tears, she
descended the staircase, at the foot of which she found the two
earls, Sir Henry Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury's son, Amyas Paulet, Drue
Drury, Robert Beale, and many gentlemen of the neighbourhood: the
queen, advancing towards them without pride, but without humility,
complained that her servants had been refused permission to follow
her, and asked that it should be granted.  The lords conferred
together; and a moment after the Earl of Kent inquired which ones she
desired to have, saying she might be allowed six.  So the queen chose
from among the men Bourgoin, Gordon, Gervais, and Didier; and from
the women Jeanne Kennedy and Elspeth Curle, the ones she preferred to
all, though the latter was sister to the secretary who had betrayed
her.  But here arose a fresh difficulty, the earls saying that this
permission did not extend to women, women not being used to be
present at such sights, and when they were, usually upsetting
everyone with cries and lamentations, and, as soon as the
decapitation was over, rushing to the scaffold to staunch the blood
with their handkerchiefs--a most unseemly proceeding.

"My lords," then said the queen, "I answer and promise for my
servants, that they will not do any of the things your honours fear.
Alas! poor people! they would be very glad to bid me farewell; and I
hope that your mistress, being a maiden queen, and accordingly
sensitive for the honour of women, has not given you such strict
orders that you are unable to grant me the little I ask; so much the
more," added she in a profoundly mournful tone, "that my rank should
be taken into consideration; for indeed I am your queen's cousin,
granddaughter of Henry VII, Queen Dowager of France and crowned Queen
of Scotland."

The lords consulted together for another moment, and granted her
demands.  Accordingly, two guards went up immediately to fetch the
chosen individuals.

The queen then moved on to the great hall, leaning on two of Sir
Amyas Paulet's gentlemen, accompanied and followed by the earls and
lords, the sheriff walking before her, and Andrew Melville bearing
her train.  Her dress, as carefully chosen as possible, as we have
said, consisted of a coif of fine cambric, trimmed with lace, with a
lace veil thrown back and falling to the ground behind.  She wore a
cloak of black stamped satin lined with black taffetas and trimmed in
front with sable, with a long train and sleeves hanging to the
ground; the buttons were of jet in the shape of acorns and surrounded
with pearls, her collar in the Italian style; her doublet was of
figured black satin, and underneath she wore stays, laced behind, in
crimson satin, edged with velvet of the same colour; a gold cross
hung by a pomander chain at her neck, and two rosaries at her girdle:
it was thus she entered the great hall where the scaffold was
erected.

It was a platform twelve feet wide, raised about two feet from the
floor, surrounded with barriers and covered with black serge, and on
it were a little chair, a cushion to kneel on, and a block also
covered in black.  Just as, having mounted the steps, she set foot on
the fatal boards, the executioner came forward, and; asking
forgiveness for the duty he was about to perform, kneeled, hiding
behind him his axe.  Mary saw it, however, and cried--

"Ah! I would rather have been beheaded in the French way, with a
sword!..."

"It is not my fault, madam," said the executioner, "if this last wish
of your Majesty cannot be fulfilled; but, not having been instructed
to bring a sword, and having found this axe here only, I am obliged
to use it.  Will that prevent your pardoning me, then?"

"I pardon you, my friend," said Mary, "and in proof of it, here is my
hand to kiss."

The executioner put his lips to the queen's hand, rose and approached
the chair.  Mary sat down, and the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury
standing on her left, the sheriff and his officers before her, Amyas
Paulet behind, and outside the barrier the lords, knights, and
gentlemen, numbering nearly two hundred and fifty, Robert Beale for
the second time read the warrant for execution, and as he was
beginning the servants who had been fetched came into the hall and
placed themselves behind the scaffold, the men mounted upon a bench
put back against the wall, and the women kneeling in front of it; and
a little spaniel, of which the queen was very fond, came quietly, as
if he feared to be driven away, and lay down near his mistress.

The queen listened to the reading of the warrant without seeming to
pay much attention, as if it had concerned someone else, and with a
countenance as calm and even as joyous as if it had been a pardon and
not a sentence of death; then, when Beale had ended, and having
ended, cried in a loud voice, "God save Queen Elizabeth!" to which no
one made any response, Mary signed herself with the cross, and,
rising without any change of expression, and, on the contrary,
lovelier than ever--

"My lords," said she, "I am a queen-born sovereign princess, and not
subject to law,--a near relation of the Queen of England, and her
rightful heir; for a long time I have been a prisoner in this
country, I have suffered here much tribulation and many evils that no
one had the right to inflict, and now, to crown all, I am about to
lose my life.  Well, my lords, bear witness that I die in the
Catholic faith, thanking God for letting me die for His holy cause,
and protesting, to-day as every day, in public as in private, that I
have never plotted, consented to, nor desired the queen's death, nor
any other thing against her person; but that, on the contrary, I have
always loved her, and have always offered her good and reasonable
conditions to put an end to the troubles of the kingdom and deliver
me from my captivity, without my having ever been honoured with a
reply from her; and all this, my lords, you well know.  Finally, my
enemies have attained their end, which was to put me to death:
I do not pardon them less for it than I pardon all those who have
attempted anything against me.  After my, death, the authors of it
will be known.  But I die without accusing anyone, for fear the Lord
should hear me and avenge me."

Upon this, whether he was afraid that such a speech by so great a
queen should soften the assembly too much, or whether he found that
all these words were making too much delay, the Dean of Peterborough
placed himself before Mary, and, leaning on the barrier--

"Madam," he said, "my much honoured mistress has commanded me to come
to you--"  But at these words, Mary, turning and interrupting him

"Mr. Dean," she answered in a loud voice, "I have nothing to do with
you; I do not wish to hear you, and beg you to withdraw."

"Madam," said the dean, persisting in spite of this resolve expressed
in such firm and precise terms, "you have but a moment longer: change
your opinions, abjure your errors, and put your faith in Jesus Christ
alone, that you may be saved through Him."

"Everything you can say is useless," replied the queen, "and you will
gain nothing by it; be silent, then, I beg you, and let me die in
peace."

And as she saw that he wanted to go on, she sat down on the other
side of the chair and turned her back to him; but the dean
immediately walked round the scaffold till he faced her again; then,
as he was going to speak, the queen turned about once more, and sat
as at first.  Seeing which the Earl of Shrewsbury said--

"Madam, truly I despair that you are so attached to this folly of
papacy: allow us, if it please you, to pray for you."

"My lord," the queen answered, "if you desire to pray for me, I thank
you, for the intention is good; but I cannot join in your prayers,
for we are not of the same religion."

The earls then called the dean, and while the queen, seated in her
little chair, was praying in a low tone, he, kneeling on the scaffold
steps, prayed aloud; and the whole assembly except the queen and her
servants prayed after him; then, in the midst of her orison, which
she said with her Agnus Dei round her neck, a crucifix in one hand,
and her book of Hours in the other, she fell from her seat on to, her
knees, praying aloud in Latin, whilst the others prayed in English,
and when the others were silent, she continued in English in her
turn, so that they could hear her, praying for the afflicted Church
of Christ, for an end to the persecution of Catholics, arid for the
happiness of her son's reign; then she said, in accents full of faith
and fervour, that she hoped to be saved by the merits of Jesus
Christ, at the foot of whose cross she was going to shed her blood.

At these words the Earl of Kent could no longer contain himself, and
without respect for the sanctity of the moment--

"Oh, madam," said he, "put Jesus Christ in your heart, and reject
all this rubbish of popish deceptions."

But she, without listening, went on, praying the saints to intercede
with God for her, and kissing the crucifix, she cried--

"Lord! Lord! receive me in Thy arms out stretched on the cross, and
forgive me all my sins!"

Thereupon,--she being again seated in the chair, the Earl of Kent
asked her if she had any confession to make; to which she replied
that, not being guilty of anything, to confess would be to give
herself, the lie.

"It is well," the earl answered; "then, madam, prepare."

The queen rose, and as the executioner approached to assist her
disrobe--

"Allow me, my friend," said she; I know how to do it better than you,
and am not accustomed to undress before so many spectators, nor to be
served by such valets."

And then, calling her two women, she began to unpin her coiffure, and
as Jeanne Kennedy and Elspeth Curle, while performing this last
service for their mistress, could not help weeping bitterly--

"Do not weep," she said to them in French; "for I have promised and
answered for you."

With these words, she made the sign of the cross upon the forehead of
each, kissed them, and recommended them to pray for her.

Then the queen began to undress, herself assisting, as she was wont
to do when preparing for bed, and taking the gold cross from her
neck, she wished to give it to Jeanne, saying to the executioner--

"My friend, I know that all I have upon me belongs to you; but this
is not in your way: let me bestow it, if you please, on this young
lady, and she will give you twice its value in money."

But the executioner, hardly allowing her to finish, snatched it from
her hands with--

"It is my right."

The queen was not moved much by this brutality, and went on taking
off her garments until she was simply in her petticoat.

Thus rid of all her garb, she again sat down, and Jeanne Kennedy
approaching her, took from her pocket the handkerchief of gold-
embroidered cambric which she had prepared the night before, and
bound her eyes with it; which the earls, lords; and gentlemen looked
upon with great surprise, it not being customary in England, and as
she thought that she was to be beheaded in the French way--that is to
say, seated in the chair--she held herself upright, motionless, and
with her neck stiffened to make it easier for the executioner, who,
for his part, not knowing how to proceed, was standing, without
striking, axe in hand: at last the man laid his hand on the queen's
head, and drawing her forward, made her fall on her knees: Mary then
understood what was required of her, and feeling for the block with
her hands, which were still holding her book of Hours and her
crucifix, she laid her neck on it, her hands joined beneath her chin,
that she might pray till the last moment: the executioner's assistant
drew them away, for fear they should be cut off with her head; and as
the queen was saying, "In manes teas, Domine," the executioner raised
his axe, which was simply an axe far chopping wood, and struck the
first blow, which hit too high, and piercing the skull, made the
crucifix and the book fly from the condemned's hands by its violence,
but which did not sever the head.  However, stunned with the blow,
the queen made no movement, which gave the executioner time to
redouble it; but still the head did not fall, and a third stroke was
necessary to detach a shred of flesh which held it to the shoulders.

At last, when the head was quite severed, the executioner held it up
to show to the assembly, saying

"God save Queen Elizabeth!"

"So perish all Her Majesty's enemies!" responded the Dean of
Peterborough.

"Amen," said the Earl of Kent; but he was the only one: no other
voice could respond, for all were choked with sobs.

At that moment the queen's headdress falling, disclosed her hair, cut
very short, and as white as if she had been aged seventy: as to her
face, it had so changed during her death-agony that no one would have
recognised it had he not known it was hers.  The spectators cried out
aloud at this sign; for, frightful to see, the eyes were open, and
the lids went on moving as if they would still pray, and this
muscular movement lasted for more than a quarter of an hour after the
head had been cut off.

The queen's servants had rushed upon the scaffold, picking up the
book of Hours and the crucifix as relics; and Jeanne Kennedy,
remembering the little dog who had come to his mistress, looked about
for him on all sides, seeking him and calling him, but she sought and
called in vain.  He had disappeared.

At that moment, as one of the executioners was untying the queen's
garters, which were of blue satin embroidered in silver, he saw the
poor little animal, which had hidden in her petticoat, and which he
was obliged to bring out by force; then, having escaped from his
hands, it took refuge between the queen's shoulders and her head,
which the executioner had laid down near the trunk.  Jeanne took him
then, in spite of his howls, and carried him away, covered with
blood; for everyone had just been ordered to leave the hall.
Bourgoin and Gervais stayed behind, entreating Sir Amyas Paulet to
let them take the queen's heart, that they might carry it to France,
as they had promised her; but they were harshly refused and pushed
out of the hall, of which all the doors were closed, and there there
remained only the executioner and the corpse.

Brantome relates that something infamous took place there!




CHAPTER X

Two hours after the execution, the body and the head were taken into
the same hall in which Mary Stuart had appeared before the
commissioners, set down on a table round which the judges had sat,
and covered over with a black serge cloth; and there remained till
three o'clock in the afternoon, when Waters the doctor from Stamford
and the surgeon from Fotheringay village came to open and embalm
them--an operation which they carried out under the eyes of Amyas
Paulet and his soldiers, without any respect for the rank and sex of
the poor corpse, which was thus exposed to the view of anyone who
wanted to see it: it is true that this indignity did not fulfil its
proposed aim; for a rumour spread about that the queen had swollen
limbs and was dropsical, while, on the contrary, there was not one of
the spectators but was obliged to confess that he had never seen the
body of a young girl in the bloom of health purer and lovelier than
that of Mary Stuart, dead of a violent death after nineteen years of
suffering and captivity.

When the body was opened, the spleen was in its normal state, with
the veins a little livid only, the lungs yellowish in places, and the
brain one-sixth larger than is usual in persons of the same age and
sex; thus everything promised a long life to her whose end had just
been so cruelly hastened.

A report having been made of the above, the body was embalmed after a
fashion, put in a leaden coffin and that in another of wood, which
was left on the table till the first day of August--that is, for
nearly five months--before anyone was allowed to come near it; and
not only that, but the English having noticed that Mary Stuart's
unhappy servants, who were still detained as prisoners, went to look
at it through the keyhole, stopped that up in such a way that they
could not even gaze at the coffin enclosing the body of her whom they
had so greatly loved.

However, one hour after Mary Stuart's death, Henry Talbot, who had
been present at it, set out at full speed for London, carrying to
Elizabeth the account of her rival's death; but at the very first
lines she read, Elizabeth, true to her character, cried out in grief
and indignation, saying that her orders had been misunderstood, that
there had been too great haste, and that all this was the fault of
Davison the Secretary of State, to whom she had given the warrant to
keep till she had made up her mind, but not to send to Fotheringay.
Accordingly, Davison was sent to the Tower and condemned to pay a
fine of ten thousand pounds sterling, for having deceived the queen.
Meanwhile, amid all this grief, an embargo was laid on all vessels in
all the ports of the realm, so that the news of the death should not
reach abroad, especially France, except through skilful emissaries
who could place the execution in the least unfavourable light for
Elizabeth.  At the same time the scandalous popular festivities which
had marked the announcement of the sentence again celebrated the
tidings of the execution.  London was illuminated, bonfires lit, and
the enthusiasm was such that the French Embassy was broken into and
wood taken to revive the fires when they began to die down.

Crestfallen at this event, M. de Chateauneuf was still shut up at the
Embassy, when, a fortnight later, he received an invitation from
Elizabeth to visit her at the country house of the Archbishop of
Canterbury.  M. de Chateauneuf went thither with the firm resolve to
say no word to her on what had happened; but as soon as she saw him,
Elizabeth, dressed in black, rose, went to him, and, overwhelming him
with kind attentions, told him that she was ready to place all the
strength of her kingdom at Henry III's disposal to help him put down
the League.  Chateauneuf received all these offers with a cold and
severe expression, without saying, as he had promised himself, a
single word about the event which had put both the queen and himself
into mourning.  But, taking him by the hand, she drew him aside, and
there, with deep sighs, said--

"Ah! sir, since I saw you the greatest misfortune which could befall
me has happened: I mean the death of my good sister, the Queen of
Scotland, of which I swear by God Himself, my soul and my salvation,
that I am perfectly innocent.  I had signed the order, it is true;
but my counsellors have played me a trick for which I cannot calm
myself; and I swear to God that if it were not for their long service
I would have them beheaded.  I have a woman's frame, sir, but in this
woman's frame beats a man's heart."

Chateauneuf bowed without a response; but his letter to Henry III and
Henry's answer prove that neither the one nor the other was the dupe
of this female Tiberius.

Meanwhile, as we have said, the unfortunate servants were prisoners,
and the poor body was in that great hall waiting for a royal
interment.  Things remained thus, Elizabeth said, to give her time to
order a splendid funeral for her good sister Mary, but in reality
because the queen dared not place in juxtaposition the secret and
infamous death and the public and royal burial; then, was not time
needed for the first reports which it pleased Elizabeth to spread to
be credited before the truth should be known by the mouths of the
servants?  For the queen hoped that once this careless world had made
up its mind about the death of the Queen of Scots, it would not take
any further trouble to change it.  Finally, it was only when the
warders were as tired as the prisoners, that Elizabeth, having
received a report stating that the ill-embalmed body could no longer
be kept, at last ordered the funeral to take place.

Accordingly, after the 1st of August, tailors and dressmakers arrived
at Fotheringay Castle, sent by Elizabeth, with cloth and black silk
stuffs, to clothe in mourning all Mary's servants.  But they refused,
not having waited for the Queen of England's bounty, but having made
their funeral garments at their own expense, immediately after their
mistress's death.  The tailors and dressmakers, however, none the
less set so actively to work that on the 7th everything was finished.

Next day, at eight o'clock in the evening, a large chariot, drawn by
four horses in mourning trappings, and covered with black velvet like
the chariot, which was, besides, adorned with little streamers on
which were embroidered the arms of Scotland, those of the queen, and
the arms of Aragon, those of Darnley, stopped at the gate of
Fotheringay Castle.  It was followed by the herald king, accompanied
by twenty gentlemen on horseback, with their servants and lackeys,
all dressed in mourning, who, having alighted, mounted with his whole
train into the room where the body lay, and had it brought down and
put into the chariot with all possible respect, each of the
spectators standing with bared head and in profound silence.

This visit caused a great stir among the prisoners, who debated a
while whether they ought not to implore the favour of being allowed
to follow their mistress's body, which they could not and should not
let go alone thus; but just as they were about to ask permission to
speak to the herald king, he entered the room where they were
assembled, and told them that he was charged by his mistress, the
august Queen of England, to give the Queen of Scotland the most
honourable funeral he could; that, not wishing to fail in such a high
undertaking, he had already made most of the preparations for the
ceremony, which was to take place on the 10th of August, that is to
say, two days later,--but that the leaden shell in which the body was
enclosed being very heavy, it was better to move it beforehand, and
that night, to where the grave was dug, than to await the day of the
interment itself; that thus they might be easy, this burial of the
shell being only a preparatory ceremony; but that if some of them
would like to accompany the corpse, to see what was done with it,
they were at liberty, and that those who stayed behind could follow
the funeral pageant, Elizabeth's positive desire being that all, from
first to last, should be present in the funeral procession.  This
assurance calmed the unfortunate prisoners, who deputed Bourgoin,
Gervais, and six others to follow their mistress's body: these were
Andrew Melville, Stewart, Gorjon, Howard, Lauder, and Nicholas
Delamarre.

At ten o'clock at night they set out, walking behind the chariot,
preceded by the herald, accompanied by men on foot, who carried
torches to light the way, and followed by twenty gentlemen and their
servants.  In this manner, at two o'clock in the morning, they
reached Peterborough, where there is a splendid cathedral built by an
ancient Saxon king, and in which, on the left of the choir, was
already interred good Queen Catharine of Aragon, wife of Henry VIII,
and where was her tomb, still decked with a canopy bearing her arms.

On arriving, they found the cathedral all hung with black, with a
dome erected in the middle of the choir, much in the way in which
'chapelles ardentes' are set up in France, except that there were no
lighted candles round it.  This dome was covered with black velvet,
and overlaid with the arms of Scotland and Aragon, with streamers
like those on the chariot yet again repeated.  The state coffin was
already set up under this dome: it was a bier, covered like the rest
in black velvet fringed with silver, on which was a pillow of the
same supporting a royal crown.

To the right of this dome, and in front of the burial-place of Queen
Catharine of Aragon, Mary of Scotland's sepulchre had been dug: it
was a grave of brick, arranged to be covered later with a slab or a
marble tomb, and in which was to be deposited the coffin, which the
Bishop of Peterborough, in his episcopal robes, but without his
mitre, cross, or cope, was awaiting at the door, accompanied by his
dean and several other clergy.  The body was brought into the
cathedral, without chant or prayer, and was let down into the tomb
amid a profound silence.  Directly it was placed there, the masons,
who had stayed their hands, set to work again, closing the grave
level with the floor, and only leaving an opening of about a foot and
a half, through which could be seen what was within, and through
which could be thrown on the coffin, as is customary at the obsequies
of kings, the broken staves of the officers and the ensigns and
banners with their arms.  This nocturnal ceremony ended, Melville,
Bourgoin, and the other deputies were taken to the bishop's palace,
where the persons appointed to take part in the funeral procession
were to assemble, in number more than three hundred and fifty, all
chosen, with the exception of the servants, from among the
authorities, the nobility, and Protestant clergy.

The day following, Thursday, August the 9th, they began to hang the
banqueting halls with rich and sumptuous stuffs, and that in the
sight of Melville, Bourgoin, and the others, whom they had brought
thither, less to be present at the interment of Queen Mary than to
bear witness to the magnificence of Queen Elizabeth.  But, as one may
suppose, the unhappy prisoners were indifferent to this splendour,
great and extraordinary as it was.

On Friday, August 10th, all the chosen persons assembled at the
bishop's palace: they ranged themselves in the appointed order, and
turned their steps to the cathedral, which was close by.  When they
arrived there, they took the places assigned them in the choir, and
the choristers immediately began to chant a funeral service in
English and according to Protestant rites.  At the first words of
this service, when he saw it was not conducted by Catholic priests,
Bourgoin left the cathedral, declaring that he would not be present
at such sacrilege, and he was followed by all Mary's servants, men
and women, except Melville and Barbe Mowbray, who thought that
whatever the tongue in which one prayed, that tongue was heard by the
Lord.  This exit created great scandal; but the bishop preached none
the less.

The sermon ended, the herald king went to seek Bourgoin and his
companions, who were walking in the cloisters, and told them that the
almsgiving was about to begin, inviting them to take part in this
ceremony; but they replied that being Catholics they could not make
offerings at an altar of which they disapproved.  So the herald king
returned, much put out at the harmony of the assembly being disturbed
by this dissent; but the alms-offering took place no less than the
sermon.  Then, as a last attempt, he sent to them again, to tell them
that the service was quite over, and that accordingly they might
return for the royal ceremonies, which belonged only to the religion
of the dead; and this time they consented; but when they arrived, the
staves were broken, and the banners thrown into the grave through the
opening that the workmen had already closed.

Then, in the same order in which it had come, the procession returned
to the palace, where a splendid funeral repast had been prepared.  By
a strange contradiction, Elizabeth, who, having punished the living
woman as a criminal, had just treated the dead woman as a queen, had
also wished that the honours of the funeral banquet should be for the
servants, so long forgotten by her.  But, as one can imagine, these
ill accommodated themselves to that intention, did not seem
astonished at this luxury nor rejoiced at this good cheer, but, on
the contrary, drowned their bread and wine in tears, without
otherwise responding to the questions put to them or the honours
granted them.  And as soon as the repast was ended, the poor servants
left Peterborough and took the road back to Fotheringay, where they
heard that they were free at last to withdraw whither they would.
They did not need to be told twice; for they lived in perpetual fear,
not considering their lives safe so long as they remained in England.
They therefore immediately collected all their belongings, each
taking his own, and thus went out of Fotheringay Castle on foot,
Monday, 13th August, 1587.

Bourgoin went last: having reached the farther side of the
drawbridge, he turned, and, Christian as he was, unable to forgive
Elizabeth, not for his own sufferings, but for his mistress's, he
faced about to those regicide walls, and, with hands outstretched to
them, said in a loud and threatening voice, those words of David:
"Let vengeance for the blood of Thy servants, which has been shed, O
Lord God, be acceptable in Thy sight".  The old man's curse was
heard, and inflexible history is burdened with Elizabeth's
punishment.

We said that the executioner's axe, in striking Mary Stuart's head,
had caused the crucifix and the book of Hours which she was holding
to fly from her hands.  We also said that the two relics had been
picked up by people in her following.  We are not aware of what
became of the crucifix, but the book of Hours is in the royal
library, where those curious about these kinds of historical
souvenirs can see it: two certificates inscribed on one of the blank
leaves of the volume demonstrate its authenticity.  These are they:

                         FIRST CERTIFICATE

"We the undersigned Vicar Superior of the strict observance of the
Order of Cluny, certify that this book has been entrusted to us by
order of the defunct Dom Michel Nardin, a professed religious priest
of our said observance, deceased in our college of Saint-Martial of
Avignon, March 28th, 1723, aged about eighty years, of which he has
spent about thirty among us, having lived very religiously: he was a
German by birth, and had served as an officer in the army a long
time.

"He entered Cluny, and made his profession there, much detached from
all this world's goods and honours; he only kept, with his superior's
permission, this book, which he knew had been in use with Mary
Stuart, Queen of England and Scotland, to the end of her life.

"Before dying and being parted from his brethren, he requested that,
to be safely remitted to us, it should be sent us by mail, sealed.
Just as we have received it, we have begged M. L'abbe Bignon,
councillor of state and king's librarian, to accept this precious
relic of the piety of a Queen of England, and of a German officer of
her religion as well as of ours.

"(Signed)BROTHER GERARD PONCET,
"Vicar-General Superior."


                         SECOND CERTIFICATE

"We, Jean-Paul Bignon, king's librarian, are very happy to have an
opportunity of exhibiting our zeal, in placing the said manuscript in
His Majesty's library.

"8th July, 1724."

"(Signed) JEAN-PAUL BIGNAN."

This manuscript, on which was fixed the last gaze of the Queen of
Scotland, is a duodecimo, written in the Gothic character and
containing Latin prayers; it is adorned with miniatures set off with
gold, representing devotional subjects, stories from sacred history,
or from the lives of saints and martyrs.  Every page is encircled
with arabesques mingled with garlands of fruit and flowers, amid
which spring up grotesque figures of men and animals.

As to the binding, worn now, or perhaps even then, to the woof, it is
in black velvet, of which the flat covers are adorned in the centre
with an enamelled pansy, in a silver setting surrounded by a wreath,
to which are diagonally attached from one corner of the cover to the
other, two twisted silver-gilt knotted cords, finished by a tuft at
the two ends.




End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Mary Stuart
by Alexandre Dumas, Pere






KARL-LUDWIG SAND

By Alexander Dumas, Pere

1819



On the 22nd of March, 1819, about nine o'clock in the morning, a
young man, some twenty-three or twenty-four years old, wearing the
dress of a German student, which consists of a short frock-coat with
silk braiding, tight trousers, and high boots, paused upon a little
eminence that stands upon the road between Kaiserthal and Mannheim,
at about three-quarters of the distance from the former town, and
commands a view of the latter.  Mannheim is seen rising calm and
smiling amid gardens which once were ramparts, and which now surround
and embrace it like a girdle of foliage and flowers.  Having reached
this spot, he lifted his cap, above the peak of which were
embroidered three interlaced oak leaves in silver, and uncovering his
brow, stood bareheaded for a moment to feel the fresh air that rose
from the valley of the Neckar.  At first sight his irregular features
produced a strange impression; but before long the pallor of his
face, deeply marked by smallpox, the infinite gentleness of his eyes,
and the elegant framework of his long and flowing black hair, which
grew in an admirable curve around a broad, high forehead, attracted
towards him that emotion of sad sympathy to which we yield without
inquiring its reason or dreaming of resistance.  Though it was still
early, he seemed already to have come some distance, for his boots
were covered with dust; but no doubt he was nearing his destination,
for, letting his cap drop, and hooking into his belt his long pipe,
that inseparable companion of the German Borsch, he drew from his
pocket a little note-book, and wrote in it with a pencil: "Left
Wanheim at five in the morning, came in sight of Mannheim at a
quarter-past nine."  Then putting his note-book back into his pocket,
he stood motionless for a moment, his lips moving as though in mental
prayer, picked up his hat, and walked on again with a firm step
towards Mannheim.

This young Student was Karl-Ludwig Sand, who was coming from Jena, by
way of Frankfort aid Darmstadt, in order to assassinate Kotzebue.

Now, as we are about to set before our readers one of those terrible
actions for the true appreciation of which the conscience is the sole
judge, they must allow us to make them fully acquainted with him whom
kings regarded as an assassin, judges as a fanatic, and the youth of
Germany as a hero.  Charles Louis Sand was born on the 5th of
October, 1795, at Wonsiedel, in the Fichtel Wald; he was the
youngest son of Godfrey Christopher Sand, first president and
councillor of justice to the King of Prussia, and of Dorothea Jane
Wilheltmina Schapf, his wife.  Besides two elder brothers, George,
who entered upon a commercial career at St, Gall, and Fritz, who was
an advocate in the Berlin court of appeal, he had an elder sister
named Caroline, and a younger sister called Julia.

While still in the cradle he had been attacked by smallpox of the
most malignant type.  The virus having spread through all his body,
laid bare his ribs, and almost ate away his skull.  For several
months he lay between life and death; but life at last gained the
upper hand.  He remained weak and sickly, however, up to his seventh
year, at which time a brain fever attacked him; and again put his
life in danger.  As a compensation, however, this fever, when it left
him, seemed to carry away with it all vestiges of his former illness.
From that moment his health and strength came into existence; but
during these two long illnesses his education had remained very
backward, and it was not until the age of eight that he could begin
his elementary studies; moreover, his physical sufferings having
retarded his intellectual development, he needed to work twice as
hard as others to reach the same result.

Seeing the efforts that young Sand made, even while still quite a
child, to conquer the defects of his organisation, Professor
Salfranck, a learned and distinguished man, rector of the Hof
gymnasium [college], conceived such an affection for him, that when,
at a later time, he was appointed director of the gymnasium at
Ratisbon, he could not part from his pupil, and took him with him.
In this town, and at the age of eleven years, he gave the first proof
of his courage and humanity.  One day, when he was walking with some
young friends, he heard cries for help, and ran in that direction: a
little boy, eight or nine years old, had just fallen into a pond.
Sand immediately, without regarding his best clothes, of which,
however, he was very proud, sprang into the water, and, after
unheard-of efforts for a child of his age, succeeded in bringing the
drowning boy to land.

At the age of twelve or thirteen, Sand, who had become more active,
skilful, and determined than many of his elders, often amused himself
by giving battle to the lads of the town and of the neighbouring
villages.  The theatre of these childish conflicts, which in their
pale innocence reflected the great battles that were at that time
steeping Germany in blood, was generally a plain extending from the
town of Wonsiedel to the mountain of St. Catherine, which had ruins
at its top, and amid the ruins a tower in excellent preservation.
Sand, who was one of the most eager fighters, seeing that his side
had several times been defeated on account of its numerical
inferiority, resolved, in order to make up for this drawback, to
fortify the tower of St. Catherine, and to retire into it at the next
battle if its issue proved unfavourable to him.  He communicated this
plan to his companions, who received it with enthusiasm.  A week was
spent, accordingly, in collecting all possible weapons of defence in
the tower and in repairing its doors and stairs.  These preparations
were made so secretly that the army of the enemy had no knowledge of
them.

Sunday came: the holidays were the days of battle.  Whether because
the boys were ashamed of having been beaten last time, or for some
other reason, the band to which Sand belonged was even weaker than
usual.  Sure, however, of a means of retreat, he accepted battle,
notwithstanding.  The struggle was not a long one; the one party was
too weak in numbers to make a prolonged resistance, and began to
retire in the best order that could be maintained to St. Catherine's
tower, which was reached before much damage had been felt.  Having
arrived there, some of the combatants ascended to the ramparts, and
while the others defended themselves at the foot of the wall, began
to shower stones and pebbles upon the conquerors.  The latter,
surprised at the new method of defence which was now for the first
time adopted, retreated a little; the rest of the defenders took
advantage of the moment to retire into the fortress and shut the
door.  Great was the astonishment an the part of the besiegers: they
had always seen that door broken down, and lo! all at once it was
presenting to them a barrier which preserved the besieged from their
blows.  Three or four went off to find instruments with which to
break it down and meanwhile the rest of the attacking farce kept the
garrison blockaded.

At the end of half an hour the messengers returned not only with
levers and picks, but also with a considerable reinforcement composed
of lads from, the village to which they had been to fetch tools.

Then began the assault: Sand and his companions defended themselves
desperately; but it was soon evident that, unless help came, the
garrison would be forced to capitulate.  It was proposed that they
should draw lots, and that one of the besieged should be chosen, who
in spite of the danger should leave the tower, make his way as best
he might through the enemy's army, and go to summon the other lads of
Wonsiedel, who had faint-heartedly remained at home.  The tale of the
peril in which their Comrades actually were, the disgrace of a
surrender, which would fall upon all of them, would no doubt overcome
their indolence and induce them to make a diversion that would allow
the garrison to attempt sortie.  This suggestion was adopted; but
instead of leaving the decision to chance, Sand proposed himself as
the messenger.  As everybody knew his courage, his skill, and his
lightness of foot, the proposition was unanimously accepted, and the
new Decius prepared to execute his act of devotion.  The deed was not
free from danger: there were but two means of egress, one by way of
the door, which would lead to the fugitive's falling immediately into
the hands of the enemy; the other by jumping from a rampart so high
that the enemy had not set a guard there.  Sand without a moment's
hesitation went to the rampart, where, always religious, even in his
childish pleasures, he made a short prayer; then, without fear,
without hesitation, with a confidence that was almost superhuman, he
sprang to the ground: the distance was twenty-two feet.  Sand flew
instantly to Wonsiedel, and reached it, although the enemy had
despatched their best runners in pursuit.  Then the garrison, seeing
the success of their enterprise, took fresh courage, and united their
efforts against the besiegers, hoping everything from Sand's
eloquence, which gave him a great influence over his young
companions.  And, indeed, in half an hour he was seen reappearing at
the head of some thirty boys of his own age, armed with slings and
crossbows.  The besiegers, on the point of being attacked before and
behind, recognised the disadvantage of their position and retreated.
The victory remained with Sand's party, and all the honours of the
day were his.

We have related this anecdote in detail, that our readers may
understand from the character of the child what was that of the man.
Besides, we shall see him develop, always calm and superior amid
small events as amid large ones.

About the same time Sand escaped almost miraculously from two
dangers.  One day a hod full of plaster fell from a scaffold and
broke at his feet.  Another day the Price of Coburg, who during the
King of Prussia's stay at the baths of Alexander, was living in the
house of Sand's parents, was galloping home with four horses when he
came suddenly upon young Karl in a gateway; he could not escape
either on the right or the left, without running the risk of being
crushed between the wall and the wheels, and the coachman could not,
when going at such a pace, hold in his horses: Sand flung himself on
his face, and the carriage passed over him without his receiving so
much as a single scratch either from the horses or the wheels.  From
that moment many people regarded him as predestined, and said that
the hand of God was upon him.

Meanwhile political events were developing themselves around the boy,
and their seriousness made him a man before the age of manhood.
Napoleon weighed upon Germany like another Sennacherib.  Staps had
tried to play the part of Mutius Scaevola, and had died a martyr.
Sand was at Hof at that time, and was a student of the gymnasium of
which his good tutor Salfranck was the head.  He learned that the man
whom he regarded as the antichrist was to come and review the troops
in that town; he left it at once and went home to his parents, who
asked him for what reason he had left the gymnasium.

"Because I could not have been in the same town with Napoleon," he
answered, "without trying to kill him, and I do not feel my hand
strong enough for that yet."

This happened in 1809; Sand was fourteen years old.  Peace, which was
signed an the 15th of October, gave Germany some respite, and allowed
the young fanatic to resume his studies without being distracted by
political considerations; but in 1811 he was occupied by them again,
when he learned that the gymnasium was to be dissolved and its place
taken by a primary school.  To this the rector Salfranck was
appointed as a teacher, but instead of the thousand florins which his
former appointment brought him, the new one was worth only five
hundred.  Karl could not remain in a primary school where he could
not continue his education; he wrote to his mother to announce this
event and to tell her with what equanimity the old German philosopher
had borne it.  Here is the answer of Sand's mother; it will serve to
show the character of the woman whose mighty heart never belied
itself in the midst of the severest suffering; the answer bears the
stamp of that German mysticism of which we have no idea in France:--

"MY DEAR KARL,--You could not have given me a more grievous piece of
news than that of the event which has just fallen upon your tutor and
father by adoption; nevertheless, terrible though it may be, do not
doubt that he will resign himself to it, in order to give to the
virtue of his pupils a great example of that submission which every
subject owes to the king wham God has set over him.  Furthermore, be
well assured that in this world there is no other upright and well
calculated policy than that which grows out of the old precept,
'Honour God, be just and fear not.' And reflect also that when
injustice against the worthy becomes crying, the public voice makes
itself heard, and uplifts those who are cast down.

"But if, contrary to all probability, this did not happen,--if God
should impose this sublime probation upon the virtue of our friend,
if the world were to disown him and Providence were to became to
that, degree his debtor,--yet in that case there are, believe me,
supreme compensations: all the things and all the events that occur
around us and that act upon us are but machines set in motion by a
Higher Hand, so as to complete our education for a higher world, in
which alone we shall take our true place.  Apply yourself, therefore,
my dear child, to watch over yourself unceasingly and always, so that
you may not take great and fine isolated actions for real virtue, and
may be ready every moment to do all that your duty may require of
you.  Fundamentally nothing is great, you see, and nothing small,
when things are, looked at apart from one another, and it is only the
putting of things together that produces the unity of evil or of
good.

"Moreover, God only sends the trial to the heart where He has put
strength, and the manner in which you tell me that your master has
borne the misfortune that has befallen him is a fresh proof of this
great and eternal truth.  You must form yourself upon him, my dear
child, and if you are obliged to leave Hof for Bamberg you must
resign yourself to it courageously.  Man has three educations: that
which he receives from his parents, that which circumstances impose
upon him, and lastly that which he gives himself; if that misfortune
should occur, pray to God that you may yourself worthily complete
that last education, the most important of all.

"I will give you as an example the life and conduct of my father, of
whom you have not heard very much, for he died before you were born,
but whose mind and likeness are reproduced in you only among all your
brothers and sisters.  The disastrous fire which reduced his native
town to ashes destroyed his fortune and that of his relatives; grief
at having lost everything--for the fire broke out in the next house
to his--cost his father his life; and while his mother, who for six
years had been stretched an a bed of pain, where horrible convulsions
held her fast, supported her three little girls by the needlework
that she did in the intervals of suffering, he went as a mere clerk
into one of the leading mercantile houses of Augsburg, where his
lively and yet even temper made him welcome; there he learned a
calling, for which, however, he was not naturally adapted, and came
back to the home of his birth with a pure and stainless heart, in
order to be the support of his mother and his sisters.

"A man can do much when he wishes to do much: join your efforts to my
prayers, and leave the rest in the hands of God."


The prediction of this Puritan woman was fulfilled: a little time
afterwards rector Salfranck was appointed professor at Richembourg,
whither Sand followed him; it was there that the events of 1813 found
him.  In the month of March he wrote to his mother:--

"I can scarcely, dear mother, express to you how calm and happy I
begin to feel since I am permitted to believe in the enfranchisement
of my country, of which I hear on every side as being so near at
hand,--of that country which, in my faith in God, I see beforehand
free and mighty, that country for whose happiness I would undergo the
greatest sufferings, and even death.  Take strength for this crisis.
If by chance it should reach our good province, lift your eyes to the
Almighty, then carry them back to beautiful rich nature.  The
goodness of God which preserved and protected so many men during the
disastrous Thirty Years' War can do and will do now what it could and
did then.  As for me, I believe and hope."

Leipzig came to justify Sand's presentiments; then the year 1814
arrived, and he thought Germany free.

On the 10th of December in the same year he left Richembourg with
this certificate from his master:--

"Karl Sand belongs to the small number of those elect young men who
are distinguished at once by the gifts of the mind and the faculties
of the soul; in application and work he surpasses all his fellow-
students, and this fact explains his rapid progress in all the
philosophical and philological sciences; in mathematics only there
are still some further studies which he might pursue.  The most
affectionate wishes of his teacher follow him on his departure.

"J. A. KEYN,
"Rector, and master of the first class.
"Richembourg, Sept. 15, 1814"


But it was really the parents of Sand, and in particular his mother,
who had prepared the fertile soil in which his teachers had sowed the
seeds of learning; Sand knew this well, for at the moment of setting
out for the university of Tubingen, where he was about to complete
the theological studies necessary for becoming a pastor, as he
desired to do, he wrote to them:--

"I confess that, like all my brothers and sisters, I owe to you that
beautiful and great part of my education which I have seen to be
lacking to most of those around me.  Heaven alone can reward you by a
conviction of having so nobly and grandly fulfilled your parental
duties, amid many others."

After having paid a visit to his brother at St. Gall, Sand reached
Tubingen, to which he had been principally attracted by the
reputation of Eschenmayer; he spent that winter quietly, and no other
incident befell than his admission into an association of Burschen,
called the Teutonic; then came tester of 1815, and with it the
terrible news that Napoleon had landed in the Gulf of Juan.
Immediately all the youth of Germany able to bear arms gathered once
more around the banners of 1813 and 1814.  Sand followed the general
example; but the action, which in others was an effect of enthusiasm,
was in him the result of calm and deliberate resolution.  He wrote to
Wonsiedel on this occasion:--

"April 22, 1813

"MY DEAR PARENTS,--Until now you have found me submissive to your
parental lessons and to the advice of my excellent masters; until now
I have made efforts to render myself worthy of the education that God
has sent me through you, and have applied myself to become capable of
spreading the word of the Lord through my native land; and for this
reason I can to-day declare to you sincerely the decision that I lave
taken, assured that as tender and affectionate parents you will calm
yourselves, and as German parents and patriots you will rather praise
my resolution than seek to turn me from it.

"The country calls once more for help, and this time the call is
addressed to me, too, for now I have courage and strength.  It cast
me a great in ward struggle, believe me, to abstain when in 1813 she
gave her first cry, and only the conviction held me back that
thousands of others were then fighting and conquering for Germany,
while I had to live far the peaceful calling to which I was destined.
Now it is a question of preserving our newly re-established liberty,
which in so many places has already brought in so rich a harvest.
The all-powerful and merciful Lord reserves for us this great trial,
which will certainly be the last; it is for us, therefore, to show
that we are worthy of the supreme gift which He has given us, and
capable of upholding it with strength and firmness.

"The danger of the country has never been so great as it is now, that
is why, among the youth of Germany, the strong should support the
wavering, that all may rise together.  Our brave brothers in the
north are already assembling from all parts under their banners; the
State of Wurtemburg is, proclaiming a general levy, and volunteers
are coming in from every quarter, asking to die for their country.
I consider it my duty, too, to fight for my country and for all the
dear ones whom I love.  If I were not profoundly convinced of this
truth, I should not communicate my resolution to you; but my family
is one that has a really German heart, and that would consider me as
a coward and an unworthy son if I did not follow this impulse.  I
certainly feel the greatness of the sacrifice; it costs me something,
believe me, to leave my beautiful studies and go to put myself under
the orders of vulgar, uneducated people, but this only increases my
courage in going to secure the liberty of my brothers; moreover, when
once that liberty is secured, if God deigns to allow, I will return
to carry them His word.

"I take leave, therefore, for a time of you, my most worthy parents,
of my brothers, my sisters, and all who are dear to me.  As, after
mature deliberation, it seems the most suitable thing for me to serve
with the Bavarians.  I shall get myself enrolled, for as long as the
war may last, with a company of that nation.  Farewell, then; live
happily; far away from you as I shall be, I shall follow your pious
exhortations.  In this new track I shall still I hope, remain pure
before God, and I shall always try to walk in the path that rises
above the things of earth and leads to those of heaven, and perhaps
in this career the bliss of saving some souls from their fall may be
reserved for me.

"Your dear image will always be about me; I will always have the Lord
before my eyes and in my heart, so that I may endure joyfully the
pains and fatigues of this holy war.  Include me in your Prayers; God
will send you the hope of better times to help you in bearing the
unhappy time in which we now are.  We cannot see one another again
soon, unless we conquer; and if we should be conquered (which God
forbid!), then my last wish, which I pray you, I conjure you, to
fulfil, my last and supreme wish would be that you, my dear and
deserving German relatives, should leave an enslaved country for some
other not yet under the yoke.

"But why should we thus sadden one another's hearts?  Is not our
cause just and holy, and is not God just and holy?  How then should
we not be victors?  You see that sometimes I doubt, so, in your
letters, which I am impatiently expecting, have pity on me and do not
alarm my soul, far in any case we shall meet again in another
country, and that one will always be free and happy.

"I am, until death, your dutiful and grateful son,

"KARL SAND."


These two lines of Korner's were written as a postscript:--

    "Perchance above our foeman lying dead
     We may behold the star of liberty."

With this farewell to his parents, and with Korner's poems on his
lips, Sand gave up his books, and on the 10th of May we find him in
arms among the volunteer chasseurs enrolled under the command of
Major Falkenhausen, who was at that time at Mannheim; here he found
his second brother, who had preceded him, and they underwent all
their drill together.

Though Sand was not accustomed to great bodily fatigues, he endured
those of the campaign with surprising strength, refusing all the
alleviations that his superiors tried to offer him; for he would
allow no one to outdo him in the trouble that he took for the good of
the country.  On the march he invariably shared: anything that he
possessed fraternally with his comrades, helping those who were
weaker than himself to carry their burdens, and, at once priest and
soldier, sustaining them by his words when he was powerless to do
anything more.

On the 18th of June, at eight o'clock in the evening, he arrived upon
the field of battle at Waterloo, On the 14th of July he entered
Paris.

On the 18th of December, 1815, Karl Sand and his brother were back at
Wonsiedel, to the great joy of their family.  He spent the Christmas
holidays and the end of the year with them, but his ardour for his
new vacation did not allow him to remain longer, and an the 7th of
January he reached Erlangen.  Then, to make up for lost time, he
resolved to subject his day to fixed and uniform rules, and to write
down every evening what he had done since the morning.  It is by the
help of this journal that we are able to follow the young enthusiast,
not only in all the actions of his life, but also in all the thoughts
of his mind and all the hesitations of his conscience.  In it we find
his whole self, simple to naivete, enthusiastic to madness, gentle
even to weakness towards others, severe even to asceticism towards
himself.  One of his great griefs was the expense that his education
occasioned to his parents, and every useless and costly pleasure left
a remorse in his heart.  Thus, on the 9th of February 1816, he
wrote:--

"I meant to go and visit my parents.  Accordingly I went to the
'Commers-haus', and there I was much amused.  N. and T. began upon me
with the everlasting jokes about Wonsiedel; that went on until eleven
o'clock.  But afterwards N. and T. began to torment me to go to the
wine-shop; I refused as long as I could.  But as, at last, they
seemed to think that it was from contempt of them that I would not go
and drink a glass of Rhine wine with them, I did not dare resist
longer.  Unfortunately, they did not stop at Braunberger; and while
my glass was still half full, N. ordered a bottle of champagne.  When
the first had disappeared, T. ordered a second; then, even before
this second battle was drunk, both of them ordered a third in my name
and in spite of me.  I returned home quite giddy, and threw myself on
the sofa, where I slept for about an hour, and only went to bed
afterwards.

"Thus passed this shameful day, in which I have not thought enough of
my kind and worthy parents, who are leading a poor and hard life, and
in which I suffered myself to be led away by the example of people
who have money into spending four florins--an expenditure which was
useless, and which would have kept the whole family for two days.
Pardon me, my God, pardon me, I beseech Thee, and receive the vow
that I make never to fall into the same fault again.  In future I
will live even more abstemiously than I usually do, so as to repair
the fatal traces in my poor cash-box of my extravagance, and not to
be obliged to ask money of my mother before the day when she thinks
of sending me some herself."


Then, at the very time when the poor young man reproaches himself as
if with a crime with having spent four florins, one of his cousins, a
widow, dies and leaves three orphan children.  He runs immediately to
carry the first consolations to the unhappy little creatures,
entreats his mother to take charge of the youngest, and overjoyed at
her answer, thanks her thus:--

"Far the very keen joy that you have given me by your letter, and for
the very dear tone in which your soul speaks to me, bless you, O my
mother!  As I might have hoped and been sure, you have taken little
Julius, and that fills me afresh with the deepest gratitude towards
you, the rather that, in my constant trust in your goodness, I had
already in her lifetime given our good little cousin the promise that
you are fulfilling for me after her death."

About March, Sand, though he did not fall ill, had an indisposition
that obliged him to go and take the waters; his mother happened at
the time to be at the ironworks of Redwitz, same twelve or fifteen
miles from Wonsiedel, where the mineral springs are found.  Sand
established himself there with his mother, and notwithstanding his
desire to avoid interrupting his work, the time taken up by baths, by
invitations to dinners, and even by the walks which his health
required, disturbed the regularity of his usual existence and
awakened his remorse.  Thus we find these lines written in his
journal for April 13th:

"Life, without some high aim towards which all thoughts and actions
tend, is an empty desert: my day yesterday is a proof of this; I
spent it with my own people, and that, of course, was a great
pleasure to me; but how did I spend it?  In continual eating, so that
when I wanted to work I could do nothing worth doing.  Full of
indolence and slackness, I dragged myself into the company of two or
three sets of people, and came from them in the same state of mind as
I went to them."

Far these expeditions Sand made use of a little chestnut horse which
belonged to his brother, and of which he was very fond.  This little
horse had been bought with great difficulty; for, as we have said,
the whole family was poor.  The following note, in relation to the
animal, will give an idea of Sand's simplicity of heart:--

"19th April
"To-day I have been very happy at the ironworks, and very industrious
beside my kind mother.  In the evening I came home on the little
chestnut.  Since the day before yesterday, when he got a strain and
hurt his foot, he has been very restive and very touchy, and when he
got home he refused his food.  I thought at first that he did not
fancy his fodder, and gave him some pieces of sugar and sticks of
cinnamon, which he likes very much; he tasted them, but would not eat
them.  The poor little beast seems to have same other internal
indisposition besides his injured foot.  If by ill luck he were to
become foundered or ill, everybody, even my parents, would throw the
blame on me, and yet I have been very careful and considerate of him.
My God, my Lord, Thou who canst do things both great and small,
remove from me this misfortune, and let him recover as quickly as
possible.  If, however, Thou host willed otherwise, and if this fresh
trouble is to fall upon us, I will try to bear it with courage, and
as the expiation of same sin.  Meanwhile, O my Gad, I leave this
matter in Thy hands, as I leave my life and my soul."

On the 20th of April he wrote:--
"The little horse is well; God has helped me."

German manners and customs are so different from ours, and contrasts
occur so frequently in the same man, on the other side of the Rhine,
that anything less than all the quotations which we have given would
have been insufficient to place before our readers a true idea of
that character made up of artlessness and reason, childishness and
strength, depression and enthusiasm, material details and poetic
ideas, which renders Sand a man incomprehensible to us.  We will now
continue the portrait, which still wants a few finishing touches.

When he returned to Erlangen, after the completion of his "cure,"
Sand read Faust far the first time.  At first he was amazed at that
work, which seemed to him an orgy of genius; then, when he had
entirely finished it, he reconsidered his first impression, and
wrote:--

"4th May

"Oh, horrible struggle of man and devil!  What Mephistopheles is in
me I feel far the first time in this hour, and I feel it, O God, with
consternation!

"About eleven at night I finished reading the tragedy, and I felt and
saw the fiend in myself, so that by midnight, amid my tears and
despair, I was at last frightened at myself."

Sand was falling by degrees into a deep melancholy, from which
nothing could rouse him except his desire to purify and preach
morality to the students around him.  To anyone who knows university
life such a task will seem superhuman.  Sand, however, was not
discouraged, and if he could not gain an influence over everyone, he
at least succeeded in forming around him a considerable circle of the
most intelligent and the best; nevertheless, in the midst of these
apostolic labours strange longings for death would overcome him; he
seemed to recall heaven and want to return to it; he called these
temptations "homesickness for the soul's country."

His favourite authors were Lessing, Schiller, Herder, and Goethe;
after re-reading the two last for the twentieth time, this is what he
wrote:

"Good and evil touch each other; the woes of the young Werther and
Weisslingen's seduction, are almost the same story; no matter, we
must not judge between what is good and what is evil in others; for
that is what God will do.  I have just been spending much time over
this thought, and have become convinced that in no circumstances
ought we to allow ourselves to seek for the devil in others, and that
we have no right to judge; the only creature over wham we have
received the power to judge and condemn is ourself, and that gives us
enough constant care, business, and trouble.

"I have again to-day felt a profound desire to quit this world and
enter a higher world; but this desire is rather dejection than
strength, a lassitude than an upsoaring."

The year 1816 was spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his
young comrades, in this ceaseless self-examination, and in the
perpetual battle which he waged with the desire for death that
pursued him; every day he had deeper doubts of himself; and on the
1st of January, 1817, he wrote this prayer in his diary :--

"Grant to me, O Lord, to me whom Thou halt endowed, in sending me on
earth, with free will, the grace that in this year which we are now
beginning I may never relax this constant attention, and not
shamefully give up the examination of my conscience which I have
hitherto made.  Give me strength to increase the attention which I
turn upon my own life, and to diminish that which I turn upon the
life of others; strengthen my will that it may become powerful to
command the desires of the body and the waverings of the soul; give
me a pious conscience entirely devoted to Thy celestial kingdom, that
I may always belong to Thee, or after failing, may be able to return
to Thee."

Sand was right in praying to God for the year 1817, and his fears
were a presentiment: the skies of Germany, lightened by Leipzig and
Waterloo, were once more darkened; to the colossal and universal
despotism of Napoleon succeeded the individual oppression of those
little princes who made up the Germanic Diet, and all that the
nations had gained by overthrowing the giant was to be governed by
dwarfs.  This was the time when secret societies were organised
throughout Germany; let us say a few words about them, for the
history that we are writing is not only that of individuals, but also
that of nations, and every time that occasion presents itself we will
give our little picture a wide horizon.

The secret societies of Germany, of which, without knowing them, we
have all heard, seem, when we follow them up, like rivers, to
originate in some sort of affiliation to those famous clubs of the
'illumines' and the freemasons which made so much stir in France at
the close of the eighteenth century.  At the time of the revolution
of '89 these different philosophical, political, and religious sects
enthusiastically accepted the republican doctrines, and the successes
of our first generals have often been attributed to the secret
efforts of the members.  When Bonaparte, who was acquainted with
these groups, and was even said to have belonged to them, exchanged
his general's uniform for an emperor's cloak, all of them,
considering him as a renegade and traitor, not only rose against him
at home, but tried to raise enemies against him abroad; as they
addressed themselves to noble and generous passions, they found a
response, and princes to whom their results might be profitable
seemed for a moment to encourage them.  Among others, Prince Louis of
Prussia was grandmaster of one of these societies.

The attempted murder by Stops, to which we have already referred, was
one of the thunderclaps of the storm; but its morrow brought the
peace of Vienna, and the degradation of Austria was the death-blow of
the old Germanic organisation.  These societies, which had received a
mortal wound in 1806 and were now controlled by the French police,
instead of continuing to meet in public, were forced to seek new
members in the dark.  In 1811 several agents of these societies were
arrested in Berlin, but the Prussian authorities, following secret
orders of Queen Louisa, actually protected them, so that they were
easily able to deceive the French police about their intentions.
About February 1815 the disasters of the French army revived the
courage of these societies, for it was seen that God was helping
their cause: the students in particular joined enthusiastically in
the new attempts that were now begun; many colleges enrolled
themselves almost entire, anal chose their principals and professors
as captains; the poet, Korner, killed on the 18th of October at
Liegzig, was the hero of this campaign.

The triumph of this national movement, which twice carried the
Prussian army--largely composed of volunteers--to Paris, was
followed, when the treaties of 1815 and the new Germanic constitution
were made known, by a terrible reaction in Germany.  All these young
men who, exiled by their princes, had risen in the name of liberty,
soon perceived that they had been used as tools to establish European
despotism; they wished to claim the promises that had been made, but
the policy of Talleyrand and Metternich weighed on them, and
repressing them at the first words they uttered, compelled them to
shelter their discontent and their hopes in the universities, which,
enjoying a kind of constitution of their own, more easily escaped the
investigations made by the spies of the Holy Alliance; but, repressed
as they were, these societies continued nevertheless to exist, and
kept up communications by means of travelling students, who, bearing
verbal messages, traversed Germany under the pretence of botanising,
and, passing from mountain to mountain, sowed broadcast those
luminous and hopeful words of which peoples are always greedy and
kings always fear.

We have seen that Sand, carried away by the general movement, had
gone through the campaign of 1815 as a volunteer, although he was
then only nineteen years old.  On his return, he, like others, had
found his golden hopes deceived, and it is from this period that we
find his journal assuming the tone of mysticism and sadness which our
readers must have remarked in it.  He soon entered one of these
associations, the Teutonia; and from that moment, regarding the great
cause which he had taken up as a religious one, he attempted to make
the conspirators worthy of their enterprise, and thus arose his
attempts to inculcate moral doctrines, in which he succeeded with
some, but failed with the majority.  Sand had succeeded, however, in
forming around him a certain circle of Puritans, composed of about
sixty to eighty students, all belonging to the group of the
'Burschenschaft' which continued its political and religious course
despite all the jeers of the opposing group--the 'Landmannschaft'.
One of his friends called Dittmar and he were pretty much the chiefs,
and although no election had given them their authority, they
exercised so much influence upon what was decided that in any
particular case their fellow-adepts were sure spontaneously to obey
any impulse that they might choose to impart.  The meetings of the
Burschen took place upon a little hill crowned by a ruined castle,
which was situated at some distance from Erlangen, and which Sand and
Dittmar had called the Ruttli, in memory of the spot where Walter
Furst, Melchthal, and Stauffacher had made their vow to deliver their
country; there, under the pretence of students' games, while they
built up a new house with the ruined fragments, they passed
alternately from symbol to action and from action to symbol.

Meanwhile the association was making such advances throughout Germany
that not only the princes and kings of the German confederation, but
also the great European powers, began to be uneasy.  France sent
agents to bring home reports, Russia paid agents on the spot, and the
persecutions that touched a professor and exasperated a whole
university often arose from a note sent by the Cabinet of the
Tuileries or of St. Petersburg.

It was amid the events that began thus that Sand, after commending
himself to the protection of God, began the year 1817, in the sad
mood in which we have just seen him, and in which he was kept rather
by a disgust for things as they were than by a disgust for life.  On
the 8th of May, preyed upon by this melancholy, which he cannot
conquer, and which comes from the disappointment of all his political
hopes, he writes in his diary:

"I shall find it impassible to set seriously to work, and this idle
temper, this humour of hypochondria which casts its black veil over
everything in life,--continues and grows in spite of the moral
activity which I imposed on myself yesterday."

In the holidays, fearing to burden his parents with any additional
expense, he will not go home, and prefers to make a walking tour with
his friends.  No doubt this tour, in addition to its recreative side,
had a political aim.  Be that as it may, Sand's diary, during the
period of his journey, shows nothing but the names of the towns
through which he passed.  That we may have a notion of Sand's
dutifulness to his parents, it should be said that he did not set out
until he had obtained his mother's permission.  On their return,
Sand, Dittmar, and their friends the Burschen, found their Ruttli
sacked by their enemies of the Landmannschaft; the house that they
had built was demolished and its fragments dispersed.  Sand took this
event for an omen, and was greatly depressed by it.

"It seems to me, O my God!" he says in his journal, "that everything
swims and turns around me.  My soul grows darker and darker; my moral
strength grows less instead of greater; I work and cannot achieve;
walk towards my aim and do not reach it; exhaust myself, and do
nothing great.  The days of life flee one after another; cares and
uneasiness increase; I see no haven anywhere for our sacred German
cause.  The end will be that we shall fall, for I myself waver.  O
Lord and Father! protect me, save me, and lead me to that land from
which we are for ever driven back by the indifference of wavering
spirits."

About this time a terrible event struck Sand to the heart; his friend
Dittmar was drowned.  This is what he wrote in his diary on the very
morning of the occurrence:

"Oh, almighty God!  What is going to become of me?  For the last
fortnight I have been drawn into disorder, and have not been able to
compel myself to look fixedly either backward or forward in my life,
so that from the 4th of June up to the present hour my journal has
remained empty.  Yet every day I might have had occasion to praise
Thee, O my God, but my soul is in anguish.  Lord, do not turn from
me; the more are the obstacles the more need is there of strength."

In the evening he added these few words to the lines that he had
written in the morning:--

"Desolation, despair, and death over my friend, over my very deeply
loved Dittmar."

This letter which he wrote to his family contains the account of the
tragic event:--

"You know that when my best friends, A., C., and Z., were gone, I
became particularly intimate with my well-beloved Dittmar of Anspach;
Dittmar, that is to say a true and worthy German, an evangelical
Christian, something more, in short, than a man!  An angelic soul,
always turned toward the good, serene, pious, and ready for action;
he had come to live in a room next to mine in Professor Grunler's
house; we loved each other, upheld each other in our efforts, and,
well or ill, bare our good or evil fortune in common.  On this last
spring evening, after having worked in his room and having
strengthened ourselves anew to resist all the torments of life and to
advance towards the aim that we desired to attain; we went, about
seven in the evening, to the baths of Redwitz.  A very black storm
was rising in the sky, but only as yet appeared on the horizon.  E.,
who was with us, proposed to go home, but Dittmar persisted, saying
that the canal was but a few steps away.  God permitted that it
should not be I who replied with these fatal words.  So he went on.
The sunset was splendid: I see it still; its violet clouds all
fringed with gold, for I remember the smallest details of that
evening.

"Dittmar went down first; he was the only one of us who knew how to
swim; so he walked before us to show us the depth.  The water was
about up to our chests, and he, who preceded us, was up to his
shoulders, when he warned us not to go farther, because he was
ceasing to feel the bottom.  He immediately gave up his footing and
began to swim, but scarcely had he made ten strokes when, having
reached the place where the river separates into two branches, he
uttered a cry, and as he was trying to get a foothold, disappeared.
We ran at once to the bank, hoping to be able to help him more
easily; but we had neither poles nor ropes within reach, and, as I
have told you, neither of us could swim.  Then we called for help
with all our might.  At that moment Dittmar reappeared, and by an
unheard-of effort seized the end of a willow branch that was hanging
over the water; but the branch was not strong enough to resist, and
our friend sank again, as though he had been struck by apoplexy.  Can
you imagine the state in which we were, we his friends, bending over
the river, our fixed and haggard eyes trying to pierce its depth?  My
God, my God! how was it we did not go mad?

"A great crowd, however, had run at our cries.  For two hours they
sought far him with boats and drag-hooks; and at last they succeeded
in drawing his body from the gulf.  Yesterday we bore it solemnly to
the field of rest.

"Thus with the end of this spring has begun the serious summer of my
life.  I greeted it in a grave and melancholy mood, and you behold me
now, if not consoled, at least strengthened by religion, which,
thanks to the merits of Christ, gives me the assurance of meeting my
friend in heaven, from the heights of which he will inspire me with
strength to support the trials of this life; and now I do not desire
anything more except to know you free from all anxiety in regard to
me."

Instead of serving to unite the two groups of students in a common
grief, this accident, on the contrary, did but intensify their hatred
of each other.  Among the first persons who ran up at the cries of
Sand and his companion was a member of the Landmannschaft who could
swim, but instead of going to Dittmar's assistance he exclaimed, "It
seems that we shall get rid of one of these dogs of Burschen; thank
God!"  Notwithstanding this manifestation of hatred, which, indeed,
might be that of an individual and not of the whole body, the
Burschen invited their enemies to be present at Dittmar's funeral.
A brutal refusal, and a threat to disturb the ceremony by insults to
the corpse, formed their sole reply.  The Burschen then warned the
authorities, who took suitable measures, and all Dittmar's friends
followed his coffin sword in hand.  Beholding this calm but resolute
demonstration, the Landmannschaft did not dare to carry out their
threat, and contented themselves with insulting the procession by
laughs and songs.

Sand wrote in his journal:

"Dittmar is a great loss to all of us, and particularly to me; he
gave me the overflow of his strength and life; he stopped, as it
were, with an embankment, the part of my character that is irresolute
and undecided.  From him it is that I have learned not to dread the
approaching storm, and to know how to fight and die."

Some days after the funeral Sand had a quarrel about Dittmar with one
of his former friends, who had passed over from the Burschen to the
Landmannschaft, and who had made himself conspicuous at the time of
the funeral by his indecent hilarity.  It was decided that they
should fight the next day, and on the same day Sand wrote in his
journal.

"To-morrow I am to fight with P. G.; yet Thou knowest, O my God, what
great friends we formerly were, except for a certain mistrust with
which his coldness always inspired me; but on this occasion his
odious conduct has caused me to descend from the tenderest pity to
the profoundest hatred.

"My God, do not withdraw Thy hand either from him or from me, since
we are both fighting like men!  Judge only by our two causes, and
give the victory to that which is the more just.  If Thou shouldst
call me before Thy supreme tribunal, I know very well that I should
appear burdened with an eternal malediction; and indeed it is not
upon myself that I reckon but upon the merits of our Saviour Jesus
Christ.

"Come what may, be praised and blessed, O my God!

"My dear parents, brothers, and friends, I commend you to the
protection of God."

Sand waited in vain for two hours next day: his adversary did not
come to the meeting place.

The loss of Dittmar, however, by no means produced the result upon
Sand that might have been expected, and that he himself seems to
indicate in the regrets he expressed for him.  Deprived of that
strong soul upon which he rested, Sand understood that it was his
task by redoubled energy to make the death of Dittmar less fatal to
his party.  And indeed he continued singly the work of drawing in
recruits which they had been carrying on together, and the patriotic
conspiracy was not for a moment impeded.

The holidays came, and Sand left Erlangen to return no more.  From
Wonsiedel he was to proceed to Jena, in order to complete his
theological studies there.  After some days spent with his family,
and indicated in his journal as happy, Sand went to his new place of
abode, where he arrived some time before the festival of the
Wartburg.  This festival, established to celebrate the anniversary of
the battle of Leipzig, was regarded as a solemnity throughout
Germany, and although the princes well knew that it was a centre for
the annual renewal of affiliation to the various societies, they
dared not forbid it.  Indeed, the manifesto of the Teutonic
Association was exhibited at this festival and signed by more than
two thousand deputies from different universities in Germany.  This
was a day of joy for Sand; for he found in the midst of new friends a
great number of old ones.

The Government, however, which had not 'dared to attack the
Association by force, resolved to undermine it by opinion.  M. de
Stauren published a terrible document, attacking the societies, and
founded, it was said, upon information furnished by Kotzebue.  This
publication made a great stir, not only at Jena, but throughout all
Germany.  Here is the trace of this event that we find in Sand's
journal:--

24th November
"Today, after working with much ease and assiduity, I went out about
four with E.  As we crossed the market-place we heard Kotzebue's new
and venomous insult read.  By what a fury that man is possessed
against the Burschen and against all who love Germany!"

Thus far the first time and in these terms Sand's journal presents
the name of the man who, eighteen months later, he was to slay.

The Government, however, which had not 'dared to attack the
Association by force, resolved to undermine it by opinion.  M. de
Stauren published a terrible document, attacking the societies, and
founded, it was said, upon information furnished by Kotzebue.  This
publication made a great stir, not only at Jena, but throughout all
Germany.  Here is the trace of this event that we find in Sand's
journal:

24th November

"To-day, after working with much ease and assiduity, I went out about
four with E.  As we crossed the market-place we heard Kotzebue's new
and venomous insult read.  By what a fury that man is possessed
against the Burschen and against all who love Germany!"

Thus for the first time and in these terms Sand's journal presents
the name of the man who, eighteen months later, he was to slay.

On the 29th, in the evening, Sand writes again:

"To-morrow I shall set out courageously and joyfully from this place
for a pilgrimage to Wonsiedel; there I shall find my large-hearted
mother and my tender sister Julia; there I shall cool my head and
warm my heart.  Probably I shall be present at my good Fritz's
marriage with Louisa, and at the baptism of my very dear Durchmith's
first-born.  God, O my Father, as Thou hast been with me during my
sad course, be with me still on my happy road."

This journey did in fact greatly cheer Sand.  Since Dittmar's death
his attacks of hypochondria had disappeared.  While Dittmar lived he
might die; Dittmar being dead, it was his part to live.

On the 11th of December he left Wonsiedel, to return to Jena, and on
the 31st of the same month he wrote this prayer in his journal.

"O merciful Saviour!  I began this year with prayer, and in these
last days I have been subject to distraction and ill-disposed.  When
I look backward, I find, alas! that I have not become better; but I
have entered more profoundly into life, and, should occasion present,
I now feel strength to act.

"It is because Thou hast always been with me, Lord, even when I was
not with Thee."

If our readers have followed with some attention the different
extracts from the journal that we have placed before them, they must
have seen Sand's resolution gradually growing stronger and his brain
becoming excited.  From the beginning of the year 1818, one feels his
view, which long was timid and wandering, taking in a wider horizon
and fixing itself on a nobler aim. He is no longer ambitious of the
pastor's simple life or of the narrow influence which he might gain
in a little community, and which, in his juvenile modesty, had seemed
the height of good fortune and happiness; it is now his native land,
his German people, nay, all humanity, which he embraces in his
gigantic plans of political regeneration.  Thus, on the flyleaf of
his journal for the year 1818, he writes:

"Lord, let me strengthen myself in the idea that I have conceived of
the deliverance of humanity by the holy sacrifice of Thy Son.  Grant
that I may be a Christ of Germany, and that, like and through Jesus,
I may be strong and patient in suffering."

But the anti-republican pamphlets of Kotzebue increased in number and
gained a fatal influence upon the minds of rulers.  Nearly all the
persons who were attacked in these pamphlets were known and esteemed
at Jena; and it may easily be comprehended what effects were produced
by such insults upon these young heads and noble hearts, which
carried conviction to the paint of blindness and enthusiasm to that
of fanaticism.

Thus, here is what Sand wrote in his diary on the 5th of May.

"Lord, what causes this melancholy anguish which has again taken
possession of me?  But a firm and constant will surmounts everything,
and the idea of the country gives joy and courage to the saddest and
the weakest.  When I think of that, I am always amazed that there is
none among us found courageous enough to drive a knife into the
breast of Kotzebue or of any other traitor."

Still dominated by the same thought, he continues thus on the 18th of
May:--

"A man is nothing in comparison with a nation; he is a unity compared
with millions, a minute compared with a century.  A man, whom nothing
precedes and nothing follows, is born, lives, and dies in a longer or
shorter time, which, relatively to eternity, hardly equals the
duration of a lightning flash.  A nation, on the contrary, is
immortal."

From time to time, however, amid these thoughts that bear the impress
of that political fatality which was driving him towards the deed of
bloodshed, the kindly and joyous youth reappears.  On the 24th of
June he writes to his mother:--

"I have received your long and beautiful letter, accompanied by the
very complete and well-chosen outfit which you send me.  The sight of
this fine linen gave me back one of the joys of my childhood.  These
are fresh benefits.  My prayers never remain unfulfilled, and I have
continual cause to thank you and God.  I receive, all at once,
shirts, two pairs of fine sheets, a present of your work, and of
Julia's and Caroline's work, dainties and sweetmeats, so that I am
still jumping with joy and I turned three times on my heels when I
opened the little parcel.  Receive the thanks of my heart, and share,
as giver, in the joy of him who has received.

"Today, however, is a very serious day, the last day of spring and
the anniversary of that on which I lost my noble and good Dittmar.  I
am a prey to a thousand different and confused feelings; but I have
only two passions left in me which remain upright and like two
pillars of brass support this whole chaos--the thought of God and the
love of my country."

During all this time Sand's life remains apparently calm and equal;
the inward storm is calmed; he rejoices in his application to work
and his cheerful temper.  However, from time to time, he makes great
complaints to himself of his propensity to love dainty food, which he
does not always find it possible to conquer.  Then, in his
self-contempt, he calls himself "fig-stomach" or "cake-stomach."  But
amid all this the religious and political exaltation and visits all
the battlefields near to the road that he follows.  On the 18th of
October he is back at Jena, where he resumes his studies with more
application than ever.  It is among such university studies that the
year 1818 closes far him, and we should hardly suspect the terrible
resolution which he has taken, were it not that we find in his
journal this last note, dated the 3lst of December:

"I finish the last day of this year 1818, then, in a serious and
solemn mood, and I have decided that the Christmas feast which has
just gone by will be the last Christmas feast that I shall celebrate.
If anything is to come of our efforts, if the cause of humanity is to
assume the upper hand in our country, if in this faithless epoch any
noble feelings can spring up afresh and make way, it can only happen
if the wretch, the traitor, the seducer of youth, the infamous
Kotzebue, falls!  I am fully convinced of this, and until I have
accomplished the work upon which I have resolved, I shall have no
rest.  Lord, Thou who knowest that I have devoted my life to this
great action, I only need, now that it is fixed in my mind, to beg of
Thee true firmness and courage of soul."

Here Sand's diary ends; he had begun it to strengthen himself; he had
reached his aim; he needed nothing more.  From this moment he was
occupied by nothing but this single idea, and he continued slowly to
mature the plan in his head in order to familiarise himself with its
execution; but all the impressions arising from this thought remained
in his own mind, and none was manifested on the surface.  To everyone
else he was the same; but for some little time past, a complete and
unaltered serenity, accompanied by a visible and cheerful return of
inclination towards life, had been noticed in him.  He had made no
charge in the hours or the duration of his studies; but he had begun
to attend the anatomical classes very assiduously.  One day he was
seen to give even more than his customary attention to a lesson in
which the professor was demonstrating the various functions of the
heart; he examined with the greatest care the place occupied by it in
the chest, asking to have some of the demonstrations repeated two or
three times, and when he went out, questioning some of the young men
who were following the medical courses, about the susceptibility of
the organ, which cannot receive ever so slight a blow without death
ensuing from that blow: all this with so perfect an indifference and
calmness that no one about him conceived any suspicion.

Another day, A. S., one of his friends, came into his room.  Sand,
who had heard him coming up, was standing by the table, with a
paper-knife in his hand, waiting for him; directly the visitor came
in, Sand flung himself upon him, struck him lightly on the forehead;
and then, as he put up his hands to ward off the blow, struck him
rather more violently in the chest; then, satisfied with this
experiment, said:--

"You see, when you want to kill a man, that is the way to do it; you
threaten the face, he puts up his hands, and while he does so you
thrust a dagger into his heart."

The two young men laughed heartily over this murderous demonstration,
and A. S. related it that evening at the wine-shop as one of the
peculiarities of character that were common in his friend.  After the
event, the pantomime explained itself.

The month of March arrived.  Sand became day by day calmer, more
affectionate, and kinder; it might be thought that in the moment of
leaving his friends for ever he wished to leave them an ineffaceable
remembrance of him.  At last he announced that on account of several
family affairs he was about to undertake a little journey, and set
about all his preparations with his usual care, but with a serenity
never previously seen in him.  Up to that time he had continued to
work as usual, not relaxing for an instant; for there was a
possibility that Kotzebue might die or be killed by somebody else
before the term that Sand had fixed to himself, and in that case he
did not wish to have lost time.  On the 7th of March he invited all
his friends to spend the evening with him, and announced his
departure for the next day but one, the 9th.  All of them then
proposed to him to escort him for some leagues, but Sand refused; he
feared lest this demonstration, innocent though it were, might
compromise them later on.  He set forth alone, therefore, after
having hired his lodgings for another half-year, in order to obviate
any suspicion, and went by way of Erfurt and Eisenach, in order to
visit the Wartburg.  From that place he went to Frankfort, where he
slept on the 17th, and on the morrow he continued his journey by way
of Darmstadt.  At last, on the 23rd, at nine in the morning, he
arrived at the top of the little hill where we found him at the
beginning of this narrative.  Throughout the journey he had been the
amiable and happy young man whom no one could see without liking.

Having reached Mannheim, he took a room at the Weinberg, and wrote
his name as "Henry" in the visitors' list.  He immediately inquired
where Kotzebue lived.  The councillor dwelt near the church of the
Jesuits; his house was at the corner of a street, and though Sand's
informants could not tell him exactly the letter, they assured him it
was not possible to mistake the house. [At Mannheim houses are marked
by letters, not by numbers.]

Sand went at once to Kotzebue's house: it was about ten o'clock; he
was told that the councillor went to walk for an hour or two every
morning in the park of Mannheim.  Sand inquired about the path in
which he generally walked, and about the clothes he wore, for never
having seen him he could only recognise him by the description.
Kotzebue chanced to take another path.  Sand walked about the park
for an hour, but seeing no one who corresponded to the description
given him, went back to the house.

Kotzebue had come in, but was at breakfast and could not see him.

Sand went back to the Weinberg, and sat down to the midday table
d'hote, where he dined with an appearance of such calmness, and even
of such happiness, that his conversation, which was now lively, now
simple, and now dignified, was remarked by everybody.  At five in the
afternoon he returned a third time to the house of Kotzebue, who was
giving a great dinner that day; but orders had been given to admit
Sand.  He was shown into a little room opening out of the anteroom,
and a moment after, Kotzebue came in.

Sand then performed the drama which he had rehearsed upon his friend
A. S.  Kotzebue, finding his face threatened, put his hands up to it,
and left his breast exposed; Sand at once stabbed him to the heart;
Kotzebue gave one cry, staggered, arid fell back into an arm-chair:
he was dead.

At the cry a little girl of six years old ran in, one of those
charming German children, with the faces of cherubs, blue-eyed, with
long flowing hair.  She flung herself upon the body of Kotzebue,
calling her father with piercing cries.  Sand, standing at the door,
could not endure this sight, and without going farther, he thrust the
dagger, still covered with Kotzebue's blood, up to the hilt into his
own breast.  Then, seeing to his surprise that notwithstanding the
terrible wound--he had just given himself he did not feel the
approach of death, and not wishing to fall alive into the hands of
the servants who were running in, he rushed to the staircase.  The
persons who were invited were just coming in; they, seeing a young
man, pale and bleeding with a knife in his breast, uttered loud
cries, and stood aside, instead of stopping him.  Sand therefore
passed down the staircase and reached the street below; ten paces
off, a patrol was passing, on the way to relieve the sentinels at the
castle; Sand thought these men had been summoned by the cries that
followed him; he threw himself on his knees in the middle of the
street, and said, "Father, receive my soul!"

Then, drawing the knife from the wound, he gave himself a second blow
below the former, and fell insensible.

Sand was carried to the hospital and guarded with the utmost
strictness; the wounds were serious, but, thanks to the skill of the
physicians who were called in, were not mortal; one of them even
healed eventually; but as to the second, the blade having gone
between the costal pleura and the pulmonary pleura, an effusion of
blood occurred between the two layers, so that, instead of closing
the wound, it was kept carefully open, in order that the blood
extravasated during the night might be drawn off every morning by
means of a pump, as is done in the operation for empyaemia.

Notwithstanding these cares, Sand was for three months between life
and death.

When, on the 26th of March, the news of Kotzebue's assassination came
from Mannheim to Jena, the academic senate caused Sand's room to be
opened, and found two letters--one addressed to his friends of the
Burschenschaft, in which he declared that he no longer belonged to
their society, since he did not wish that their brotherhood should
include a man about to die an the scaffold.  The other letter, which
bore this superscription, "To my nearest and dearest," was an exact
account of what he meant to do, and the motives which had made him
determine upon this act.  Though the letter is a little long, it is
so solemn and so antique in spirit, that we do not hesitate to
present it in its entirety to our readers:--


"To all my own
"Loyal and eternally cherished souls

"Why add still further to your sadness?  I asked myself, and I
hesitated to write to you; but my silence would have wounded the
religion of the heart; and the deeper a grief the more it needs,
before it can be blotted out, to drain to the dregs its cup of
bitterness.  Forth from my agonised breast, then; forth, long and
cruel torment of a last conversation, which alone, however, when
sincere, can alleviate the pain of parting.

"This letter brings you the last farewell of your son and your
brother.

"The greatest misfortune of life far any generous heart is to see the
cause of God stopped short in its developments by our fault; and the
most dishonouring infamy would be to suffer that the fine things
acquired bravely by thousands of men, and far which thousands of men
have joyfully sacrificed themselves, should be no more than a
transient dream, without real and positive consequences.  The
resurrection of our German life was begun in these last twenty years,
and particularly in the sacred year 1813, with a courage inspired by
God.  But now the house of our fathers is shaken from the summit to
the base.  Forward!  let us raise it, new and fair, and such as the
true temple of the true God should be.

"Small is the number of those who resist, and who wish to oppose
themselves as a dyke against the torrent of the progress of higher
humanity among the German people.  Why should vast whole masses bow
beneath the yoke of a perverse minority?  And why, scarcely healed,
should we fall back into a worse disease than that which we are
leaving behind?

"Many of these seducers, and those are the most infamous, are playing
the game of corruption with us; among them is Kotzebue, the most
cunning and the worst of all, a real talking machine emitting all
sorts of detestable speech and pernicious advice.  His voice is
skillful in removing from us all anger and bitterness against the
most unjust measures, and is just such as kings require to put us to
sleep again in that old hazy slumber which is the death of nations.
Every day he odiously betrays his country, and nevertheless, despite
his treason, remains an idol for half Germany, which, dazzled by him,
accepts unresisting the poison poured out by him in his periodic
pamphlets, wrapped up and protected as he is by the seductive mantle
of a great poetic reputation.  Incited by him, the princes of
Germany, who have forgotten their promises, will allow nothing free
or good to be accomplished; or if anything of the kind is
accomplished in spite of them, they will league themselves with the
French to annihilate it.  That the history of our time may not be
covered with eternal ignominy, it is necessary that he should fall.

"I have always said that if we wish to find a great and supreme
remedy for the state of abasement in which we are, none must shrink
from combat nor from suffering; and the real liberty of the German
people will only be assured when the good citizen sets himself or
some other stake upon the game, and when every true son of the
country, prepared for the struggle for justice, despises the good
things of this world, and only desires those celestial good things
which death holds in charge.

"Who then will strike this miserable hireling, this venal traitor?

"I have long been waiting in fear, in prayer, and in tears--I who am
not born for murder--for some other to be beforehand with me, to set
me free, and suffer me to continue my way along the sweet and
peaceful path that I had chosen for myself.  Well, despite my prayers
and my tears, he who should strike does not present himself; indeed,
every man, like myself, has a right to count upon some other, and
everyone thus counting, every hour's delay, but makes our state
worse; far at any moment--and how deep a shame would that be for us!
Kotzebue may leave Germany, unpunished, and go to devour in Russia
the treasures for which he has exchanged his honour, his conscience,
and his German name.  Who can preserve us from this shame, if every
man, if I myself, do not feel strength to make myself the chosen
instrument of God's justice?  Therefore, forward!  It shall be I who
will courageously rush upon him (do not be alarmed), on him, the
loathsome seducer; it shall be I who will kill the traitor, so that
his misguiding voice, being extinguished, shall cease to lead us
astray from the lessons of history and from the Spirit of God.  An
irresistible and solemn duty impels me to this deed, ever since I
have recognised to what high destinies the German; nation may attain
during this century, and ever since I have come to know the dastard
and hypocrite who alone prevents it from reaching them; for me, as
for every German who seeks the public good, this desire has became a
strict and binding necessity.  May I, by this national vengeance,
indicate to all upright and loyal consciences where the true danger
lies, and save our vilified and calumniated societies from the
imminent danger that threatens them!  May I, in short, spread terror
among the cowardly and wicked, and courage arid faith among the good!
Speeches and writings lead to nothing; only actions work.

"I will act, therefore; and though driven violently away from my fair
dreams of the future, I am none the less full of trust in God; I even
experience a celestial joy, now that, like the Hebrews when they
sought the promised land, I see traced before me, through darkness
and death, that road at the end of which I shall have paid my debt to
my country.

"Farewell, then, faithful hearts: true, this early separation is
hard; true, your hopes, like my wishes, are disappointed; but let us
be consoled by the primary thought that we have done what the voice
of our country called upon us to do; that, you knew, is the principle
according to which I have always lived.  You will doubtless say among
yourselves, 'Yes, thanks to our sacrifices, he had learned to know
life and to taste the joys of earth, and he seemed: deeply to love
his native country and the humble estate to which he was called'.
Alas, yes, that is true!  Under your protection, and amid your
numberless sacrifices, my native land and life had become profoundly
dear to me.  Yes, thanks to you, I have penetrated into the Eden of
knowledge, and have lived the free life of thought; thanks to you, I
have looked into history, and have then returned to my own conscience
to attach myself to the solid pillars of faith in the Eternal.

"Yes, I was to pass gently through this life as a preacher of the
gospel; yes, in my constancy to my calling I was to be sheltered from
the storms of this existence.  But would that suffice to avert the
danger that threatens Germany?  And you yourselves, in your infinite
lave, should you not rather push me on to risk my life for the good
of all?  So many modern Greeks have fallen already to free their
country from the yoke of the Turks, and have died almost without any
result and without any hope; and yet thousands of fresh martyrs keep
up their courage and are ready to fall in their turn; and should I,
then, hesitate to die?

"That I do not recognise your love, or that your love is but a
trifling consideration with me, you will not believe.  What else
should impel me to die if not my devotion to you and to Germany, and
the need of proving this devotion to my family and my country?

"You, mother, will say, 'Why have I brought up a son whom I loved and
who loved me, for whom I have undergone a thousand cares and toils,
who, thanks to my prayers and my example, was impressionable to good
influences, and from whom, after my long and weary course, I hoped to
receive attentions like those which I have given him?  Why does he
now abandon me?'

"Oh, my kind and tender mother!  Yes, you will perhaps say that; but
could not the mother of anyone else say the same, and everything go
off thus in words when there is need to act for the country?  And if
no one would act, what would become of that mother of us all who is
called Germany?

"But no; such complaints are far from you, you noble woman!  I
understood your appeal once before, and at this present hour, if no
one came forward in the German cause, you yourself would urge me to
the fight.  I have two brothers and two sisters before me, all noble
and loyal.  They will remain to you, mother; and besides you will
have for sons all the children of Germany who love their country.

"Every man has a destiny which he has to accomplish: mine is devoted
to the action that I am about to undertake; if I were to live another
fifty years, I could not live more happily than I have done lately.
Farewell, mother: I commend you to the protection of God; may He
raise you to that joy which misfortunes can no longer trouble!  Take
your grandchildren, to whom I should so much have liked to be a
loving friend, to the top of our beautiful mountains soon.  There, on
that altar raised by the Lord Himself in the midst of Germany, let
them devote themselves, swearing to take up the sword as soon as they
have strength to lift it, and to lay it down only when our brethren
are all united in liberty, when all Germans, having a liberal
constitution; are great before the Lord, powerful against their
neighbours, and united among themselves.

"May my country ever raise her happy gaze to Thee, Almighty Father!
May Thy blessing fall abundantly upon her harvests ready to be cut
and her armies ready for battle, and recognising the blessings that
Thou host showered upon us, may the German nation ever be first among
nations to rise and uphold the cause of humanity, which is Thy image
upon earth!

"Your eternally attached son, brother and friend,
" KARL-LUDWIG SAND.
" JENA, the beginning of March, 1819."


Sand, who, as we have said, had at first been taken to the hospital,
was removed at the end of three months to the prison at Mannheim,
where the governor, Mr. G----, had caused a room to be prepared for
him.  There he remained two months longer in a state of extreme
weakness: his left arm was completely paralysed; his voice was very
weak; every movement gave him horrible pain, and thus it was not
until the 11th of August--that is to say, five months after the event
that we have narrated--that he was able to write to his family the
following letter:--

"MY VERY DEAR PARENTS:--The grand-duke's commission of inquiry
informed me yesterday that it might be possible I should have the
intense joy of a visit from you, and that I might perhaps see you
here and embrace you--you, mother, and some of my brothers and
sisters.

"Without being surprised at this fresh proof of your motherly love, I
have felt an ardent remembrance reawaken of the happy life that we
spent gently together.  Joy and grief, desire and sacrifice, agitate
my heart violently, and I have had to weigh these various impulses
one against the other, and with the force of reason, in order to
resume mastery of myself and to take a decision in regard to my
wishes.

"The balance has inclined in the direction of sacrifice.

"You know, mother, how much joy and courage a look from your eyes,
daily intercourse with you, and your pious and high-minded
conversation, might bring me during my very short time.  But you also
know my position, and you are too well acquainted with the natural
course of all these painful inquiries, not to feel as I do, that such
annoyance, continually recurring, would greatly trouble the pleasure
of our companionship, if it did not indeed succeed in entirely
destroying it.  Then, mother, after the long and fatiguing journey
that you would be obliged to make in order to see me, think of the
terrible sorrow of the farewell when the moment came to part in this
world.  Let us therefore abide by the sacrifice, according to God's
will, and let us yield ourselves only to that sweet community of
thought which distance cannot interrupt, in which I find my only
joys, and which, in spite of men, will always be granted us by the
Lord, our Father.

"As for my physical state, I knew nothing about it.  You see,
however, since at last I am writing to you myself, that I have come
past my first uncertainties.  As for the rest, I know too little of
the structure of my own body to give any opinion as to what my wounds
may determine for it.  Except that a little strength has returned to
me, its state is still the same, and I endure it calmly and
patiently; for God comes to my help, and gives me courage and
firmness.  He will help me, believe me, to find all the joys of the
soul and to be strong in mind.  Amen.

"May you live happy!--Your deeply respectful son,

"KARL-LUDWIG SAND."


A month after this letter came tender answers from all the family.
We will quote only that of Sand's mother, because it completes the
idea which the reader may have formed already of this great-hearted
woman, as her son always calls her.

"DEAR, INEXPRESSIBLY DEAR KARL,--How Sweet it was to me to see the
writing of your beloved hand after so long a time!  No journey would
have been so painful and no road so long as to prevent me from coming
to you, and I would go, in deep and infinite love, to any end of the
earth in the mere hope of catching sight of you.

"But, as I well know both your tender affection and your profound
anxiety for me, and as you give me, so firmly and upon such manly
reflection, reasons against which I can say nothing, and which I can
but honour, it shall be, my well-beloved Karl, as you have wished and
decided.  We will continue, without speech, to communicate our
thoughts; but be satisfied, nothing can separate us; I enfold you in
my soul, and my material thoughts watch over you.

"May this infinite love which upholds us, strengthens us, and leads
us all to a better life, preserve, dear Karl, your courage and
firmness.

"Farewell, and be invariably assured that I shall never cease to love
you strongly and deeply.

"Your faithful mother, who loves you to eternity."


Sand replied:--

January 1820, from my isle of Patmos.

"MY DEAR PARENTS, BROTHERS, AND SISTERS,--

"In the middle of the month of September last year I received, through
the grand-duke's special commission of inquiry, whose humanity you
have already appreciated, your dear letters of the end of August and
the beginning of September, which had such magical influence that
they inundated me with joy by transporting me into the inmost circle
of your hearts.

"You, my tender father, you write to me on the sixty-seventh
anniversary of your birth, and you bless me by the outpouring of your
most tender love.

"You, my well-beloved mother, you deign to promise the continuance of
your maternal affection, in which I have at all times constantly
believed; and thus I have received the blessings of both of you,
which, in my present position, will exercise a more beneficent
influence upon me than any of the things that all the kings of the
earth, united together, could grant me.  Yes, you strengthen me
abundantly by your blessed love, and I render thanks to you, my
beloved parents, with that respectful submission that my heart will
always inculcate as the first duty of a son.

"But the greater your love and the more affectionate your letters,
the more do I suffer, I must acknowledge, from the voluntary
sacrifice that we have imposed upon ourselves in not seeing one
another; and the only reason, my dear parents, why I have delayed to
reply to you, was to give myself time to recover the strength which I
have lost.

"You too, dear brother-in-law and dear sister, assure me of your
sincere and uninterrupted attachment.  And yet, after the fright that
I have spread among you all, you seem not to know exactly what to
think of me; but my heart, full of gratitude for your past kindness,
comforts itself; for your actions speak and tell me that, even if
you wished no longer to love me as I love you, you would not be able
to do otherwise.  These actions mean more to me at this hour than any
possible protestations, nay, than even the tenderest words.

"And you also, my kind brother, you would have consented to hurry
with our beloved mother to the shores of the Rhine, to this place
where the real links of the soul were welded between us, where we
were doubly brothers; but tell me, are you not really here, in
thought and in spirit, when I consider the rich fountain of
consolation brought me by your cordial and tender letter?

"And, you, kind sister-in-law, as you showed yourself from the first,
in your delicate tenderness, a true sister, so I find you again at
present.  There are still the same tender relations, still the same
sisterly affection; your consolations, which emanate from a deep and
submissive piety, have fallen refreshingly into the depths of my
heart.  But, dear sister-in-law, I must tell you, as well as the
others, that you are too liberal towards me in dispensing your esteem
and praises, and your exaggeration has cast me back face to face with
my inmost judge, who has shown me in the mirror of my conscience the
image of my every weakness.

"You, kind Julia, you desire nothing else but to save me from the
fate that awaits me; and you assure me in your own name and in that
of you all, that you, like the others, would rejoice to endure it in
my place; in that I recognise you fully, and I recognise, too, those
sweet and tender relations in which we have been brought up from
childhood.  Oh, be comforted, dear Julia; thanks to the protection of
God, I promise you: that it will be easy for me, much easier than I
should have thought, to bear what falls to my lot.  Receive, then,
all of you, my warm and sincere thanks for having thus rejoiced my
heart.

"Now that I know from these strengthening letters that, like the
prodigal son, the love and goodness of my family are greater on my
return than at my departure, I will, as carefully as possible, paint
for you my physical and moral state, and I pray God to supplement my
words by His strength, so that my letter may contain an equivalent of
what yours brought to me, and may help you to reach that state of
calm and serenity to which I have myself attained.

"Hardened, by having gained power over myself, against the good and
ill of this earth, you knew already that of late years I have lived
only for moral joys, and I must say that, touched by my efforts,
doubtless, the Lord, who is the sacred fount of all that is good, has
rendered me apt in seeking them and in tasting them to the full.  God
is ever near me, as formerly, and I find in Him the sovereign
principle of the creation of all things; in Him, our holy Father, not
only consolation and strength, but an unalterable Friend, full of the
holiest love, who will accompany me in all places where I may need
His consolations.  Assuredly, if He had turned from me, or if I had
turned away my eyes from Him, I should now find myself very
unfortunate and wretched; but by His grace, on the contrary, lowly
and weak creature as I am, He makes me strong and powerful against
whatever can befall me.

"What I have hitherto revered as sacred, what I have desired as good
what I have aspired to as heavenly, has in no respect changed now.
And I thank God for it, for I should now be in great despair if I
were compelled to recognise that my heart had adored deceptive images
and enwrapped itself in fugitive chimeras.  Thus my faith in these
ideas and my pure love far them, guardian angels of my spirit as they
are, increase moment by moment, and will go on increasing to my end,
and I hope that I may pass all the more easily from this world into
eternity.  I pass my silent life in Christian exaltation and
humility, and I sometimes have those visions from above through which
I have, from my birth, adored heaven upon earth, and which give me
power to raise myself to the Lord upon the eager wings of my prayers.
My illness, though long, painful, and cruel, has always been
sufficiently mastered by my will to let me busy myself to some result
with history, positive sciences, and the finer parts of religious
education, and when my suffering became more violent and for a time
interrupted these occupations, I struggled successfully,
nevertheless, against ennui; for the memories of the past, my
resignation to the present, and my faith in the future were rich
enough and strong enough in me and round me to prevent my falling
from my terrestrial paradise.  According to my principles, I would
never, in the position in which I am and in which I have placed
myself, have been willing to ask anything for my own comfort; but so
much kindness and care have been lavished upon me, with so much
delicacy and humanity,--which alas!  I am unable to return--by every
person with whom I have been brought into contact, that wishes which
I should not have dared to frame in the mast private recesses of my
heart have been more than exceeded.  I have never been so much
overcome by bodily pains that I could not say within myself, while I
lifted my thoughts to heaven, 'Come what may of this ray.'  And great
as these gains have been, I could not dream of comparing them with
those sufferings of the soul that we feel so profoundly and
poignantly in the recognition of our weaknesses and faults.

"Moreover, these pains seldom now cause me to lose consciousness; the
swelling and inflammation never made great headway, and the fever has
always been moderate, though for nearly ten months I have been forced
to remain lying on my back, unable to raise myself, and although more
than forty pints of matter have come from my chest at the place where
the heart is.  No, an the contrary, the wound, though still open, is
in a good state; and I owe that not only to the excellent nursing
around me, but also to the pure blood that I received from you, my
mother.  Thus I have lacked neither earthly assistance nor heavenly
encouragement.  Thus, on the anniversary of my birth, I had every
reason--oh, not to curse the hour in which I was born, but, on the
contrary, after serious contemplation of the world, to thank God and
you, my dear parents, for the life that you have given me!  I
celebrated it, on the 18th of October, by a peaceful and ardent
submission to the holy will of God.  On Christmas Day I tried to put
myself into the temper of children who are devoted to the Lord; and
with God's help the new year will pass like its predecessor, in
bodily pain, perhaps, but certainly in spiritual joy.  And with this
wish, the only one that I form, I address myself to you, my dear
parents, and to you and yours, my dear brothers and sisters.

"I cannot hope to see a twenty-fifth new year; so may the prayer that
I have just made be granted!  May this picture of my present state
afford you some tranquillity, and may this letter that I write to you
from the depths of my heart not only prove to you that I am not
unworthy of the inexpressible love that you all display, but, on the
contrary, ensure this love to me for eternity.

"Within the last few days I have also received your dear letter of
the 2nd of December, my kind mother, and the grind-duke's commission
has deigned to let me also read my kind brother's letter which
accompanied yours.  You give me the best of news in regard to the
health of all of you, and send me preserved fruits from our dear
home.  I thank you for them from the bottom of my heart.  What causes
me most joy in the matter is that you have been solicitously busy
about me in summer as in winter, and that you and my dear Julia
gathered them and prepared them for me at home, and I abandon my
whole soul to that sweet enjoyment.

"I rejoice sincerely at my little cousin's coming into the world; I
joyfully congratulate the good parents and the grandparents; I
transport myself, for his baptism, into that beloved parish, where I
offer him my affection as his Christian brother, and call down on him
all the blessings of heaven.

"We shall be obliged, I think, to give up this correspondence, so as
not to inconvenience the grand-duke's commission.  I finish,
therefore, by assuring you, once more, but for the last time,
perhaps, of my profound filial submission and of my fraternal
affection.--Your most tenderly attached

"KARL-LUDWIG SAND."


Indeed, from that moment all correspondence between Karl and his
family ceased, and he only wrote to them, when he knew his fate, one
more letter, which we shall see later on.

We have seen by what attentions Sand was surrounded; their humanity
never flagged for an instant.  It is the truth, too, that no one saw
in him an ordinary murderer, that many pitied him under their breath,
and that some excused him aloud.  The very commission appointed by
the grand-duke prolonged the affair as much as possible; for the
severity of Sand's wounds had at first given rise to the belief that
there would be no need of calling in the executioner, and the
commission was well pleased that God should have undertaken the
execution of the judgment.  But these expectations were deceived: the
skill of the doctor defeated, not indeed the wound, but death: Sand
did not recover, but he remained alive; and it began to be evident
that it would be needful to kill him.

Indeed, the Emperor Alexander, who had appointed Kotzebue his
councillor, and who was under no misapprehension as to the cause of
the murder, urgently demanded that justice should take its course.
The commission of inquiry was therefore obliged to set to work; but
as its members were sincerely desirous of having some pretext to
delay their proceedings, they ordered that a physician from
Heidelberg should visit Sand and make an exact report upon his case;
as Sand was kept lying down and as he could not be executed in his
bed, they hoped that the physician's report, by declaring it
impossible for the prisoner to rise, would come to their assistance
and necessitate a further respite.

The chosen doctor came accordingly to Mannheim, and introducing
himself to Sand as though attracted by the interest that he inspired,
asked him whether he did not feel somewhat better, and whether it
would be impossible to rise.  Sand looked at him for an instant, and
then said, with a smile--

"I understand, sir; they wish to know whether I am strong enough to
mount a scaffold: I know nothing about it myself, but we will make
the experiment together."

With these words he rose, and accomplishing, with superhuman courage,
what he had not attempted for fourteen months, walked twice round the
room, came back to his bed, upon which he seated himself, and said

"You see, sir, I am strong enough; it would therefore be wasting
precious time to keep my judges longer about my affair; so let them
deliver their judgment, for nothing now prevents its execution."

The doctor made his report; there was no way of retreat; Russia was
becoming more and more pressing, and an the 5th of May 1820 the high
court of justice delivered the following judgment, which was
confirmed on the 12th by His Royal Highness the Grand-Duke of Baden:

"In the matters under investigation and after administration of the
interrogatory and hearing the defences, and considering the united
opinions of the court of justice at Mannheim and the further
consultations of the court of justice which declare the accused, Karl
Sand of Wonsiedel, guilty of murder, even on his own confession, upon
the person of the Russian imperial Councillor of State, Kotzebue; it
is ordered accordingly, for his just punishment and for an example
that may deter other people, that he is to be put from life to death
by the sword.

"All the costs of these investigations, including these occasioned by
his public execution, will be defrayed from the funds of the law
department, on account of his want of means."

We see that, though it condemned the accused to death, which indeed
could hardly be avoided, the sentence was both in form and substance
as mild as possible, since, though Sand was convicted, his poor
family was not reduced by the expenses of a long and costly trial to
complete ruin.

Five days were still allowed to elapse, and the verdict was not
announced until the 17th.  When Sand was informed that two
councillors of justice were at the door, he guessed that they were
coming to read his sentence to him; he asked a moment to rise, which
he had done but once before, in the instance already narrated, during
fourteen months.  And indeed he was so weak that he could not stand
to hear the sentence, and after having greeted the deputation that
death sent to him, he asked to sit down, saying that he did so not
from cowardice of soul but from weakness of body; then he added, "You
are welcome, gentlemen; far I have suffered so much for fourteen
months past that you come to me as angels of deliverance."

He heard the sentence quite unaffectedly and with a gentle smile upon
his lips; then, when the reading was finished, he said--

"I look for no better fate, gentlemen, and when, more than a year
ago, I paused on the little hill that overlooks the town, I saw
beforehand the place where my grave would be; and so I ought to thank
God and man far having prolonged my existence up to to-day."

The councillors withdrew; Sand stood up a second time to greet them
on their departure, as he had done on their entrance; then he sat
down again pensively in his chair, by which Mr. G, the governor of
the prison, was standing.  After a moment of silence, a tear appeared
at each of the condemned man's eyelids, and ran down his cheeks;
then, turning suddenly to Mr.  G----, whom he liked very much, he
said, "I hope that my parents would rather see me die by this violent
death than of some slow and shameful disease.  As for me, I am glad
that I shall soon hear the hour strike in which my death will satisfy
those who hate me, and those wham, according to my principles, I
ought to hate."

Then he wrote to his family.

"MANNHEIM

"17th of the month of spring, 1820

"DEAR PARENTS, BROTHERS, AND SISTERS,--You should have received my
last letters through the grand-duke's commission; in them I answered
yours, and tried to console you for my position by describing the
state of my soul as it is, the contempt to which I have attained for
everything fragile and earthly, and by which one must necessarily be
overcome when such matters are weighed against the fulfilment of an
idea, or that intellectual liberty which alone can nourish the soul;
in a word, I tried to console you by the assurance that the feelings,
principles, and convictions of which I formerly spoke are faithfully
preserved in me and have remained exactly the same; but I am sure all
this was an unnecessary precaution on my part, for there was never a
time when you asked anything else of me than to have God before my
eyes and in my heart; and you have seen how, under your guidance,
this precept so passed into my soul that it became my sole object of
happiness for this world and the next; no doubt, as He was in and
near me, God will be in and near you at the moment when this letter
brings you the news of my sentence.  I die willingly, and the Lord
will give me strength to die as one ought to die.

"I write to you perfectly quiet and calm about all things, and I hope
that your lives too will pass calmly and tranquilly until the moment
when our souls meet again full of fresh force to love one another and
to share eternal happiness together.

"As for me, such as I have lived as long as I have known myself--that
is to say, in a serenity full of celestial desires and a courageous
and indefatigable love of liberty, such I am about to die.

"May God be with you and with me!--Your son, brother, and friend,

"KARL-LUDWIG SAND."


From that moment his serenity remained un troubled; during the whole
day he talked more gaily than usual, slept well, did not awake until
half-past seven, said that he felt stronger, and thanked God for
visiting him thus.

The nature of the verdict had been known since the day before, and it
had been learned that the execution was fixed for the 20th of May
--that is to say, three full days after the sentence had been read to
the accused.

Henceforward, with Sand's permission, persons who wished to speak to
him and whom he was not reluctant to see, were admitted: three among
these paid him long and noteworthy visits.

One was Major Holzungen, of the Baden army, who was in command of the
patrol that had arrested him, or rather picked him up, dying, and
carried him to the hospital.  He asked him whether he recognised him,
and Sand's head was so clear when he stabbed himself, that although
he saw the major only for a moment and had never seen him again
since, he remembered the minutest details of the costume which he had
been wearing fourteen months previously, and which was the full-dress
uniform.  When the talk fell upon the death to which Sand was to
submit at so early an age, the major pitied him; but Sand answered,
with a smile, "There is only one difference between you and me,
major; it is that I shall die far my convictions, and you will die
for someone else's convictions."

After the major came a young student from Jena whom Sand had known at
the university.  He happened to be in the duchy of Baden and wished
to visit him.  Their recognition was touching, and the student wept
much; but Sand consoled him with his usual calmness and serenity.

Then a workman asked to be admitted to see Sand, on the plea that he
had been his schoolfellow at Wonsiedel, and although he did not
remember his name, he ordered him to be let in: the workman reminded
him that he had been one of the little army that Sand had commanded
on the day of the assault of St. Catherine's tower.  This indication
guided Sand, who recognised him perfectly, and then spoke with tender
affection of his native place and his dear mountains.  He further
charged him to greet his family, and to beg his mother, father,
brothers, and sisters once more not to be grieved on his account,
since the messenger who undertook to deliver his last wards could
testify in how calm and joyful a temper he was awaiting death.

To this workman succeeded one of the guests whom Sand had met on the
staircase directly after Kotzebue's death.  He asked him whether he
acknowledged his crime and whether he felt any repentance.  Sand
replied, "I had thought about it during a whole year.  I have been
thinking of it for fourteen months, and my opinion has never varied
in any respect: I did what I should have done."

After the departure of this last visitor, Sand sent for Mr. G----,
the governor of the prison, and told him that he should like to talk
to the executioner before the execution, since he wished to ask for
instructions as to how he should hold himself so as to render the
operation most certain and easy.  Mr. G---- made some objections, but
Sand insisted with his usual gentleness, and Mr. G---- at last
promised that the man in question should be asked to call at the
prison as soon as he arrived from Heidelberg, where he lived.

The rest of the day was spent in seeing more visitors and in
philosophical and moral talks, in which Sand developed his social and
religious theories with a lucidity of expression and an elevation of
thought such as he had, perhaps, never before shown.  The governor of
the prison from whom I heard these details, told me that he should
all his life regret that he did not know shorthand, so that he might
have noted all these thoughts, which would have formed a pendant to
the Phaedo.

Night came.  Sand spent part of the evening writing; it is thought
that he was composing a poem; but no doubt he burned it, for no trace
of it was found.  At eleven he went to bed, and slept until six in
the morning.  Next day he bore the dressing of his wound, which was
always very painful, with extraordinary courage, without fainting, as
he sometimes did, and without suffering a single complaint to escape
him: he had spoken the truth; in the presence of death God gave him
the grace of allowing his strength to return.  The operation was
over; Sand was lying down as usual, and Mr. G---- was sitting on the
foot of his bed, when the door opened and a man came in and bowed to
Sand and to Mr. G----.  The governor of the prison immediately stood
up, and said to Sand in a voice the emotion of which he could not
conceal, "The person who is bowing to you is Mr. Widemann of
Heidelberg, to whom you wished to speak."

Then Sand's face was lighted up by a strange joy; he sat up and said,
"Sir, you are welcome."  Then, making his visitor sit down by his
bed, and taking his hand, he began to thank him for being so
obliging, and spoke in so intense a tone and so gentle a voice, that
Mr. Widemann, deeply moved, could not answer.  Sand encouraged him to
speak and to give him the details for which he wished, and in order
to reassure him, said, "Be firm, sir; for I, on my part, will not
fail you: I will not move; and even if you should need two or three
strokes to separate my head from my body, as I am told is sometimes
the case, do not be troubled on that account."

Then Sand rose, leaning on Mr. G----, to go through with the
executioner the strange and terrible rehearsal of the drama in which
he was to play the leading part on the morrow.  Mr. Widemann made him
sit in a chair and take the required position, and went into all the
details of the execution with him.  Then Sand, perfectly instructed,
begged him not to hurry and to take his time.  Then he thanked him
beforehand; "for," added he, "afterwards I shall not be able."  Then
Sand returned to his bed, leaving the executioner paler and more
trembling than himself.  All these details have been preserved by Mr.
G----; for as to the executioner, his emotion was so great that he
could remember nothing.

After Mr. Widemann, three clergymen were introduced, with whom Sand
conversed upon religious matters: one of them stayed six hours with
him, and on leaving him told him that he was commissioned to obtain
from him a promise of not speaking to the people at the place of
execution.  Sand gave the promise, and added, "Even if I desired to
do so, my voice has become so weak that people could not hear it."

Meanwhile the scaffold was being erected in the meadow that extends
on the left of the road to Heidelberg.  It was a platform five to six
feet high and ten feet wide each way.  As it was expected that,
thanks to the interest inspired by the prisoner and to the nearness
to Whitsuntide, the crowd would be immense, and as some movement from
the universities was apprehended, the prison guards had been trebled,
and General Neustein had been ordered to Mannheim from Carlsruhe,
with twelve hundred infantry, three hundred and fifty cavalry, and a
company of artillery with guns.

On, the afternoon of the 19th there arrived, as had been foreseen, so
many students, who took up their abode in the neighbouring villages,
that it was decided to put forward the hour of the execution, and to
let it take place at five in the morning instead of at eleven, as had
been arranged.  But Sand's consent was necessary for this; for he
could not be executed until three full days after the reading of his
sentence, and as the sentence had not been read to him till half-past
ten Sand had a right to live till eleven o'clock.

Before four in the morning the officials went into the condemned
man's room; he was sleeping so soundly that they were obliged to
awaken him.  He opened his eyes with a smile, as was his custom, and
guessing why they came, asked, "Can I have slept so well that it is
already eleven in the morning?"  They told him that it was not, but
that they had come to ask his permission to put forward the time;
for, they told him, same collision between the students and the
soldiers was feared, and as the military preparations were very
thorough, such a collision could not be otherwise than fatal to his
friends.  Sand answered that he was ready that very moment, and only
asked time enough to take a bath, as the ancients were accustomed to
do before going into battle.  But as the verbal authorisation which
he had given was not sufficient, a pen and paper were given to Sand,
and he wrote, with a steady hand and in his usual writing:

"I thank the authorities of Mannheim for anticipating my most eager
wishes by making my execution six hours earlier.

"Sit nomen Domini benedictum.

"From the prison room, May 20th, day of my deliverance.

"KARL-LUDWIG SAND."


When Sand had given these two lines to the recorder, the physician
came to him to dress his wound, as usual.  Sand looked at him with a
smile, and then asked, "Is it really worth the trouble?"

"You will be stronger for it," answered the physician.

"Then do it," said Sand.

A bath was brought.  Sand lay down in it, and had his long and
beautiful hair arranged with the greatest care; then his toilet being
completed, he put on a frock-coat of the German shape--that is to
say, short and with the shirt collar turned back aver the shoulders,
close white trousers, and high boots.  Then Sand seated himself on
his bed and prayed some time in a low voice with the clergy; then,
when he had finished, he said these two lines of Korner's:

    "All that is earthly is ended,
     And the life of heaven begins."

He next took leave of the physician and the priests, saying to them,
"Do not attribute the emotion of my voice to weakness but to
gratitude."  Then, upon these gentlemen offering to accompany him to
the scaffold, he said, "There is no need; I am perfectly prepared, at
peace with God and with my conscience.  Besides, am I not almost a
Churchman myself?"  And when one of them asked whether he was not
going out of life in a spirit of hatred, he returned, "Why, good
heavens! have I ever felt any?"

An increasing noise was audible from the street, and Sand said again
that he was at their disposal and that he was ready.  At this moment
the executioner came in with his two assistants;  he was dressed in a
long wadded black coat, beneath which he hid his sword.  Sand offered
him his hand affectionately; and as Mr.  Widemann, embarrassed by the
sword which he wished to keep Sand from seeing, did not venture to
come forward, Sand said to him, "Come along and show me your sword; I
have never seen one of the kind, and am curious to know what it is
like."

Mr. Widemann, pale and trembling, presented the weapon to him; Sand
examined it attentively, and tried the edge with his finger.

"Come," said he, "the blade is good; do not tremble, and all will go
well."  Then, turning to Mr. G----, who was weeping, he said to him,
"You will be good enough, will you not, to do me the service of
leading me to the scaffold?"

Mr. G---- made a sign of assent with his head, for he could not
answer.  Sand took his arm, and spoke for the third time, saying once
more, "Well, what are you waiting for, gentlemen?  I am ready."

When they reached the courtyard, Sand saw all the prisoners weeping
at their windows.  Although he had never seen them, they were old
friends of his; for every time they passed his door, knowing that the
student who had killed Kotzebue lay within, they used to lift their
chain, that he might not be disturbed by the noise.

All Mannheim was in the streets that led to the place of execution,
and many patrols were passing up and down.  On the day when the
sentence was announced the whole town had been sought through for a
chaise in which to convey Sand to the scaffold, but no one, not even
the coach-builders, would either let one out or sell one; and it had
been necessary, therefore, to buy one at Heidelberg without saying
for what purpose.

Sand found this chaise in the courtyard, and got into it with Mr.
G----.  Turning to him, he whispered in his ear, "Sir, if you see me
turn pale, speak my name to me, my name only, do you hear?  That will
be enough."

The prison gate was opened, and Sand was seen; then every voice cried
with one impulse, "Farewell, Sand, farewell!"

And at the same time flowers, some of which fell into the carriage,
were thrown by the crowd that thronged the street, and from the
windows.  At these friendly cries and at this spectacle, Sand, who
until then had shown no moment of weakness, felt tears rising in
spite of himself, and while he returned the greetings made to him on
all sides, he murmured in a low voice, "O my God, give me courage!"

This first outburst over, the procession set out amid deep silence;
only now and again same single voice would call out, "Farewell,
Sand!" and a handkerchief waved by some hand that rose out of the
crowd would show from what paint the last call came.  On each side of
the chaise walked two of the prison officials, and behind the chaise
came a second conveyance with the municipal authorities.

The air was very cold: it had rained all night, and the dark and
cloudy sky seemed to share in the general sadness.  Sand, too weak to
remain sitting up, was half lying upon the shoulder of Mr.  G-----,
his companion; his face was gentle, calm and full of pain; his brow
free and open, his features, interesting though without regular
beauty, seemed to have aged by several years during the fourteen
months of suffering that had just elapsed.  The chaise at last
reached the place of execution, which was surrounded by a battalion
of infantry; Sand lowered his eyes from heaven to earth and saw the
scaffold.  At this sight he smiled gently, and as he left the
carriage he said, "Well, God has given me strength so far."

The governor of the prison and the chief officials lifted him that he
might go up the steps.  During that short ascent pain kept him bowed,
but when he had reached the top he stood erect again, saying, "Here
then is the place where I am to die!"

Then before he came to the chair on which he was to be seated for the
execution, he turned his eyes towards Mannheim, and his gaze
travelled over all the throng that surrounded him; at that moment a
ray of sunshine broke through the clouds.  Sand greeted it with a
smile and sat down.

Then, as, according to the orders given, his sentence was to be read
to him a second time, he was asked whether he felt strong enough to
hear it standing.  Sand answered that he would try, and that if his
physical strength failed him, his moral strength would uphold him.
He rose immediately from the fatal chair, begging Mr. G----to stand
near enough to support him if he should chance to stagger.  The
precaution was unnecessary, Sand did not stagger.

After the judgment had been read, he sat down again and said in a
laud voice, "I die trusting in God."

But at these words Mr.  G------ interrupted him.

"Sand," said he, "what did you promise?"

"True," he answered; "I had forgotten."  He was silent, therefore, to
the crowd; but, raising his right hand and extending it solemnly in
the air, he said in a low voice, so that he might be heard only by
those who were around him, "I take God to witness that I die for the
freedom of Germany."

Then, with these words, he did as Conradin did with his glove; he
threw his rolled-up handkerchief over the line of soldiers around
him, into the midst of the people.

Then the executioner came to cut off his hair; but Sand at first
objected.

"It is for your mother," said Mr.  Widemann.

"On your honour, sir?" asked Sand.

"On my honour."

"Then do it," said Sand, offering his hair to the executioner.

Only a few curls were cut off, those only which fell at the back, the
others were tied with a ribbon on the top of the head.  The
executioner then tied his hands on his breast, but as that position
was oppressive to him and compelled him an account of his wound to
bend his head, his hands were laid flat on his thighs and fixed in
that position with ropes.  Then, when his eyes were about to be
bound, he begged Mr.  Widemann to place the bandage in such a manner
that he could see the light to his last moment.  His wish was
fulfilled.

Then a profound and mortal stillness hovered over the whole crowd and
surrounded the scaffold.  The executioner drew his sword, which
flashed like lightning and fell.  Instantly a terrible cry rose at
once from twenty thousand bosoms; the head had not fallen, and though
it had sunk towards the breast still held to the neck.  The
executioner struck a second time, and struck off at the same blow the
head and a part of the hand.

In the same moment, notwithstanding the efforts of the soldiers,
their line was broken through; men and women rushed upon the
scaffold, the blood was wiped up to the last drop with handkerchiefs;
the chair upon which Sand had sat was broken and divided into pieces,
and those who could not obtain one, cut fragments of bloodstained
wood from the scaffold itself.

The head and body were placed in a coffin draped with black, and
carried back, with a large military escort, to the prison.  At
midnight the body was borne silently, without torches or lights, to
the Protestant cemetery, in which Kotzebue had been buried fourteen
months previously.  A grave had been mysteriously dug; the coffin was
lowered into it, and those who were present at the burial were sworn
upon the New Testament not to reveal the spot where Sand was buried
until such time as they were freed from their oath.  Then the grave
was covered again with the turf, that had been skilfully taken off,
and that was relaid on the same spat, so that no new grave could be
perceived; then the nocturnal gravediggers departed, leaving guards
at the entrance.

There, twenty paces apart, Sand and Kotzebue rest: Kotzebue opposite
the gate in the most conspicuous spot of the cemetery, and beneath a
tomb upon which is engraved this inscription:

"The world persecuted him without pity,
Calumny was his sad portion,
He found no happiness save in the arms of his wife,
And no repose save in the bosom of death.
Envy dogged him to cover his path with thorns,
Love bade his roses blossom;
May Heaven pardon him
As he pardons earth!"

In contrast with this tall and showy monument, standing, as we have
said, in the most conspicuous spot of the cemetery, Sand's grave must
be looked far in the corner to the extreme left of the entrance gate;
and a wild plum tree, some leaves of which every passing traveller
carries away, rises alone upon the grave, which is devoid of any
inscription.

As far the meadow in which Sand was executed, it is still called by
the people "Sand's Himmelsfartsweise," which signifies "The manner of
Sand's ascension."

Toward the end of September, 1838, we were at Mannheim, where I had
stayed three days in order to collect all the details I could find
about the life and death of Karl-Ludwig Sand.  But at the end of
these three days, in spite of my active investigations, these details
still remained extremely incomplete, either because I applied in the
wrong quarters, or because, being a foreigner, I inspired same
distrust in those to whom I applied.  I was leaving Mannheim,
therefore, somewhat disappointed, and after having visited the little
Protestant cemetery where Sand and Kotzebue are buried at twenty
paces from each other, I had ordered my driver to take the road to
Heidelberg, when, after going a few yards, he, who knew the object of
my inquiries, stopped of himself and asked me whether I should not
like to see the place where Sand was executed.  At the same time he
pointed to a little mound situated in the middle of a meadow and a
few steps from a brook.  I assented eagerly, and although the driver
remained on the highroad with my travelling companions, I soon
recognised the spot indicated, by means of some relics of cypress
branches, immortelles, and forget-me-nots scattered upon the earth.
It will readily be understood that this sight, instead of diminishing
my desire for information, increased it.  I was feeling, then, more
than ever dissatisfied at going away, knowing so little, when I saw a
man of some five-and-forty to fifty years old, who was walking a
little distance from the place where I myself was, and who, guessing
the cause that drew me thither, was looking at me with curiosity.
I determined to make a last effort, and going up to him, I said, "Oh,
sir, I am a stranger; I am travelling to collect all the rich and
poetic traditions of your Germany.  By the way in which you look at
me, I guess that you know which of them attracts me to this meadow.
Could you give me any information about the life and death of Sand?"

"With what object, sir?" the person to whom I spoke asked me in
almost unintelligible French.

"With a very German object, be assured, sir," I replied.  "From the
little I have learned, Sand seems to me to be one of those ghosts
that appear only the greater and the more poetic for being wrapped in
a shroud stained with blood.  But he is not known in France; he might
be put on the same level there with a Fieschi or a Meunier, and I
wish, to the best of my ability, to enlighten the minds of my
countrymen about him."

"It would be a great pleasure to me, sir, to assist in such an
undertaking; but you see that I can scarcely speak French; you do not
speak German at all; so that we shall find it difficult to understand
each other."

"If that is all," I returned, "I have in my carriage yonder an
interpreter, or rather an interpretress, with whom you will, I hope,
be quite satisfied, who speaks German like Goethe, and to whom, when
you have once begun to speak to her, I defy you not to tell
everything."

"Let us go, then, sir," answered the pedestrian.  "I ask no better
than to be agreeable to you."

We walked toward the carriage, which was still waiting on the
highroad, and I presented to my travelling companion the new recruit
whom I had just gained.  The usual greetings were exchanged, and the
dialogue began in the purest Saxon.  Though I did not understand a
word that was said, it was easy for me to see, by the rapidity of the
questions and the length of the answers, that the conversation was
most interesting.  At last, at the end of half an hours growing
desirous of knowing to what point they had come, I said, "Well?"

"Well," answered my interpreter, "you are in luck's way, and you
could not have asked a better person."

"The gentleman knew Sand, then?"

"The gentleman is the governor of the prison in which Sand was
confined."

"Indeed?"

"For nine months--that is to say, from the day he left the hospital--
this gentleman saw him every day."

"Excellent!"

"But that is not all: this gentleman was with him in the carriage
that took him to execution; this gentleman was with him on the
scaffold; there's only one portrait of Sand in all Mannheim, and this
gentleman has it."

I was devouring every word; a mental alchemist, I was opening my
crucible and finding gold in it.

"Just ask," I resumed eagerly, "whether the gentleman will allow us
to take down in writing the particulars that he can give me."

My interpreter put another question, then, turning towards me, said,
"Granted."

Mr. G---- got into the carriage with us, and instead of going on to
Heidelberg, we returned to Mannheim, and alighted at the prison.

Mr. G--- did not once depart from the ready kindness that he had
shown.  In the most obliging manner, patient over the minutest
trifles, and remembering most happily, he went over every
circumstance, putting himself at my disposal like a professional
guide.  At last, when every particular about Sand had been sucked
dry, I began to ask him about the manner in which executions were
performed.  "As to that," said he, "I can offer you an introduction
to someone at Heidelberg who can give you all the information you can
wish for upon the subject."

I accepted gratefully, and as I was taking leave of Mr. G----, after
thanking him a thousand times, he handed me the offered letter.  It
bore this superscription: "To Herr-doctor Widemann, No. III High
Street, Heidelberg."

I turned to Mr. G---- once more.

"Is he, by chance, a relation of the man who executed Sand? "I asked.

"He is his son, and was standing by when the head fell.".

"What is his calling, then?"

"The same as that of his father, whom he succeeded."

"But you call him 'doctor'?"

"Certainly; with us, executioners have that title."

"But, then, doctors of what?"

"Of surgery."

"Really?" said I.  "With us it is just the contrary; surgeons are
called executioners."

"You will find him, moreover," added Mr.  G----, "a very
distinguished young man, who, although he was very young at that
time, has retained a vivid recollection of that event.  As for his
poor father, I think he would as willingly have cut off his own right
hand as have executed Sand; but if he had refused, someone else would
have been found.  So he had to do what he was ordered to do, and he
did his best."

I thanked Mr. G----, fully resolving to make use of his letter, and
we left for Heidelberg, where we arrived at eleven in the evening.

My first visit next day was to Dr. Widernann.  It was not without
some emotion, which, moreover, I saw reflected upon, the faces of my
travelling companions, that I rang at the door of the last judge, as
the Germans call him.  An old woman opened the door to us, and
ushered us into a pretty little study, on the left of a passage and
at the foot of a staircase, where we waited while Mr. Widemann
finished dressing.  This little room was full of curiosities,
madrepores, shells, stuffed birds, and dried plants; a double-
barrelled gun, a powder-flask, and a game-bag showed that Mr.
Widemann was a hunter.

After a moment we heard his footstep, and the door opened.  Mr.
Widemann was a very handsome young man, of thirty or thirty-two, with
black whiskers entirely surrounding his manly and expressive face;
his morning dress showed a certain rural elegance.  He seemed at
first not only embarrassed but pained by our visit.  The aimless
curiosity of which he seemed to be the object was indeed odd.  I
hastened to give him Mr. G----'s letter and to tell him what reason
brought me.  Then he gradually recovered himself, and at last showed
himself no less hospitable and obliging towards us than he to whom we
owed the introduction had been, the day before.

Mr. Widemann then gathered together all his remembrances; he, too,
had retained a vivid recollection of Sand, and he told us among other
things that his father, at the risk of bringing himself into ill
odour, had asked leave to have a new scaffold made at his own
expense, so that no other criminal might be executed upon the altar
of the martyr's death.  Permission had been given, and Mr. Widemann
had used the wood of the scaffold for the doors and windows of a
little country house standing in a vineyard.  Then for three or four
years this cottage became a shrine for pilgrims; but after a time,
little by little, the crowd grew less, and at the present day, when
some of those who wiped the blood from the scaffold with their
handkerchiefs have became public functionaries, receiving salaries
from Government, only foreigners ask, now and again, to see these
strange relics.

Mr. Widemann gave me a guide; for, after hearing everything, I wanted
to see everything.  The house stands half a league away from
Heidelberg, on the left of the road to Carlsruhe, and half-way up the
mountain-side.  It is perhaps the only monument of the kind that
exists in the world.

Our readers will judge better from this anecdote than from anything
more we could say, what sort of man he was who left such a memory in
the hearts of his gaoler and his executioner.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "KARL LUDWIG SAND"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 4
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES,  VOLUME 4(of 8), Part 2

By Alexandre Dumas, Pere




URBAIN GRANDIER

1634


CHAPTER I

On Sunday, the 26th of November, 1631, there was great excitement in
the little town of Loudun, especially in the narrow streets which led
to the church of Saint-Pierre in the marketplace, from the gate of
which the town was entered by anyone coming from the direction of the
abbey of Saint-Jouin-les-Marmes.  This excitement was caused by the
expected arrival of a personage who had been much in people's mouths
latterly in Loudun, and about whom there was such difference of
opinion that discussion on the subject between those who were on his
side and those who were against him was carried on with true
provincial acrimony.  It was easy to see, by the varied expressions
on the faces of those who turned the doorsteps into improvised
debating clubs, how varied were the feelings with which the man would
be welcomed who had himself formally announced to friends and enemies
alike the exact date of his return.

About nine o'clock a kind of sympathetic vibration ran through the
crowd, and with the rapidity of a flash of lightning the words,
"There he is! there he is!" passed from group to group.  At this cry
some withdrew into their houses and shut their doors and darkened
their windows, as if it were a day of public mourning, while others
opened them wide, as if to let joy enter.  In a few moments the
uproar and confusion evoked by the news was succeeded by the deep
silence of breathless curiosity.

Then, through the silence, a figure advanced, carrying a branch of
laurel in one hand as a token of triumph.  It was that of a young man
of from thirty-two to thirty-four years of age, with a graceful and
well-knit frame, an aristocratic air and faultlessly beautiful
features of a somewhat haughty expression.  Although he had walked
three leagues to reach the town, the ecclesiastical garb which he
wore was not only elegant but of dainty freshness.  His eyes turned
to heaven, and singing in a sweet voice praise to the Lord, he passed
through the streets leading to the church in the market-place with a
slow and solemn gait, without vouchsafing a look, a word, or a
gesture to anyone.  The entire crowd, falling into step, marched
behind him as he advanced, singing like him, the singers being the
prettiest girls in Loudun, for we have forgotten to say that the
crowd consisted almost entirely of women.

Meanwhile the object of all this commotion arrived at length at the
porch of the church of Saint-Pierre.  Ascending the steps, he knelt
at the top and prayed in a low voice, then rising he touched the
church doors with his laurel branch, and they opened wide as if by
magic, revealing the choir decorated and illuminated as if for one of
the four great feasts of the year, and with all its scholars, choir
boys, singers, beadles, and vergers in their places.  Glancing
around, he for whom they were waiting came up the nave, passed
through the choir, knelt for a second time at the foot of the altar,
upon which he laid the branch of laurel, then putting on a robe as
white as snow and passing the stole around his neck, he began the
celebration of the mass before a congregation composed of all those
who had followed him.  At the end of the mass a Te Deum was sung.

He who had just rendered thanks to God for his own victory with all
the solemn ceremonial usually reserved for the triumphs of kings was
the priest Urbain Grandier.  Two days before, he had been acquitted,
in virtue of a decision pronounced by M. d'Escoubleau de Sourdis,
Archbishop of Bordeaux, of an accusation brought against him of which
he had been declared guilty by a magistrate, and in punishment of
which he had been condemned to fast on bread and water every Friday
for three months, and forbidden to exercise his priestly functions in
the diocese of Poitiers for five years and in the town of Loudun for
ever.

These are the circumstances under which the sentence had been passed
and the judgment reversed.

Urbain Grandier was born at Rovere, a village near Sable, a little
town of Bas-Maine.  Having studied the sciences with his father
Pierre and his uncle Claude Grandier, who were learned astrologers
and alchemists, he entered, at the age of twelve, the Jesuit college
at Bordeaux, having already received the ordinary education of a
young man.  The professors soon found that besides his considerable
attainments he had great natural gifts for languages and oratory;
they therefore made of him a thorough classical scholar, and in order
to develop his oratorical talent encouraged him to practise
preaching.  They soon grew very fond of a pupil who was likely to
bring them so much credit, and as soon as he was old enough to take
holy orders they gave him the cure of souls in the parish of Saint-
Pierre in Loudun, which was in the gift of the college.  When he had
been some months installed there as a priest-in-charge, he received a
prebendal stall, thanks to the same patrons, in the collegiate church
of Sainte-Croix.

It is easy to understand that the bestowal of these two positions on
so young a man, who did not even belong to the province, made him
seem in some sort a usurper of rights and privileges belonging to the
people of the country, and drew upon him the envy of his brother-
ecclesiastics.  There were, in fact, many other reasons why Urbain
should be an object of jealousy to these: first, as we have already
said, he was very handsome, then the instruction which he had
received from his father had opened the world of science to him and
given him the key to a thousand things which were mysteries to the
ignorant, but which he fathomed with the greatest ease.  Furthermore,
the comprehensive course of study which he had followed at the Jesuit
college had raised him above a crowd of prejudices, which are sacred
to the vulgar, but for which he made no secret of his contempt; and
lastly, the eloquence of his sermons had drawn to his church the
greater part of the regular congregations of the other religious
communities, especially of the mendicant orders, who had till then,
in what concerned preaching, borne away the palm at Loudun.  As we
have said, all this was more than enough to excite, first jealousy,
and then hatred.  And both were excited in no ordinary degree.

We all know how easily the ill-natured gossip of a small town can
rouse the angry contempt of the masses for everything which is beyond
or above them.  In a wider sphere Urbain would have shone by his many
gifts, but, cooped up as he was within the walls of a little town and
deprived of air and space, all that might have conduced to his
success in Paris led to his destruction at Loudun.

It was also unfortunate for Urbain that his character, far from
winning pardon for his genius, augmented the hatred which the latter
inspired.  Urbain, who in his intercourse with his friends was
cordial and agreeable, was sarcastic, cold, and haughty to his
enemies.  When he had once resolved on a course, he pursued it
unflinchingly; he jealously exacted all the honour due to the rank at
which he had arrived, defending it as though it were a conquest; he
also insisted on enforcing all his legal rights, and he resented the
opposition and angry words of casual opponents with a harshness which
made them his lifelong enemies.

The first example which Urbain gave of this inflexibility was in
1620, when he gained a lawsuit against a priest named Meunier.  He
caused the sentence to be carried out with such rigour that he awoke
an inextinguishable hatred in Meunier's mind, which ever after burst
forth on the slightest provocation.

A second lawsuit, which he likewise gained; was one which he
undertook against the chapter of Sainte-Croix with regard to a house,
his claim to which the chapter, disputed.  Here again he displayed
the same determination to exact his strict legal rights to the last
iota, and unfortunately Mignon, the attorney of the unsuccessful
chapter, was a revengeful, vindictive, and ambitious man; too
commonplace ever to arrive at a high position, and yet too much above
his surroundings to be content with the secondary position which he
occupied.  This man, who was a canon of the collegiate church of
Sainte-Croix and director of the Ursuline convent, will have an
important part to play in the following narrative.  Being as
hypocritical as Urbain was straightforward, his ambition was to gain
wherever his name was known a reputation for exalted piety; he
therefore affected in his life the asceticism of an anchorite and the
self-denial of a saint.  As he had much experience in ecclesiastical
lawsuits, he looked on the chapter's loss of this one, of which he
had in some sort guaranteed the success, as a personal humiliation,
so that when Urbain gave himself airs of triumph and exacted the last
letter of his bond, as in the case of Meunier, he turned Mignon into
an enemy who was not only more relentless but more dangerous than the
former.

In the meantime, and in consequence of this lawsuit, a certain Barot,
an uncle of Mignon and his partner as well, got up a dispute with
Urbain, but as he was a man below mediocrity, Urbain required in
order to crush him only to let fall from the height of his
superiority a few of those disdainful words which brand as deeply as
a red-hot iron.  This man, though totally wanting in parts, was very
rich, and having no children was always surrounded by a horde of
relatives, every one of whom was absorbed in the attempt to make
himself so agreeable that his name would appear in Barot's will.
This being so, the mocking words which were rained down on Barot
spattered not only himself but also all those who had sided with him
in the quarrel, and thus added considerably to the tale of Urbain's
enemies.

About this epoch a still graver event took place.  Amongst the most
assiduous frequenters of the confessional in his church was a young
and pretty girl, Julie by name, the daughter of the king's attorney,
Trinquant--Trinquant being, as well as Barot, an uncle of Mignon.
Now it happened that this young girl fell into such a state of
debility that she was obliged to keep her room.  One of her friends,
named Marthe Pelletier, giving up society, of which she was very
fond, undertook to nurse the patient, and carried her devotion so far
as to shut herself up in the same room with her.  When Julie
Trinquant had recovered and was able again to take her place in the
world, it came out that Marthe Pelletier, during her weeks of
retirement, had given birth to a child, which had been baptized and
then put out to nurse.  Now, by one of those odd whims which so often
take possession of the public mind, everyone in Loudun persisted in
asserting that the real mother of the infant was not she who had
acknowledged herself as such--that, in short, Marthe Pelletier had
sold her good name to her friend Julie for a sum of money; and of
course it followed as a matter about which there could be no possible
doubt, that Urbain was the father.

Trinquant hearing of the reports about his daughter, took upon
himself as king's attorney to have Marthe Pelletier arrested and
imprisoned.  Being questioned about the child, she insisted that she
was its mother, and would take its maintenance upon herself.  To have
brought a child into the world under such circumstances was a sin,
but not a crime; Trinquant was therefore obliged to set Marthe at
liberty, and the abuse of justice of which he was guilty served only
to spread the scandal farther and to strengthen the public in the
belief it had taken up.

Hitherto, whether through the intervention of the heavenly powers, or
by means of his own cleverness, Urbain Grandier had come out victor
in every struggle in which he had engaged, but each victor had added
to the number of his enemies, and these were now so numerous that any
other than he would have been alarmed, and have tried either to
conciliate them or to take precautions against their malice; but
Urbain, wrapped in his pride, and perhaps conscious of his innocence,
paid no attention to the counsels of his most faithful followers, but
went on his way unheeding.

All the opponents whom till now Urbain had encountered had been
entirely unconnected with each other, and had each struggled for his
own individual ends.  Urbain's enemies, believing that the cause of
his success was to be found in the want of cooperation among
themselves, now determined to unite in order to crush him.  In
consequence, a conference was held at Barot's, at which, besides
Barot himself, Meunier, Trinquant, and Mignon took part, and the
latter had also brought with him one Menuau, a king's counsel and his
own most intimate friend, who was, however, influenced by other
motives than friendship in joining the conspiracy.  The fact was,
that Menuau was in love with a woman who had steadfastly refused to
show him any favour, and he had got firmly fixed in his head that the
reason for her else inexplicable indifference and disdain was that
Urbain had been beforehand with him in finding an entrance to her
heart.  The object of the meeting was to agree as to the best means
of driving the common enemy out of Loudon and its neighbourhood.

Urbain's life was so well ordered that it presented little which his
enemies could use as a handle for their purpose.  His only foible
seemed to be a predilection for female society; while in return all
the wives and daughters of the place, with the unerring instinct of
their sex, seeing, that the new priest was young, handsome, and
eloquent, chose him, whenever it was possible, as their spiritual
director.  As this preference had already offended many husbands and
fathers, the decision the conspirators arrived at was that on this
side alone was Grandier vulnerable, and that their only chance of
success was to attack him where he was weakest.  Almost at once,
therefore, the vague reports which had been floating about began to
attain a certain definiteness: there were allusions made, though no
name was mentioned, to a young girl in Loudun; who in spite of
Grandier's frequent unfaithfulness yet remained his mistress-in-
chief; then it began to be whispered that the young girl, having had
conscientious scruples about her love for Urbain, he had allayed them
by an act of sacrilege--that is to say, he had, as priest, in the
middle of the night, performed the service of marriage between
himself and his mistress.  The more absurd the reports, the more
credence did they gain, and it was not long till everyone in Loudun
believed them true, although no one was able to name the mysterious
heroine of the tale who had had the courage to contract a marriage
with a priest; and considering how small Loudun was, this was most
extraordinary.

Resolute and full of courage as was Grandier, at length he could not
conceal from himself that his path lay over quicksands: he felt that
slander was secretly closing him round, and that as soon as he was
well entangled in her shiny folds, she would reveal herself by
raising her abhorred head, and that then a mortal combat between them
would begin.  But it was one of his convictions that to draw back was
to acknowledge one's guilt; besides, as far as he was concerned, it
was probably too late for him to retrace his steps.  He therefore
went on his way, as unyielding, as scornful, and as haughty as ever.

Among those who were supposed to be most active in spreading the
slanders relative to Urbain was a man called Duthibaut, a person of
importance in the province, who was supposed by the townspeople to
hold very advanced views, and who was a "Sir Oracle" to whom the
commonplace and vulgar turned for enlightenment.  Some of this man's
strictures on Grandier were reported to the latter, especially some
calumnies to which Duthibaut had given vent at the Marquis de
Bellay's; and one day, Grandier, arrayed in priestly garments, was
about to enter the church of Sainte-Croix to assist in the service,
he encountered Duthibaut at the entrance, and with his usual haughty
disdain accused him of slander.  Duthibaut, who had got into the
habit of saying and doing whatever came into his head without fear of
being called to account, partly because of his wealth and partly
because of the influence he had gained over the narrow-minded, who
are so numerous in a small provincial town, and who regarded him as
being much above them, was so furious at this public reprimand, that
he raised his cane and struck Urbain.

The opportunity which this affront afforded Grandier of being
revenged on all his enemies was too precious to be neglected, but,
convinced, with too much reason, that he would never obtain justice
from the local authorities, although the respect due to the Church
had been infringed, in his person he decided to appeal to King Louis
XIII, who deigned to receive him, and deciding that the insult
offered to a priest robed in the sacred vestments should be expiated,
sent the cause to the high court of Parliament, with instructions
that the case against Duthibaut should be tried and decided there.

Hereupon Urbain's enemies saw they had no time to lose, and took
advantage of his absence to make counter accusations against him.
Two worthies beings, named Cherbonneau and Bugrau, agreed to become
informers, and were brought before the ecclesiastical magistrate at
Poitiers.  They accused Grandier of having corrupted women and girls,
of indulging in blasphemy and profanity, of neglecting to read his
breviary daily, and of turning God's sanctuary into a place of
debauchery and prostitution.  The information was taken down, and
Louis Chauvet, the civil lieutenant, and the archpriest of Saint-
Marcel and the Loudenois, were appointed to investigate the matter,
so that, while Urbain was instituting proceedings against Duthibaut
in Paris, information was laid against himself in Loudun.  This
matter thus set going was pushed forward with all the acrimony so
common in religious prosecutions; Trinquant appeared as a witness,
and drew many others after him, and whatever omissions were found in
the depositions were interpolated according to the needs of the
prosecution.  The result was that the case when fully got up appeared
to be so serious that it was sent to the Bishop of Poitiers for
trial.  Now the bishop was not only surrounded by the friends of
those who were bringing the accusations against Grandier, but had
himself a grudge against him.  It had happened some time before that
Urbain, the case being urgent, had dispensed with the usual notice of
a marriage, and the bishop, knowing this, found in the papers laid
before him, superficial as they were, sufficient evidence against
Urbain to justify him in issuing a warrant for his apprehension,
which was drawn up in the following words:

"Henri-Louis, Chataignier de la Rochepezai, by divine mercy Bishop of
Poitiers, in view of the charges and informations conveyed to us by
the archpriest of Loudun against Urbain Grandier, priest-in-charge of
the Church of Saint-Pierre in the Market-Place at Loudun, in virtue
of a commission appointed by us directed to the said archpriest, or
in his absence to the Prior of Chassaignes, in view also of the
opinion given by our attorney upon the said charges, have ordered and
do hereby order that Urbain Grandier, the accused, be quietly taken
to the prison in our palace in Poitiers, if it so be that he be taken
and apprehended, and if not, that he be summoned to appear at his
domicile within three days, by the first apparitor-priest, or
tonsured clerk, and also by the first royal sergeant, upon this
warrant, and we request the aid of the secular authorities, and to
them, or to any one of them, we hereby give power and authority to
carry out this decree notwithstanding any opposition or appeal, and
the said Grandier having been heard, such a decision will be given by
our attorney as the facts may seem to warrant.

"Given at Dissay the 22nd day of October 1629, and signed in the
original as follows:

"HENRI-LOUIS, Bishop of Poitiers."


Grandier was, as we have said, at Paris when these proceedings were
taken against him, conducting before the Parliament his case against
Duthibaut.  The latter received a copy of the decision arrived at by
the bishop, before Grandier knew of the charges that had been
formulated against him, and having in the course of his defence drawn
a terrible picture of the immorality of Grandier's life, he produced
as a proof of the truth of his assertions the damning document which
had been put into his hands.  The court, not knowing what to think of
the turn affairs had taken, decided that before considering the
accusations brought by Grandier, he must appear before his bishop to
clear himself of the charges, brought against himself.  Consequently
he left Paris at once, and arrived at Loudun, where he only stayed
long enough to learn what had happened in his absence, and then went
on to Poitiers in order to draw up his defence.  He had, however, no
sooner set foot in the place than he was arrested by a sheriff's
officer named Chatry, and confined in the prison of the episcopal
palace.

It was the middle of November, and the prison was at all times cold
and damp, yet no attention was paid to Grandier's request that he
should be transferred to some other place of confinement.  Convinced
by this that his enemies had more influence than he had supposed, he
resolved to possess his soul in patience, and remained a prisoner for
two months, during which even his warmest friends believed him lost,
while Duthibaut openly laughed at the proceedings instituted against
himself, which he now believed would never go any farther, and Barot
had already selected one of his heirs, a certain Ismael Boulieau, as
successor to Urbain as priest and prebendary.

It was arranged that the costs of the lawsuit should be defrayed out
of a fund raised by the prosecutors, the rich paying for the poor;
for as all the witnesses lived at Loudun and the trial was to take
place at Poitiers, considerable expense would be incurred by the
necessity of bringing so many people such a distance; but the lust of
vengeance proved stronger than the lust of gold; the subscription
expected from each being estimated according to his fortune, each
paid without a murmur, and at the end of two months the case was
concluded.

In spite of the evident pains taken by the prosecution to strain the
evidence against the defendant, the principal charge could not be
sustained, which was that he had led astray many wives and daughters
in Loudun.  No one woman came forward to complain of her ruin by
Grandier; the name of no single victim of his alleged immorality was
given.  The conduct of the case was the most extraordinary ever seen;
it was evident that the accusations were founded on hearsay and not
on fact, and yet a decision and sentence against Grandier were
pronounced on January 3rd, 1630.  The sentence was as follows: For
three months to fast each Friday on bread and water by way of
penance; to be inhibited from the performance of clerical functions
in the diocese of Poitiers for five years, and in the town of Loudun
for ever.

Both parties appealed from this decision: Grandier to the Archbishop
of Bordeaux, and his adversaries, on the advice of the attorney to
the diocese, pleading a miscarriage of justice, to the Parliament of
Paris; this last appeal being made in order to overwhelm Grandier and
break his spirit.  But Grandier's resolution enabled him to face this
attack boldly: he engaged counsel to defend his case before the
Parliament, while he himself conducted his appeal to the Archbishop
of Bordeaux.  But as there were many necessary witnesses, and it was
almost impossible to bring them all such a great distance, the
archiepiscopal court sent the appeal to the presidial court of
Poitiers.  The public prosecutor of Poitiers began a fresh
investigation, which being conducted with impartiality was not
encouraging to Grandier's accusers.  There had been many conflicting
statements made by the witnesses, and these were now repeated: other
witnesses had declared quite openly that they had been bribed; others
again stated that their depositions had been tampered with; and
amongst these latter was a certain priest named Mechin, and also that
Ishmael Boulieau whom Barot had been in such a hurry to select as
candidate for the reversion of Grandier's preferments.  Boulieau's
deposition has been lost, but we can lay Mechin's before the reader,
for the original has been preserved, just as it issued from his pen:

"I, Gervais Mechin, curate-in-charge of the Church of Saint-Pierre in
the Market Place at Loudun, certify by these presents, signed by my
hand, to relieve my conscience as to a certain report which is being
spread abroad, that I had said in support of an accusation brought by
Gilles Robert, archpriest, against Urbain Grandier, priest-in-charge
of Saint-Pierre, that I had found the said Grandier lying with women
and girls in the church of Saint Pierre, the doors being closed.

"ITEM, that on several different occasions, at unsuitable hours both
day and night, I had seen women and girls disturb the said Grandier
by going into his bedroom, and that some of the said women remained
with him from one o'clock in the after noon till three o'clock the
next morning, their maids bringing them their suppers and going away
again at once.

"ITEM, that I had seen the said Grandier in the church, the doors
being open, but that as soon as some women entered he closed them.

"As I earnestly desire that such reports should cease, I declare by
these presents that I have never seen the said Grandier with women or
girls in the church, the doors being closed; that I have never found
him there alone with women or girls; that when he spoke to either
someone else was always present, and the doors were open; and as to
their posture, I think I made it sufficiently clear when in the
witness-box that Grandier was seated and the women scattered over the
church; furthermore, I have never seen either women or girls enter
Grandier's bedroom either by day or night, although it is true that I
have heard people in the corridor coming and going late in the
evening, who they were I cannot say, but a brother of the said
Grandier sleeps close by; neither have I any knowledge that either
women or girls, had their suppers brought to the said room.  I have
also never said that he neglected the reading of his breviary,
because that would be contrary to the truth, seeing that on several
occasions he borrowed mine and read his hours in it.  I also declare
that I have never seen him close the doors of the church, and that
whenever I have seen him speaking to women I have never noticed any
impropriety; I have not ever seen him touch them in any way, they
have only spoken together; and if anything is found in my deposition
contrary to the above, it is without my knowledge, and was never read
to me, for I would not have signed it, and I say and affirm all this
in homage to the truth.

"Done the last day of October 1630,
"(Signed) G.  MECHIN."


In the face of such proofs of innocence none of the accusations could
be considered as established and so, according to the decision of the
presidial court of Poitiers, dated the 25th of May 1634, the decision
of the bishop's court was reversed, and Grandier was acquitted of the
charges brought against him.  However, he had still to appear before
the Archbishop of Bordeaux, that his acquittal might be ratified.
Grandier took advantage of a visit which the archbishop paid to his
abbey at Saint-Jouin-les-Marmes, which was only three leagues from
Loudun, to make this appearance; his adversaries, who were
discouraged by the result of the proceedings at Poitiers, scarcely
made any defence, and the archbishop, after an examination which
brought clearly to light the innocence of the accused, acquitted and
absolved him.

The rehabilitation of Grandier before his bishop had two important
results: the first was that it clearly established his innocence, and
the second that it brought into prominence his high attainments and
eminent qualities.  The archbishop seeing the persecutions to which
he was subjected, felt a kindly interest in him, and advised him to
exchange into some other diocese, leaving a town the principal
inhabitants of which appeared to have vowed him a relentless hate.
But such an abandonment of his rights was foreign to the character of
Urbain, and he declared to his superior that, strong in His Grace's
approbation and the testimony of his own conscience, he would remain
in the place to which God had called him.  Monseigneur de Sourdis did
not feel it his duty to urge Urbain any further, but he had enough
insight into his character to perceive that if Urbain should one day
fall, it would be, like Satan, through pride; for he added another
sentence to his decision, recommending him to fulfil the duties of
his office with discretion and modesty, according to the decrees of
the Fathers and the canonical constitutions.  The triumphal entry of
Urbain into Loudun with which we began our narrative shows the spirit
in which he took his recommendation.




CHAPTER II

Urbain Granadier was not satisfied with the arrogant demonstration by
which he signalised his return, which even his friends had felt to be
ill advised; instead of allowing the hate he had aroused to die away
or at least to fall asleep by letting the past be past, he continued
with more zeal than ever his proceedings against Duthibaut, and
succeeded in obtaining a decree from the Parliament of La Tournelle,
by which Duthibaut was summoned before it, and obliged to listen
bareheaded to a reprimand, to offer apologies, and to pay damages and
costs.

Having thus got the better of one enemy, Urbain turned on the others,
and showed himself more indefatigable in the pursuit of justice than
they had been in the pursuit of vengeance.  The decision of the
archbishop had given him a right to a sum of money for compensation,
and interest thereon, as well as to the restitution of the revenues
of his livings, and there being some demur made, he announced
publicly that he intended to exact this reparation to the uttermost
farthing, and set about collecting all the evidence which was
necessary for the success of a new lawsuit for libel and forgery
which he intended to begin.  It was in vain that his friends assured
him that the vindication of his innocence had been complete and
brilliant, it was in vain that they tried to convince him of the
danger of driving the vanquished to despair, Urbain replied that he
was ready to endure all the persecutions which his enemies might
succeed in inflicting on him, but as long as he felt that he had
right upon his side he was incapable of drawing back.

Grandier's adversaries soon became conscious of the storm which was
gathering above their heads, and feeling that the struggle between
themselves and this man would be one of life or death, Mignon, Barot,
Meunier, Duthibaut, and Menuau met Trinquant at the village of
Pindadane, in a house belonging to the latter, in order to consult
about the dangers which threatened them.  Mignon had, however,
already begun to weave the threads of a new intrigue, which he
explained in full to the others; they lent a favourable ear, and his
plan was adopted.  We shall see it unfold itself by degrees, for it
is the basis of our narrative.

We have already said that Mignon was the director of the convent of
Ursulines at Loudun: Now the Ursuline order was quite modern, for the
historic controversies to which the slightest mention of the
martyrdom of St.  Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins gave rise,
had long hindered the foundation of an order in the saint's honour.
However, in 1560 Madame Angele de Bresse established such an order in
Italy, with the same rules as the Augustinian order.  This gained the
approbation of Pope Gregory XIII in 1572.  In 1614, Madeleine
Lhuillier, with the approval of Pope Paul V, introduced this order
into France, by founding a convent at Paris, whence it rapidly spread
over the whole kingdom, so-that in 1626, only six years before the
time when the events just related took place, a sisterhood was
founded in the little town of Loudun.

Although this community at first consisted entirely of ladies of good
family, daughters of nobles, officers, judges, and the better class
of citizens, and numbered amongst its founders Jeanne de Belfield,
daughter of the late Marquis of Cose, and relative of M. de
Laubardemont, Mademoiselle de Fazili, cousin of the cardinal-duke,
two ladies of the house of Barbenis de Nogaret, Madame de Lamothe,
daughter of the Marquis Lamothe-Barace of Anjou, and Madame
d'Escoubleau de Sourdis, of the same family as the Archbishop of
Bordeaux, yet as these nuns had almost all entered the convent
because of their want of fortune, the community found itself at the
time of its establishment richer in blood than in money, and was
obliged instead of building to purchase a private house.  The owner
of this house was a certain Moussaut du Frene, whose brother was a
priest.  This brother, therefore, naturally became the first director
of these godly women.  Less than a year after his appointment he
died, and the directorship became vacant.

The Ursulines had bought the house in which they lived much below its
normal value, for it was regarded as a haunted house by all the town.
The landlord had rightly thought that there was no better way of
getting rid of the ghosts than to confront them with a religious
sisterhood, the members of which, passing their days in fasting and
prayer, would be hardly likely to have their nights disturbed by bad
spirits; and in truth, during the year which they had already passed
in the house, no ghost had ever put in an appearance--a fact which
had greatly increased the reputation of the nuns for sanctity.

When their director died, it so happened that the boarders took
advantage of the occasion to indulge in some diversion at the expense
of the older nuns, who were held in general detestation by the youth
of the establishment on account of the rigour with which they
enforced the rules of the order.  Their plan was to raise once more
those spirits which had been, as everyone supposed, permanently
relegated to outer darkness.  So noises began to be heard on the roof
of the house, which resolved themselves into cries and groans; then
growing bolder, the spirits entered the attics and garrets,
announcing their presence by clanking of chains; at last they became
so familiar that they invaded the dormitories, where they dragged the
sheets off the sisters and abstracted their clothes.

Great was the terror in the convent, and great the talk in the town,
so that the mother superior called her wisest, nuns around her and
asked them what, in their opinion, would be the best course to take
in the delicate circumstances in which they found themselves.
Without a dissentient voice, the conclusion arrived at was, that the
late director should be immediately replaced by a man still holier
than he, if such a man could be found, and whether because he
possessed a reputation for sanctity, or for some other reason, their
choice fell on Urbain Grandier.  When the offer of the post was
brought to him, he answered that he was already responsible for two
important charges, and that he therefore had not enough time to watch
over the snow-white flock which they wished to entrust to him, as a
good shepherd should, and he recommended the lady superior to seek
out another more worthy and less occupied than himself.

This answer, as may be supposed, wounded the self-esteem of the
sisters: they next turned their eyes towards Mignon, priest and canon
of the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix, and he, although he felt
deeply hurt that they had not thought first of him, accepted the
position eagerly; but the recollection that Grandier had been
preferred before himself kept awake in, him one of those bitter
hatreds which time, instead of soothing, intensifies.  From the
foregoing narrative the reader can see to what this hate led.

As soon as the new director was appointed, the mother superior
confided to him the kind of foes which he would be expected to
vanquish.  Instead of comforting her by the assurance that no ghosts
existing, it could not be ghosts who ran riot in the house, Mignon
saw that by pretending to lay these phantoms he could acquire the
reputation for holiness he so much desired.  So he answered that the
Holy Scriptures recognised the existence of ghosts by relating how
the witch of Endor had made the shade of Samuel appear to Saul.  He
went on to say that the ritual of the Church possessed means of
driving away all evil spirits, no matter how persistent they were,
provided that he who undertook the task were pure in thought and
deed, and that he hoped soon, by the help of God, to rid the convent
of its nocturnal visitants, whereupon as a preparation for their
expulsion he ordered a three days' fast, to be followed by a general
confession.

It does not require any great cleverness to understand how easily
Mignon arrived at the truth by questioning the young penitents as
they came before him.  The boarders who had played at being ghosts
confessed their folly, saying that they had been helped by a young
novice of sixteen years of age, named Marie Aubin.  She acknowledged
that this was true; it was she who used to get up in the middle of
the night, and open the dormitory door, which her more timid room-
mates locked most carefully from within every night, before going to
bed--a fact which greatly increased their terror when, despite their
precautions, the ghosts still got in.  Under pretext of not exposing
them to the anger of the superior, whose suspicions would be sure to
be awakened if the apparitions were to disappear immediately after
the general confession, Mignon directed them to renew their nightly
frolics from time to time, but at longer and longer intervals.  He
then sought an interview with the superior, and assured her that he
had found the minds of all those under her charge so chaste and pure
that he felt sure through his earnest prayers he would soon clear the
convent of the spirits which now pervaded it.

Everything happened as the director had foretold, and the reputation
for sanctity of the holy man, who by watching and praying had
delivered the worthy Ursulines from their ghostly assailants,
increased enormously in the town of Loudun.




CHAPTER III

Hardly had tranquillity been restored when Mignon, Duthibaut, Menuau,
Meunier, and Barot, having lost their cause before the Archbishop of
Bordeaux, and finding themselves threatened by Grandier with a
prosecution for libel and forgery, met together to consult as to the
best means of defending themselves before the unbending severity of
this man, who would, they felt, destroy them if they did not destroy
him.

The result of this consultation was that very shortly afterwards
queer reports began to fly about; it was whispered that the ghosts
whom the pious director had expelled had again invaded the convent,
under an invisible and impalpable form, and that several of the nuns
had given, by their words and acts, incontrovertible proofs of being
possessed.

When these reports were mentioned to Mignon, he, instead of denying
their truth, cast up his eyes to heaven and said that God was
certainly a great and merciful God, but it was also certain that
Satan was very clever, especially when he was barked by that false
human science called magic.  However, as to the reports, though they
were not entirely without foundation, he would not go so far as to
say that any of the sisters were really possessed by devils, that
being a question which time alone could decide.

The effect of such an answer on minds already prepared to listen to
the most impossible things, may easily be guessed.  Mignon let the
gossip go its rounds for several months without giving it any fresh
food, but at length, when the time was ripe, he called on the priest
of Saint-Jacques at Chinon, and told him that matters had now come to
such a pass in the Ursuline convent that he felt it impossible to
bear up alone under the responsibility of caring for the salvation of
the afflicted nuns, and he begged him to accompany him to the
convent.  This priest, whose name was Pierre Barre, was exactly the
man whom Mignon needed in such a crisis.  He was of melancholy
temperament, and dreamed dreams and saw visions; his one ambition was
to gain a reputation for asceticism and holiness.  Desiring to
surround his visit with the solemnity befitting such an important
event, he set out for Loudun at the head of all his parishioners, the
whole procession going on foot, in order to arouse interest and
curiosity; but this measure was quite needless it took less than that
to set the town agog.

While the faithful filled the churches offering up prayers for the
success of the exorcisms, Mignon and Barre entered upon their task at
the convent, where they remained shut up with the nuns for six hours.
At the end of this time Barre appeared and announced to his
parishioners that they might go back to Chinon without him, for he
had made up his mind to remain for the present at Loudun, in order to
aid the venerable director of the Ursuline convent in the holy work
he had undertaken; he enjoined on them to pray morning and evening,
with all possible fervour, that, in spite of the serious dangers by
which it was surrounded, the good cause might finally triumph.  This
advice, unaccompanied as it was by any explanation, redoubled the
curiosity of the people, and the belief gained ground that it was not
merely one or two nuns who were possessed of devils, but the whole
sisterhood.  It was not very long before the name of the magician who
had worked this wonder began to be mentioned quite openly: Satan, it
was said, had drawn Urbain Grandier into his power, through his
pride.  Urbain had entered into a pact with the Evil Spirit by which
he had sold him his soul in return for being made the most learned
man on earth.  Now, as Urbain's knowledge was much greater than that
of the inhabitants of Loudun, this story gained general credence in
the town, although here and there was to be found a man sufficiently
enlightened to shrug his shoulders at these absurdities, and to laugh
at the mummeries, of which as yet he saw only the ridiculous side,

For the next ten or twelve days Mignon and Barre spent the greater
part of their time at the convent; sometimes remaining there for six
hours at a stretch, sometimes the entire day.  At length, on Monday,
the 11th of October, 1632, they wrote to the priest of Venier, to
Messire Guillaume Cerisay de la Gueriniere, bailiff of the Loudenois,
and to Messire Louis Chauvet, civil lieutenant, begging them to visit
the Ursuline convent, in order to examine two nuns who were possessed
by evil spirits, and to verify the strange and almost incredible
manifestations of this possession.  Being thus formally appealed to,
the two magistrates could not avoid compliance with the request.  It
must be confessed that they were not free from curiosity, and felt
far from sorry at being able to get to the bottom of the mystery of
which for some time the whole town was talking.  They repaired,
therefore, to the convent, intending to make a thorough investigation
as to the reality of the possession and as to the efficacy of the
exorcisms employed.  Should they judge that the nuns were really
possessed, and that those who tried to deliver them were in earnest,
they would authorise the continuation of the efforts at exorcism; but
if they were not satisfied on these two points, they would soon put
an end to the whole thing as a comedy.  When they reached the door,
Mignon, wearing alb and stole, came to meet them.  He told them that
the feelings of the nuns had for more than two weeks been harrowed by
the apparition of spectres and other blood-curdling visions, that the
mother superior and two nuns had evidently been possessed by evil
spirits for over a week; that owing to the efforts of Barre and same
Carmelite friars who were good enough to assist him against their
common enemies, the devils had been temporarily driven out, but on
the previous Sunday night, the 10th of October, the mother superior,
Jeanne de Belfield, whose conventual name was Jeanne des Anges, and a
lay sister called Jeanne Dumagnoux, had again been entered into by
the same spirits.  It had, however, been discovered by means of
exorcisms that a new compact, of which the symbol and token was a
bunch of roses, had been concluded, the symbol and token of the first
having been three black thorns.  He added that during the time of the
first possession the demons had refused to give their names, but by
the power of his exorcisms this reluctance had been overcome, the
spirit which had resumed possession of the mother superior having at
length revealed that its name was Ashtaroth, one of the greatest
enemies of God, while the devil which had entered into the lay sister
was of a lower order, and was called Sabulon.  Unfortunately,
continued Mignon, just now the two afflicted nuns were resting, and
he requested the bailiff and the civil lieutenant to put off their
inspection till a little later.  The two magistrates were just about
to go away, when a nun appeared, saying that the devils were again
doing their worst with the two into whom they had entered.
Consequently, they accompanied Mignon and the priest from Venier to
an upper room, in which were seven narrow beds, of which two only
were occupied, one by the mother superior and the other by the lay
sister.  The superior, who was the more thoroughly possessed of the
two, was surrounded by the Carmelite monks, the sisters belonging to
the convent, Mathurin Rousseau, priest and canon of Sainte-Croix, and
Mannouri, a surgeon from the town.

No sooner did the two magistrates join the others than the superior
was seized with violent convulsions, writhing and uttering squeals in
exact imitation of a sucking pig.  The two magistrates looked on in
profound astonishment, which was greatly increased when they saw the
patient now bury herself in her bed, now spring right out of it, the
whole performance being accompanied by such diabolical gestures and
grimaces that, if they were not quite convinced that the possession
was genuine, they were at least filled with admiration of the manner
in which it was simulated.  Mignon next informed the bailiff and the
civil lieutenant, that although the superior had never learned Latin
she would reply in that language to all the questions addressed to
her, if such were their desire.  The magistrates answered that as
they were there in order to examine thoroughly into the facts of the
case, they begged the exorcists to give them every possible proof
that the possession was real.  Upon this, Mignon approached the
mother superior, and, having ordered everyone to be silent, placed
two of his fingers in her mouth, and, having gone through the form of
exorcism prescribed by the ritual, he asked the following questions
word for word as they are given,

D.  Why have you entered into the body of this young girl?
R.  Causa animositatis.       Out of enmity.
D.  Per quod pactum?          By what pact?
R.  Per flores.               By flowers.
D.  Quales?                   What flowers?
R.  Rosas.                    Roses.
D.  Quis misfit?              By whom wert thou sent?

At this question the magistrates remarked that the superior hesitated
to reply; twice she opened her mouth in vain, but the third time she
said in a weak voice

D.  Dic cognomen?             What is his surname?
R.  Urbanus.                  Urbain.

Here there was again the same hesitation, but as if impelled by the
will of the exorcist she answered--

R.  Grandier.                 Grandier.
D.  Dic qualitatem?           What is his profession?
R.  Sacerdos.                 A priest.
D.  Cujus ecclesiae?          Of what church?
R.  Sancti Petri.             Saint-Pierre.
D.  Quae persona attulit
    flores?                   Who brought the flowers?
R.  Diabolica.                Someone sent by the devil.


As the patient pronounced the last word she recovered her senses, and
having repeated a prayer, attempted to swallow a morsel of bread
which was offered her; she was, however, obliged to spit it out,
saying it was so dry she could not get it down.

Something more liquid was then brought, but even of that she could
swallow very little, as she fell into convulsions every few minutes.

Upon this the two officials, seeing there was nothing more to be got
out of the superior, withdrew to one of the window recesses and began
to converse in a low tone; whereupon Mignon, who feared that they had
not been sufficiently impressed, followed them, and drew their
attention to the fact that there was much in what they had just seen
to recall the case of Gaufredi, who had been put to death a few years
before in consequence of a decree of the Parliament of Aix, in
Provence.  This ill-judged remark of Mignon showed so clearly what
his aim was that the magistrates made no reply.  The civil lieutenant
remarked that he had been surprised that Mignon had not made any
attempt to find out the cause of the enmity of which the superior had
spoken, and which it was so important to find out; but Mignon excused
himself by saying that he had no right to put questions merely to
gratify curiosity.  The civil lieutenant was about to insist on the
matter being investigated, when the lay sister in her turn went into
a fit, thus extricating Mignon from his embarrassment.  The
magistrates approached the lay sister's bed at once, and directed
Mignon to put the same questions to her as to the superior: he did
so, but all in vain; all she would reply was, "To the other!  To the
other!"

Mignon explained this refusal to answer by saying that the evil
spirit which was in her was of an inferior order, and referred all
questioners to Ashtaroth, who was his superior.  As this was the only
explanation, good or bad, offered them by Mignon, the magistrates
went away, and drew up a report of all they had seen and heard
without comment, merely appending their signatures.

But in the town very few people showed the same discretion and
reticence as the magistrates.  The bigoted believed, the hypocrites
pretended to believe; and the worldly-minded, who were numerous,
discussed the doctrine of possession in all its phases, and made no
secret of their own entire incredulity.  They wondered, and not
without reason it must be confessed, what had induced the devils to
go out of the nuns' bodies for two days only, and then come back and
resume possession, to the confusion of the exorcists; further, they
wanted to know why the mother superior's devil spoke Latin, while the
lay sister's was ignorant of that tongue; for a mere difference of
rank in the hierarchy of hell did not seem a sufficient explanation
of such a difference in education; Mignon's refusal to go on with his
interrogations as to the cause of the enmity made them, they said,
suspect that, knowing he had reached the end of Ashtaroth's classical
knowledge, he felt it useless to try to continue the dialogue in the
Ciceronian idiom.  Moreover, it was well known that only a few days
before all Urbain's worst enemies had met in conclave in the village
of Puidardane; and besides, how stupidly Mignon had shown his hand by
mentioning Gaufredi, the priest who had been executed at Aix: lastly,
why had not a desire for impartiality been shown by calling in other
than Carmelite monks to be present at the exorcism, that order having
a private quarrel with Grandier?  It must be admitted that this way
of looking at the case was not wanting in shrewdness.

On the following day, October 12th, the bailiff and the civil
lieutenant, having heard that exorcisms had been again tried without
their having been informed beforehand, requested a certain Canon
Rousseau to accompany them, and set out with him and their clerk for
the convent.  On arriving, they asked for Mignon, and on his
appearance they told him that this matter of exorcism was of such
importance that no further steps were to be taken in it without the
authorities being present, and that in future they were to be given
timely notice of every attempt to get rid of the evil spirits.  They
added that this was all the more necessary as Mignon's position as
director of the sisterhood and his well-known hate for Grandier would
draw suspicions on him unworthy of his cloth, suspicions which he
ought to be the first to wish to see dissipated, and that quickly;
and that, therefore, the work which he had so piously begun would be
completed by exorcists appointed by the court.

Mignon replied that, though he had not the slightest objection to the
magistrates being present at all the exorcisms, yet he could not
promise that the spirits would reply to anyone except himself and
Barre.  Just at that moment Barre came on the scene, paler and more
gloomy than ever, and speaking with the air of a man whose word no
one could help believing, he announced that before their arrival some
most extraordinary things had taken place.  The magistrates asked
what things, and Barre replied that he had learned from the mother
superior that she was possessed, not by one, but by seven devils, of
whom Ashtaroth was the chief; that Grandier had entrusted his pact
with the devil, under the symbol of a bunch of roses, to a certain
Jean Pivart, to give to a girl who had introduced it into the convent
garden by throwing it over the wall; that this took place in the
night between Saturday and Sunday "hora secunda nocturna" (two hours
after midnight); that those were the very words the superior had
used, but that while she readily named Pivart, she absolutely refused
to give the name of the girl; that on asking what Pivart was; she had
replied, "Pauper magus" (a poor magician); that he then had pressed
her as to the word magus, and that she had replied "Magicianus et
civis" (magician and citizen); and that just as she said those words
the magistrates had arrived, and he had asked no more questions.

The two officials listened to this information with the seriousness
befitting men entrusted with high judicial functions, and announced
to the two priests that they proposed to visit the possessed women
and witness for themselves the miracles that were taking place.  The
clerics offered no opposition, but said they feared that the devils
were fatigued and would refuse to reply; and, in fact, when the
officials reached the sickroom the two patients appeared to have
regained some degree of calm.  Mignon took advantage of this quiet
moment to say mass, to which the two magistrates listened devoutly
and tranquilly, and while the sacrifice was being offered the demons
did not dare to move.  It was expected that they would offer some
opposition at the elevation of the Host, but everything passed off
without disturbance, only the lay sister's hands and feet twitched a
great deal; and this was the only fact which the magistrates thought
worthy of mention in their report for that morning.  Barre assured
them, however, that if they would return about three o'clock the
devils would probably have recovered sufficiently from their fatigue
to give a second performance.

As the two gentlemen had determined to see the affair to the end,
they returned to the convent at the hour named, accompanied by
Messire Irenee de Sainte-Marthe, sieur Deshurneaux; and found the
room in which the possessed were lying full of curious spectators;
for the exorcists had been true prophets--the devils were at work
again.

The superior, as always, was the more tormented of the two, as was
only to be expected, she having seven devils in her all at once; she
was terribly convulsed, and was writhing and foaming at the mouth as
if she were mad.  No one could long continue in such a condition
without serious injury to health; Barre therefore asked the devil-in-
chief how soon he would come out.  "Cras mane" (To-morrow morning),
he replied.  The exorcist then tried to hurry him, asking him why he
would not come out at once; whereupon the superior murmured the word
"Pactum" (A pact); and then "Sacerdos" (A priest), and finally
"Finis," or "Finit," for even those nearest could not catch the word
distinctly, as the devil, afraid doubtless of perpetrating a
barbarism, spoke through the nun's closely clenched teeth.  This
being all decidedly unsatisfying, the magistrates insisted that the
examination should continue, but the devils had again exhausted
themselves, and refused to utter another word.  The priest even tried
touching the superior's head with the pyx, while prayers and litanies
were recited, but it was all in vain, except that some of the
spectators thought that the contortions of the patient became more
violent when the intercessions of certain saints were invoked, as for
instance Saints Augustine Jerome, Antony, and Mary Magdalene.  Barre
next directed the mother superior to dedicate her heart and soul to
God, which she did without difficulty; but when he commanded her to
dedicate her body also, the chief devil indicated by fresh
convulsions that he was not going to allow himself to be deprived of
a domicile without resistance, and made those who had heard him say
that he would leave the next morning feel that he had only said so
under compulsion; and their curiosity as to the result became
heightened.  At length, however, despite the obstinate resistance of
the demon, the superior succeeded in dedicating her body also to God,
and thus victorious her features resumed their usual expression, and
smiling as if nothing had happened, she turned to Barre and said that
there was no vestige of Satan left in her.  The civil lieutenant then
asked her if she remembered the questions she had been asked and the
answers she had given, but she replied that she remembered nothing;
but afterwards, having taken some refreshment, she said to those
around her that she recollected perfectly how the first possession,
over which Mignon had triumphed, had taken place: one evening about
ten o'clock, while several nuns were still in her room, although she
was already in bed, it seemed to her that someone took her hand and
laid something in it, closing her fingers; at that instant she felt a
sharp pain as if she had been pricked by three pins, and hearing her
scream, the nuns came to her bedside to ask what ailed her.  She held
out her hand, and they found three black thorns sticking in it, each
having made a tiny wound.  Just as she had told this tale, the lay
sister, as if to prevent all commentary, was seized with convulsions,
and Barre recommenced his prayers and exorcisms, but was soon
interrupted by shrieks; for one of the persons present had seen a
black cat come down the chimney and disappear.  Instantly everyone
concluded it must be the devil, and began to seek it out.  It was not
without great difficulty that it was caught; for, terrified at the
sight of so many people and at the noise, the poor animal had sought
refuge under a canopy; but at last it was secured and carried to the
superior's bedside, where Barre began his exorcisms once more,
covering the cat with signs of the cross, and adjuring the devil to
take his true shape.  Suddenly the 'touriere', (the woman who
received the tradespeople,) came forward, declaring the supposed
devil to be only her cat, and she immediately took possession of it,
lest some harm should happen to it.

The gathering had been just about to separate, but Barry fearing that
the incident of the cat might throw a ridiculous light upon the evil
spirits, resolved to awake once more a salutary terror by announcing
that he was going to burn the flowers through which the second spell
had been made to work.  Producing a bunch of white roses, already
faded, he ordered a lighted brazier to be brought.  He then threw the
flowers on the glowing charcoal, and to the general astonishment they
were consumed without any visible effect: the heavens still smiled,
no peal of thunder was heard, and no unpleasant odour diffused itself
through the room.  Barre feeling that the baldness of this act of
destruction had had a bad effect, predicted that the morrow would
bring forth wondrous things; that the chief devil would speak more
distinctly than hitherto; that he would leave the body of the
superior, giving such clear signs of his passage that no one would
dare to doubt any longer that it was a case of genuine possession.
Thereupon the criminal lieutenant, Henri Herve, who had been present
during the exorcism, said they must seize upon the moment of his exit
to ask about Pivart, who was unknown at Loudun, although everyone who
lived there knew everybody else.  Barre replied in Latin, "Et hoc
dicet epuellam nominabit" (He will not only tell about him, but he
will also name the young girl).  The young girl whom the devil was to
name was, it may be recollected, she who had introduced the flowers
into the convent, and whose name the demon until now had absolutely
refused to give.  On the strength of these promises everyone went
home to await the morrow with impatience.




CHAPTER IV

That evening Grandier asked the bailiff for an audience.  At first he
had made fun of the exorcisms, for the story had been so badly
concocted, and the accusations were so glaringly improbable, that he
had not felt the least anxiety.  But as the case went on it assumed
such an important aspect, and the hatred displayed by his enemies was
so intense, that the fate of the priest Gaufredi, referred to by
Mignon, occurred to Urbain's mind, and in order to be beforehand with
his enemies he determined to lodge a complaint against them.  This
complaint was founded on the fact that Mignon had performed the rite
of exorcism in the presence of the civil lieutenant, the bailiff, and
many other persons, and had caused the nuns who were said to be
possessed, in the hearing of all these people, to name him, Urbain,
as the author of their possession.  This being a falsehood and an
attack upon his honour, he begged the bailiff, in whose hands the
conduct of the affair had been specially placed, to order the nuns to
be sequestered, apart from the rest of the sisterhood and from each
other, and then to have each separately examined.  Should there
appear to be any evidence of possession, he hoped that the bailiff
would be pleased to appoint clerics of well-known rank and upright
character to perform whatever exorcisms were needful; such men having
no bias against him would be more impartial than Mignon and his
adherents.  He also called upon the bailiff to have an exact report
drawn up of everything that took place at the exorcisms, in order
that, if necessary, he as petitioner might be able to lay it before
anyone to whose judgment he might appeal.  The bailiff gave Grandier
a statement of the conclusions at which he had arrived, and told him
that the exorcisms had been performed that day by Barre, armed with
the authority of the Bishop of Poitiers himself.  Being, as we have
seen, a man of common sense and entirely unprejudiced in the matter,
the bailiff advised Grandier to lay his complaint before his bishop;
but unfortunately he was under the authority of the Bishop of
Poitiers, who was so prejudiced against him that he had done
everything in his power to induce the Archbishop of Bordeaux to
refuse to ratify the decision in favour of Grandier, pronounced by
the presidial court.  Urbain could not hide from the magistrate that
he had nothing to hope for from this quarter, and it was decided that
he should wait and see what the morrow would bring forth, before
taking any further step.

The impatiently expected day dawned at last, and at eight o'clock in
the morning the bailiff, the king's attorney, the civil lieutenant,
the criminal lieutenant, and the provost's lieutenant, with their
respective clerks, were already at the convent.  They found the outer
gate open, but the inner door shut.  In a few moments Mignon came to
them and brought them into a waiting-room.  There he told them that
the nuns were preparing for communion, and that he would be very much
obliged to them if they would withdraw and wait in a house across the
street, just opposite the convent, and that he would send them word
when they could come back.  The magistrates, having first informed
Mignon of Urbain's petition, retired as requested.

An hour passed, and as Mignon did not summon them, in spite of his
promise, they all went together to the convent chapel, where they
were told the exorcisms were already over.  The nuns had quitted the
choir, and Mignon and Barre came to the grating and told them that
they had just completed the rite, and that, thanks to their
conjurations, the two afflicted ones were now quite free from evil
spirits.  They went on to say that they had been working together at
the exorcism from seven o'clock in the morning, and that great
wonders, of which they had drawn up an account, had come to pass; but
they had considered it would not be proper to allow any one else to
be present during the ceremony besides the exorcists and the
possessed.  The bailiff pointed out that their manner of proceedings
was not only illegal, but that it laid them under suspicion of fraud
and collusion, in the eyes of the impartial:  Moreover, as the
superior had accused Grandier publicly, she was bound to renew and
prove her accusation also publicly, and not in secret; furthermore,
it was a great piece of insolence on the part of the exorcists to
invite people of their standing and character to come to the convent,
and having kept them waiting an hour, to tell them that they
considered them unworthy to be admitted to the ceremony which they.
had been requested to attend; and he wound up by saying that he would
draw up a report, as he had already done on each of the preceding
days, setting forth the extraordinary discrepancy between their
promises and their performance.  Mignon replied that he and Barre had
had only one thing in view, viz. the expulsion of the, demons, and
that in that they had succeeded, and that their success would be of
great benefit to the holy Catholic faith, for they had got the demons
so thoroughly into their power that they had been able to command
them to produce within a week miraculous proofs of the spells cast on
the nuns by Urbain Grandier and their wonderful deliverance
therefrom; so that in future no one would be able to doubt as to the
reality of the possession.  Thereupon the magistrates drew up a
report of all that had happened, and of what Barre and Mignon had
said.  This was signed by all the officials present, except the
criminal lieutenant, who declared that, having perfect confidence in
the statements of the exorcists, he was anxious to do nothing to
increase the doubting spirit which was unhappily so prevalent among
the worldly.

The same day the bailiff secretly warned Urbain of the refusal of the
criminal lieutenant to join with the others in signing the report,
and almost at the same moment he learned that the cause of his
adversaries was strengthened by the adhesion of a certain Messire
Rene Memin, seigneur de Silly, and prefect of the town.  This
gentleman was held in great esteem not only on account of his wealth
and the many offices which he filled, but above all on account of his
powerful friends, among whom was the cardinal-duke himself, to whom
he had formerly been of use when the cardinal was only a prior.  The
character of the conspiracy had now become so alarming that Grandier
felt it was time to oppose it with all his strength.  Recalling his
conversation with the bailiff the preceding day, during which he had
advised him to lay his complaint before the Bishop of Poitiers, he
set out, accompanied by a priest of Loudun, named Jean Buron, for the
prelate's country house at Dissay.  The bishop, anticipating his
visit, had already given his orders, and Grandier was met by Dupuis,
the intendant of the palace, who, in reply to Grandier's request to
see the bishop, told him that his lordship was ill.  Urbain next
addressed himself to the bishop's chaplain, and begged him to inform
the prelate that his object in coming was to lay before him the
official reports which the magistrates had drawn up of the events
which had taken place at the Ursuline convent, and to lodge a
complaint as to the slanders and accusations of which he was the
victim.  Grandier spoke so urgently that the chaplain could not
refuse to carry his message; he returned, however, in a few moments,
and told Grandier, in the presence of Dupuis, Buron, and a certain
sieur Labrasse, that the bishop advised him to take his case to the
royal judges, and that he earnestly hoped he would obtain justice
from them.  Grandier perceived that the bishop had been warned
against him, and felt that he was becoming more and more entangled in
the net of conspiracy around him; but he was not a man to flinch
before any danger.  He therefore returned immediately to Loudun, and
went once more to the bailiff, to whom he related all that had
happened at Dissay; he then, a second time, made a formal complaint
as to the slanders circulated with regard to him, and begged the
magistrates to have recourse to the king's courts in the business.
He also said that he desired to be placed under the protection of the
king and his justice, as the accusations made against him were aimed
at his honour and his life.  The bailiff hastened to make out a
certificate of Urbain's protest, which forbade at the same time the
repetition of the slanders or the infliction on Urbain of any injury.

Thanks to this document, a change of parts took place: Mignon, the
accuser, became the accused.  Feeling that he had powerful support
behind him, he had the audacity to appear before the bailiff the same
day.  He said that he did not acknowledge his jurisdiction, as in
what concerned Grandier and himself, they being both priests, they
could only be judged by their bishop; he nevertheless protested
against the complaint lodged by Grandier, which characterised him as
a slanderer, and declared that he was ready to give himself up as a
prisoner, in order to show everyone that he did not fear the result
of any inquiry.  Furthermore, he had taken an oath on the sacred
elements the day before, in the presence of his parishioners who had
come to mass, that in all he had hitherto done he had been moved, not
by hatred of Grandier, but by love of the truth, and by his desire
for the triumph of the Catholic faith; and he insisted that the
bailiff should give him a certificate of his declaration, and served
notice of the same on Grandier that very day.




CHAPTER V

Since October 13th, the day on which the demons had been expelled,
life at the convent seemed to have returned to its usual quiet; but
Grandier did not let himself be lulled to sleep by the calm: he knew
those with whom he was contending too well to imagine for an instant
that he would hear no more of them; and when the bailiff expressed
pleasure at this interval of repose, Grandier said that it would not
last long, as the nuns were only conning new parts, in order to carry
on the drama in a more effective manner than ever.  And in fact, on
November 22nd, Rene Mannouri, surgeon to the convent, was sent to one
of his colleagues, named Gaspard Joubert, to beg him to come,
bringing some of the physicians of the town with him, to visit the
two sisters, who were again tormented by evil spirits.  Mannouri,
however, had gone to the wrong man, for Joubert had a frank and loyal
character, and hated everything that was underhand.  Being determined
to take no part in the business, except in a public and judicial
manner, he applied at once to the bailiff to know if it was by his
orders that he was called in.  The bailiff said it was not, and
summoned Mannouri before him to ask him by whose authority he had
sent for Joubert.  Mannouri declared that the 'touriere' had run in a
fright to his house, saying that the nuns had never been worse
possessed than now, and that the director, Mignon, begged him to come
at once to the convent, bringing with him all the doctors he could
find.

The bailiff, seeing that fresh plots against Grandier were being
formed, sent for him and warned him that Barre had come over from
Chinon the day before, and had resumed his exorcisms at the convent,
adding that it was currently reported in the town that the mother
superior and Sister Claire were again tormented by devils.  The news
neither astonished nor discouraged Grandier, who replied, with his
usual smile of disdain, that it was evident his enemies were hatching
new plots against him, and that as he had instituted proceedings
against them for the former ones, he would take the same course with
regard to these.  At the same time, knowing how impartial the bailiff
was, he begged him to accompany the doctors and officials to the
convent, and to be present at the exorcisms, and should any sign of
real possession manifest itself, to sequester the afflicted nuns at
once, and cause them to be examined by other persons than Mignon and
Barre, whom he had such good cause to distrust.

The bailiff wrote to the king's attorney, who, notwithstanding his
bias against Grandier, was forced to see that the conclusions arrived
at were correct, and having certified this in writing, he at once
sent his clerk to the convent to inquire if the superior were still
possessed.  In case of an affirmative reply being given, the clerk
had instructions to warn Mignon and Barre that they were not to
undertake exorcisms unless in presence of the bailiff and of such
officials and doctors as he might choose to bring with him, and that
they would disobey at their peril; he was also to tell them that
Grandier's demands to have the nuns sequestered and other exorcists
called in were granted.

Mignon and Barre listened while the clerk read his instructions, and
then said they refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the bailiff
in this case; that they had been summoned by the mother superior and
Sister Claire when their strange illness returned, an illness which
they were convinced was nothing else than possession by evil spirits;
that they had hitherto carried out their exorcisms under the
authority of a commission given them by the Bishop of Poitiers; and
as the time for which they had permission had not yet expired; they
would continue to exorcise as often as might be necessary.  They had,
however, given notice to the worthy prelate of what was going on, in
order that he might either come himself or send other exorcists as
best suited him, so that a valid opinion as to the reality, of the
possession might be procured, for up to the present the worldly and
unbelieving had taken upon themselves to declare in an off-hand
manner that the whole affair was a mixture of fraud and delusion, in
contempt of the glory of God and the Catholic religion.  As to the
rest of the message, they would not, in any way prevent the bailiff
and the other officials, with as many medical men as they chose to
bring, from seeing the nuns, at least until they heard from the
bishop, from whom they expected a letter next day.  But it was for
the nuns themselves to say whether it was convenient for them to
receive visitors; as far as concerned themselves, they desired to
renew their protest, and declared they could not accept the bailiff
as their judge, and did not think that it could be legal for them to
refuse to obey a command from their ecclesiastical superiors, whether
with relation to exorcism or any other thing of which the
ecclesiastical courts properly took cognisance.  The clerk brought
this answer to the bailiff, and he, thinking it was better to wait
for the arrival of the bishop or of fresh orders from him, put off
his visit to the convent until the next day.  But the next day came
without anything being heard of the prelate himself or of a messenger
from him.

Early in the morning the bailiff went to the convent, but was not
admitted; he then waited patiently until noon, and seeing that no
news had arrived from Dissay, and that the convent gates were still
closed against him, he granted a second petition of Grandier's, to
the effect that Byre and Mignon should be prohibited from questioning
the superior and the other nuns in a manner tending to blacken the
character of the petitioner or any other person.  Notice of this
prohibition was served the same day on Barre and on one nun chosen to
represent the community.  Barre did not pay the slightest attention
to this notice, but kept on asserting that the bailiff had no right
to prevent his obeying the commands of his bishop, and declaring that
henceforward he would perform all exorcisms solely under
ecclesiastical sanction, without any reference to lay persons, whose
unbelief and impatience impaired the solemnity with which such rites
should be conducted.

The best part of the day having gone over without any sign of either
bishop or messenger, Grandier presented a new petition to the
bailiff.  The bailiff at once summoned all the officers of the
bailiwick and the attorneys of the king, in order to lay it before
them; but the king's attorneys refused to consider the matter,
declaring upon their honour that although they did not accuse
Grandier of being the cause, yet they believed that the nuns were
veritably possessed, being convinced by the testimony of the devout
ecclesiastics in whose presence the evil spirits had come out.  This
was only the ostensible reason for their refusal, the real one being
that the advocate was a relation of Mignon's, and the attorney a son-
in-law of Trinquant's, to whose office he had succeeded.  Thus
Grandier, against whom were all the ecclesiastical judges, began to
feel as if he were condemned beforehand by the judges of the royal
courts, for he knew how very short was the interval between the
recognition of the possession as a fact and the recognition of
himself as its author.

Nevertheless, in spite of the formal declarations of the king's
advocate and attorney, the bailiff ordered the superior and the lay
sister to be removed to houses in town, each to be accompanied by a
nun as companion.  During their absence from the convent they were to
be looked after by exorcists, by women of high character and
position, as well as by physicians and attendants, all of whom he
himself would appoint, all others being forbidden access to the nuns
without his permission.

The clerk was again sent to the convent with a copy of this decision,
but the superior having listened to the reading of the document,
answered that in her own name and that of the sisterhood she refused
to recognise the jurisdiction of the bailiff; that she had already
received directions from the Bishop of Poitiers, dated 18th November,
explaining the measures which were to be taken in the matter, and she
would gladly send a copy of these directions to the bailiff, to
prevent his pleading ignorance of them; furthermore, she demurred to
the order for her removal, having vowed to live always secluded in a
convent, and that no one could dispense her from this vow but the
bishop.  This protest having been made in the presence of Madame de
Charnisay, aunt of two of the nuns, and Surgeon Mannouri, who was
related to another, they both united in drawing up a protest against
violence, in case the bailiff should insist on having his orders
carried out, declaring that, should he make the attempt, they would
resist him, as if he were a mere private individual.  This document
being duly signed and witnessed was immediately sent to the bailiff
by the hand of his own clerk, whereupon the bailiff ordered that
preparations should be made with regard to the sequestration, and
announced that the next day, the 24th November, he would repair to
the convent and be present at the exorcisms.

The next day accordingly, at the appointed hour, the bailiff summoned
Daniel Roger, Vincent de Faux, Gaspard Joubert, and Matthieu Fanson,
all four physicians, to his presence, and acquainting them with his
reasons for having called them, asked them to accompany him to the
convent to examine, with the most scrupulous impartiality, two nuns
whom he would point out, in order to discover if their illness were
feigned, or arose from natural or supernatural causes.  Having thus
instructed them as to his wishes, they all set out for the convent.

They were shown into the chapel and placed close to the altar, being
separated by a grating from the choir, in which the nuns who sang
usually sat.  In a few moments the superior was carried in on a small
bed, which was laid down before the grating.  Barre then said mass,
during which the superior went into violent convulsions.  She threw
her arms about, her fingers were clenched, her cheeks enormously
inflated, and her eyes turned up so that only the whites could be
seen.

The mass finished, Barre approached her to administer the holy
communion and to commence the exorcism.  Holding the holy wafer in
his hand, he said--

"Adora Deum tuum, creatorem tuum" (Adore God, thy Creator).

The superior hesitated, as if she found great difficulty in making
this act of love, but at length she said--

"Adoro te" (I adore Thee).

"Quem adoras?" (Whom dost thou adore?)

"Jesus Christus" (Jesus Christ), answered the nun, quite unconscious
that the verb adorn governs accusative.

This mistake, which no sixth-form boy would make, gave rise to bursts
of laughter in the church; and Daniel Douin, the provost's assessor,
was constrained to say aloud--

"There's a devil for you, who does not know much about transitive
verbs."

Barre perceiving the bad impression that the superior's nominative
had made, hastened to ask her--

"Quis est iste quem adoras?" (Who is it whom thou dost adore?)

His hope was that she would again reply "Jesus Christus," but he was
disappointed.

"Jesu Christe," was her answer.

Renewed shouts of laughter greeted this infraction of one of the most
elementary rules of syntax, and several of those present exclaimed:

"Oh, your reverence, what very poor Latin!"

Barre pretended not to hear, and next asked what was the name of the
demon who had taken possession of her.  The poor superior, who was
greatly confused by the unexpected effect of her last two answers,
could not speak for a long time; but at length with great trouble she
brought out the name Asmodee, without daring to latinise it.  The
exorcist then inquired how many devils the superior had in her body,
and to this question she replied quite fluently

"Sex" ( Six).

The bailiff upon this requested Barre to ask the chief devil how many
evil spirits he had with him.  But the need for this answer had been
foreseen, and the nun unhesitatingly returned

"Quinque" (Five).

This answer raised Asmodee somewhat in the opinion of those present;
but when the bailiff adjured the superior to repeat in Greek what she
had just said in Latin she made no reply, and on the adjuration being
renewed she immediately recovered her senses.

The examination of the superior being thus cut short, a little nun
who appeared for the first time in public was brought forward.  She
began by twice pronouncing the name of Grandier with a loud laugh;
then turning to the bystanders, called out--

"For all your number, you can do nothing worth while."

As it was easy to see that nothing of importance was to be expected
from this new patient, she was soon suppressed, and her place taken
by the lay sister Claire who had already made her debut in the mother
superior's room

Hardly had she entered the choir than she uttered a groan, but as
soon as they placed her on the little bed on which the other nuns had
lain, she gave way to uncontrollable laughter, and cried out between
the paroxysms

"Grandier, Grandier, you must buy some at the market."

Barre at once declared that these wild and whirling words were a
proof of possession, and approached to exorcise the demon; but Sister
Claire resisted, and pretending to spit in the face of the exorcist,
put out her tongue at him, making indecent gestures, using a word in
harmony with her actions.  This word being in the vernacular was
understood by everyone and required no interpretation.

The exorcist then conjured her to give the name of the demon who was
in her, and she replied

"Grandier."

But Barre by repeating his question gave her to understand that she
had made a mistake, whereupon she corrected herself and said

"Elimi."

Nothing in the world could induce her to reveal the number of evil
spirits by whom Elimi was accompanied, so that Barre, seeing that it
was useless to press her on this point, passed on to the next
question.

"Quo pacto ingressus est daemon"(By what pact did the demon get in?).

"Duplex" (Double), returned Sister Claire.

This horror of the ablative, when the ablative was absolutely
necessary, aroused once more the hilarity of the audience, and proved
that Sister Claire's devil was just as poor a Latin scholar as the
superior's, and Barre, fearing some new linguistic eccentricity on
the part of the evil spirit, adjourned the meeting to another day.

The paucity of learning shown in the answers of the nuns being
sufficient to convince any fairminded person that the whole affair
was a ridiculous comedy, the bailiff felt encouraged to persevere
until he had unravelled the whole plot.  Consequently, at three
o'clock in the afternoon, he returned to the convent, accompanied by
his clerk, by several magistrates, and by a considerable number of
the best known people of Loudun, and asked to see the superior.
Being admitted, he announced to Barre that he had come to insist on
the superior being separated from Sister Claire, so that each could
be exorcised apart.  Barre dared not refuse before such a great
number of witnesses, therefore the superior was isolated and the
exorcisms begun all over again.  Instantly the convulsions returned,
just as in the morning, only that now she twisted her feet into the
form of hooks, which was a new accomplishment.

Having adjured her several times, the exorcist succeeded in making
her repeat some prayers, and then sounded her as to the name and
number of the demons in possession, whereupon she said three times
that there was one called Achaos.  The bailiff then directed Barre to
ask if she were possessed 'ex pacto magi, aut ex Aura voluntate Dei'
(by a pact with a sorcerer or by the pure will of God), to which the
superior answered

"Non est voluutas Dei" (Not by the will of God).

Upon this, Barre dreading more questions from the bystanders, hastily
resumed his own catechism by asking who was the sorcerer.

"Urbanus," answered the superior.

"Est-ne Urbanus papa" (Is it Pope Urban?), asked the exorcist.

"Grandier," replied the superior.

"Quare ingressus es in corpus hujus puellae" (Why did you enter the
body of this maiden?), said Barre.

"Propter praesentiam tuum" (Because of your presence), answered the
superior.

At this point the bailiff, seeing no reason why the dialogue between
Barre and the superior should ever come to an end, interposed and
demanded that questions suggested by him and the other officials
present should be put to the superior, promising that if she answered
three of four such questions correctly, he, and those with him, would
believe in the reality of the possession, and would certify to that
effect.  Barre accepted the challenge, but unluckily just at that
moment the superior regained consciousness, and as it was already
late, everyone retired.




CHAPTER VI

The next day, November 25th, the bailiff and the majority of the
officers of the two jurisdictions came to the convent once more, and
were all conducted to the choir.  In a few moments the curtains
behind the grating were drawn back, and the superior, lying on her
bed, came to view.  Barre began, as usual, by the celebration of
mass, during which the superior was seized with convulsions, and
exclaimed two or three times, "Grandier!  Grandier!  false priest!"
When the mass was over, the celebrant went behind the grating,
carrying the pyx; then, placing it on his head and holding it there,
he protested that in all he was doing he was actuated by the purest
motives and the highest integrity; that he had no desire to harm
anyone on earth; and he adjured God to strike him dead if he had been
guilty of any bad action or collusion, or had instigated the nuns to
any deceit during the investigation.

The prior of the Carmelites next advanced and made the same
declaration, taking the oath in the same manner, holding the pyx over
his head; and further calling down on himself and his brethren the
curse of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram if they had sinned during this
inquiry.  These protestations did not, however, produce the salutary
effect intended, some of those present saying aloud that such oaths
smacked of sacrilege.

Barre hearing the murmurs, hastened to begin the exorcisms, first
advancing to the superior to offer her the holy sacrament: but as
soon as she caught sight of him she became terribly convulsed, and
attempted to drag the pyx from his hands.  Barre, however, by
pronouncing the sacred words, overcame the repulsion of the superior,
and succeeded in placing the wafer in her mouth; she, however, pushed
it out again with her tongue, as if it made her sick; Barge caught it
in his fingers and gave it to her again, at the same time forbidding
the demon to make her vomit, and this time she succeeded in partly
swallowing the sacred morsel, but complained that it stuck in her
throat.  At last, in order to get it down, Barge three times gave her
water to drink; and then, as always during his exorcisms, he began by
interrogating the demon.

"Per quod pactum ingressus es in corpus hujus puellae?" (By what pact
didst thou enter the body of this maiden?)

"Aqua" ( By water), said the superior.

One of those who had accompanied the bailiff was a Scotchman called
Stracan, the head of the Reformed College of Loudun.  Hearing this
answer, he called on the demon to translate aqua into Gaelic, saying
if he gave this proof of having those linguistic attainments which
all bad spirits possess, he and those with him would be convinced
that the possession was genuine and no deception.  Barre, without
being in the least taken aback, replied that he would make the demon
say it if God permitted, and ordered the spirit to answer in Gaelic.
But though he repeated his command twice, it was not obeyed; on the
third repetition the superior said--

"Nimia curiositas" (Too much curiosity), and on being asked again,
said--

"Deus non volo."

This time the poor devil went astray in his conjugation, and
confusing the first with the third person, said, "God, I do not
wish," which in the context had no meaning.  "God does not wish,"
being the appointed answer.

The Scotchman laughed heartily at this nonsense, and proposed to
Barre to let his devil enter into competition with the boys of his
seventh form; but Barre, instead of frankly accepting the challenge
in the devil's name, hemmed and hawed, and opined that the devil was
justified in not satisfying idle curiosity.

"But, sir, you must be aware," said the civil lieutenant, "and if you
are not, the manual you hold in your hand will teach you, that the
gift of tongues is one of the unfailing symptoms of true possession,
and the power to tell what is happening at a distance another."

"Sir," returned Barre, "the devil knows the language very well, but,
does not wish to speak it; he also knows all your sins, in proof of
which, if you so desire, I shall order him to give the list."

"I shall be delighted to hear it," said the civil lieutenant; "be so
good as to try the experiment."

Barre was about to approach the superior, when he was held back by
the bailiff, who remonstrated with him on the impropriety of his
conduct, whereupon Barre assured the magistrate that he had never
really intended to do as he threatened.

However, in spite of all Barre's attempts to distract the attention
of the bystanders from the subject, they still persisted in desiring
to discover the extent of the devil's knowledge of foreign languages,
and at their suggestion the bailiff proposed to Barre to try him in
Hebrew instead of Gaelic.  Hebrew being, according to Scripture, the
most ancient language of all, ought to be familiar to the demon,
unless indeed he had forgotten it.  This idea met with such general
applause that Barre was forced to command the possessed nun to say
aqua in Hebrew.  The poor woman, who found it difficult enough to
repeat correctly the few Latin words she had learned by rote, made an
impatient movement, and said--

"I can't help it; I retract" (Je renie).

These words being heard and repeated by those near her produced such
an unfavourable impression that one of the Carmelite monks tried to
explain them away by declaring that the superior had not said "Je
renie," but "Zaquay," a Hebrew word corresponding to the two Latin
words, "Effudi aquam" (I threw water about).  But the words "Je
renie" had been heard so distinctly that the monk's assertion was
greeted with jeers, and the sub-prior reprimanded him publicly as a
liar.  Upon this, the superior had a fresh attack of convulsions, and
as all present knew that these attacks usually indicated that the
performance was about to end, they withdrew, making very merry over a
devil who knew neither Hebrew nor Gaelic, and whose smattering of
Latin was so incorrect.

However, as the bailiff and civil lieutenant were determined to clear
up every doubt so far as they still felt any, they went once again to
the convent at three o'clock the same afternoon.  Barre came out to
meet them, and took them for a stroll in the convent grounds.  During
their walk he said to the civil lieutenant that he felt very much
surprised that he, who had on a former occasion, by order of the
Bishop of Poitiers, laid information against Grandier should be now
on his side.  The civil lieutenant replied that he would be ready to
inform against him again if there were any justification, but at
present his object was to arrive at the truth, and in this he felt
sure he should be successful.  Such an answer was very unsatisfactory
to Barre; so, drawing the bailiff aside, he remarked to him that a
man among whose ancestors were many persons of condition, several of
whom had held positions of much dignity in the Church, and who
himself held such an important judicial position, ought to show less
incredulity in regard to the possibility of a devil entering into a
human body, since if it were proved it would redound to the glory of
God and the good of the Church and of religion.  The bailiff received
this remonstrance with marked coldness, and replied that he hoped
always to take justice for his guide, as his duty commanded.  Upon
this, Barre pursued the subject no farther, but led the way to the
superior's apartment.

Just as they entered the room, where a large number of people were
already gathered, the superior, catching sight of the pyx which Barre
had brought with him, fell once more into convulsions.  Barre went
towards her, and having asked the demon as usual by what pact he had
entered the maiden's body, and received the information that it was
by water, continued his examination as follows:

"Quis finis pacti" (What is the object of this pact?)

"Impuritas" (Unchastity).

At these words the bailiff interrupted the exorcist and ordered him
to make the demon say in Greek the three words, 'finis, pacti,
impuritas'.  But the superior, who had once already got out of her
difficulties by an evasive answer, had again recourse to the same
convenient phrase, "Nimia curiositas," with which Barre agreed,
saying that they were indeed too much given to curiosity.  So the
bailiff had to desist from his attempt to make the demon speak Greek,
as he had before been obliged to give up trying to make him speak
Hebrew and Gaelic.  Barre then continued his examination.

"Quis attulit pactum?" (Who brought the pact?)

"Magus" (The sorcerer).

"Quale nomen magi?" (What is the sorcerer's name?)

"Urbanus" (Urban).

"Quis Urbanus?  Est-ne Urbanus papa?"

(What Urban?  Pope Urban?)

"Grandier."

"Cujus qualitatis?" (What is his profession?)

"Curcatus."


The enriching of the Latin language by this new and unknown word
produced a great effect on the audience; however, Barre did not pause
long enough to allow it to be received with all the consideration it
deserved, but went on at once.

"Quis attulit aquam pacti?" (Who brought the water of the pact?)

"Magus" (The magician).

"Qua hora?" (At what o'clock?)

"Septima" (At seven o'clock).

"An matutina?" (In the morning?)

"Sego" (In the evening).

"Quomodo intravit?" (How did he enter?)

"Janua" (By the door).

"Quis vidit?" (Who saw him?)

"Tres" (Three persons).

Here Barre stopped, in order to confirm the testimony of the devil,
assuring his hearers that the Sunday after the superior's deliverance
from the second possession he along with Mignon and one of the
sisters was sitting with her at supper, it being about seven o'clock
in the evening, when she showed them drops of water on her arm, and
no one could tell where they came from.  He had instantly washed her
arm in holy water and repeated some prayers, and while he was saying
them the breviary of the superior was twice dragged from her hands
and thrown at his feet, and when he stooped to pick it up for the
second time he got a box on the ear without being able to see the
hand that administered it.  Then Mignon came up and confirmed what
Barre had said in a long discourse, which he wound up by calling down
upon his head the most terrible penalties if every word he said were
not the exact truth.  He then dismissed the assembly, promising to
drive out the evil spirit the next day, and exhorting those present
to prepare themselves, by penitence and receiving the holy communion,
for the contemplation of the wonders which awaited them.




CHAPTER VII

The last two exorcisms had been so much talked about in the town,
that Grandier, although he had not been present, knew everything that
had happened, down to the smallest detail, so he once more laid a
complaint before the bailiff, in which he represented that the nuns
maliciously continued to name him during the exorcisms as the author
of their pretended possession, being evidently influenced thereto by
his enemies, whereas in fact not only had he had no communication
with them, but had never set eyes on them; that in order to prove
that they acted under influence it was absolutely necessary that they
should be sequestered, it being most unjust that Mignon and Barre,
his mortal enemies, should have constant access to them and be able
to stay with them night and day, their doing so making the collusion
evident and undeniable; that the honour of God was involved, and also
that of the petitioner, who had some right to be respected, seeing
that he was first in rank among the ecclesiastics of the town.

Taking all this into consideration, he consequently prayed the
bailiff to be pleased to order that the nuns buffering from the so-
called possession should at once be separated from each other and
from their present associates, and placed under the control of
clerics assisted by physicians in whose impartiality the petitioner
could have confidence; and he further prayed that all this should be
performed in spite of any opposition or appeal whatsoever (but
without prejudice to the right of appeal), because of the importance
of the matter.  And in case the bailiff were not pleased to order the
sequestration, the petitioner would enter a protest and complaint
against his refusal as a withholding of justice.

The bailiff wrote at the bottom of the petition that it would be at
once complied with.

After Urbain Grandier had departed, the physicians who had been
present at the exorcisms presented themselves before the bailiff,
bringing their report with them.  In this report they said that they
had recognised convulsive movements of the mother superior's body,
but that one visit was not sufficient to enable them to make a
thorough diagnosis, as the movements above mentioned might arise as
well from a natural as from supernatural causes; they therefore
desired to be afforded opportunity for a thorough examination before
being called on to pronounce an opinion.  To this end they required
permission to spend several days and nights uninterruptedly in the
same room with the patients, and to treat them in the presence of
other nuns and some of the magistrates.  Further, they required that
all the food and medicine should pass through the doctors' hands, and
that no one, should touch the patients except quite openly, or speak
to them except in an audible voice.  Under these conditions they
would undertake to find out the true cause of the convulsions and to
make a report of the same.

It being now nine o'clock in the morning, the hour when the exorcisms
began, the bailiff went over at once to the convent, and found Barre
half way through the mass, and the superior in convulsions.  The
magistrate entered the church at the moment of the elevation of the
Host, and noticed among the kneeling Catholics a young man called
Dessentier standing up with his hat on.  He ordered him either to
uncover or to go away.  At this the convulsive movements of the
superior became more violent, and she cried out that there were
Huguenots in the church, which gave the demon great power over her.
Barre asked her how many there were present, and she replied, "Two,"
thus proving that the devil was no stronger in arithmetic than in
Latin; for besides Dessentier, Councillor Abraham Gauthier, one of
his brothers, four of his sisters, Rene Fourneau, a deputy, and an
attorney called Angevin, all of the Reformed faith, were present.

As Barre saw that those present were greatly struck, by this
numerical inaccuracy, he tried to turn their thoughts in another
direction by asking the superior if it were true that she knew no
Latin.  On her replying that she did not know a single word, he held
the pyx before her and ordered her to swear by the holy sacrament.
She resisted at first, saying loud enough for those around her to
hear--

"My father, you make me take such solemn oaths that I fear God will
punish me."

To this Barre replied--

"My daughter, you must swear for the glory of God."

And she took the oath.

Just then one of the bystanders remarked that the mother superior was
in the habit of interpreting the Catechism to her scholars.  This she
denied, but acknowledged that she used to translate the Paternoster
and the Creed for them.  As the superior felt herself becoming
somewhat confused at this long series of embarrassing questions, she
decided on going into convulsions again, but with only moderate
success, for the bailiff insisted that the exorcists should ask her
where Grandier was at that very moment.  Now, as the ritual teaches
that one of the proofs of possession is the faculty of telling, when
asked, where people are, without seeing them, and as the question was
propounded in the prescribed terms, she was bound to answer, so she
said that Grandier was in the great hall of the castle.

"That is not correct," said the bailiff, "for before coming here I
pointed out a house to Grandier and asked him to stay in it till I
came back.  If anybody will go there, they will be sure to find him,
for he wished to help me to discover the truth without my being
obliged to resort to sequestration, which is a difficult measure to
take with regard to nuns."

Barre was now ordered to send some of the monks present to the
castle, accompanied by a magistrate and a clerk.  Barre chose the
Carmelite prior, and the bailiff Charles Chauvet, assessor of the
bailiwick, Ismael Boulieau a priest, and Pierre Thibaut, an articled
clerk, who all set out at once to execute their commission, while the
rest of those present were to await their return.

Meanwhile the superior, who had not spoken a word since the bailiff's
declaration, remained, in spite of repeated exorcisms, dumb, so Barre
sent for Sister Claire, saying that one devil would encourage the
other.  The bailiff entered a formal protest against this step,
insisting that the only result of a double exorcism would be to cause
confusion, during which suggestions might be conveyed to the
superior, and that the proper thing to do was, before beginning new
conjurations, to await the return of the messengers.  Although the
bailiff's suggestion was most reasonable, Barre knew better than to
adopt it, for he felt that no matter what it cost he must either get
rid of the bailiff and all the other officials who shared his doubts,
or find means with the help of Sister Claire to delude them into
belief.  The lay sister was therefore brought in, in spite of the
opposition of the bailiff and the other magistrates, and as they did
not wish to seem to countenance a fraud, they all withdrew, declaring
that they could no longer look on at such a disgusting comedy.  In
the courtyard they met their messengers returning, who told them they
had gone first to the castle and had searched the great hall and all
the other rooms without seeing anything of Grandier; they had then
gone to the house mentioned by the bailiff, where they found him for
whom they were looking, in the company of Pere Veret, the confessor
of the nuns, Mathurin Rousseau, and Nicolas Benoit, canons, and
Conte, a doctor, from whom they learned that Grandier had not been an
instant out of their sight for the last two hours.  This being all
the magistrates wanted to know, they went home, while their envoys
went upstairs and told their story, which produced the effect which
might be expected.  Thereupon a Carmelite brother wishing to weaken
the impression, and thinking that the devil might be more lucky in
his, second guess than the first, asked the superior where Grandier
was just then.  She answered without the slightest hesitation that he
was walking with the bailiff in the church of Sainte-Croix.  A new
deputation was at once sent off, which finding the church empty, went
on to the palace, and saw the bailiff presiding at a court.  He had
gone direct from the convent to the palace, and had not yet seen
Grandier.  The same day the nuns sent word that they would not
consent to any more exorcisms being performed in the presence of the
bailiff and the officials who usually accompanied him, and that for
the future they were determined to answer no questions before such
witnesses.

Grandier learning of this piece of insolence, which prevented the
only man on whose impartiality he could reckon from being
henceforward present at the exorcisms, once more handed in a petition
to the bailiff, begging for the sequestration of the two nuns, no
matter at what risk.  The bailiff, however, in the interests of the
petitioner himself, did not dare to grant this request, for he was
afraid that the ecclesiastical authorities would nullify his
procedure, on the ground that the convent was not under his
jurisdiction.

He, however, summoned a meeting of the principal inhabitants of the
town, in order to consult with them as to the best course to take for
the public good.  The conclusion they arrived at was to write to the
attorney-general and to the Bishop of Poitiers, enclosing copies of
the reports which had been drawn up, and imploring them to use their
authority to put an end to these pernicious intrigues.  This was
done, but the attorney-general replied that the matter being entirely
ecclesiastical the Parliament was not competent to take cognisance of
it.  As for the bishop, he sent no answer at all.

He was not, however, so silent towards Grandier's enemies; for the
ill-success of the exorcisms of November 26th having made increased
precautions necessary, they considered it would be well to apply to
the bishop for a new commission, wherein he should appoint certain
ecclesiastics to represent him during the exorcisms to come.  Barre
himself went to Poitiers to make this request.  It was immediately
granted, and the bishop appointed Bazile, senior-canon of Champigny,
and Demorans, senior canon of Thouars, both of whom were related to
some of Grandier's adversaries.  The following is a copy of the new
commission:

"Henri-Louis le Chataignier de la Rochepezai, by the divine will
Bishop of Poitiers, to the senior canons of the Chatelet de
Saint-Pierre de Thouars et de Champigny-sur-Vese, greeting:

"We by these presents command you to repair to the town of Loudun, to
the convent of the nuns of Sainte-Ursule, to be present at the
exorcisms which will be undertaken by Sieur Barre upon some nuns of
the said convent who are tormented by evil spirits, we having thereto
authorised the said Barre.  You are also to draw up a report of all
that takes place, and for this purpose are to take any clerk you may
choose with you.

" Given and done at Poitiers, November 28th, 1632.

"(Signed) HENRI LOUIS, Bishop of Poitiers.
"(Countersigned) By order of the said Lord Bishop,
"MICHELET"

These two commissioners having been notified beforehand, went to
Loudun, where Marescot, one of the queen's chaplains, arrived at the
same time; for the pious queen, Anne of Austria, had heard so many
conflicting accounts of the possession of the Ursuline nuns, that she
desired, for her own edification, to get to the bottom of the affair.
We can judge what importance the case was beginning to assume by its
being already discussed at court.

In spite of the notice which had been sent them that the nuns would
not receive them, the bailiff and the civil lieutenant fearing that
the royal envoy would allow himself to be imposed on, and would draw
up an account which would cast doubt on the facts contained in their
reports, betook themselves to the convent on December 1st, the day on
which the exorcisms were to recommence, in the presence of the new
commissioners.  They were accompanied by their assessor, by the
provost's lieutenant, and a clerk.  They had to knock repeatedly
before anyone seemed to hear them, but at length a nun opened the
door and told them they could not enter, being suspected of bad
faith, as they had publicly declared that the possession was a fraud
and an imposture.  The bailiff, without wasting his time arguing with
the sister, asked to see Barre, who soon appeared arrayed in his
priestly vestments, and surrounded by several persons, among whom was
the queen's chaplain.  The bailiff complained that admittance had
been refused to him and those with him, although he had been
authorised to visit the convent by the Bishop of Poitiers.  Barre'
replied that he would not hinder their coming in, as far as it
concerned him.

"We are here with the intention of entering," said the bailiff, "and
also for the purpose of requesting you to put one or two questions to
the demon which we have drawn up in terms which are in accordance
with what is prescribed in the ritual.  I am sure you will not
refuse," he added, turning with a bow to Marescot, "to make this
experiment in the presence of the queen's chaplain, since by that
means all those suspicions of imposture can be removed which are
unfortunately so rife concerning this business."

"In that respect I shall do as I please, and not as you order me,"
was the insolent reply of the exorcist.

"It is, however, your duty to follow legal methods in your
procedure," returned the bailiff, "if you sincerely desire the truth;
for it would be an affront to God to perform a spurious miracle in
His honour, and a wrong to the Catholic faith, whose power is in its
truth, to attempt to give adventitious lustre to its doctrines by the
aid of fraud and deception."

"Sir," said Barre, "I am a man of honour, I know my duty and I shall
discharge it; but as to yourself, I must recall to your recollection
that the last time you were here you left the chapel in anger and
excitement, which is an attitude of mind most unbecoming in one whose
duty it is to administer justice."

Seeing that these recriminations would have no practical result, the
magistrates cut them short by reiterating their demand for
admittance; and on this being refused, they reminded the exorcists
that they were expressly prohibited from asking any questions tending
to cast a slur on the character of any person or persons whatever,
under pain of being treated as disturbers of the public peace.  At
this warning Barre, saying that he did not acknowledge the bailiff's
jurisdiction, shut the door in the faces of the two magistrates.

As there was no time to lose if the machinations of his enemies were
to be brought to nought, the bailiff and the civil lieutenant advised
Grandier to write to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who had once already
extricated him from imminent danger, setting forth at length his
present predicament; this letter; accompanied by the reports drawn up
by the bailiff and the civil lieutenant, were sent off at once by a
trusty messenger to His Grace of Escoubleau de Sourdis.  As soon as
he received the despatches, the worthy prelate seeing how grave was
the crisis, and that the slightest delay might be fatal to Grandier,
set out at once for his abbey of Saint-Jouinles-Marmes, the place in
which he had already vindicated in so striking a manner the upright
character of the poor persecuted priest by a fearless act of justice.

It is not difficult to realise what a blow his arrival was to those
who held a brief for the evil spirits in possession; hardly had he
reached Saint-Jouin than he sent his own physician to the convent
with orders to see the afflicted nuns and to test their condition, in
order to judge if the convulsions were real or simulated.  The
physician arrived, armed with a letter from the archbishop, ordering
Mignon to permit the bearer to make a thorough examination into the
position of affairs.  Mignon received the physician with all the
respect due to him who sent him, but expressed great regret that he
had not come a little sooner, as, thanks to his (Mignon's) exertions
and those of Barre, the devils had been exorcised the preceding day.
He nevertheless introduced the archbishop's envoy to the presence of
the superior and Sister Claire, whose demeanour was as calm as if
they had never been disturbed by any agitating' experiences.
Mignon's statement being thus confirmed, the doctor returned to
Saint-Jouin, the only thing to which he could bear testimony being
the tranquillity which reigned at the moment in the convent.

The imposture being now laid so completely bare, the archbishop was
convinced that the infamous persecutions to which it had led would
cease at once and for ever; but Grandier, better acquainted with the
character of his adversaries, arrived on the 27th of December at the
abbey and laid a petition at the archbishop's feet.  In this document
he set forth that his enemies having formerly brought false and
slanderous accusations, against him of which, through the justice of
the archbishop, he had been able to clear himself, had employed
themselves during the last three months in inventing and publishing
as a fact that the petitioner had sent evil spirits into the bodies
of nuns in the Ursuline convent of Loudun, although he had never
spoken to any of the sisterhood there; that the guardianship of the
sisters who, it was alleged, were possessed, and the task of
exorcism, had been entrusted to Jean Mignon and Pierre Barre, who had
in the most unmistakable manner shown themselves to be the mortal
enemies of the petitioner; that in the reports drawn up by the said
Jean Mignon and Pierre Barre, which differed so widely from those
made by the bailiff and the civil lieutenant, it was boastfully
alleged that three or four times devils had been driven out, but that
they had succeeded in returning and taking possession of their
victims again and again, in virtue of successive pacts entered into
between the prince of darkness and the petitioner; that the aim of
these reports and allegations was to destroy the reputation of the
petitioner and excite public opinion against him; that although the
demons had been put to flight by the arrival of His Grace, yet it was
too probable that as soon as he was gone they would return to the
charge; that if, such being the case, the powerful support of the
archbishop were not available, the innocence of the petitioner, no
matter how strongly established, would by the cunning tactics of his
inveterate foes be obscured and denied: he, the petitioner, therefore
prayed that, should the foregoing reasons prove on examination to be
cogent, the archbishop would be pleased to prohibit Barre, Mignon,
and their partisans, whether among the secular or the regular clergy,
from taking part in any future exorcisms, should such be necessary,
or in the control of any persons alleged to be possessed;
furthermore, petitioner prayed that His Grace would be pleased to
appoint as a precautionary measure such other clerics and lay persons
as seemed to him suitable, to superintend the administration of food
and medicine and the rite of exorcism to those alleged to be
possessed, and that all the treatment should be carried out in the
presence of magistrates.

The archbishop accepted the petition, and wrote below it:

"The present petition having been seen by us and the opinion of our
attorney having been taken in the matter, we have sent the petitioner
in advance of our said attorney back to Poitiers, that justice may be
done him, and in the meantime we have appointed Sieur Barre, Pere
l'Escaye, a Jesuit residing in Poitiers, Pere Gaut of the Oratory,
residing at Tours, to conduct the exorcisms, should such be
necessary, and have given them an order to this effect.

"It is forbidden to all others to meddle with the said exorcisms, on
pain of being punished according to law."

It will be seen from the above that His Grace the Archbishop of
Bordeaux, in his enlightened and generous exercise of justice, had
foreseen and provided for every possible contingency; so that as soon
as his orders were made known to the exorcists the possession ceased
at once and completely, and was no longer even talked of.  Barre
withdrew to Chinon, the senior canons rejoined their chapters, and
the nuns, happily rescued for the time, resumed their life of
retirement and tranquillity.  The archbishop nevertheless urged on
Grandier the prudence of effecting an exchange of benefices, but he
replied that he would not at that moment change his simple living of
Loudun for a bishopric.




CHAPTER VIII

The exposure of the plot was most prejudicial to the prosperity of
the Ursuline community: spurious possession, far from bringing to
their convent an increase of subscriptions and enhancing their
reputation, as Mignon had promised, had ended for them in open shame,
while in private they suffered from straitened circumstances, for the
parents of their boarders hastened to withdraw their daughters from
the convent, and the nuns in losing their pupils lost their sole
source of income.  Their, fall in the estimation of the public filled
them with despair, and it leaked out that they had had several
altercations with their director, during which they reproached him
for having, by making them commit such a great sin, overwhelmed them
with infamy and reduced them to misery, instead of securing for them
the great spiritual and temporal advantages he had promised them.
Mignon, although devoured by hate, was obliged to remain quiet, but
he was none the less as determined as ever to have revenge, and as he
was one of those men who never give up while a gleam of hope remains,
and whom no waiting can tire, he bided his time, avoiding notice,
apparently resigned to circumstances, but keeping his eyes fixed on
Grandier, ready to seize on the first chance of recovering possession
of the prey that had escaped his hands.  And unluckily the chance
soon presented itself.

It was now 1633: Richelieu was at the height of his power, carrying
out his work of destruction, making castles fall before him where he
could not make heads fall, in the spirit of John Knox's words,
"Destroy the nests and the crows will disappear."  Now one of these
nests was the crenellated castle of Loudun, and Richelieu had
therefore ordered its demolition.

The person appointed to carry out this order was a man such as those
whom Louis XI. had employed fifty years earlier to destroy the feudal
system, and Robespierre one hundred and fifty years later to destroy
the aristocracy.  Every woodman needs an axe, every reaper a sickle,
and Richelieu found the instrument he required in de Laubardemont,
Councillor of State.

But he was an instrument full of intelligence, detecting by the
manner in which he was wielded the moving passion of the wielder, and
adapting his whole nature with marvellous dexterity to gratify that
passion according to the character of him whom it possessed; now by a
rough and ready impetuosity, now by a deliberate and hidden advance;
equally willing to strike with the sword or to poison by calumny, as
the man who moved him lusted for the blood or sought to accomplish
the dishonour of his victim.

M. de Laubardemont arrived at Loudun during the month of August 1633,
and in order to carry out his mission addressed himself to Sieur
Memin de Silly, prefect of the town, that old friend of the
cardinal's whom Mignon and Barre, as we have said, had impressed so
favourably.  Memin saw in the arrival of Laubardemont a special
intimation that it was the will of Heaven that the seemingly lost
cause of those in whom he took such a warm interest should ultimately
triumph.  He presented Mignon and all his friends to M. Laubardemont,
who received them with much cordiality.  They talked of the mother
superior, who was a relation, as we have seen, of M. de Laubardemont,
and exaggerated the insult offered her by the decree of the
archbishop, saying it was an affront to the whole family; and before
long the one thing alone which occupied the thoughts of the
conspirators and the councillor was how best to draw down upon
Grandier the anger of the cardinal-duke.  A way soon opened.

The Queen mother, Marie de Medici, had among her attendants a woman
called Hammon, to whom, having once had occasion to speak, she had
taken a fancy, and given a post near her person.  In consequence of
this whim, Hammon came to be regarded as a person of some importance
in the queen's household.  Hammon was a native of Loudun, and had
passed the greater part of her youth there with her own people, who
belonged to the lower classes.  Grandier had been her confessor, and
she attended his church, and as she was lively and clever he enjoyed
talking to her, so that at length an intimacy sprang up between them.
It so happened at a time when he and the other ministers were in
momentary disgrace, that a satire full of biting wit and raillery
appeared, directed especially against the cardinal, and this satire
had been attributed to Hammon, who was known to share, as was
natural, her mistress's hatred of Richelieu.  Protected as she was by
the queen's favour, the cardinal had found it impossible to punish
Hammon, but he still cherished a deep resentment against her.

It now occurred to the conspirators to accuse Grandier of being the
real author of the satire; and it was asserted that he had learned
from Hammon all the details of the cardinal's private life, the
knowledge of which gave so much point to the attack on him; if they
could once succeed in making Richelieu believe this, Grandier was
lost.

This plan being decided on, M. de Laubardemont was asked to visit the
convent, and the devils knowing what an important personage he was,
flocked thither to give him a worthy welcome.  Accordingly, the nuns
had attacks of the most indescribably violent convulsions, and M. de
Laubardemont returned to Paris convinced as to the reality of their
possession.

The first word the councillor of state said to the cardinal about
Urbain Grandier showed him that he had taken useless trouble in
inventing the story about the satire, for by the bare mention of his
name he was able to arouse the cardinal's anger to any height he
wished.  The fact was, that when Richelieu had been Prior of Coussay
he and Grandier had had a quarrel on a question of etiquette, the
latter as priest of Loudun having claimed precedence over the prior,
and carried his point.  The cardinal had noted the affront in his
bloodstained tablets, and at the first hint de Laubardemont found him
as eager to bring about Grandier's ruin as was the councillor
himself.

De Laubardemont was at once granted the following commission:

"Sieur de Laubardemont, Councillor of State and Privy Councillor,
will betake himself to Loudun, and to whatever other places may be
necessary, to institute proceedings against Grandier on all the
charges formerly preferred against him, and on other facts which have
since come to light, touching the possession by evil spirits of the
Ursuline nuns of Loudun, and of other persons, who are said like wise
to be tormented of devils through the evil practices of the said
Grandier; he will diligently investigate everything from the
beginning that has any bearing either on the said possession or on
the exorcisms, and will forward to us his report thereon, and the
reports and other documents sent in by former commissioners and
delegates, and will be present at all future exorcisms, and take
proper steps to obtain evidence of the said facts, that they may be
clearly established; and, above all, will direct, institute, and
carry through the said proceedings against Grandier and all others
who have been involved with him in the said case, until definitive
sentence be passed; and in spite of any appeal or countercharge this
cause will not be delayed (but without prejudice to the right of
appeal in other causes), on account of the nature of the crimes, and
no regard will be paid to any request for postponement made by the
said Grandier.  His majesty commands all governors, provincial
lieutenant-generals, bailiffs, seneschals, and other municipal
authorities, and all subjects whom it may concern, to give every
assistance in arresting and imprisoning all persons whom it may be
necessary to put under constraint, if they shall be required so to
do."

Furnished with this order, which was equivalent to a condemnation, de
Laubardemont arrived at Laudun, the 5th of December, 1633, at nine
o'clock in the evening; and to avoid being seen he alighted in a
suburb at the house of one maitre Paul Aubin, king's usher, and son-
in-law of Memin de Silly.  His arrival was kept so secret that
neither Grandier nor his friends knew of it, but Memin, Herve Menuau,
and Mignon were notified, and immediately called on him.  De
Laubardemont received them, commission in hand, but broad as it was,
it did not seem to them sufficient, for it contained no order for
Grandier's arrest, and Grandier might fly.  De Laubardemont, smiling
at the idea that he could be so much in fault, drew from his pocket
an order in duplicate, in case one copy should be lost, dated like
the commission, November 30th, signed LOUIS, and countersigned
PHILIPPEAUX.  It was conceived in the following terms:

LOUIS, etc. etc.
"We have entrusted these presents to Sieur de Laubardemont, Privy
Councillor, to empower the said Sieur de Laubardemont to arrest
Grandier and his accomplices and imprison them in a secure place,
with orders to all provosts, marshals, and other officers, and to all
our subjects in general, to lend whatever assistance is necessary to
carry out above order; and they are commanded by these presents to
obey all orders given by the said Sieur; and all governors and
lieutenants-general are also hereby commanded to furnish the said
Sieur with whatever aid he may require at their hands."

This document being the completion of the other, it was immediately
resolved, in order to show that they had the royal authority at their
back, and as a preventive measure, to arrest Grandier at once,
without any preliminary investigation.  They hoped by this step to
intimidate any official who might still be inclined to take
Grandier's part, and any witness who might be disposed to testify in
his favour.  Accordingly, they immediately sent for Guillaume Aubin,
Sieur de Lagrange arid provost's lieutenant.  De Laubardemont
communicated to him the commission of the cardinal and the order of
the king, and requested him to arrest Grandier early next morning.
M. de Lagrange could not deny the two signatures, and answered that
he would obey; but as he foresaw from their manner of going to work
that the proceedings about to be instituted would be an assassination
and not a fair trial, he sent, in spite of being a distant connection
of Memin, whose daughter was married to his (Lagrange's) brother, to
warn Grandier of the orders he had received.  But Grandier with his
usual intrepidity, while thanking Lagrange for his generous message,
sent back word that, secure in his innocence and relying on the
justice of God, he was determined to stand his ground.

So Grandier remained, and his brother, who slept beside him, declared
that his sleep that night was as quiet as usual.  The next morning he
rose, as was his habit, at six o'clock, took his breviary in his
hand, and went out with the intention of attending matins at the
church of Sainte-Croix.  He had hardly put his foot over the
threshold before Lagrange, in the presence of Memin, Mignon, and the
other conspirators, who had come out to gloat over the sight,
arrested him in the name of the king.  He was at once placed in the
custody of Jean Pouguet, an archer in His Majesty's guards, and of
the archers of the provosts of Loudun and Chinon, to be taken to the
castle at Angers.  Meanwhile a search was instituted, and the royal
seal affixed to the doors of his apartments, to his presses, his
other articles of furniture-in fact, to every thing and place in the
house; but nothing was found that tended to compromise him, except an
essay against the celibacy of priests, and two sheets of paper
whereon were written in another hand than his, some love-poems in the
taste of that time.




CHAPTER IX

For four months Grandier languished in prison, and, according to the
report of Michelon, commandant of Angers, and of Pierre Bacher, his
confessor, he was, during the whole period, a model of patience and
firmness, passing his days in reading good books or in writing
prayers and meditations, which were afterwards produced at his trial.
Meanwhile, in spite of the urgent appeals of Jeanne Esteye, mother of
the accused, who, although seventy years of age, seemed to recover
her youthful strength and activity in the desire to save her son,
Laubardemont continued the examination, which was finished on April
4th.  Urbain was then brought back from Angers to Loudun.

An extraordinary cell had been prepared for him in a house belonging
to Mignon, and which had formerly been occupied by a sergeant named
Bontems, once clerk to Trinquant, who had been a witness for the
prosecution in the first trial.  It was on the topmost story; the
windows had been walled up, leaving only one small slit open, and
even this opening was secured by enormous iron bars; and by an
exaggeration of caution the mouth of the fireplace was furnished with
a grating, lest the devils should arrive through the chimney to free
the sorcerer from his chains.  Furthermore, two holes in the corners
of the room, so formed that they were unnoticeable from within,
allowed a constant watch to be kept over Grandier's movements by
Bontem's wife, a precaution by which they hoped to learn something
that would help them in the coming exorcisms.  In this room, lying on
a little straw, and almost without light, Grandier wrote the
following letter to his mother:

"MY MOTHER,--I received your letter and everything you sent me except
the woollen stockings.  I endure any affliction with patience, and
feel more pity for you than for myself.  I am very much
inconvenienced for want of a bed; try and have mine brought to me,
for my mind will give way if my body has no rest: if you can, send me
a breviary, a Bible, and a St. Thomas for my consolation; and above
all, do not grieve for me.  I trust that, God will bring my innocence
to light.  Commend me to my brother and sister, and all our good
friends.--I am, mother, your dutiful son and servant,

"GRANDIER"


While Grandier had been in prison at Angers the cases of possession
at the convent had miraculously multiplied, for it was no longer only
the superior and Sister Claire who had fallen a prey to the evil
spirits, but also several other sisters, who were divided into three
groups as follows, and separated:--

The superior, with Sisters Louise des Anges and Anne de Sainte-Agnes,
were sent to the house of Sieur Delaville, advocate, legal adviser to
the sisterhood; Sisters Claire and Catherine de la Presentation were
placed in the house of Canon Maurat; Sisters Elisabeth de la Croix,
Monique de Sainte-Marthe, Jeanne du Sainte-Esprit, and Seraphique
Archer were in a third house.

A general supervision was undertaken by Memin's sister, the wife of
Moussant, who was thus closely connected with two of the greatest
enemies of the accused, and to her Bontems' wife told all that the
superior needed to know about Grandier.  Such was the manner of the
sequestration!

The choice of physicians was no less extraordinary.  Instead of
calling in the most skilled practitioners of Angers, Tours, Poitiers,
or Saumur, all of them, except Daniel Roger of Loudun, came from the
surrounding villages, and were men of no education: one of them,
indeed, had failed to obtain either degree or licence, and had been
obliged to leave Saumur in consequence; another had been employed in
a small shop to take goods home, a position he had exchanged for the
more lucrative one of quack.

There was just as little sense of fairness and propriety shown in the
choice of the apothecary and surgeon.  The apothecary, whose name was
Adam, was Mignon's first cousin, and had been one of the witnesses
for the prosecution at Grandier's first trial; and as on that
occasion--he had libelled a young girl of Loudun, he had been
sentenced by a decree of Parliament to make a public apology.  And
yet, though his hatred of Grandier in consequence of this humiliation
was so well known,--perhaps for that very reason, it was to him the
duty of dispensing and administering the prescriptions was entrusted,
no one supervising the work even so far as to see that the proper
doses were given, or taking note whether for sedatives he did not
sometimes substitute stimulating and exciting drugs, capable of
producing real convulsions.  The surgeon Mannouri was still more
unsuitable, for he was a nephew of Memin de Silly, and brother of the
nun who had offered the most determined opposition to Grandier's
demand for sequestration of the possessed sisters, during the second
series of exorcisms.  In vain did the mother and brother of the
accused present petitions setting forth the incapacity of the doctors
and the hatred of Grandier professed by the apothecary; they could
not, even at their own expense, obtain certified copies of any of
these petitions, although they had witnesses ready to prove that Adam
had once in his ignorance dispensed crocus metallorum for crocus
mantis--a mistake which had caused the death of the patient for whom
the prescription was made up.  In short, so determined were the
conspirators that this time Grandier should be done to death, that
they had not even the decency to conceal the infamous methods by
which they had arranged to attain this result.

The examination was carried on with vigour.  As one of the first
formalities would be the identification of the accused, Grandier
published a memorial in which he recalled the case of Saint-
Anastasius at the Council of Tyre, who had been accused of immorality
by a fallen woman whom he had never seen before.  When this woman
entered the hall of justice in order to swear to her deposition, a
priest named Timothy went up to her and began to talk to her as if he
were Anastasius; falling into the trap, she answered as if she
recognised him, and thus the innocence of the saint was shown forth.
Grandier therefore demanded that two or three persons of his own
height and complexion should be dressed exactly like himself, and
with him should be allowed to confront the nuns.  As he had never
seen any of them, and was almost certain they had never seen him,
they would not be able, he felt sure, to point him out with
certainty, in spite of the allegations of undue intimacy with
themselves they brought against him.  This demand showed such
conscious innocence that it was embarrassing to answer, so no notice
was taken of it.

Meanwhile the Bishop of Poitiers, who felt much elated at getting the
better of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who of course was powerless
against an order issued by the cardinal-duke, took exception to Pere
l'Escaye and Pere Gaut, the exorcists appointed by his superior, and
named instead his own chaplain, who had been judge at Grandier's
first trial, and had passed sentence on him, and Pere Lactance, a
Franciscan monk.  These two, making no secret of the side with which
they sympathised, put up on their arrival at Nicolas Moussant's, one
of Grandier's most bitter enemies; on the following day they went to
the superior's apartments and began their exorcisms.  The first time
the superior opened her lips to reply, Pere Lactance perceived that
she knew almost no Latin, and consequently would not shine during the
exorcism, so he ordered her to answer in French, although he still
continued to exorcise her in Latin; and when someone was bold enough
to object, saying that the devil, according to the ritual, knew all
languages living and dead, and ought to reply in the same language in
which he was addressed, the father declared that the incongruity was
caused by the pact, and that moreover some devils were more ignorant
than peasants.

Following these exorcists, and two Carmelite monks, named Pierre de
Saint-Thomas and Pierre de Saint-Mathurin, who had, from the very
beginning, pushed their way in when anything was going on, came four
Capuchins sent by Pere Joseph, head of the Franciscans, "His grey
Eminence," as he was called, and whose names were Peres Luc,
Tranquille, Potais, and Elisee; so that a much more rapid advance
could be made than hitherto by carrying on the exorcisms in four
different places at once--viz., in the convent, and in the churches
of Sainte-Croix, Saint-Pierre du Martroy, and Notre-Dame du Chateau.
Very little of importance took place, however, on the first two
occasions, the 15th and 16th of April; for the declarations of the
doctors were most vague and indefinite, merely saying that the things
they had seen were supernatural, surpassing their knowledge and the
rules of medicine.

The ceremony of the 23rd April presented, however, some points of
interest.  The superior, in reply to the interrogations of Pere
Lactance, stated that the demon had entered her body under the forms
of a cat, a dog, a stag, and a buck-goat.

"Quoties?" (How often?), inquired the exorcist.

"I didn't notice the day," replied the superior, mistaking the word
quoties for quando (when).

It was probably to revenge herself for this error that the superior
declared the same day that Grandier had on his body five marks made
by the devil, and that though his body was else insensible to pain,
he was vulnerable at those spots.  Mannouri, the surgeon, was
therefore ordered to verify this assertion, and the day appointed for
the verification was the 26th.

In virtue of this mandate Mannouri presented himself early on that
day at Grandier's prison, caused him to be stripped naked and cleanly
shaven, then ordered him to be laid on a table and his eyes bandaged.
But the devil was wrong again: Grandier had only two marks, instead
of five--one on the shoulder-blade, and the other on the thigh.

Then took place one of the most abominable performances that can be
imagined.  Mannouri held in his hand a probe, with a hollow handle,
into which the needle slipped when a spring was touched: when
Mannouri applied the probe to those parts of Grandier's body which,
according to the superior, were insensible, he touched the spring,
and the needle, while seeming to bury itself in the flesh, really
retreated into the handle, thus causing no pain; but when he touched
one of the marks said to be vulnerable, he left the needle fixed, and
drove it in to the depth of several inches.  The first time he did
this it drew from poor Grandier, who was taken unprepared, such a
piercing cry that it was heard in the street by the crowd which had
gathered round the door.  From the mark on the shoulder-blade with
which he had commenced, Mannouri passed to that on the thigh, but
though he plunged the needle in to its full depth Grandier uttered
neither cry nor groan, but went on quietly repeating a prayer, and
notwithstanding that Mannouri stabbed him twice more through each of
the two marks, he could draw nothing from his victim but prayers for
his tormentors.

M. de Laubardemont was present at this scene.

The next day the devil was addressed in such forcible terms that an
acknowledgment was wrung from him that Grandier's body bore, not
five, but two marks only; and also, to the vast admiration of the
spectators, he was able this time to indicate their precise
situation.

Unfortunately for the demon, a joke in which he indulged on this
occasion detracted from the effect of the above proof of cleverness.
Having been asked why he had refused to speak on the preceding
Saturday, he said he had not been at Loudun on that day, as the whole
morning he had been occupied in accompanying the soul of a certain Le
Proust, attorney to the Parliament of Paris, to hell.  This answer
awoke such doubts in the breasts of some of the laymen present that
they took the trouble to examine the register of deaths, and found
that no one of the name of Le Proust, belonging to any profession
whatever, had died on that date.  This discovery rendered the devil
less terrible, and perhaps less amusing.

Meantime the progress of the other exorcisms met with like
interruptions.  Pere Pierre de Saint Thomas, who conducted the
operations in the Carmelite church, asked one of the possessed
sisters where Grandier's books of magic were; she replied that they
were kept at the house of a certain young girl, whose name she gave,
and who was the same to whom Adam had been forced to apologise.  De
Laubardemont, Moussant, Herve, and Meunau hastened at once to the
house indicated, searched the rooms and the presses, opened the
chests and the wardrobes and all the secret places in the house, but
in vain.  On their return to the church, they reproached the devil
for having deceived them, but he explained that a niece of the young
woman had removed the books.  Upon this, they hurried to the niece's
dwelling, but unluckily she was not at home, having spent the whole
day at a certain church making her devotions, and when they went
thither, the priests and attendants averred that she had not gone out
all day; so notwithstanding the desire of the exorcists to oblige
Adam they were forced to let the matter drop.

These two false statements increased the number of unbelievers; but
it was announced that a most interesting performance would take place
on May 4th; indeed, the programme when issued was varied enough to
arouse general curiosity.  Asmodeus was to raise the superior two
feet from the ground, and the fiends Eazas and Cerberus, in emulation
of their leader, would do as much for two other nuns; while a fourth
devil, named Beherit, would go farther still, and, greatly daring,
would attack M. de Laubardemont himself, and, having spirited his
councillor's cap from his head, would hold it suspended in the air
for the space of a Misereye.  Furthermore, the exorcists announced
that six of the strongest men in the town would try to prevent the
contortions of the, weakest of the convulsed nuns, and would fail.

It need hardly be said that the prospect of such an entertainment
filled the church on the appointed day to overflowing.  Pere Lactance
began by calling on Asmodeus to fulfil his promise of raising the
superior from the ground.  She began, hereupon, to perform various
evolutions on her mattress, and at one moment it seemed as if she
were really suspended in the air; but one of the spectators lifted
her dress and showed that she was only standing on tiptoe, which,
though it might be clever, was not miraculous.  Shouts of laughter
rent the air, which had such an intimidating effect on Eazas and
Cerberus that not all the adjurations of the exorcists could extract
the slightest response.  Beherit was their last hope, and he replied
that he was prepared to lift up M. de Laubardemont's cap, and would
do so before the expiration of a quarter of an hour.

We must here remark that this time the exorcisms took place in the
evening, instead of in the morning as hitherto; and it was now
growing dark, and darkness is favourable to illusions.  Several of
the unbelieving ones present, therefore, began to call attention to
the fact that the quarter of an hour's delay would necessitate the
employment of artificial light during the next scene.  They also
noticed that M. de Laubardemont had seated himself apart and
immediately beneath one of the arches in the vaulted  roof, through
which a hole had been drilled for the passage of the bell-rope.  They
therefore slipped out of the church, and up into the belfry, where
they hid.  In a few moments a man appeared who began to work at
something.  They sprang on him and seized his wrists, and found in
one of his hands a thin line of horsehair, to one end of which a hook
was attached.  The holder being frightened, dropped the line and
fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the
spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise
into the air, it remained quite firm on the owner's head, to the no
small confusion of Pere Lactance, who, all unwitting of the fiasco,
continued to adjure Beherit to keep his word--of course without the
least effect.

Altogether, this performance of May 4th, went anything but smoothly.
Till now no trick had succeeded; never before had the demons been
such bunglers.  But the exorcists were sure that the last trick would
go off without a hitch.  This was, that a nun, held by six men chosen
for their strength, would succeed in extricating herself from their
grasp, despite their utmost efforts.  Two Carmelites and two
Capuchins went through the audience and selected six giants from
among the porters and messengers of the town.

This time the devil answered expectations by showing that if he was
not clever he was strong, for although the six men tried to hold her
down upon her mattress, the superior was seized with such terrible
convulsions that she escaped from their hands, throwing down one of
those who tried to detain her.  This experiment, thrice renewed,
succeeded thrice, and belief seemed about to return to the assembly,
when a physician of Saumur named Duncan, suspecting trickery, entered
the choir, and, ordering the six men to retire, said he was going to
try and hold the superior down unaided, and if she escaped from his
hands he would make a public apology for his unbelief.  M. de
Laubardemont tried to prevent this test, by objecting to Duncan as an
atheist, but as Duncan was greatly respected on account of his skill
and probity, there was such an outcry at this interference from the
entire audience that the commissioner was forced to let him have his
way.  The six porters were therefore dismissed, but instead of
resuming their places among the spectators they left the church by
the sacristy, while Duncan approaching the bed on which the superior
had again lain down, seized her by the wrist, and making certain that
he had a firm hold, he told the exorcists to begin.

Never up to that time had it been so clearly shown that the conflict
going on was between public opinion and the private aims of a few.  A
hush fell on the church; everyone stood motionless in silent
expectancy.

The moment Pere Lactance uttered the sacred words the convulsions of
the superior recommenced; but it seemed as if Duncan had more
strength than his six predecessors together, for twist and writhe and
struggle as she would, the superior's wrist remained none the less
firmly clasped in Duncan's hand.  At length she fell back on her bed
exhausted, exclaiming!"

"It's no use, it's no use!  He's holding me!"

Release her arm!  "shouted Pere Lactance in a rage.  "How can the
convulsions take place if you hold her that way?"

"If she is really possessed by a demon," answered Duncan aloud, "he
should be stronger than I; for it is stated in the ritual that among
the symptoms of possession is strength beyond one's years, beyond
one's condition, and beyond what is natural."

"That is badly argued," said Lactance sharply: "a demon outside the
body is indeed stronger than you, but when enclosed in a weak frame
such as this it cannot show such strength, for its efforts are
proportioned to the strength of the body it possesses."

"Enough!" said M. de Laubardemont; "we did not come here to argue
with philosophers, but to build up the faith of Christians."

With that he rose up from his chair amidst a terrible uproar, and the
assembly dispersed in the utmost disorder, as if they were leaving a
theatre rather than a church.

The ill success of this exhibition caused a cessation of events of
interest for some days.  The result was that a great number of
noblemen and other people of quality who had come to Loudun expecting
to see wonders and had been shown only commonplace transparent
tricks, began to think it was not worth while remaining any longer,
and went their several ways--a defection much bewailed by Pere
Tranquille in a little work which he published on this affair.

"Many," he says, "came to see miracles at Loudun, but finding the
devils did not give them the signs they expected, they went away
dissatisfied, and swelled the numbers of the unbelieving."

It was determined, therefore, in order to keep the town full, to
predict some great event which would revive curiosity and increase
faith.  Pere Lactance therefore announced that on the 20th of May
three of the seven devils dwelling in the superior would come out,
leaving three wounds in her left side, with corresponding holes in
her chemise, bodice, and dress.  The three parting devils were
Asmodeus, Gresil des Trones, and Aman des Puissances.  He added that
the superior's hands would be bound behind her back at the time the
wounds were given.

On the appointed day the church of Sainte-Croix was filled to
overflowing with sightseers curious to know if the devils would keep
their promises better this time than the last.  Physicians were
invited to examine the superior's side and her clothes; and amongst
those who came forward was Duncan, whose presence guaranteed the
public against deception; but none of the exorcists ventured to
exclude him, despite the hatred in which they held him--a hatred
which they would have made him feel if he had not been under the
special protection of Marshal Breze.  The physicians having completed
their examination, gave the following certificate:--

"We have found no wound in the patient's side, no rent in her
vestments, and our search revealed no sharp instrument hidden in the
folds of her dress."

These preliminaries having been got through, Pere Lactance questioned
her in French for nearly two hours, her answers being in the same
language.  Then he passed from questions to adjurations: on this,
Duncan came forward, and said a promise had been given that the
superior's hands should be tied behind her back, in order that there
might be no room for suspicion of fraud, and that the moment had now
arrived to keep that promise.  Pere Lactance admitted the justice of
the demand, but said as there were many present who had never seen
the superior in convulsions such as afflicted the possessed, it would
be only fair that she should be exorcised for their satisfaction
before binding her.  Accordingly he began to repeat the form of
exorcism, and the superior was immediately attacked by frightful
convulsions, which in a few minutes produced complete exhaustion, so
that she fell on her face to the ground, and turning on her left arm
and side, remained motionless some instants, after which she uttered
a low cry, followed by a groan.  The physicians approached her, and
Duncan seeing her take away her hand from her left side, seized her
arm, and found that the tips of her fingers were stained with blood.
They then examined her clothing and body, and found her dress,
bodice, and chemise cut through in three places, the cuts being less
than an inch long.  There were also three scratches beneath the left
breast, so slight as to be scarcely more than skin deep, the middle
one being a barleycorn in length; still, from all three a sufficient
quantity of blood had oozed to stain the chemise above them.

This time the fraud was so glaring that even de Laubardemont
exhibited some signs of confusion because of the number and quality
of the spectators.  He would not, however, allow the doctors to
include in their report their opinion as to the manner in which the
wounds were inflicted; but Grandier protested against this in a
Statement of Facts, which he drew up during the night, and which was
distributed next day.

It was as follows:

"That if the superior had not groaned the physicians would not have
removed her clothes, and would have suffered her to be bound, without
having the least idea that the wounds were already made; that then
the exorcists would have commanded the devils to come forth, leaving
the traces they had promised; that the superior would then have gone
through the most extraordinary contortions of which she was capable,
and have had a long fit of, convulsions, at the end of which she
would have been delivered from the three demons, and the wounds would
have been found in her body; that her groans, which had betrayed her,
had by God's will thwarted the best-laid plans of men and devils.
Why do you suppose," he went on to ask, "that clean incised wounds,
such as a sharp blade would make, 'were chosen for a token, seeing
that the wounds left by devils resemble burns?  Was it not because it
was easier for the superior to conceal a lancet with which to wound
herself slightly, than to conceal any instrument sufficiently heated
to burn her?  Why do you think the left side was chosen rather than
the forehead and nose, if not because she could not give herself a
wound in either of those places without being seen by all the
spectators?  Why was the left side rather than the right chosen, if
it were not that it was easier for the superior to wound herself with
her right hand, which she habitually used, in the left side than in
the right?  Why did she turn on her left side and arm and remain so
long in that position, if it were not to hide from the bystanders the
instrument with which she wounded herself?  What do you think caused
her to groan, in spite of all her resolution, if it were not the pain
of the wound she gave herself? for the most courageous cannot repress
a shudder when the surgeon opens a vein.  Why were her finger-tips
stained with blood, if it were not that the secreted blade was so
small that the fingers which held it could not escape being reddened
by the blood it caused to flow?  How came it that the wounds were so
superficial that they barely went deeper than the cuticle, while
devils are known to rend and tear demoniacs when leaving them, if it
were not that the superior did not hate herself enough to inflict
deep and dangerous wounds?"

Despite this logical protest from Grandier and the barefaced knavery
of the exorcist, M. de Laubardemont prepared a report of the
expulsion of the three devils, Asmodeus, Gresil, and Aman, from the
body of sister Jeanne des Anges, through three wounds below the
region of the heart; a report which was afterwards shamelessly used
against Grandier, and of which the memorandum still exists, a
monument, not so much of credulity and superstition, as of hatred and
revenge.  Pere Lactance, in order to allay the suspicions which the
pretended miracle had aroused among the eye-wittnesses, asked Balaam,
one of the four demons who still remained in the superior's body, the
following day, why Asmodeus and his two companions had gone out
against their promise, while the superior's face and hands were
hidden from the people.

"To lengthen the incredulity of certain people," answered Balaam.

As for Pere Tranquille, he published a little volume describing the
whole affair, in which, with the irresponsible frivolity of a true
Capuchin, he poked fun at those who could not swallow the miracles
wholesale.

"They had every reason to feel vexed," he said, "at the small
courtesy or civility shown by the demons to persons of their merit
and station; but if they had examined their consciences, perhaps they
would have found the real reason of their discontent, and, turning
their anger against themselves, would have done penance for having
come to the exorcisms led by a depraved moral sense and a prying
spirit."

Nothing remarkable happened from the 20th May till the 13th June, a
day which became noteworthy by reason of the superior's vomiting a
quill a finger long.  It was doubtless this last miracle which
brought the Bishop of Poitiers to Loudun, "not," as he said to those
who came to pay their respects to him, "to examine into the
genuineness of the possession, but to force those to believe who
still doubted, and to discover the classes which Urbain had founded
to teach the black art to pupils of both sexes."

Thereupon the opinion began to prevail among the people that it would
be prudent to believe in the possession, since the king, the
cardinal-duke, and the bishop believed in it, and that continued
doubt would lay them open to the charges of disloyalty to their king
and their Church, and of complicity in the crimes of Grandier, and
thus draw down upon them the ruthless punishment of Laubardemont.

"The reason we feel so certain that our work is pleasing to God is
that it is also pleasing to the king," wrote Pere Lactance.

The arrival of the bishop was followed by a new exorcism; and of this
an eye-witness, who was a good Catholic and a firm believer in
possession, has left us a written description, more interesting than
any we could give.  We shall present it to our readers, word for
word, as it stands:--

"On Friday, 23rd June 1634, on the Eve of Saint John, about 3 p.m.,
the Lord Bishop of Poitiers and M. de Laubardemont being present in
the church of Sainte-Croix of Loudun, to continue the exorcisms of
the Ursuline nuns, by order of M, de Laubardemont, commissioner,
Urbain Grandier, priest-in-charge, accused and denounced as a
magician by the said possessed nuns, was brought from his prison to
the said church.

"There were produced by the said commissioner to the said Urbain
Grandier four pacts mentioned several times by the said possessed
nuns at the preceding exorcisms, which the devils who possessed the
nuns declared they had made with the said Grandier on several
occasions: there was one in especial which Leviathan gave up on
Saturday the 17th inst., composed of an infant's heart procured at a
witches' sabbath, held in Orleans in 1631; the ashes of a consecrated
wafer, blood, etc., of the said Grandier,  whereby Leviathan asserted
he had entered the body of the sister, Jeanne des Anges, the superior
of the said nuns, and took possession of her with his coadjutors
Beherit, Eazas, and Balaam, on December 8th, 1632.  Another such pact
was composed of the pips of Grenada oranges, and was given up by
Asmodeus and a number of other devils.  It had been made to hinder
Beherit from keeping his promise to lift the commissioner's hat two
inches from his head and to hold it there the length of a Miseyere,
as a sign that he had come out of the nun.  On all these pacts being
shown to the said Grandier, he said, without astonishment, but with
much firmness and resolution, that he had no knowledge of them
whatever, that he had never made them, and had not the skill by which
to make them, that he had held no communication with devils, and knew
nothing of what they were talking about.  A report of all this being
made and shown to him, he signed it.

"This done, they brought all the possessed nuns, to the number of
eleven or twelve, including three lay sisters, also possessed, into
the choir of the said church, accompanied by a great many monks,
Carmelites, Capuchins, and Franciscans; and by three physicians and a
surgeon.  The sisters on entering made some wanton remarks, calling
Grandier their master, and exhibiting great delight at seeing him.

"Thereupon Pere Lactance and Gabriel, a Franciscan brother, and one
of the exorcists, exhorted all present with great fervour to lift up
their hearts to God and to make an act of contrition for the offences
committed against His divine majesty, and to pray that the number of
their sins might not be an obstacle to the fulfilment of the plans
which He in His providence had formed for the promotion of His glory
on that occasion, and to give outward proof of their heartfelt grief
by repeating the Confiteor as a preparation for the blessing of the
Lord Bishop of Poitiers.  This having been done, he went on to say
that the matter in question was of such moment and so important in
its relation to the great truths of the Roman Catholic Church, that
this consideration alone ought to be sufficient to excite their
devotion; and furthermore, that the affliction of these poor sisters
was so peculiar and had lasted so long, that charity impelled all
those who had the right to work for their deliverance and the
expulsion of the devils, to employ the power entrusted to them with
their office in accomplishing so worthy a task by the forms of
exorcism prescribed by the Church to its ministers; then addressing
Grandier, he said that he having been anointed as a priest belonged
to this number, and that he ought to help with all his power and with
all his energy, if the bishop were pleased to allow him to do so, and
to remit his suspension from authority.  The bishop having granted
permission, the Franciscan friar offered a stole to Grandier, who,
turning towards the prelate, asked him if he might take it.  On
receiving a reply in the affirmative, he passed it round his neck,
and on being offered a copy of the ritual, he asked permission to
accept it as before, and received the bishop's blessing, prostrating
himself at his feet to kiss them; whereupon the Veni Creator Spiritus
having been sung, he rose, and addressing the bishop, asked--

"'My lord, whom am I to exorcise?'"

The said bishop having replied--

"'These maidens.'

" Grandier again asked--

"'What maidens?'

"'The possessed maidens,' was the answer.

"'That is to say, my lord,' said he; "that I am obliged to believe in
the fact of possession.  The Church believes in it, therefore I too
believe; but I cannot believe that a sorcerer can cause a Christian
to be possessed unless the Christian consent.'

"Upon this, some of those present exclaimed that it was heretical to
profess such a belief; that the contrary was indubitable, believed by
the whole Church and approved by the Sorbonne.  To which he replied
that his mind on that point was not yet irrevocably made up, that
what he had said was simply his own idea, and that in any case he
submitted to the opinion of the whole body of which he was only a
member; that nobody was declared a heretic for having doubts, but
only for persisting in them, and that what he had advanced was only
for the purpose of drawing an assurance from the bishop that in doing
what he was about to do he would not be abusing the authority of the
Church.  Sister Catherine having been brought to him by the
Franciscan as the most ignorant of all the nuns, and the least open
to the suspicion of being acquainted with Latin, he began the
exorcism in the form prescribed by the ritual.  But as soon as he
began to question her he was interrupted, for all the other nuns were
attacked by devils, and uttered strange and terrible noises.  Amongst
the rest, Sister Claire came near, and reproached him for his
blindness and obstinacy, so that he was forced to leave the nun with
whom he had begun, and address his words to the said Sister Claire,
who during the entire duration of the exorcism continued to talk at
random, without paying any heed to Grandier's words, which were also
interrupted by the mother superior, to whom he of last gave
attention, leaving Sister Claire.  But it is to be noted that before
beginning to exorcise the superior, he said, speaking in Latin as
heretofore, that knowing she understood Latin, he would question her
in Greek.  To which the devil replied by the mouth of the possessed

"'Ah! how clever you are!  You know it was one of the first
conditions of our pact that I was not to answer in Greek.'

"Upon this, he cried, 'O pulchra illusio, egregica evasio!'
( O superb fraud, outrageous evasion!)

"He was then told that he was permitted to exorcise in Greek,
provided he first wrote down what he wished to say, and the superior
hereupon said that he should be answered in what language he pleased;
but it was impossible, for as soon as he opened his mouth all the
nuns recommenced their shrieks and paroxysms, showing unexampled
despair, and giving way to convulsions, which in each patient assumed
a new form, and persisting in accusing Grandier of using magic and
the black art to torment them; offering to wring his neck if they
were allowed, and trying to outrage his feelings in every possible
way.  But this being against the prohibitions of the Church, the
priests and monks present worked with the utmost zeal to calm the
frenzy which had seized on the nuns.  Grandier meanwhile remained
calm and unmoved, gazing fixedly at the maniacs, protesting his
innocence, and praying to God for protection.  Then addressing
himself to the bishop and M. de Laubardemont, he implored them by the
ecclesiastical and royal authority of which they were the ministers
to command these demons to wring his neck, or at least to put a mark
in his forehead, if he were guilty of the crime of which they accused
him, that the glory of God might be shown forth, the authority of the
Church vindicated, and himself brought to confusion, provided that
the nuns did not touch him with their hands.  But to this the bishop
and the commissioner would not consent, because they did not want to
be responsible for what might happen to him, neither would they
expose the authority of the Church to the wiles of the devils, who
might have made some pact on that point with Grandier.  Then the
exorcists, to the number of eight, having commanded the devils to be
silent and to cease their tumult, ordered a brazier to be brought,
and into this they threw the pacts one by one, whereupon the
convulsions returned with such awful violence and confused cries,
rising into frenzied shrieks, and accompanied by such horrible
contortions, that the scene might have been taken for an orgy of
witches, were it not for the sanctity of the place and the character
of those present, of whom Grandier, in outward seeming at least, was
the least amazed of any, although he had the most reason.  The devils
continued their accusations, citing the places, the days, and the
hours of their intercourse with him; the first spell he cast on them,
his scandalous behaviour, his insensibility, his abjurations of God
and the faith.  To all this he calmly returned that these accusations
were calumnies, and all the more unjust considering his profession;
that he renounced Satan and all his fiends, having neither knowledge
nor comprehension of them; that in spite of all he was a Christian,
and what was more, an anointed priest; that though he knew himself to
be a sinful man, yet his trust was in God and in His Christ; that he
had never indulged in such abominations, end that it would be
impossible to furnish any pertinent and convincing proof of his
guilt.

"At this point no words could express what the senses perceived; eyes
and ears received an impression of being surrounded by furies such as
had never been gathered together before; and unless accustomed to
such ghastly scenes as those who sacrifice to demons, no one could
keep his mind free from astonishment and horror in the midst of such
a spectacle.  Grandier alone remained unchanged through it all,
seemingly insensible to the monstrous exhibitions, singing hymns to
the Lord with the rest of the people, as confident as if he were
guarded by legions of angels.  One of the demons cried out that
Beelzebub was standing between him and Pere Tranquille the Capuchin,
upon which Grandier said to the demon--

"'Obmutescas!' (Hold thy peace).

"Upon this the demon began to curse, and said that was their
watchword; but they could not hold their peace, because God was
infinitely powerful, and the powers of hell could not prevail against
Him.  Thereupon they all struggled to get at Grandier, threatening to
tear him limb from limb, to point out his marks, to strangle him
although he was their master; whereupon he seized a chance to say he
was neither their master nor their servant, and that it was
incredible that they should in the same breath acknowledge him for
their master and express a desire to strangle him: on hearing this,
the frenzy of the nuns reached its height, and they kicked their
slippers into his face.

"'Just look!' said he; 'the shoes drop from the hoofs of their own
accord.'

"At length, had it not been for the help and interposition of people
in the choir, the nuns in their frenzy would have taken the life of
the chief personage in this spectacle; so there was no choice but to
take him away from the church and the furies who threatened his life.
He was therefore brought back to prison about six o'clock in the
evening, and the rest of the day the exorcists were employed in
calming the poor sisters--a task of no small difficulty."

Everyone did not regard the possessed sisters with the indulgent eye
of the author of the above narrative, and many saw in this terrible
exhibition of hysteria and convulsions an infamous and sacrilegious
orgy, at which revenge ran riot.  There was such difference of
opinion about it that it was considered necessary to publish the
following proclamation by means of placards on July 2nd:

"All persons, of whatever rank or profession, are hereby expressly
forbidden to traduce, or in any way malign, the nuns and other
persons at Loudun possessed by evil spirits; or their exorcists; or
those who accompany them either to the places appointed for exorcism
or elsewhere; in any form or manner whatever, on pain of a fine of
ten thousand livres, or a larger sum and corporal punishment should
the case so require; and in order that no one may plead ignorance
hereof, this proclamation will be read and published to-day from the
pulpits of all the churches, and copies affixed to the church doors
and in other suitable public places.

" Done at Loudun, July 2nd, 1634."

This order had great influence with worldly folk, and from that
moment, whether their belief was strengthened or not, they no longer
dared to express any incredulity.  But in spite of that, the judges
were put to shame, for the nuns themselves began to repent; and on
the day following the impious scene above described, just as Pere
Lactanee began to exorcise Sister Claire in the castle chapel, she
rose, and turning towards the congregation, while tears ran down her
cheeks, said in a voice that could be heard by all present, that she
was going to speak the truth at last in the sight of Heaven.
Thereupon she confessed that all that she had said during the last
fortnight against Grandier was calumnious and false, and that all her
actions had been done at the instigation of the Franciscan Pere
Lactance, the director, Mignon, and the Carmelite brothers.  Pere
Lactance, not in the least taken aback, declared that her confession
was a fresh wile of the devil to save her master Grandier.  She then
made an urgent appeal to the bishop and to M. de Laubardemont, asking
to be sequestered and placed in charge of other priests than those
who had destroyed her soul, by making her bear false witness against
an innocent man; but they only laughed at the pranks the devil was
playing, and ordered her to be at once taken back to the house in
which she was then living.  When she heard this order, she darted out
of the choir, trying to escape through the church door, imploring
those present to come to her assistance and save her from everlasting
damnation.  But such terrible fruit had the proclamation borne that
noon dared respond, so she was recaptured and taken back to the house
in which she was sequestered, never to leave it again.




CHAPTER X

The next day a still more extraordinary scene took place.  While M.
de Laubardemont was questioning one of the nuns, the superior came
down into the court, barefooted; in her chemise, and a cord round her
neck; and there she remained for two hours, in the midst of a fearful
storm, not shrinking before lightning, thunder, or rain, but waiting
till M. de Laubardemont and the other exorcists should come out.  At
length the door opened and the royal commissioner appeared, whereupon
Sister Jeanne des Anges, throwing herself at his feet, declared she
had not sufficient strength to play the horrible part they had made
her learn any longer, and that before God and man she declared Urbain
Grandier innocent, saying that all the hatred which she and her
companions had felt against him arose from the baffled desires which
his comeliness awoke--desires which the seclusion of conventional
life made still more ardent.  M. de Laubardemont threatened her with
the full weight of his displeasure, but she answered, weeping
bitterly, that all she now dreaded was her sin, for though the mercy
of the Saviour was great, she felt that the crime she had committed
could never be pardoned.  M. de Laubardemont exclaimed that it was
the demon who dwelt in her who was speaking, but she replied that the
only demon by whom she had even been possessed was the spirit of
vengeance, and that it was indulgence in her own evil thoughts, and
not a pact with the devil, which had admitted him into her heart.

With these words she withdrew slowly, still weeping, and going into
the garden, attached one end of the cord round her neck to the branch
of a tree, and hanged herself.  But some of the sisters who had
followed her cut her down before life was extinct.

The same day an order for her strict seclusion was issued for her as
for Sister Claire, and the circumstances that she was a relation of
M. de Laubardemont did not avail to lessen her punishment in view of
the gravity of her fault.

It was impossible to continue the exorcisms other nuns might be
tempted to follow the example, of the superior and Sister Claire, and
in that case all would be lost.  And besides, was not Urbain Grandier
well and duly convicted?  It was announced, therefore, that the
examination had proceeded far enough, and that the judges would
consider the evidence and deliver judgment.

This long succession of violent and irregular breaches of law
procedure, the repeated denials of his claim to justice, the refusal
to let his witnesses appear, or to listen to his defence, all
combined to convince Grandier that his ruin was determined on; for
the case had gone so far and had attained such publicity that it was
necessary either to punish him as a sorcerer and magician or to
render a royal commissioner, a bishop, an entire community of nuns,
several monks of various orders, many judges of high reputation, and
laymen of birth and standing, liable to the penalties incurred by
calumniators.  But although, as this conviction grew, he confronted
it with resignation, his courage did not fail,--and holding it to be
his duty as a man and a Christian to defend his life and honour to
the end, he drew up and published another memorandum, headed Reasons
for Acquittal, and had copies laid before his judges.  It was a
weighty and, impartial summing up of the whole case, such as a
stranger might have written, and began, with these words.

"I entreat you in all humility to consider deliberately and with
attention what the Psalmist says in Psalm 82, where he exhorts judges
to fulfil their charge with absolute rectitude; they being themselves
mere mortals who will one day have to appear before God, the
sovereign judge of the universe, to give an account of their
administration.  The Lord's Anointed speaks to you to-day who are
sitting in judgment, and says--

"'God standeth in the congregation of the mighty: He judgeth among
the gods.

"'How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the
wicked?

"'Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and
needy.

"'Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

"'I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most
High.

"'But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.'"

But this appeal, although convincing and dignified, had no influence
upon the commission; and on the 18th of August the following verdict
and sentence was pronounced:--

"We have declared, and do hereby declare, Urbain Grandier duly
accused and convicted of the crimes of magic and witchcraft, and of
causing the persons of certain Ursuline nuns of this town and of
other females to become possessed of evil spirits, wherefrom other
crimes and offences have resulted.  By way of reparation therefor, we
have sentenced, and do hereby sentence, the said Grandier to make
public apology, bareheaded, with a cord around his neck, holding a
lighted torch of two pounds weight in his hand, before the west door
of the church of Saint-Pierre in the Market Place and before--that of
Sainte-Ursule, both of this town, and there on bended knee to ask
pardon of God and the king and the law, and this done, to be taken to
the public square of Sainte-Croix and there to be attached to a
stake, set in the midst of a pile of wood, both of which to be
prepared there for this purpose, and to be burnt alive, along with
the pacts and spells which remain in the hands of the clerk and the
manuscript of the book written by the said Grandier against a
celibate priesthood, and his ashes, to be scattered to the four winds
of heaven.  And we have declared, and do hereby declare, all and
every part of his property confiscate to the king, the sum of one
hundred and fifty livres being first taken therefrom to be employed
in the purchase of a copper plate whereon the substance of the
present decree shall be engraved, the same to be exposed in a
conspicuous place in the said church of Sainte-Ursule, there to
remain in perpetuity; and before this sentence is carried out, we
order the said Grandier to be put to the question ordinary and
extraordinary, so that his accomplices may become known.

"Pronounced at Loudun against the said Grandier this 18th day of
August 1634."


On the morning of the day on which this sentence was passed, M. de
Laubardemont ordered the surgeon Francois Fourneau to be arrested at
his own house and taken to Grandier's cell, although he was ready to
go there of his own free will.  In passing through the adjoining room
he heard the voice of the accused saying:--

"What do you want with me, wretched executioner?  Have you come to
kill me?  You know how cruelly you have already tortured my body.
Well I am ready to die."

On entering the room, Fourneau saw that these words had been
addressed to the surgeon Mannouri.

One of the officers of the 'grand privot de l'hotel', to whom M. de
Laubardemont lent for the occasion the title of officer of the king's
guard, ordered the new arrival to shave Grandier, and not leave a
single hair on his whole body.  This was a formality employed in
cases of witchcraft, so that the devil should have no place to hide
in; for it was the common belief that if a single hair were left, the
devil could render the accused insensible to the pains of torture.
From this Urbain understood that the verdict had gone against him and
that he was condemned to death.

Fourneau having saluted Grandier, proceeded to carry out his orders,
whereupon a judge said it was not sufficient to shave the body of the
prisoner, but that his nails must also be torn out, lest the devil
should hide beneath them.  Grandier looked at the speaker with an
expression of unutterable pity, and held out his hands to Fourneau;
but Forneau put them gently aside, and said he would do nothing of
the kind, even were the order given by the cardinal-duke himself, and
at the same time begged Grandier's pardon for shaving him.  At, these
words Grandier, who had for so long met with nothing but barbarous
treatment from those with whom he came in contact, turned towards the
surgeon with tears in his eyes, saying--

"So you are the only one who has any pity for me."

"Ah, sir," replied Fourneau, "you don't see everybody."

Grandier was then shaved, but only two marks found on him, one as we
have said on the shoulder blade, and the other on the thigh.  Both
marks were very sensitive, the wounds which Mannouri had made not
having yet healed.  This point having been certified by Fourneau,
Grandier was handed, not his own clothes, but some wretched garments
which had probably belonged to some other condemned man.

Then, although his sentence had been pronounced at the Carmelite
convent, he was taken by the grand provost's officer, with two of his
archers, accompanied by the provosts of Loudun and Chinon, to the
town hall, where several ladies of quality, among them Madame de
Laubardemont, led by curiosity, were sitting beside the judges,
waiting to hear the sentence read.  M. de Laubardemont was in the
seat usually occupied by the clerk, and the clerk was standing before
him.  All the approaches were lined with soldiers.

Before the accused was brought in, Pere Lactance and another
Franciscan who had come with him exorcised him to oblige the devils
to leave him; then entering the judgment hall, they exorcised the
earth, the air, "and the other elements."  Not till that was done was
Grandier led in.

At first he was kept at the far end of the hall, to allow time for
the exorcisms to have their full effect, then he was brought forward
to the bar and ordered to kneel down.  Grandier obeyed, but could
remove neither his hat nor his skull-cap, as his hands were bound
behind his back, whereupon the clerk seized on the one and the
provost's officer on the other, and flung them at de Laubardemont's
feet.  Seeing that the accused fixed his eyes on the commissioner as
if waiting to see what he was about to do, the clerk said

"Turn your head, unhappy man, and adore the crucifix above the
bench."

Grandier obeyed without a murmur and with great humility, and
remained sunk in silent prayer for about ten minutes; he then resumed
his former attitude.

The clerk then began to read the sentence in a trembling voice, while
Grandier listened with unshaken firmness and wonderful tranquillity,
although it was the most terrible sentence that could be passed,
condemning the accused to be burnt alive the same day, after the
infliction of ordinary and extraordinary torture.  When the clerk had
ended, Grandier said, with a voice unmoved from its usual calm

"Messeigneurs, I aver in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, and the Blessed Virgin, my only hope, that I have never
been a magician, that I have never committed sacrilege, that I know
no other magic than that of the Holy Scriptures, which I have always
preached, and that I have never held any other belief than that of
our Holy Mother the Catholic Apostolic Church of Rome; I renounce the
devil and all his works; I confess my Redeemer, and I pray to be
saved through the blood of the Cross; and I beseech you,
messeigneurs, to mitigate the rigour of my sentence, and not to drive
my soul to despair."

The concluding words led de Laubardemont to believe that he could
obtain some admission from Grandier through fear of suffering, so he
ordered the court to be cleared, and, being left alone with Maitre
Houmain, criminal lieutenant of Orleans, and the Franciscans, he
addressed Grandier in a stern voice, saying there was only one way to
obtain any mitigation of his sentence, and that was to confess the
names of his accomplices and to sign the confession.  Grandier
replied that having committed no crime he could have no accomplices,
whereupon Laubardemont ordered the prisoner to be taken to the
torture chamber, which adjoined the judgment hall--an order which was
instantly obeyed.




CHAPTER XI

The mode of torture employed at Loudun was a variety of the boot, and
one of the most painful of all.  Each of the victim's legs below the
knee was placed between two boards, the two pairs were then laid one
above the other and bound together firmly at the ends; wedges were
then driven in with a mallet between the two middle boards; four such
wedges constituted ordinary and eight extraordinary torture; and this
latter was seldom inflicted, except on those condemned to death, as
almost no one ever survived it, the sufferer's legs being crushed to
a pulp before he left the torturer's bands.  In this case M. de
Laubardemont on his own initiative, for it had never been done
before, added two wedges to those of the extraordinary torture, so
that instead of eight, ten were to be driven in.

Nor was this all: the commissioner royal and the two Franciscans
undertook to inflict the torture themselves.

Laubardemont ordered Grandier to be bound in the usual manner, I and
then saw his legs placed between the boards.  He then dismissed the
executioner and his assistants, and directed the keeper of the
instruments to bring the wedges, which he complained of as being too
small.  Unluckily, there were no larger ones in stock, and in spite
of threats the keeper persisted in saying he did not know where to
procure others.  M. de Laubardemont then asked how long it would take
to make some, and was told two hours; finding that too long to wait,
he was obliged to put up with those he had.

Thereupon the torture began.  Pere Lactance having exorcised the
instruments, drove in the first wedge, but could not draw a murmur
from Grandier, who was reciting a prayer in a low voice; a second was
driven home, and this time the victim, despite his resolution, could
not avoid interrupting his devotions by two groans, at each of which
Pere Lactance struck harder, crying, "Dicas! dicas!" (Confess,
confess!), a word which he repeated so often and so furiously, till
all was over, that he was ever after popularly called "Pere Dicas."

When the second wedge was in, de Laubardemont showed Grandier his
manuscript against the celibacy of the priests, and asked if he
acknowledged it to be in his own handwriting.  Grandier answered in
the affirmative.  Asked what motive he had in writing it, he said it
was an attempt to restore peace of mind to a poor girl whom he had
loved, as was proved by the two lines written at the end--

    "Si ton gentil esprit prend bien cette science,
     Tu mettras en repos ta bonne conscience."

     [If thy sensitive mind imbibe this teaching,
     It will give ease to thy tender conscience]

Upon this, M. de Laubardemont demanded the girl's name; but Grandier
assured him it should never pass his lips, none knowing it but
himself and God.  Thereupon M. de Laubardemont ordered Pere Lactance
to insert the third wedge.  While it was being driven in by the
monk's lusty arm, each blow being accompanied by the word "'Dicas'!"
Grandier exclaimed--

"My God! they are killing me, and yet I am neither a sorcerer nor
sacrilegious!"

At the fourth wedge Grandier fainted, muttering--

"Oh, Pere Lactance, is this charity?"

Although his victim was unconscious, Pere Lactance continued to
strike; so that, having lost consciousness through pain, pain soon
brought him back to life.

De Laubardemont took advantage of this revival to take his turn at
demanding a confession of his crimes; but Grandier said--

"I have committed no crimes, sir, only errors.  Being a man, I have
often gone astray; but I have confessed and done penance, and believe
that my prayers for pardon have been heard; but if not, I trust that
God will grant me pardon now, for the sake of my sufferings."

At the fifth wedge Grandier fainted once more, but they restored him
to consciousness by dashing cold water in his face, whereupon he
moaned, turning to M. de Laubardemont

"In pity, sir, put me to death at once! I am only a man, and I cannot
answer for myself that if you continue to torture me so I shall not
give way to despair."

"Then sign this, and the torture shall cease," answered the
commissioner royal, offering him a paper.

"My father," said Urbain, turning towards the Franciscan, "can you
assure me on your conscience that it is permissible for a man, in
order to escape suffering, to confess a crime he has never
committed?"

"No," replied the monk; "for if he die with a lie on his lips he dies
in mortal sin."

"Go on, then," said Grandier; "for having suffered so much in my
body, I desire to save my soul."

As Pere Lactance drove in the sixth wedge Grandier fainted anew.

When he had been revived, Laubardemont called upon him to confess
that a certain Elisabeth Blanchard had been his mistress, as well as
the girl for whom he had written the treatise against celibacy; but
Grandier replied that not only had no improper relations ever existed
between them, but that the day he had been confronted with her at his
trial was the first time he had ever seen her.

At the seventh wedge Grandier's legs burst open, and the blood
spurted into Pere Lactance's face; but he wiped it away with the
sleeve of his gown.

"O Lord my God, have mercy on me!  I die!" cried Grandier, and
fainted for the fourth time.  Pere Lactance seized the opportunity to
take a short rest, and sat down.

When Grandier had once more come to himself, he began slowly to utter
a prayer, so beautiful and so moving that the provost's lieutenant
wrote it down; but de Laubardemont noticing this, forbade him ever to
show it to anyone.

At the eighth wedge the bones gave way, and the marrow oozed out of
the wounds, and it became useless to drive in any more wedges, the
legs being now as flat as the boards that compressed them, and
moreover Pere Lactance was quite worn out.

Grandier was unbound and laid upon the flagged floor, and while his
eyes shone with fever and agony he prayed again a second prayer--a
veritable martyr's prayer, overflowing with faith and enthusiasm; but
as he ended his strength failed, and he again became unconscious.
The provost's lieutenant forced a little wine between his lips, which
brought him to; then he made an act of contrition, renounced Satan
and all his works once again, and commended his soul to God.

Four men entered, his legs were freed from the boards, and the
crushed parts were found to be a mere inert mass, only attached to
the knees by the sinews.  He was then carried to the council chamber,
and laid on a little straw before the fire.

In a corner of the fireplace an Augustinian monk was seated.  Urbain
asked leave to confess to him, which de Laubardemont refused, holding
out the paper he desired to have signed once more, at which Grandier
said--

"If I would not sign to spare myself before, am I likely to give way
now that only death remains?"

"True," replied Laubardemont; "but the mode of your death is in our
hands: it rests with us to make it slow or quick, painless or
agonising; so take this paper and sign?"

Grandier pushed the paper gently away, shaking his head in sign of
refusal, whereupon de Laubardemont left the room in a fury, and
ordered Peres Tranquille and Claude to be admitted, they being the
confessors he had chosen for Urbain.  When they came near to fulfil
their office, Urbain recognised in them two of his torturers, so he
said that, as it was only four days since he had confessed to Pere
Grillau, and he did not believe he had committed any mortal sin since
then, he would not trouble them, upon which they cried out at him as
a heretic and infidel, but without any effect.

At four o'clock the executioner's assistants came to fetch him; he
was placed lying on a bier and carried out in that position.  On the
way he met the criminal lieutenant of Orleans, who once more exhorted
him to confess his crimes openly; but Grandier replied--

"Alas, sir, I have avowed them all; I have kept nothing back."

"Do you desire me to have masses said for you?" continued the
lieutenant.

"I not only desire it, but I beg for it as a great favour," said
Urbain.

A lighted torch was then placed in his hand: as the procession
started he pressed the torch to his lips; he looked on all whom he
met with modest confidence, and begged those whom he knew to
intercede with God for him.  On the threshold of the door his
sentence was read to him, and he was then placed in a small cart and
driven to the church of St. Pierre in the market-place.  There he was
awaited by M. de Laubardemont, who ordered him to alight.  As he
could not stand on his mangled limbs, he was pushed out, and fell
first on his knees and then on his face.  In this position he
remained patiently waiting to be lifted.  He was carried to the top
of the steps and laid down, while his sentence was read to him once
more, and just as it was finished, his confessor, who had not been
allowed to see him for four days, forced a way through the crowd and
threw himself into Grandier's arms.  At first tears choked Pere
Grillau's voice, but at last he said, "Remember, sir, that our
Saviour Jesus Christ ascended to His Father through the agony of the
Cross: you are a wise man, do not give way now and lose everything.
I bring you your mother's blessing; she and I never cease to pray
that God may have mercy on you and receive you into Paradise."

These words seemed to inspire Grandier with new strength; he lifted
his head, which pain had bowed, and raising his eyes to heaven,
murmured a short prayer.  Then turning towards the worthy, friar, he
said--

"Be a son to my mother; pray to God for me constantly; ask all our
good friars to pray for my soul; my one consolation is that I die
innocent.  I trust that God in His mercy may receive me into
Paradise."

"Is there nothing else I can do for you?" asked Pere Grillau.

"Alas, my father!" replied Grandier, "I am condemned to die a most
cruel death; ask the executioner if there is no way of shortening
what I must undergo."

"I go at once," said the friar; and giving him absolution in
'articulo mortis', he went down the steps, and while Grandier was
making his confession aloud the good monk drew the executioner aside
and asked if there were no possibility of alleviating the death-agony
by means of a shirt dipped in brimstone.  The executioner answered
that as the sentence expressly stated that Grandier was to be burnt
alive, he could not employ an expedient so sure to be discovered as
that; but that if the friar would give him thirty crowns he would
undertake to strangle Grandier while he was kindling the pile.  Pere
Grillau gave him the money, and the executioner provided himself with
a rope.  The Franciscan then placed himself where he could speak to
his penitent as he passed, and as he embraced him for the last time,
whispered to him what he had arranged with the executioner, whereupon
Grandier turned towards the latter and said in a tone of deep
gratitude--

"Thanks, my brother."

At that moment, the archers having driven away Pere Grillau, by order
of M. de Laubardemont, by beating him with their halberts, the
procession resumed its march, to go through the same ceremony at the
Ursuline church, and from there to proceed to the square of Sainte-
Croix.  On the way Urbain met and recognised Moussant, who was
accompanied by his wife, and turning towards him, said--

"I die your debtor, and if I have ever said a word that could offend
you I ask you to forgive me."

When the place of execution was reached, the provost's lieutenant
approached Grandier and asked his forgiveness.

"You have not offended me," was the reply; "you have only done what
your duty obliged you to do."

The executioner then came forward and removed the back board of the
cart, and ordered his assistants to carry Grandier to where the pile
was prepared.  As he was unable to stand, he was attached to the
stake by an iron hoop passed round his body.  At that moment a flock
of pigeons seemed to fall from the sky, and, fearless of the crowd,
which was so great that the archers could not succeed even by blows
of their weapons in clearing a way for the magistrates, began to fly
around Grandier, while one, as white as the driven snow, alighted on
the summit of the stake, just above his head.  Those who believed in
possession exclaimed that they were only a band of devils come to
seek their master, but there were many who muttered that devils were
not wont to assume such a form, and who persisted in believing that
the doves had come in default of men to bear witness to Grandier's
innocence.

In trying next day to combat this impression, a monk asserted that he
had seen a huge fly buzzing round Grandier's head, and as Beelzebub
meant in Hebrew, as he said, the god of flies, it was quite evident
that it was that demon himself who, taking upon him the form of one
of his subjects, had come to carry off the magician's soul.

When everything was prepared, the executioner passed the rope by
which he meant to strangle him round Grandier's neck; then the
priests exorcised the earth, air, and wood, and again demanded of
their victim if he would not publicly confess his crimes.  Urbain
replied that he had nothing to say, but that he hoped through the
martyr's death he was about to die to be that day with Christ in
Paradise.

The clerk then read his sentence to him for the fourth time, and
asked if he persisted in what he said under torture.

"Most certainly I do," said Urbain; "for it was the exact truth."

Upon this, the clerk withdrew, first informing Grandier that if he
had anything to say to the people he was at liberty to speak.

But this was just what the exorcists did not want: they knew
Grandier's eloquence and courage, and a firm, unshaken denial at the
moment of death would be most prejudicial to their interests.  As
soon, therefore, as Grandier opened his lips to speak, they dashed
such a quantity of holy water in his face that it took away his
breath.  It was but for a moment, however, and he recovered himself,
and again endeavoured to speak, a monk stooped down and stifled the
words by kissing him on the lips.  Grandier, guessing his intention,
said loud enough for those next the pile to hear, "That was the kiss
of Judas!"

At these words the monks become so enraged that one of them struck
Grandier three times in the face with a crucifix, while he appeared
to be giving it him to kiss; but by the blood that flowed from his
nose and lips at the third blow those standing near perceived the
truth: all Grandier could do was to call out that he asked for a
Salve Regina and an Ave Maria, which many began at once to repeat,
whilst he with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven commended
himself to God and the Virgin.  The exorcists then made one more
effort to get him to confess publicly, but he exclaimed--

"My fathers, I have said all I had to say; I hope in God and in His
mercy."

At this refusal the anger of the exorcists surpassed all bounds, and
Pere Lactance, taking a twist of straw, dipped it in a bucket of
pitch which was standing beside the pile, and lighting it at a torch,
thrust it into his face, crying--

"Miserable wretch! will nothing force you to confess your crimes and
renounce the devil?"

"I do not belong to the devil," said Grandier, pushing away the straw
with his hands; "I have renounced the devil, I now renounce him and
all his works again, and I pray that God may have mercy on me."

At this, without waiting for the signal from the provost's
lieutenant, Pere Lactance poured the bucket of pitch on one corner of
the pile of wood and set fire to it, upon which Grandier called the
executioner to his aid, who, hastening up, tried in vain to strangle
him, while the flames spread apace.

"Ah! my brother," said the sufferer, "is this the way you keep your
promise?"

"It's not my fault," answered the executioner; "the monks have
knotted the cord, so that the noose cannot slip."

"Oh, Father Lactance!  Father Lactance!  have you no charity?" cried
Grandier.

The executioner by this time was forced by the increasing heat to
jump down from the pile, being indeed almost overcome; and seeing
this, Grandier stretched forth a hand into the flames, and said--

"Pere Lactance, God in heaven will judge between thee and me; I
summon thee to appear before Him in thirty days."

Grandier was then seen to make attempts to strangle himself, but
either because it was impossible, or because he felt it would be
wrong to end his life by his own hands, he desisted, and clasping his
hands, prayed aloud--

"Deus meus, ad te vigilo, miserere me."

A Capuchin fearing that he would have time to say more, approached
the pile from the side which had not yet caught fire, and dashed the
remainder of the holy water in his face.  This caused such smoke that
Grandier was hidden for a moment from the eyes of the spectators;
when it cleared away, it was seen that his clothes were now alight;
his voice could still be heard from the midst of the flames raised in
prayer; then three times, each time in a weaker voice, he pronounced
the name of Jesus, and giving one cry, his head fell forward on his
breast.

At that moment the pigeons which had till then never ceased to circle
round the stake, flew away, and were lost in the clouds.

Urbain Grandier had given up the ghost.




CHAPTER XII

This time it was not the man who was executed who was guilty, but the
executioners; consequently we feel sure that our readers will be
anxious to learn something of their fate.

Pere Lactance died in the most terrible agony on September 18th,
1634, exactly a month from the date of Grandier's death.  His
brother-monks considered that this was due to the vengeance of Satan;
but others were not wanting who said, remembering the summons uttered
by Grandier, that it was rather due to the justice of God.  Several
attendant circumstances seemed to favour the latter opinion.  The
author of the History of the Devils of Loudzin gives an account of
one of these circumstances, for the authenticity of which he vouches,
and from which we extract the following:

"Some days after the execution of Grandier, Pere Lactance fell ill of
the disease of which he died.  Feeling that it was of supernatural
origin, he determined to take a pilgrimage to Notre Dame des
Andilliers de Saumur, where many miracles were wrought, and which was
held in high estimation in the neighbourhood.  A place in the
carriage of the Sieur de Canaye was offered him for the journey; for
this gentleman, accompanied by a large party on pleasure bent, was
just then setting out for his estate of Grand Fonds, which lay in the
same direction.  The reason for the offer was that Canaye and his
friends, having heard that the last words of Grandier had affected
Pere Lactance's mind, expected to find a great deal of amusement in
exciting the terrors of their travelling-companion.  And in truth,
for a day or two, the boon companions sharpened their wits at the
expense of the worthy monk, when all at once, on a good road and
without apparent cause, the carriage overturned.  Though no one was
hurt, the accident appeared so strange to the pleasure-seekers that
it put an end to the jokes of even the boldest among them.  Pere
Lactance himself appeared melancholy and preoccupied, and that
evening at supper refused to eat, repeating over and over again--

"'It was wrong of me to deny Grandier the confessor he asked for; God
is punishing me, God is punishing me!'

"On the following morning the journey was resumed, but the evident
distress of mind under which Pere Lactance laboured had so damped the
spirits of the party that all their gaiety had disappeared.
Suddenly, just outside Fenet, where the road was in excellent
condition and no obstacle to their progress apparent, the carriage
upset for the second time.  Although again no one was hurt, the
travellers felt that there was among them someone against whom God's
anger was turned, and their suspicions pointing to Pere Lactance,
they went on their way, leaving him behind, and feeling very
uncomfortable at the thought that they had spent two or three days in
his society.

"Pere Lactance at last reached Notre-Dame des Andilliers; but however
numerous were the miracles there performed, the remission of the doom
pronounced by the martyr on Pere Lactance was not added to their
number; and at a quarter-past six on September 18th, exactly a month
to the very minute after Grandier's death, Pere Lactance expired in
excruciating agony."

Pere Tranquille's turn came four years later.  The malady which
attacked him was so extraordinary that the physicians were quite at a
loss, and forced to declare their ignorance of any remedy.  His
shrieks and blasphemies were so distinctly heard in the streets, that
his brother Franciscans, fearing the effect they would have on his
after-reputation, especially in the minds of those who had seen
Grandier die with words of prayer on his lips, spread abroad the
report that the devils whom he had expelled from the bodies of the
nuns had entered into the body of the exorcist.  He died shrieking--

"My God! how I suffer!  Not all the devils and all the damned
together endure what I endure!"  His panegyrist, in whose book we
find all the horrible details of his death employed to much purpose
to illustrate the advantages of belonging to the true faith,
remarks--

"Truly big generous heart must have been a hot hell for those fiends
who entered his body to torment it."

The following epitaph which was placed over his grave was
interpreted, according to the prepossessions of those who read it,
either as a testimony to his sanctity or as a proof of his
punishment:--

"Here lies Pere Tranquille, of Saint-Remi; a humble Capuchin
preacher.  The demons no longer able to endure his fearlessly
exercised power as an exorcist, and encouraged by sorcerers, tortured
him to death, on May 31st, 1638."

But a death about which there could be no doubt as to the cause was
that of the surgeon Mannouri, the same who had, as the reader may
recollect, been the first to torture Grandier.  One evening about ten
o'clock he was returning from a visit to a patient who lived on the
outskirts of the town, accompanied by a colleague and preceded by his
surgery attendant carrying a lantern.  When they reached the centre
of the town in the rue Grand-Pave, which passes between the walls of
the castle grounds and the gardens of the Franciscan monastery,
Mannouri suddenly stopped, and, staring fixedly at some object which
was invisible to his companions, exclaimed with a start--

"Oh! there is Grandier!

"Where?  where?" cried the others.

He pointed in the direction towards which his eyes were turned, and
beginning to tremble violently, asked--

"What do you want with me, Grandier?  What do you want?"

A moment later he added

"Yes-yes, I am coming."

Immediately it seemed as if the vision vanished from before his eyes,
but the effect remained.  His brother-surgeon and the servant brought
him home, but neither candles nor the light of day could allay his
fears; his disordered brain showed him Grandier ever standing at the
foot of his bed.  A whole week he continued, as was known all over
the town, in this condition of abject terror; then the spectre seemed
to move from its place and gradually to draw nearer, for he kept on
repeating, "He is coming! he is coming!" and at length, towards
evening, at about the same hour at which Grandier expired, Surgeon
Mannouri drew his last breath.

We have still to tell of M. de Laubardemont.  All we know is thus
related in the letters of M. de Patin:--

"On the 9th inst., at nine o'clock in the evening, a carriage was
attacked by robbers; on hearing the noise the townspeople ran to the
spot, drawn thither as much by curiosity as by humanity.  A few shots
were exchanged and the robbers put to flight, with the exception of
one man belonging to their band who was taken prisoner, and another
who lay wounded on the paving-stones.  This latter died next day
without having spoken, and left no clue behind as to who he was.  His
identity was, however, at length made clear.  He was the son of a
high dignitary named de Laubardemont, who in 1634, as royal
commissioner, condemned Urbain Grandier, a poor, priest of Loudun, to
be burnt alive, under the pretence that he had caused several nuns of
Loudun to be possessed by devils.  These nuns he had so tutored as to
their behaviour that many people foolishly believed them to be
demoniacs.  May we not regard the fate of his son as a chastisement
inflicted by Heaven on this unjust judge--an expiation exacted for
the pitilessly cruel death inflicted on his victim, whose blood still
cries unto the Lord from the ground?"

Naturally the persecution of Urbain Grandier attracted the attention
not only of journalists but of poets.  Among the many poems which
were inspired by it, the following is one of the best.  Urbain
speaks:--

"From hell came the tidings that by horrible sanctions
I had made a pact with the devil to have power over women:
Though not one could be found to accuse me.
In the trial which delivered me to torture and the stake,
The demon who accused me invented and suggested the crime,

And his testimony was the only proof against me.

The English in their rage burnt the Maid alive;
Like her, I too fell a victim to revenge;
We were both accused falsely of the same crime;
In Paris she is adored, in London abhorred;
In Loudun some hold me guilty of witchcraft,
Some believe me innocent; some halt between two minds.

Like Hercules, I loved passionately;
Like him, I was consumed by fire;
But he by death became a god.
The injustice of my death was so well concealed
That no one can judge whether the flames saved or destroyed me;
Whether they blackened me for hell, or purified me for heaven.

In vain did I suffer torments with unshaken resolution;
They said that I felt no pain, being a sorcerer died unrepentant;
That the prayers I uttered were impious words;
That in kissing the image on the cross I spat in its face;
That casting my eyes to heaven I mocked the saints;
That when I seemed to call on God, I invoked the devil

Others, more charitable, say, in spite of their hatred of my crime,
That my death may be admired although my life was not blameless;
That my resignation showed that I died in hope and faith;
That to forgive, to suffer without complaint or murmur,
Is perfect love; and that the soul is purified
From the sins of life by a death like mine."




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "URBAIN GRANDIER"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 4
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES BY ALEXANDER DUMAS, PERE
VOLUME 4, Part 3



NISIDA

1825


If our readers, tempted by the Italian proverb about seeing Naples
and then dying, were to ask us what is the most favourable moment for
visiting the enchanted city, we should advise them to land at the
mole, or at Mergellina, on a fine summer day and at the hour when
some solemn procession is moving out of the cathedral.  Nothing can
give an idea of the profound and simple-hearted emotion of this
populace, which has enough poetry in its soul to believe in its own
happiness.  The whole town adorns herself and attires herself like a
bride for her wedding; the dark facades of marble and granite
disappear beneath hangings of silk and festoons of flowers; the
wealthy display their dazzling luxury, the poor drape themselves
proudly in their rags.  Everything is light, harmony, and perfume;
the sound is like the hum of an immense hive, interrupted by a
thousandfold outcry of joy impossible to describe.  The bells repeat
their sonorous sequences in every key; the arcades echo afar with the
triumphal marches of military bands; the sellers of sherbet and
water-melons sing out their deafening flourish from throats of
copper.  People form into groups; they meet, question, gesticulate;
there are gleaming looks, eloquent gestures, picturesque attitudes;
there is a general animation, an unknown charm, an indefinable
intoxication.  Earth is very near to heaven, and it is easy to
understand that, if God were to banish death from this delightful
spot, the Neapolitans would desire no other paradise.

The story that we are about to tell opens with one of these magical
pictures.  It was the Day of the Assumption in the year 1825; the sun
had been up some four or five hours, and the long Via da Forcella,
lighted from end to end by its slanting rays, cut the town in two,
like a ribbon of watered silk.  The lava pavement, carefully cleaned,
shone like any mosaic, and the royal troops, with their proudly
waving plumes, made a double living hedge on each side of the street.
The balconies, windows, and terraces, the stands with their
unsubstantial balustrades, and the wooden galleries set up during the
night, were loaded with spectators, and looked not unlike the boxes
of a theatre.  An immense crowd, forming a medley of the brightest
colours, invaded the reserved space and broke through the military
barriers, here and there, like an overflowing torrent.  These
intrepid sightseers, nailed to their places, would have waited half
their lives without giving the least sign of impatience.

At last, about noon, a cannon-shot was heard, and a cry of general
satisfaction followed it.  It was the signal that the procession had
crossed the threshold of the church.  In the same moment a charge of
carabineers swept off the people who were obstructing the middle of
the street, the regiments of the line opened floodgates for the
overflowing crowd, and soon nothing remained on the causeway but some
scared dog, shouted at by the people, hunted off by the soldiers, and
fleeing at full speed.  The procession came out through the Via di
Vescovato.  First came the guilds of merchants and craftsmen, the
hatters, weavers, bakers, butchers, cutlers, and goldsmiths.  They
wore the prescribed dress: black coats, knee breeches, low shoes and
silver buckles.  As the countenances of these gentlemen offered
nothing very interesting to the multitude, whisperings arose, little
by little, among the spectators, then some bold spirits ventured a
jest or two upon the fattest or the baldest of the townsmen, and at
last the boldest of the lazzaroni slipped between the soldiers' legs
to collect the wax that was running down from the lighted tapers.

After the craftsmen, the religious orders marched past, from the
Dominicans to the Carthusians, from the Carmelites to the Capuchins.
They advanced slowly, their eyes cast down, their step austere, their
hands on their hearts; some faces were rubicund and shining, with
large cheek-hones and rounded chins, herculean heads upon bullnecks;
some, thin and livid, with cheeks hollowed by suffering and
penitence, and with the look of living ghosts; in short, here were
the two sides of monastic life.

At this moment, Nunziata and Gelsomina, two charming damsels, taking
advantage of an old corporal's politeness, pushed forward their
pretty heads into the first rank.  The break in the line was
conspicuous; but the sly warrior seemed just a little lax in the
matter of discipline.

"Oh, there is Father Bruno!" said Gelsomina suddenly.  "Good-day,
Father Bruno."

"Hush, cousin!  People do not talk to the procession."

"How absurd!  He is my confessor.  May I not say good-morning to my
confessor?"

"Silence, chatterboxes!"

"Who was that spoke?"

"Oh, my dear, it was Brother Cucuzza, the begging friar."

"Where is he?  Where is he?"

"There he is, along there, laughing into his beard.  How bold he is!"

"Ah, God in heaven!  If we were to dream of him---"

While the two cousins were pouring out endless comments upon the
Capuchins and their beards, the capes of the canons and the surplices
of the seminarists, the 'feroci' came running across from the other
side to re-establish order with the help of their gun-stocks.

"By the blood of my patron saint," cried a stentorian voice, "if I
catch you between my finger and thumb, I will straighten your back
for the rest of your days."

"Who are you falling out with, Gennaro?"

"With this accursed hunchback, who has been worrying my back for the
last hour, as though he could see through it."

"It is a shame," returned the hunchback in a tone of lamentation;
"I have been here since last night, I slept out of doors to keep my
place, and here is this abominable giant comes to stick himself in
front of me like an obelisk."

The hunchback was lying like a Jew, but the crowd rose unanimously
against the obelisk.  He was, in one way, their superior, and
majorities are always made up of pigmies.

"Hi!  Come down from your stand!"

"Hi! get off your pedestal!"

"Off with your hat!"

"Down with your head!"

"Sit down!"

"Lie down!"

This revival of curiosity expressing itself in invectives evidently
betokened the crisis of the show.  And indeed the chapters of canons,
the clergy and bishops, the pages and chamberlains, the
representatives of the city, and the gentlemen of the king's chamber
now appeared, and finally the king himself, who, bare-headed and
carrying a taper, followed the magnificent statue of the Virgin.  The
contrast was striking: after the grey-headed monks and pale novices
came brilliant young captains, affronting heaven with the points of
their moustaches, riddling the latticed windows with killing glances,
following the procession in an absent-minded way, and interrupting
the holy hymns with scraps of most unorthodox conversation.

"Did you notice, my dear Doria, how like a monkey the old Marchesa
d'Acquasparta takes her raspberry ice?"

"Her nose takes the colour of the ice.  What fine bird is showing off
to her?"

"It is the Cyrenian."

"I beg your pardon!  I have not seen that name in the Golden Book."

"He helps the poor marquis to bear his cross."

The officer's profane allusion was lost in the prolonged murmur of
admiration that suddenly rose from the crowd, and every gaze was
turned upon one of the young girls who was strewing flowers before
the holy Madonna.  She was an exquisite creature.  Her head glowing
in the sun shine, her feet hidden amid roses and broom-blossom, she
rose, tall and fair, from a pale cloud of incense, like some seraphic
apparition.  Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way
down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a
mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely
arched black eye-brows melted into the opal of her temples; her
eyelids were fast down, and the curled black fringe of lashes veiled
a glowing and liquid glance of divine emotion; the nose, straight,
slender, and cut by two easy nostrils, gave to her profile that
character of antique beauty which is vanishing day by day from the
earth.  A calm and serene smile, one of those smiles that have
already left the soul and not yet reached the lips, lifted the
corners of her mouth with a pure expression of infinite beatitude and
gentleness.  Nothing could be more perfect than the chin that
completed the faultless oval of this radiant countenance; her neck of
a dead white, joined her bosom in a delicious curve, and supported
her head gracefully like the stalk of a flower moved by a gentle
breeze.  A bodice of crimson velvet spotted with gold outlined her
delicate and finely curved figure, and held in by means of a handsome
gold lace the countless folds of a full and flowing skirt, that fell
to her feet like those severe robes in which the Byzantine painters
preferred to drape their angels.  She was indeed a marvel, and so
rare and modest of beauty had not been seen within the memory of man.

Among those who had gazed most persistently at her was observed the
young Prince of Brancaleone, one of the foremost nobles of the
kingdom.  Handsome, rich, and brave, he had, at five-and-twenty,
outdone the lists of all known Don Juans.  Fashionable young women
spoke very ill of him and adored him in secret; the most virtuous
made it their rule to fly from him, so impossible did resistance
appear.  All the young madcaps had chosen him for their model; for
his triumphs robbed many a Miltiades of sleep, and with better cause.
In short, to get an idea of this lucky individual, it will be enough
to know that as a seducer he was the most perfect thing that the
devil had succeeded in inventing in this progressive century.  The
prince was dressed out for the occasion in a sufficiently grotesque
costume, which he wore with ironic gravity and cavalier ease.  A
black satin doublet, knee breeches, embroidered stockings, and shoes
with gold buckles, formed the main portions of his dress, over which
trailed a long brocaded open-sleeved robe lined with ermine, and a
magnificent diamond-hilted sword.  On account of his rank he enjoyed
the rare distinction of carrying one of the six gilded staves that
supported the plumed and embroidered canopy.

As soon as the procession moved on again, Eligi of Brancaleone gave a
side glance to a little man as red as a lobster, who was walking
almost at his side, and carrying in his right hand, with all the
solemnity that he could muster, his excellency's hat.  He was a
footman in gold-laced livery, and we beg leave to give a brief sketch
of his history.  Trespolo was the child of poor but thieving parents,
and on that account was early left an orphan.  Being at leisure, he
studied life from an eminently social aspect.  If we are to believe a
certain ancient sage, we are all in the world to solve a problem: as
to Trespolo, he desired to live without doing anything; that was his
problem.  He was, in turn, a sacristan, a juggler, an apothecary's
assistant, and a cicerone, and he got tired of all these callings.
Begging was, to his mind, too hard work, and it was more trouble to
be a thief than to be an honest man.  Finally he decided in favour of
contemplative philosophy.  He had a passionate preference for the
horizontal position, and found the greatest pleasure in the world in
watching the shooting of stars.  Unfortunately, in the course of his
meditations this deserving man came near to dying of hunger; which
would have been a great pity, for he was beginning to accustom
himself not to eat anything.  But as he was predestined by nature to
play a small part in our story, God showed him grace for that time,
and sent to his assistance--not one of His angels, the rogue was not
worthy of that, but--one of Brancaleone's hunting dogs.  The noble
animal sniffed round the philosopher, and uttered a little charitable
growl that would have done credit to one of the brethren of Mount St.
Bernard.  The prince, who was returning in triumph from hunting, and
who, by good luck, had that day killed a bear and ruined a countess,
had an odd inclination to do a good deed.  He approached the plebeian
who was about to pass into the condition of a corpse, stirred the
thing with his foot, and seeing that there was still a little hope,
bade his people bring him along.

From that day onward, Trespolo saw the dream of his life nearly
realised.  Something rather above a footman and rather below a house
steward, he became the confidant of his master, who found his talents
most useful; for this Trespolo was as sharp as a demon and almost as
artful as a woman.  The prince, who, like an intelligent man as he
was, had divined that genius is naturally indolent, asked nothing of
him but advice; when tiresome people wanted thrashing, he saw to that
matter himself, and, indeed, he was the equal of any two at such
work.  As nothing in this lower world, however, is complete, Trespolo
had strange moments amid this life of delights; from time to time his
happiness was disturbed by panics that greatly diverted his master;
he would mutter incoherent words, stifle violent sighs, and lose his
appetite.  The root of the matter was that the poor fellow was afraid
of going to hell.  The matter was very simple: he was afraid of
everything; and, besides, it had often been preached to him that the
Devil never allowed a moment's rest to those who were ill-advised
enough to fall into his clutches.  Trespolo was in one of his good
moods of repentance, when the prince, after gazing on the young girl
with the fierce eagerness of a vulture about to swoop upon its prey,
turned to speak to his intimate adviser.  The poor servant understood
his master's abominable design, and not wishing to share the guilt of
a sacrilegious conversation, opened his eyes very wide and turned
them up to heaven in ecstatic contemplation.  The prince coughed,
stamped his foot, moved his sword so as to hit Trespolo's legs, but
could not get from him any sign of attention, so absorbed did he
appear in celestial thoughts.  Brancaleone would have liked to wring
his neck, but both his hands were occupied by the staff of the
canopy; and besides, the king was present.

At last they were drawing nearer to the church of St. Clara, where
the Neapolitan kings were buried, and where several princesses of the
blood, exchanging the crown for the veil, have gone to bury
themselves alive.  The nuns, novices, and abbess, hidden behind
shutters, were throwing flowers upon the procession.  A bunch fell at
the feet of the Prince of Brancaleone.

"Trespolo, pick up that nosegay," said the prince, so audibly that
his servant had no further excuse.  "It is from Sister Theresa," he
added, in a low voice; "constancy is only to be found, nowadays, in a
convent."

Trespolo picked up the nosegay and came towards his master, looking
like a man who was being strangled.

"Who is that girl?" the latter asked him shortly.

"Which one?" stammered the servant.

"Forsooth!  The one walking in front of us."

"I don't know her, my lord."

"You must find out something about her before this evening."

"I shall have to go rather far afield."

"Then you do know her, you intolerable rascal!  I have half a mind to
have you hanged like a dog."

"For pity's sake, my lord, think of the salvation of your soul, of
your eternal life."

"I advise you to think of your temporal life.  What is her name?"

"She is called Nisida, and is the prettiest girl in the island that
she is named after.  She is innocence itself.  Her father is only a
poor fisherman, but I can assure your excellency that in his island
he is respected like a king."

"Indeed!" replied the prince, with an ironical smile.  "I must own,
to my great shame, that I have never visited the little island of
Nisida.  You will have a boat ready for me to-morrow, and then we
will see."

He interrupted himself suddenly, for the king was looking at him; and
calling up the most sonorous bass notes that he could find in the
depths of his throat, he continued with an inspired air, "Genitori
genitoque laus et jubilatio."

"Amen," replied the serving-man in a ringing voice.

Nisida, the beloved daughter of Solomon, the fisherman, was, as we
have said, the loveliest flower of the island from which she derived
her name.  That island is the most charming spot, the most delicious
nook with which we are acquainted; it is a basket of greenery set
delicately amid the pure and transparent waters of the gulf, a hill
wooded with orange trees and oleanders, and crowned at the summit by
a marble castle.  All around extends the fairy-like prospect of that
immense amphitheatre, one of the mightiest wonders of creation.
There lies Naples, the voluptuous syren, reclining carelessly on the
seashore; there, Portici, Castellamare, and Sorrento, the very names
of which awaken in the imagination a thousand thoughts of poetry and
love; there are Pausilippo, Baiae, Puozzoli, and those vast plains,
where the ancients fancied their Elysium, sacred solitudes which one
might suppose peopled by the men of former days, where the earth
echoes under foot like an empty grave, and the air has unknown sounds
and strange melodies.

Solomon's hut stood in that part of the island which, turning its
back to the capital, beholds afar the blue crests of Capri.  Nothing
could be simpler or brighter.  The brick walls were hung with ivy
greener than emeralds, and enamelled with white bell-flowers; on the
ground floor was a fairly spacious apartment, in which the men slept
and the family took their meals; on the floor above was Nisida's
little maidenly room, full of coolness, shadows, and mystery, and
lighted by a single casement that looked over the gulf; above this
room was a terrace of the Italian kind, the four pillars of which
were wreathed with vine branches, while its vine-clad arbour and wide
parapet were overgrown with moss and wild flowers.  A little hedge
of hawthorn, which had been respected for ages, made a kind of
rampart around the fisherman's premises, and defended his house
better than deep moats and castellated walls could have done.  The
boldest roisterers of the place would have preferred to fight before
the parsonage and in the precincts of the church rather than in front
of Solomon's little enclosure.  Otherwise, this was the meeting place
of the whole island.  Every evening, precisely at the same hour, the
good women of the neighbourhood came to knit their woollen caps and
tell the news.  Groups of little children, naked, brown, and as
mischievous as little imps, sported about, rolling on the grass and
throwing handfuls of sand into the other's eyes, heedless of the risk
of blinding, while their mothers were engrossed in that grave gossip
which marks the dwellers in villages.  These gatherings occurred
daily before the fisherman's house; they formed a tacit and almost
involuntary homage, consecrated by custom, and of which no one had
ever taken special account; the envy that rules in small communities
would soon have suppressed them.  The influence which old Solomon had
over his equals had grown so simply and naturally, that no one found
any fault with it, and it had only attracted notice when everyone was
benefiting by it, like those fine trees whose growth is only observed
when we profit by their shade.  If any dispute arose in the island,
the two opponents preferred to abide by the judgment of the fisherman
instead of going before the court; he was fortunate enough or clever
enough to send away both parties satisfied.  He knew what remedies to
prescribe better than any physician, for it seldom happened that he
or his had not felt the same ailments, and his knowledge, founded on
personal experience, produced the most excellent results.  Moreover,
he had no interest, as ordinary doctors have, in prolonging
illnesses.  For many years past the only formality recognised as a
guarantee for the inviolability of a contract had been the
intervention of the fisherman.  Each party shook hands with Solomon,
and the thing was done.  They would rather have thrown themselves
into Vesuvius at the moment of its most violent eruption than have
broken so solemn an agreement.  At the period when our story opens,
it was impossible to find any person in the island who had not felt
the effects of the fisherman's generosity, and that without needing
to confess to him any necessities.  As it was the custom for the
little populace of Nisida to spend its leisure hours before Solomon's
cottage, the old man, while he walked slowly among the different
groups, humming his favourite song, discovered moral and physical
weaknesses as he passed; and the same evening he or his daughter
would certainly be seen coming mysteriously to bestow a benefit upon
every sufferer, to lay a balm upon every wound.  In short, he united
in his person all those occupations whose business is to help
mankind.  Lawyers, doctors, and the notary, all the vultures of
civilisation, had beaten a retreat before the patriarchal benevolence
of the fisherman.  Even the priest had capitulated.

On the morrow of the Feast of the Assumption, Solomon was sitting, as
his habit was, on a stone bench in front of his house, his legs
crossed and his arms carelessly stretched out.  At the first glance
you would have taken him for sixty at the outside, though he was
really over eighty.  He had all his teeth, which were as white as
pearls, and showed them proudly.  His brow, calm and restful beneath
its crown of abundant white hair, was as firm and polished as marble;
not a wrinkle ruffled the corner of his eye, and the gem-like lustre
of his blue orbs revealed a freshness of soul and an eternal youth
such as fable grants to the sea-gods.  He displayed his bare arms and
muscular neck with an old man's vanity.  Never had a gloomy idea, an
evil prepossession, or a keen remorse, arisen to disturb his long and
peaceful life.  He had never seen a tear flow near him without
hurrying to wipe it; poor though he was, he had succeeded in pouring
out benefits that all the kings of the earth could not have bought
with their gold; ignorant though he was, he had spoken to his fellows
the only language that they could understand, the language of the
heart.  One single drop of bitterness had mingled with his
inexhaustible stream of happiness; one grief only had clouded his
sunny life--the death of his wife--and moreover he had forgotten
that.

All the affections of his soul were turned upon Nisida, whose birth
had caused her mother's death; he loved her with that immoderate love
that old people have for the youngest of their children.  At the
present moment he was gazing upon her with an air of profound
rapture, and watching her come and go, as she now joined the groups
of children and scolded them for games too dangerous or too noisy;
now seated herself on the grass beside their mothers and took part
with grave and thoughtful interest in their talk.  Nisida was more
beautiful thus than she had been the day before; with the vaporous
cloud of perfume that had folded her round from head to foot had
disappeared all that mystic poetry which put a sort of constraint
upon her admirers and obliged them to lower their glances.  She had
become a daughter of Eve again without losing anything of her charm.
Simply dressed, as she usually was on work-days, she was
distinguishable among her companions only by her amazing beauty and
by the dazzling whiteness of her skin.  Her beautiful black hair was
twisted in plaits around the little dagger of chased silver, that has
lately been imported into Paris by that right of conquest which the
pretty women of Paris have over the fashions of all countries, like
the English over the sea.

Nisida was adored by her young friends, all the mothers had adopted
her with pride; she was the glory of the island.  The opinion of her
superiority was shared by everyone to such a degree, that if some
bold young man, forgetting the distance which divided him from the
maiden, dared speak a little too loudly of his pretensions, he became
the laughing-stock of his companions.  Even the past masters of
tarentella dancing were out of countenance before the daughter of
Solomon, and did not dare to seek her as a partner.  Only a few
singers from Amalfi or Sorrento, attracted by the rare beauty of this
angelic creature, ventured to sigh out their passion, carefully
veiled beneath the most delicate allusions.  But they seldom reached
the last verse of their song; at every sound they stopped short,
threw down their triangles and their mandolines, and took flight like
scared nightingales.

One only had courage enough or passion enough to brave the mockery;
this was Bastiano, the most formidable diver of that coast.  He also
sang, but with a deep and hollow voice; his chant was mournful and
his melodies full of sadness.  He never accompanied himself upon any
instrument, and never retired without concluding his song.  That day
he was gloomier than usual; he was standing upright, as though by
enchantment, upon a bare and slippery rock, and he cast scornful
glances upon the women who were looking at him and laughing.  The
sun, which was plunging into the sea like a globe of fire, shed its
light full upon his stern features, and the evening breeze, as it
lightly rippled the billows, set the fluttering reeds waving at his
feet.  Absorbed by dark thoughts, he sang, in the musical language of
his country, these sad words:--

"O window, that wert used to shine in the night like an open eye, how
dark thou art!  Alas, alas! my poor sister is ill.

"Her mother, all in tears, stoops towards me and says, 'Thy poor
sister is dead and buried.'

"Jesus!  Jesus!  Have pity on me!  You stab me to the heart.

"Tell me, good neighbours, how it happened; repeat to me her last
words.

"She had a burning thirst, and refused to drink because thou wast not
there to give her water from thy hand.

"Oh, my sister!  Oh, my sister!

"She refused her mother's kiss, because thou wast not there to
embrace her.

"Oh, my sister!  Oh, my sister!

"She wept until her last breath, because thou wast not there to dry
her tears.

"Oh, my sister!  Oh, my sister!

"We placed on her brow her wreath of orangeflowers, we covered her
with a veil as white as snow; we laid her gently in her coffin.

"Thanks, good neighbours.  I will go and be with her.

"Two angels came down from heaven and bore her away on their wings.
Mary Magdalene came to meet her at the gate of heaven.

"Thanks, good neighbours.  I will go and be with her.

"There, she was seated in a place of glory, a chaplet of rubies was
given to her, and she is singing her rosary with the Virgin.

"Thanks, good neighbours.  I will go and be with her."


As he finished the last words of his melancholy refrain, he flung
himself from the top of his rock into the sea, as though he really
desired to engulf himself.  Nisida and the other women gave a cry of
terror, for during some minutes the diver failed to reappear upon the
surface.

"Are you out of your senses?" cried a young man who had suddenly
appeared, unobserved among the women.  "Why, what are you afraid of?
You know very well that Bastiano is always doing things of this sort.
But do not be alarmed: all the fishes in the Mediterranean will be
drowned before any harm comes to him.  Water is his natural element.
Good-day, sister; good-day, father."

The young fisherman kissed Nisida on the forehead, drew near to his
father, and, bowing his handsome head before him, took off his red
cap and respectfully kissed the old man's hand.  He came thus to ask
his blessing every evening before putting out to sea, where he often
spent the night fishing from his boat.

"May God bless thee, my Gabriel!" said the old man in a tone of
emotion, as he slowly passed his hand over his son's black curls, and
a tear came into his eye.  Then, rising solemnly and addressing the
groups around him, he added in a voice full of dignity and of
gentleness.  "Come, my children, it is time to separate.  The young
to work, the old to rest.  There is the angelus ringing."

Everybody knelt, and after a short prayer each went on his way.
Nisida, after having given her father the last daily attentions, went
up to her room, replenished the oil in the lamp that burned day and
night before the Virgin, and, leaning her elbow on the window ledge,
divided the branches of jasmine which hung like perfumed curtains,
began to gaze out at the sea, and seemed lost in a deep, sweet
reverie.

At this very time, a little boat, rowed silently by two oarsmen,
touched shore on the other side of the island.  It had become quite
dark.  A little man first landed cautiously, and respectfully offered
his hand to another individual, who, scorning that feeble support,
leapt easily ashore.

"Well, knave," he cried, "are my looks to your taste?"

"Your lordship is perfect."

"I flatter myself I am.  It is true that, in order to make the
transformation complete, I chose the very oldest coat that displayed
its rags in a Jew's shop."

"Your lordship looks like a heathen god engaged in a love affair.
Jupiter has sheathed his thunderbolts and Apollo has pocketed his
rays."

"A truce to your mythology.  And, to begin with, I forbid you to call
me 'your lordship.'"

"Yes, your lordship."

"If my information that I have procured during the day is correct,
the house must be on the other side of the island, in a most remote
and lonely spot.  Walk at a certain distance, and do not trouble
yourself about me, for I know my part by heart."

The young Prince of Brancaleone, whom, in spite of the darkness of
the night, our readers will already have recognised, advanced towards
the fisherman's house, with as little noise as possible, walked up
and down several times upon the shore, and, after having briefly
reconnoitred the place that he wished to attack, waited quietly for
the moon to rise and light up the scene that he had prepared.  He was
not obliged to exercise his patience very long, for the darkness
gradually disappeared, and Solomon's little house was bathed in
silvery light.  Then he approached with timid steps, lifted towards
the casement a look of entreaty, and began to sigh with all the power
of his lungs.  The young girl, called suddenly from her meditations
by the appearance of this strange person, raised herself sharply and
prepared to close the shutters.

"Stay, charming Nisida!" cried the prince, in the manner of a man
overcome by irresistible passion.

"What do you want with me, signor?" answered the maiden, amazed to
hear herself called by name.

"To adore you as a Madonna is adored, and to make you aware of my
sighs."

Nisida looked at him steadily, and, after a moment or two of
reflection, asked suddenly, as though in response to some secret
thought, "Do you belong to this country, or are you a foreigner?"

"I arrived in this island," replied the prince without hesitation,
"at the moment when the sun was writing his farewell to the earth and
dipping the rays that serves as his pen into the shadow that serves
as his inkstand."

"And who are you?" returned the young girl, not at all understanding
these strange words.

"Alas!  I am but a poor student, but I may become a great poet like
Tasso, whose verses you often hear sung by a departing fisherman who
sends his thrilling music as a last farewell that returns to die on
the beach."

"I do not know whether I am doing wrong to speak to you, but at least
I will be frank with you," said Nisida, blushing; "I have the
misfortune to be the richest girl on the island."

"Your father will not be inexorable," returned the prince ardently;
"one word from you, light of my eyes, goddess of my heart, and I will
work night and day, never pausing nor slackening, and will render.
myself worthy to possess the treasure that God has revealed to my
dazzled eyes, and, from being poor and obscure as you see me, I will
become rich and powerful."

"I have stayed too long listening to talk that a maiden should not
hear; permit me, signor, to withdraw."

"Have pity on me, my cruel enemy!  What have I done to you that you
should thus leave me with death in my soul?  You do not know that,
for months past, I have been following you everywhere like a shadow,
that I prowl round your home at night, stifling my sighs lest they
should disturb your peaceful slumber.  You are afraid, perhaps, to
let yourself be touched, at a first meeting, by a poor wretch who
adores you.  Alas!  Juliet was young and beautiful like you, and she
did not need many entreaties to take pity on Romeo."

Nisida suffered a sad and thoughtful look to fall upon this handsome
young man who spoke to her in so gentle a voice, and withdrew without
further reply, that she might not humiliate his poverty.

The prince made great efforts to suppress a strong inclination
towards laughter, and, very well satisfied with this opening, turned
his steps towards the spot where he had left his servant.  Trespolo,
after having emptied a bottle of lacryma with which he had provided
himself for any emergency, had looked long around him to choose a
spot where the grass was especially high and thick, and had laid
himself down to a sound sleep, murmuring as he did so, this sublime
observation, "O laziness, but for the sin of Adam you would be a
virtue!"

The young girl could not close her eyes during the whole night after
the conversation that she had held with the stranger.  His sudden
appearance, his strange dress and odd speech, had awakened in her an
uncertain feeling that had been lying asleep in the bottom of her
heart.  She was at this time in all the vigour of her youth and of
her resplendent beauty.  Nisida was not one of the weak and timid
natures that are broken by suffering or domineered over by tyranny.
Far otherwise: everything around her had contributed towards shaping
for her a calm and serene destiny; her simple, tender soul had
unfolded in an atmosphere of peace and happiness.  If she had not
hitherto loved, it was the fault, not of her coldness but of the
extreme timidity shown by the inhabitants of her island.  The blind
depth of respect that surrounded the old fisherman had drawn around
his daughter a barrier of esteem and submission that no one dared to
cross.  By means of thrift and labour Solomon had succeeded in
creating for himself a prosperity that put the poverty of the other
fishermen to the blush.  No one had asked for Nisida because no one
thought he deserved her.  The only admirer who had dared to show his
passion openly was Bastiano, the most devoted and dearest friend of
Gabriel; but Bastiano did not please her.  So, trusting in her
beauty, upheld by the mysterious hope that never deserts youth, she
had resigned herself to wait, like some princess who knows that her
betrothed will come from a far country.

On the day of the Assumption she had left her island for the first
time in her life, chance having chosen her among the maidens of the
kingdom vowed by their mothers to the special protection of the
Virgin.  But, overwhelmed by the weight of a position so new to her,
blushing and confused under the eyes of an immense crowd, she had
scarcely dared to raise her wondering looks, and the splendours of
the town had passed before her like a dream, leaving but a vague
remembrance.

When she perceived the presence of this handsome young man, so
slenderly and elegantly built, whose noble and calm demeanour
contrasted with the timidity and awkwardness of her other admirers,
she felt herself inwardly disturbed, and no doubt she would have
believed that her prince had come, if she had been unpleasantly
struck by the poverty of his dress.  She had, nevertheless, allowed
herself to listen to him longer than she ought to have done, and she
drew back with her bosom heavy, her cheek on fire, and her heart rent
by an ache that was both dull and sharp.

"If my father does not wish me to marry him," she said to herself,
tormented by the first remorseful feeling of her life.  "I shall have
done wrong to speak to him.  And yet he is so handsome!"

Then she knelt before the Virgin, who was her only confidante, the
poor child having never known her mother, and tried to tell her the
torments of her soul; but she could not achieve her prayer.  The
thoughts became entangled within her brain, and she surprised herself
uttering strange words.  But, assuredly, the Holy Virgin must have
taken pity upon her lovely devotee, for she rose with the impression
of a consoling thought, resolved to confide everything to her father.

"I cannot have a moment's doubt," she said to herself, as she unlaced
her bodice, "of my father's affection.  Well, then, if he forbids me
to speak to him, it will be for my good.  And indeed, I have seen him
but this once," she added, as she threw herself upon the bed, "and
now I think of it, I consider him very bold to dare to speak to me.
I am almost inclined to laugh at him.  How confidently he brought out
his nonsense, how absurdly he rolled his eyes!  They are really very
fine, those eyes of his, and so is his mouth, and his forehead and
his hair.  He does not suspect that I noticed his hands, which are
really very white, when he raised them to heaven, like a madman, as
he walked up and down by the sea.  Come, come, is he going to prevent
my sleeping?  I will not see him again!" she cried, drawing the sheet
over her head like an angry child.  Then she began to laugh to
herself over her lover's dress, and meditated long upon what her
companions would say to it.  Suddenly her brow contracted painfully,
a frightful thought had stolen into her mind, she shuddered from head
to foot.  "Suppose he were to think someone else prettier than me?
Men are so foolish!  Certainly, it is too hot, and I shall not sleep
to-night."

Then she sat up in her bed, and continued her monologue--which we
will spare the reader--till the morning.  Scarcely had the first rays
of light filtered through the interlacing branches of jasmine and
wavered into the room, when Nisida dressed herself hurriedly, and
went as usual to present her forehead to her father's kiss.  The old
man at once observed the depression and weariness left by a sleepless
night upon his daughter's face, and parting with an eager and anxious
hand the beautiful black hair that fell over her cheeks, he asked
her, "What is the matter, my child?  Thou hast not slept well?"

"I have not slept at all," answered Nisida, smiling, to reassure her
father; "I am perfectly well, but I have something to confess to
you."

"Speak quickly, child; I am dying with impatience."

"Perhaps I have done wrong; but I want you to promise beforehand not
to scold me."

"You know very well that I spoil you," said the old man, with a
caress; "I shall not begin to be stern to-day."

"A young man who does not belong to this island, and whose name I do
not know, spoke to me yesterday evening when I was taking the air at
my window."

"And what was he so eager to say to you, my dear Nisida?"

"He begged me to speak to you in his favour."

"I am listening.  What can I do for him?"

"Order me to marry him."

"And should you obey willingly?"

"I think so, father," the girl candidly replied.  "As to other
things, you yourself must judge in your wisdom; for I wanted to speak
to you before coming to know him, so as not to go on with a
conversation that you might not approve.  But there is a hindrance."

"You know that I do not recognise any when it is a question of making
my daughter happy."

"He is poor, father."

"Well, all the more reason for me to like him.  There is work here
for everybody, and my table can spare a place for another son.  He is
young, he has arms; no doubt he has some calling."

"He is a poet."

"No matter; tell him to come and speak to me, and if he is an honest
lad, I promise you, my child, that I will do anything in the world to
promote your happiness."

Nisida embraced her father effusively, and was beside herself with
joy all day, waiting impatiently for the evening in order to give the
young man such splendid news.  Eligi Brancaleone was but moderately
flattered, as you will easily believe, by the fisherman's magnanimous
intentions towards him; but like the finished seducer that he was, he
appeared enchanted at them.  Recollecting his character as a
fantastical student and an out-at-elbows poet, he fell upon his knees
and shouted a thanksgiving to the planet Venus; then, addressing the
young girl, he added, in a calmer voice, that he was going to write
immediately to his own father, who in a week's time would come to
make his formal proposal; until then, he begged, as a favour, that he
might not present himself to Solomon nor to any person at all in the
island, and assigned as a pretext a certain degree of shame which he
felt on account of his old clothes, assuring his beloved that his
father would bring him a complete outfit for the wedding-day.

While the ill-starred girl was thus walking in terrifying security at
the edge of the precipice, Trespolo, following his master's wishes,
had established himself in the island as a pilgrim from Jerusalem.
Playing his part and sprinkling his conversation with biblical
phrases, which came to him readily, in his character of ex-sacristan,
he distributed abundance of charms, wood of the true Cross and milk
of the Blessed Virgin, and all those other inexhaustible treasures on
which the eager devotion of worthy people daily feeds.  His relics
were the more evidently authentic in that he did not sell any of
them, and, bearing his poverty in a holy manner, thanked the faithful
and declined their alms.  Only, out of regard for the established
virtue of Solomon, he had consented to break bread with the
fisherman, and went to take meals with him with the regularity of a
cenobite.  His abstinence aroused universal surprise: a crust dipped
in water, a few nuts or figs sufficed to keep this holy man alive--to
prevent him, that is to say, from dying.  Furthermore, he entertained
Nisida by his tales of his travels and by his mysterious predictions.
Unfortunately, he only appeared towards evening; for he spent the
rest of the day in austerities and in prayers--in other words, in
drinking like a Turk and snoring like a buffalo.

On the morning of the seventh day, after the promise given by the
prince to the fisherman's daughter, Brancaleone came into his
servant's room, and, shaking hint roughly, cried in his ear, "Up,
odious marmot!"

Trespolo, awakened suddenly, rubbed his eyes in alarm.  The dead,
sleeping peacefully at the bottom of their coffins, will be less
annoyed at the last day when the trump of Judgment comes to drag them
from their slumbers.  Fear having, however, immediately dispersed the
dark clouds that overspread his countenance, he sat up, and asked
with an appearance of bewilderment--

"What is the matter, your excellency?"

"The matter is that I will have you flayed alive a little if you do
not leave off that execrable habit of sleeping twenty hours in the
day."

"I was not asleep, prince!" cried the servant boldly, as he sprang
out of bed; "I was reflecting---"

"Listen to me," said the prince in a severe tone; "you were once
employed, I believe, in a chemist's shop?"

"Yes, my lord, and I left because my employer had the scandalous
barbarity to make me pound drugs, which tired my arms horribly."

"Here is a phial containing a solution of opium."

"Mercy!" cried Trespolo, falling on his knees.

"Get up, idiot, and pay great attention to what I am going to say to
you.  This little fool of a Nisida persists in wanting me to speak to
her father.  I made her believe that I was going away this evening to
fetch my papers.  There is no time to lose.  They know you very well
at the fisherman's.  You will pour this liquid into their wine; your
life will answer for your not giving them a larger dose than enough
to produce a deep sleep.  You will take care to prepare me a good
ladder for to-night; after which you will go and wait for me in my
boat, where you will find Numa and Bonaroux.  They have my orders.
I shall not want you in scaling the fortress; I have my Campo Basso
dagger."

"But, my lord---" stammered Trespolo, astounded.

"No difficulties!" cried the prince, stamping his foot furiously,
"or, by my father's death, I will cure you, once for all, of your
scruples."  And he turned on his heel with the air of a man who is
certain that people will be very careful not to disobey his orders.

The unhappy Trespolo fulfilled his master's injunctions punctually.
With him fear was the guiding principle.  That evening the
fisherman's supper table was hopelessly dull, and the sham pilgrim
tried in vain to enliven it by factitious cheerfulness.  Nisida was
preoccupied by her lover's departure, and Solomon, sharing
unconsciously in his daughter's grief, swallowed but a drop or two of
wine, to avoid resisting the repeated urgency of his guest.  Gabriel
had set out in the morning for Sorrento and was not to return for two
or three days; his absence tended to increase the old man's
melancholy.  As soon as Trespolo had retired, the fisherman yielded
to his fatigue.  Nisida, with her arms hanging by her sides, her head
heavy and her heart oppressed by a sad presentiment, had scarcely
strength to go up to her room, and after having mechanically trimmed
the lamp, sank on her bed as pale and stiff as a corpse.

The storm was breaking out with violence; one of those terrible
storms seen only in the South, when the congregated clouds, parting
suddenly, shed torrents of rain and of hail, and threaten another
deluge.  The roar of the thunder drew nearer and was like the noise
of a cannonade.  The gulf, lately so calm and smooth that the island
was reflected as in a mirror, had suddenly darkened; the furiously
leaping waves flung themselves together like wild horses; the island
quaked, shaken by terrible shocks.  Even the boldest fishermen had
drawn their boats ashore, and, shut within their cabins, encouraged
as best they could their frightened wives and children.

Amid the deep darkness that overspread the sea Nisida's lamp could be
seen gleaming clear and limpid, as it burned before the Madonna.  Two
boats, without rudders, sails, or oars, tossed by the waves, beaten
by the winds, were whirling above the abyss; two men were in these
two boats, their muscles tense, their breasts bare, their hair
flying.  They gazed haughtily on the sea, and braved the tempest.

"Once more, I beg you," cried one of these men, "fear not for me,
Gabriel; I promise you that with my two broken oars and a little
perseverance I shall get to Torre before daybreak."

"You are mad, Bastiano; we have not been able ever since the morning
to get near Vico, and have been obliged to keep tacking about; your
skill and strength have been able to do nothing against this
frightful hurricane which has driven us back to this point."

"It is the first time you have ever refused to go with me," remarked
the young man.

"Well, yes, my dear Bastiano, I do not know how it is, but to-night I
feel drawn to the island by an irresistible power.  The winds have
been unchained to bring me back to it in spite of myself, and I will
own to you, even though it should make me seem like a madman in your
eyes, that this simple and ordinary event appears to me like an order
from heaven.  Do you see that lamp shining over there?"

"I know it," answered Bastiano, suppressing a sigh.

"It was lighted before the Virgin one the day when my sister was
born, and for eighteen year it has never ceased to burn, night and
day.  It was my mother's vow.  You do not know, my dear Bastiano, you
cannot know how many torturing thoughts that vow recalls to me.  My
poor mother called me to her deathbed and told me a frightful tale, a
horrible secret, which weighs on my soul like a cloak of lead, and of
which I can only relieve myself by confiding it to a friend.  When
her painful story was ended she asked to see and to embrace my
sister, who was just born; then with her trembling hand, already
chilled by the approach of death, she desired to light the lamp
herself.  'Remember,' these were her last words, 'remember, Gabriel,
that your sister is vowed to the Madonna.  As long as this light
shines before the blessed image of the Virgin, your sister will be in
no danger.'  You can understand now why, at night, when we are
crossing the gulf, my eyes are always fixed on that lamp.  I have a
belief that nothing could shake, which is that on the day that light
goes out my sister's soul will have taken flight to heaven."

"Well," cried Bastiano in an abrupt tone that betrayed the emotion of
his heart, "if you prefer to stay, I will go alone."

"Farewell," said Gabriel, without turning aside his eyes from the
window towards which he felt himself drawn by a fascination for which
he could not account.  Bastiano disappeared, and Nisida's brother,
assisted by the waves, was drawing nearer and nearer to the shore,
when, at all once, he uttered a terrible cry which sounded above the
noise of the tempest.

The star had just been extinguished; the lamp had been blown out.

"My sister is dead!" cried Gabriel and, leaping into the sea, he
cleft the waves with the rapidity of lightning.

The storm had redoubled its intensity; long lines of lightning,
rending the sides of the clouds, bathed everything in their tawny and
intermittent light.  The fisherman perceived a ladder leaning against
the front of his home, seized it with a convulsive hand, and in three
bounds flung himself into the room.  The prince felt himself
strangely moved on making his way into this pure and silent retreat.
The calm and gentle gaze of the Virgin who seemed to be protecting
the rest of the sleeping girl, that perfume of innocence shed around
the maidenly couch, that lamp, open-eyed amid the shadows, like a
soul in prayer, had inspired the seducer with an unknown distress.
Irritated by what he called an absurd cowardice, he had extinguished
the obtrusive light, and was advancing towards the bed, and
addressing unspoken reproaches to himself, when Gabriel swooped upon
him with a wounded tiger's fierce gnashing of the teeth.

Brancaleone, by a bold and rapid movement that showed no common
degree of skill and bravery, while struggling in the grasp of his
powerful adversary, drew forth in his right hand a long dagger with a
fine barbed blade.  Gabriel smiled scornfully, snatched the weapon
from him, and even as he stooped to break it across his knee, gave
the prince a furious blow with his head that made him stagger and
sent him rolling on the floor, three paces away; then, leaning over
his poor sister and gazing on her with hungry eyes, by the passing
gleam of a flash, "Dead!" he repeated, wringing his arms in despair,
--"dead!"

In the fearful paroxysm that compressed his throat he could find no
other words to assuage his rage or to pour forth his woe.  His hair,
which the storm had flattened, rose on his head, the marrow of his
bones was chilled, and he felt his tears rush back upon his heart.
It was a terrible moment; he forgot that the murderer still lived.

The prince, however, whose admirable composure did not for a moment
desert him, had risen, bruised and bleeding.  Pale and trembling with
rage, he sought everywhere for a weapon with which to avenge himself.
Gabriel returned towards him gloomier and more ominous than ever, and
grasping his neck with an iron hand, dragged him into the room where
the old man was sleeping.

"Father!  father!  father!" he cried in a piercing voice, "here is
the Bastard who Has just murdered Nisida!"

The old man, who had drunk but a few drops of the narcotic potion,
was awakened by this cry which echoed through his soul; he arose as
though moved by a spring, flung off his coverings, and with that
promptitude of action that God has bestowed upon mothers in moments
of danger, event up to his daughter's room, found a light, knelt on
the edge of the bed, and began to test his child's pulse and watch
her breathing with mortal anxiety.

All! this had passed in less time than we have taken in telling it.
Brancaleone by an unheard-of effort had freed himself from the hands
of the young fisherman, and suddenly resuming his princely pride,
said in a loud voice, "You shall not kill me without listening to
me."

Gabriel would have overwhelmed him with Bitter reproaches, but,
unable to utter a single word, he burst into tears.

"Your sifter is not dead," said the prince, with cold dignity; "she
is merely asleep.  You can assure yourself of it, and meanwhile I
undertake, upon my Honour, not to move a single step away."

These words were pronounced with such an accent of truth that the
fisherman was struck by them.  An unexpected gleam of hope suddenly
dawned in his thoughts; he cast upon the stranger a glance of hate
and distrust, and muttered in a muffled voice, "Do not flatter
yourself, in any case, that you will be able to escape me."

Then he went up to his sister's room, and approaching the old man,
asked tremblingly, "Well, father?"

Solomon thrust him gently aside with the solicitude of a mother
removing some buzzing insect from her child's cradle, and, making a
sign to enjoin silence, added in a low voice, "She is neither dead
nor poisoned.  Some philtre has been given to her for a bad purpose.
Her breathing is even, and she cannot fail to recover from her
lethargy."

Gabriel, reassured about Nisida's life, returned silently to the
ground floor where he had left the seducer.  His manner was grave and
gloomy; he was coming now not to rend the murderer of his sister with
his hands, but to elucidate a treacherous and infamous mystery, and
to avenge his honour which had been basely attacked.  He opened wide
the double entrance door that admitted daylight to the apartment in
which, on the few nights that he spent at home, he was accustomed to
sleep with his father.  The rain had just stopped, a ray of moonlight
pierced the clouds, and all at once made its way into the room.  The
fisherman adjusted his dripping garments, walked towards the
stranger, who awaited him without stirring, and after having gazed
upon him haughtily, said, "Now you are going to explain your presence
in our house."

"I confess," said the prince, in an easy tone and with the most
insolent assurance, "that appearances are against me.  It is the fate
of lovers to be treated as thieves.  But although I have not the
advantage of being known to you, I am betrothed to the fair Nisida--
with your father's approval, of course.  Now, as I have the
misfortune to possess very hardhearted parents, they have had the
cruelty to refuse me their consent.  Love led me astray, and I was
about to be guilty of a fault for which a young man like you ought to
have some indulgence.  Furthermore, it was nothing but a mere attempt
at an abduction, with the best intentions in the world, I swear, and
I am ready to atone for everything if you will agree to give me your
hand and call me your brother."

"I will agree to call you a coward and a betrayer!" replied Gabriel,
whose face had begun to glow, as he heard his sister spoken of with
such impudent levity.  "If it is thus that insults are avenged in
towns, we fishers have a different plan.  Ah! so you flattered
yourself with the thought of bringing desolation aid disgrace into
our home, and of paying infamous assassins to come and share an old
man's bread so as to poison his daughter, of stealing by night, like
a brigand, armed with a dagger, into my sister's room, and of being
let off by marrying the most beautiful woman in the kingdom!"

The prince made a movement.

"Listen," continued Gabriel: "I could break you as I broke your
dagger just now; but I have pity on you.  I see that you can do
nothing with your hands, neither defend yourself nor work.  Go, I
begin to understand; you are a braggart, my fine sir; your poverty is
usurped; you have decked yourself in these poor clothes, but you are
unworthy of them."

He suffered a glance of crushing contempt to fall upon the prince,
then going to a cupboard hidden in the wall, he drew out a rifle and
an axe.

"Here," said he, "are all the weapons in the house; choose."

A flash of joy illuminated the countenance of the prince, who had
hitherto suppressed his rage.  He seized the rifle eagerly, drew
three steps backward, and drawing himself up to his full height,
said, "You would have done better to lend me this weapon at the
beginning; for then I would have been spared from witnessing your
silly vapourings and frantic convulsions.  Thanks, young-man; one of
my servants will bring you back your gun.  Farewell."

And he threw him his purse, which fell heavily at the fisherman's
feet.

"I lent you that rifle to fight with me," cried Gabriel, whom
surprise had rooted to the spot.

"Move aside, my lad; you are out of your senses," said the prince,
taking a step towards the door.

"So you refuse to defend yourself?" asked Gabriel in a determined
voice.

"I have told you already that I cannot fight with you."

"Why not?"

"Because such is the will of God; because you were born to crawl and
I to trample you under my feet; because all the blood that I could
shed in this island would not purchase one drop of my blood; because
a thousand lives of wretches like you are not equal to one hour of
mine; because you will kneel at my name that I, am now going to
utter; because, in short, you are but a poor fisherman and my name is
Prince of Brancaleone."

At this dreaded name, which the young nobleman flung, like a
thunderbolt, at his head, the fisherman bounded like a lion.  He drew
a deep breath, as though he had lifted a weight that had long rested
on his heart.

"Ah!" he cried, "you have given yourself into my hands, my lord!
Between the poor fisherman and the all-powerful prince there is a
debt of blood.  You shall pay for yourself and for your father.  We
are going to settle our accounts, your excellency," he added, rising
his axe over the head of the prince, who was aiming at him.  "Oh!
you were in too great haste to choose: the rifle is not loaded."  The
prince turned pale.

"Between our two families," Gabriel continued, "there exists a
horrible secret which my mother confided to me on the brink of the
grave, of which my father himself is unaware, and that no man in the
world must learn.  You are different, you are going to die."

He dragged him into the space outside the house.

"Do you know why my sister, whom you wished to dishonour, was vowed
to the Madonna?  Because your father, like you, wished to dishonour
my mother.  In your accursed house there is a tradition of infamy.
You do not know what slow and terrible torments my poor mother
endured-torments that broke her strength and caused her to die in
early youth, and that her angelic soul dared confide to none but her
son in that supreme hour and in order to bid me watch over my
sister."

The fisherman wiped away a burning tear.  "One day, before we were
born, a fine lady, richly dressed, landed in our island from a
splendid boat; she asked to see my mother, who was as young and
beautiful as my Nisida is to-day.  She could not cease from admiring
her; she blamed the blindness of fate which had buried this lovely
jewel in the bosom of an obscure island; she showered praises,
caresses, and gifts upon my mother, and after many indirect speeches,
finally asked her parents for her, that she might make her her lady-
in-waiting.  The poor people, foreseeing in the protection of so
great a lady a brilliant future for their daughter, were weak enough
to yield.  That lady was your mother; and do you know why she came
thus to seek that poor innocent maiden?  Because your mother had a
lover, and because she wished to make sure, in this infamous manner,
of the prince's indulgence."

"Silence, wretch!"

"Oh, your excellency will hear me out.  At the beginning, my poor
mother found herself surrounded by the tenderest care: the princess
could not be parted from her for a moment; the most flattering words,
the finest clothes, the richest ornaments were hers; the servants
paid her as much respect as though she were a daughter of the house.
When her parents went to see her and to inquire whether she did not
at all regret having left them, they found her so lovely and so
happy, that they blessed the princess as a good angel sent them from
God.  Then the prince conceived a remarkable affection for my mother;
little by little his manners became more familiar and affectionate.
At last the princess went away for a few days, regretting that she
could not take with her her dear child, as she called her.  Then the
prince's brutality knew no further barriers; he no longer concealed
his shameful plans of seduction; he spread before the poor girl's
eyes pearl necklaces and caskets of diamonds; he passed from the most
glowing passion to the blackest fury, from the humblest prayers to
the most horrible threats.  The poor child was shut up in a cellar
where there was hardly a gleam of daylight, and every morning a
frightful gaoler came and threw her a bit of black bread, repeating
with oaths that it only depended upon herself to alter all this by
becoming the prince's mistress.  This cruelty continued for two
years.  The princess had gone on a long journey, and my mother's poor
parents believed that their daughter was still happy with her
protectress.  On her return, having; no doubt fresh sins for which
she needed forgiveness, she took my mother from her dungeon, assumed
the liveliest indignation at this horrible treatment, about which she
appeared to have known nothing, wiped her tears, and by an abominable
refinement of perfidy received the thanks of the victim whom she was
about to sacrifice.

"One evening--I have just finished, my lord--the princess chose to sup
alone with her lady-in-waiting: the rarest fruits, the most exquisite
dishes, and the most delicate wines were served to my poor mother,
whose prolonged privations had injured her health and weakened her
reason; she gave way to a morbid gaiety.  Diabolical philtres were
poured into her cup; that is another tradition in your family.  My
mother felt uplifted, her eyes shone with feverish brilliance, her
cheeks were on fire.  Then the prince came in--oh! your excellency
will see that God protects the poor.  My darling mother, like a
frightened dove, sheltered herself in the bosom of the princess, who
pushed her away, laughing.  The poor distraught girl, trembling,
weeping, knelt down in the midst of that infamous room.  It was St.
Anne's Day; all at once the house shook, the walls cracked, cries of
distress rang out in the streets.  My mother was saved.  It was the
earthquake that destroyed half Naples.  You know all about it, my
lord, since your old palace is no longer habitable."

"What are you driving at?" cried Brancaleone in terrible agitation.

"Oh, I merely wish to persuade you that you must fight with me,"
answered the fisherman coldly, as he offered him a cartridge.  "And
now," he added, in an excited tone, "say your prayers, my lord; for I
warn you, you will die by my hand; justice must be done."

The prince carefully examined the powder and shot, made sure that his
rifle was in good condition; loaded it, and, eager to make an end,
took aim at the fisherman; but, either because he had been so much
disturbed by his opponent's terrible tale, or, because the grass was
wet from the storm, at the moment when he put forward his left foot
to steady his shot, he slipped, lost his balance and fell on one
knee.  He fired into the air.

"That does not count, my lord," cried Gabriel instantly, and handed
him a second charge.

At the noise of the report Solomon had appeared at the window, and,
understanding what was going on, had lifted his hands to heaven, in
order to address to God a dumb and fervent prayer.  Eligi uttered a
frightful inprecation, and hastily reloaded his rifle; but, struck by
the calm confidence of the young man, who stood motionless before
him, and by the old man, who, impassive and undisturbed, seemed to be
conjuring God in the name of a father's authority, disconcerted by
his fall, his knees shaking and his arm jarred, he felt the chills of
death running in his veins.  Attempting, nevertheless, to master his
emotion, he took aim a second time; the bullet whistled by the
fisherman's ear and buried itself in the stem of a poplar.

The prince, with the energy of despair, seized the barrel of his
weapon in both hands; but Gabriel was coming forward with his axe, a
terrible foe, and his first stroke carried away the butt of the
rifle.  He was still hesitating, however, to kill a defenceless man,
when two armed servants appeared at the end of the pathway.  Gabriel
did not see them coming; but at the moment when they would have
seized him by the shoulders, Solomon uttered a cry and rushed to his
son's assistance.

"Help, Numa! help, Bonaroux!  Death to the ruffians!  They want to
murder me."

"You lie, Prince of Brancaleone!" cried Gabriel, and with one blow of
the axe he cleft his skull.

The two bravoes who were coming to their master's assistance, when
they saw him fall, took flight; Solomon and his son went up to
Nisida's room.  The young girl had just shaken off her heavy slumber;
a slight perspiration moistened her brow, and she opened her eyes
slowly to the dawning day.

"Why are you looking at me in that way, father?" she said, her mind
still wandering a littler and she passed her hand over her forehead.

The old man embraced her tenderly.

"You have just passed through a great danger, my poor Nisida," said
he; "arise, and let us give thanks to the Madonna."

Then all three, kneeling before the sacred image of the Virgin, began
to recite litanies.  But at that very instant a noise of arms sounded
in the enclosure, the house was surrounded by soldiers, and a
lieutenant of gendarmes, seizing Gabriel, said in a loud voice, "In
the name of the law, I arrest you for the murder that you have just
committed upon the person of his excellency and illustrious lordship,
the Prince of Brancaleone."

Nisida, struck by these words, remained pale and motionless like a
marble statue kneeling on a tomb; Gabriel was already preparing to
make an unreasoning resistance, when a gesture from his father
stopped him.

"Signor tenente," said the old man, addressing himself to the
officer, "my son killed the prince in lawful defence, for the latter
had scaled our house and made his way in at night and with arms in
his hand.  The proofs are before your eyes.  Here is a ladder set up
against the window; and here," he proceeded, picking up the two
pieces of the broken blade, "is a dagger with the Brancaleone arms.
However, we do not refuse to follow you."

The last words of the fisherman were drowned by cries of "Down with
the sbirri!  down with the gendarmes!" which were repeated in every
direction.  The whole island was up in arms, and the fisher-folk
would have suffered themselves to be cut up to the last man before
allowing a single hair of Solomon or of his son to be touched; but
the old man appeared upon his threshold, and, stretching out his arm
with a calm and grave movement that quieted the anger of the crowd,
he said, "Thanks, my children; the law must be respected.  I shall be
able, alone, to defend the innocence of my son before the judges."

Hardly three months have elapsed since the day upon which we first
beheld the old fisherman of Nisida sitting before the door of his
dwelling, irradiated by all the happiness that he had succeeded in
creating around him, reigning like a king, on his throne of rock, and
blessing his two children, the most beautiful creatures in the
island.  Now the whole existence of this man, who was once so happy
and so much envied, is changed.  The smiling cottage, that hung over
the gulf like a swan over a transparent lake, is sad and desolate;
the little enclosure, with its hedges of lilac and hawthorn, where
joyous groups used to come and sit at the close of day, is silent and
deserted.  No human sound dares to trouble the mourning of this
saddened solitude.  Only towards evening the waves of the sea,
compassionating such great misfortunes, come to murmur plaintive
notes upon the beach.

Gabriel has been condemned.  The news of the high-born Prince of
Brancaleone's death, so young, so handsome, and so universally
adored, not only fluttered the aristocracy of Naples, but excited
profound indignation in all classes of people.  He was mourned by
everybody, and a unanimous cry for vengeance was raised against the
murderer.

The authorities opened the inquiry with alarming promptness.  The
magistrates whom their office called to judge this deplorable affair
displayed, however, the most irreproachable integrity.  No
consideration outside their duty, no deference due to so noble and
powerful a family, could shake the convictions of their conscience.
History has kept a record of this memorable trial; and has, no
reproach to make to men which does not apply equally to the
imperfection of human laws.  The appearance of things, that fatal
contradiction which the genius of evil so often here on earth gives
to truth, overwhelmed the poor fisherman with the most evident
proofs.

Trespolo, in whom fear had destroyed all scruples, being first
examined, as having been the young prince's confidant, declared with
cool impudence that, his master having shown a wish to escape for a
few days from the importunities of a young married lady whose passion
was beginning to tire him, had followed him to the island with three
or four of his most faithful servants, and that he himself had
adopted the disguise of a pilgrim, not wishing to betray his
excellency's incognito to the fisher-people, who would certainly have
tormented so powerful a person by all sorts of petitions.  Two local
watch men, who had happened to be on the hillside at the moment of
the crime, gave evidence that confirmed the valet's lengthy
statement; hidden by some under wood, they had seen Gabriel rush upon
the prince, and had distinctly heard the last words of the dying man;
calling "Murder!"  All the witnesses, even those summoned at the
request of the prisoner, made his case worse by their statements,
which they tried to make favourable.  Thus the court, with its usual
perspicacity and its infallible certainty, succeeded in establishing
the fact that Prince Eligi of Brancaleone, having taken a temporary
dislike to town life, had retired to the little island of Nisida,
there to give himself up peaceably to the pleasure of fishing, for
which he had at all times had a particular predilection (a proof
appeared among the documents of the case that the prince had
regularly been present every other year at the tunny-fishing on his
property at Palermo); that when once he was thus hidden in the
island, Gabriel might have recognised him, having gone with his
sister to the procession, a few days before, and had, no doubt,
planned to murder him.  On the day before the night of the crime, the
absence of Gabriel and the discomposure of his father and sister had
been remarked.  Towards evening the prince had dismissed his servant,
and gone out alone, as his custom was, to walk by the seashore.
Surprised by the storm and not knowing the byways of the island, he
had wandered round the fisherman's house, seeking a shelter; then
Gabriel, encouraged by the darkness and by the noise of the tempest,
which seemed likely to cover the cries of his victim, had, after
prolonged hesitation, resolved to commit his crime, and having fired
two shots at the unfortunate young man without succeeding in wounding
him, had put an end to him by blows of the axe; lastly, at the moment
when, with Solomon's assistance, he was about to throw the body into
the sea, the prince's servants having appeared, they had gone up to
the girl's room, and, inventing their absurd tale, had cast
themselves on their knees before the Virgin, in order to mislead the
authorities.  All the circumstances that poor Solomon cited in his
son's favour turned against him: the ladder at Nisida's window
belonged to the fisherman; the dagger which young Brancaleone always
carried upon him to defend himself had evidently been taken from him
after his death, and Gabriel had hastened to break it, so as to
destroy, to the best of his power, the traces of his crime.
Bastiano's evidence did not receive a minute's consideration: he, to
destroy the idea of premeditation, declared that the young fisherman
had left him only at the moment when the storm broke over the island;
but, in the first place, the young diver was known to be Gabriel's
most devoted friend and his sister's warmest admirer, and, in the
second, he had been seen to land at Torre during the same hour in
which he had affirmed that he was near to Nisida.  As for the
prince's passion for the poor peasant girl, the magistrates simply
shrugged their shoulders at the ridiculous assertion of that, and
especially at the young girl's alleged resistance and the extreme
measures to which the prince was supposed to have resorted to conquer
the virtue of Nisida.  Eligi of Brancaleone was so young, so
handsome, so seductive, and at the same time so cool amid his
successes, that he had never been suspected of violence, except in
getting rid of his mistresses.  Finally, an overwhelming and
unanswerable proof overthrew all the arguments for the defence: under
the fisherman's bed had been found a purse with the Brancaleone arms,
full of gold, the purse which, if our readers remember, the prince
had flung as a last insult at Gabriel's feet.

The old man did not lose heart at this fabric of lies; after the
pleadings of the advocates whose ruinous eloquence he had bought with
heavy gold, he defended his son himself, and put so much truth, so
much passion, and so many tears into his speech, that the whole
audience was moved, and three of the judges voted for an acquittal;
but the majority was against it, and the fatal verdict was
pronounced.

The news at once spread throughout the little island, and caused the
deepest dejection there.  The fishers who, at the first irruption of
force, had risen as one man to defend their comrade's cause, bowed
their heads without a murmur before the unquestioned authority of a
legal judgment.  Solomon received unflinchingly the stab that pierced
his heart.  No sigh escaped his breast; no tear came to his eyes; his
wound did not bleed.  Since his son's arrest he had sold all he
possessed in the world, even the little silver cross left by his wife
at her death, even the pearl necklace that flattered his fatherly
pride by losing its whiteness against his dear Nisida's throat; the
pieces of gold gained by the sale of these things he had sewn into
his coarse woollen cap, and had established himself in the city.  He
ate nothing but the bread thrown to him by the pity of passers-by,
and slept on the steps of churches or at the magistrates' door.

To estimate at its full value the heroic courage of this unhappy
father, one must take a general view of the whole extent of his
misfortune.  Overwhelmed by age and grief, he looked forward with
solemn calmness to the terrible moment which would bear his son, a
few days before him, to the grave.  His sharpest agony was the
thought of the shame that would envelop his family.  The first
scaffold erected in that gently mannered island would arise for
Gabriel, and that ignominious punishment tarnish the whole population
and imprint upon it the first brand of disgrace.  By a sad
transition, which yet comes so easily in the destiny of man, the poor
father grew to long for those moments of danger at which he had
formerly trembled, those moments in which his son might have died
nobly.  And now all was lost: a long life of work, of abnegation, and
of good deeds, a pure and stainless reputation that had extended
beyond the gulf into distant countries, and the traditional
admiration, rising almost to worship, of several generations; all
these things only served to deepen the pit into which the fisherman
had fallen, at one blow, from his kingly height.  Good fame, that
divine halo without which nothing here on earth is sacred, had
disappeared.  Men no longer dared to defend the poor wretch, they
pitied him.  His name would soon carry horror with it, and Nisida,
poor orphan, would be nothing to anyone but the sister of a man who
had been condemned to death.  Even Bastiano turned away his face and
wept.  Thus, when every respite was over, when poor Solomon's every
attempt had failed, people in the town who saw him smile strangely,
as though under the obsession of some fixed idea, said to one another
that the old man had lost his reason.

Gabriel saw his last day dawn, serenely and calmly.  His sleep had
been deep; he awoke full of unknown joy; a cheerful ray of sunlight,
falling through the loophole, wavered over the fine golden straw in
his cell; an autumn breeze playing around him, brought an agreeable
coolness to his brow, and stirred in his long hair.  The gaoler, who
while he had had him in his charge had always behaved humanely,
struck by his happy looks, hesitated to announce the priest's visit,
in fear of calling the poor prisoner from his dream.  Gabriel
received the news with pleasure; he conversed for two hours with the
good priest, and shed sweet tears on receiving the last absolution.
The priest left the prison with tears in his eyes, declaring aloud
that he had never in his life met with a more beautiful, pure,
resigned, and courageous spirit.

The fisherman was still under the influence of this consoling emotion
when his sister entered.  Since the day when she had been carried,
fainting, from the room where her brother had just been arrested, the
poor girl, sheltered under the roof of an aunt, and accusing herself
of all the evil that had befallen, had done nothing but weep at the
feet of her holy protectress.  Bowed by grief like a young lily
before the storm, she would spend whole hours, pale, motionless,
detached from earthly things, her tears flowing silently upon her
beautiful clasped hands.  When the moment came to go and embrace her
brother for the last time, Nisida arose with the courage of a saint.
She wiped away the traces of her tears, smoothed her beautiful black
hair, and put on her best white dress.  Poor child, she tried to hide
her grief by an angelic deception.  She had the strength to smile!
At the sight of her alarming pallor Gabriel felt his heart wrung, a
cloud passed over his eyes; he would have run to meet her, but, held
back by the chain which fettered him to a pillar of his prison,
stepped back sharply and stumbled. Nisida flew to her brother and
upheld him in her arms.  The young girl had understood him; she
assured him that she was well.  Fearing to remind him of his terrible
position, she spoke volubly of all manner of things--her aunt, the
weather, the Madonna.  Then she stopped suddenly, frightened at her
own words, frightened at her own silence; she fixed her burning gaze
upon her brother's brow as though to fascinate him.  Little by little
animation returned to her; a faint colour tinted her hollowed cheeks,
and Gabriel, deceived by the maiden's super human efforts, thought
her still beautiful, and thanked God in his heart for having spared
this tender creature.  Nisida, as though she had followed her
brother's secret thoughts, came close to him, pressed his hand with
an air of understanding, and murmured low in his ear, "Fortunately
our father has been away for two days; he sent me word that he would
be detained in town.  For us, it is different; we are young, we have
courage!"

The poor young girl was trembling like a leaf.

"What will become of you, my poor Nisida?"

"Bah!  I will pray to the Madonna.  Does she not watch over us?"  The
girl stopped, struck by the sound of her own words, which the
circumstances so cruelly contradicted.  But looking at her brother,
she went on in a low tone: "Assuredly she does watch over us.  She
appeared to me last night in a dream.  She held her child Jesus on
her arm, and looked at me with a mother's tenderness.  She wishes to
make saints of us, for she loves us; and to be a saint, you see,
Gabriel, one must suffer."

"Well, go and pray for me, my kind sister; go away from the view of
this sad place, which will eventually shake your firmness, and
perhaps mine.  Go; we shall see each other again in heaven above,
where our mother is waiting for us--our mother whom you have not
known, and to whom I shall often speak of you.  Farewell, my sister,
until we meet again!"

And he kissed her on the forehead.

The young girl called up all her strength into her heart for this
supreme moment; she walked with a firm step; having reached the
threshold, she turned round and waved him a farewell, preventing
herself by a nervous contraction from bursting into tears, but as
soon as she was in the corridor, a sob broke from her bosom, and
Gabriel, who heard it echo from the vaulted roof, thought that his
heart would break.

Then he threw himself on his knees, and, lifting his hands to heaven,
cried, "I have finished suffering; I have nothing more that holds me
to life.  I thank Thee, my God!  Thou hast kept my father away, and
hast been willing to spare the poor old man a grief that would have
been beyond his strength."

It was at the hour of noon, after having exhausted every possible
means, poured out his gold to the last piece, and embraced the knees
of the lowest serving man, that Solomon the fisherman took his way to
his son's prison.  His brow was so woebegone that the guards drew
back, seized with pity, and the gaoler wept as he closed the door of
the cell upon him.  The old man remained some moments without
advancing a step, absorbed in contemplation of his son.  By the tawny
gleam of his eye might be divined that the soul of the man was moved
at that instant by some dark project.  He seemed nevertheless struck
by the-beauty of Gabriel's face.  Three months in prison had restored
to his skin the whiteness that the sun had turned brown; his fine
dark hair fell in curls around his neck, his eyes rested on his
father with a liquid and brilliant gaze.  Never had this head been so
beautiful as now, when it was to fall.

"Alas, my poor son!" said the old man, "there is no hope left; you
must die."

"I know it," answered Gabriel in a tone of tender reproach, "and it
is not that which most afflicts me at this moment.  But you, too, why
do you wish to give me pain, at your age?  Why did you not stay in
the town?"

"In the town," the old man returned, "they have no pity; I cast
myself at the king's feet, at everybody's feet; there is no pardon,
no mercy for us."

"Well, in God's name, what is death to me?  I meet it daily on the
sea.  My greatest, my only torment is the pain that they are causing
you."

"And I, do you think, my Gabriel, that I only suffer in seeing you
die?  Oh, it is but a parting for a few days; I shall soon go to join
you.  But a darker sorrow weighs upon me.  I am strong, I am a man".
He stopped, fearing that he had said too much; then drawing near to
his son, he said in a tearful voice, "Forgive me, my Gabriel; I am
the cause of your death. I ought to have killed the prince with my
own hand.  In our country, children and old men are not condemned to
death.  I am over eighty years old; I should have been pardoned; they
told me that when, with tears, I asked pardon for you; once more,
forgive me, Gabriel; I thought my daughter was dead; I thought of
nothing else; and besides, I did not know the law."

"Father, father!" cried Gabriel, touched, "what are you saying?  I
would have given my life a thousand times over to purchase one day of
yours.  Since you are strong enough to be present at my last hour,
fear not; you will not see me turn pale; your son will be worthy of
you."

"And he is to die, to die!" cried Solomon, striking his forehead in
despair, and casting on the walls of the dungeon a look of fire that
would fain have pierced them.

"I am resigned, father," said Gabriel gently; did not Christ ascend
the cross?"

"Yes," murmured the old man in a muffled voice, "but He did not leave
behind a sister dishonoured by His death."

These words, which escaped the old fisherman in spite of himself,
threw a sudden and terrible light into the soul of Gabriel.  For the
first time he perceived all the infamous manner of his death: the
shameless populace crowding round the scaffold, the hateful hand of
the executioner taking him by the Hair, and the drops of his blood
besprinkling the white raiment of his sister and covering her with
shame.

"Oh, if I could get a weapon!" cried Gabriel, his haggard eyes
roaming around.

"It is not the weapon that is lacking," answered Solomon, carrying
his hand to the hilt of a dagger that he had hidden in his breast.

"Then kill me, father," said Gabriel in a low tone, but with an
irresistible accent of persuasion and entreaty; "oh yes, I confess it
now, the executioner's hand frightens me.  My Nisida, my poor Nisida,
I have seen her; she was here just now, as beautiful and as pale as
the Madonna Dolorosa; she smiled to hide from me her sufferings.  She
was happy, poor girl, because she believed you away.  Oh, how sweet
it will be to me to die by your hand!  You gave me life; take it
back, father, since God will have it so.  And Nisida will be saved.
Oh, do not hesitate!  It would be a cowardice on the part of both of
us; she is my sister, she is your daughter."

And seeing that his powerful will had subjugated the old man, he
said, "Help! help, father!" and offered his breast to the blow.  The
poor father lifted his hand to strike; but a mortal convulsion ran
through all his limbs; he fell into his son's arms, and both burst
into tears.

"Poor father!" said Gabriel.  "I ought to have foreseen that.  Give
me that dagger and turn away; I am young and my arm will not
tremble."

"Oh no !" returned Solomon solemnly, "no, my son, for then you would
be a suicide!  Let your soul ascend to heaven pure!  God will give me
His strength.  Moreover, we have time yet."

And a last ray of hope shone in the eyes of the fisherman.

Then there passed in that dungeon one of those scenes that words can
never reproduce.  The poor father sat down on the straw at his son's
side and laid his head gently upon his knees.  He smiled to him
through his tears, as one smiles to a sick child; he passed his hand
slowly through the silky curls of his hair, and asked him countless
questions, intermingled with caresses.  In order to give him a
distaste for this world he kept on talking to him of the other.
Then, with a sudden change, he questioned him minutely about all
sorts of past matters.  Sometimes he stopped in alarm, and counted
the beatings of his heart, which were  hurriedly marking the passage
of time.

"Tell me everything, my child; have you any desire, any wish that
could be satisfied before you die?  Are you leaving any woman whom
you loved secretly?  Everything we have left shall be hers."

"I regret nothing on earth but you and my sister.  You are the only
persons whom I have loved since my mother's death."

"Well, be comforted.  Your sister will be saved."

"Oh, yes!  I shall die happy."

"Do you forgive our enemies?"

"With all the strength of my heart.  I pray God to have mercy on the
witnesses who accused me.  May He forgive me my sins!"

"How old is it that you will soon be?" the old man asked suddenly,
for his reason was beginning to totter, and his memory had failed
him.

"I was twenty-five on All Hallows' Day."

"True; it was a sad day, this year; you were in prison."

"Do you remember how, five years ago, on that same day I got the
prize in the regatta at Venice?"

"Tell me about that, my child."

And he listened, his neck stretched forward, his mouth half open, his
hands in his son's.  A sound of steps came in from the corridor, and
a dull knock was struck upon the door.  It was the fatal hour.  The
poor father had forgotten it.

The priests had already begun to sing the death hymn; the executioner
was ready, the procession had set out, when Solomon the fisherman
appeared suddenly on the threshold of the prison, his eyes aflame and
his brow radiant with the halo of the patriarchs.  The old man drew
himself up to his full height, and raising in one hand the reddened
knife, said in a sublime voice, "The sacrifice is fulfilled.  God did
not send His angel to stay the hand of Abraham."

The crowd carried him in triumph!

[The details of this case are recorded in the archives of the
Criminal Court at Naples.  We have changed nothing in the age or
position of the persons who appear in this narrative.  One of the
most celebrated advocates at the Neapolitan bar secured the acquittal
of the old man.]




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "NISIDA", CELEBRATED CRIMES, v4
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 5 (of 8), Part 1

By Alexandre Dumas, Pere



DERUES


One September afternoon in 1751, towards half-past five, about a
score of small boys, chattering, pushing, and tumbling over one
another like a covey of partridges, issued from one of the religious
schools of Chartres.  The joy of the little troop just escaped from a
long and wearisome captivity was doubly great: a slight accident to
one of the teachers had caused the class to be dismissed half an hour
earlier than usual, and in consequence of the extra work thrown on
the teaching staff the brother whose duty it was to see all the
scholars safe home was compelled to omit that part of his daily task.
Therefore not only thirty or forty minutes were stolen from work, but
there was also unexpected, uncontrolled liberty, free from the
surveillance of that black-cassocked overseer who kept order in their
ranks.  Thirty minutes! at that age it is a century, of laughter and
prospective games!  Each had promised solemnly, under pain of severe
punishment, to return straight to his paternal nest without delay,
but the air was so fresh and pure, the country smiled all around!
The school, or preferably the cage, which had just opened, lay at the
extreme edge of one of the suburbs, and it only required a few steps
to slip under a cluster of trees by a sparkling brook beyond which
rose undulating ground, breaking the monotony of a vast and fertile
plain.  Was it possible to be obedient, to refrain from the desire to
spread one's wings?  The scent of the meadows mounted to the heads of
the steadiest among them, and intoxicated even the most timid.  It
was resolved to betray the confidence of the reverend fathers, even
at the risk of disgrace and punishment next morning, supposing the
escapade were discovered.

A flock of sparrows suddenly released from a cage could not have
flown more wildly into the little wood.  They were all about the same
age, the eldest might be nine.  They flung off coats and waistcoats,
and the grass became strewn with baskets, copy-books, dictionaries,
and catechisms.  While the crowd of fair-haired heads, of fresh and
smiling faces, noisily consulted as to which game should be chosen, a
boy who had taken no part in the general gaiety, and who had been
carried away by the rush without being able to escape sooner, glided
slyly away among the trees, and, thinking himself unseen, was beating
a hasty retreat, when one of his comrades cried out--

"Antoine is running away!"

Two of the best runners immediately started in pursuit, and the
fugitive, notwithstanding his start, was speedily overtaken, seized
by his collar, and brought back as a deserter.

"Where were you going?" the others demanded.

"Home to my cousins," replied the boy; "there is no harm in that."

"You canting sneak!" said another boy, putting his fist under the
captive's chin; "you were going to the master to tell of us."

"Pierre," responded Antoine, "you know quite well I never tell lies."

"Indeed!--only this morning you pretended I had taken a book you had
lost, and you did it because I kicked you yesterday, and you didn't
dare to kick me back again."

Antoine lifted his eyes to heaven, and folding his arms on his
breast

Dear Buttel," he said, "you are mistaken; I have always been taught
to forgive injuries."

"Listen, listen!  he might be saying his prayers!" cried the other
boys; and a volley of offensive epithets, enforced by cuffs, was
hurled at the culprit.

Pierre Buttel, whose influence was great, put a stop to this
onslaught.

"Look here, Antoine, you are a bad lot, that we all know; you are a
sneak and a hypocrite.  It's time we put a stop to it.  Take off your
coat and fight it out.  If you like, we will fight every morning and
evening till the end of the month."

The proposition was loudly applauded, and Pierre, turning up his
sleeves as far as his elbows, prepared to suit actions to words.

The challenger assuredly did not realise the full meaning, of his
words; had he done so, this chivalrous defiance would simply have
been an act of cowardice on his part, for there could be no doubt as
to the victor in such a conflict.  The one was a boy of alert and
gallant bearing, strong upon his legs, supple and muscular, a
vigorous man in embryo; while the other, not quite so old, small,
thin, of a sickly leaden complexion, seemed as if he might be blown
away by a strong puff of wind.  His skinny arms and legs hung on to
his body like the claws of a spider, his fair hair inclined to red,
his white skin appeared nearly bloodless, and the consciousness of
weakness made him timid, and gave a shifty, uneasy look to his eyes.
His whole expression was uncertain, and looking only at his face it
was difficult at first sight to decide to which sex he belonged.
This confusion of two natures, this indefinable mixture of feminine
weakness without grace, and of abortive boyhood, seemed to stamp him
as something exceptional, unclassable, and once observed, it was
difficult to take one's eyes from him.  Had he been endowed with
physical strength he would have been a terror to his comrades,
exercising by fear the ascendancy which Pierre owed to his joyous
temper and unwearied gaiety, for this mean exterior concealed
extraordinary powers of will and dissimulation.  Guided by instinct,
the other children hung about Pierre and willingly accepted his
leadership; by instinct also they avoided Antoine, repelled by a
feeling of chill, as if from the neighbourhood of a reptile, and
shunning him unless to profit in some way by their superior strength.
Never would he join their games without compulsion; his thin,
colourless lips seldom parted for a laugh, and even at that tender
age his smile had an unpleasantly sinister expression.

"Will you fight?" again demanded Pierre.

Antoine glanced hastily round; there was no chance of escape, a
double ring enclosed him.  To accept or refuse seemed about equally
risky; he ran a good chance of a thrashing whichever way he decided.
Although his heart beat loudly, no trace of emotion appeared on his
pallid cheek; an unforeseen danger would have made him shriek, but he
had had time to collect himself, time to shelter behind hypocrisy.
As soon as he could lie and cheat he recovered courage, and the
instinct of cunning, once roused, prevailed over everything else.
Instead of answering this second challenge, he knelt down and said to
Pierre--

"You are much stronger than I am."

This submission disarmed his antagonist.  "Get up," he replied;
"I won't touch you, if you can't defend yourself.

"Pierre," continued Antoine, still on his knees, "I assure you, by
God and the Holy Virgin, I was not going to tell.  I was going home
to my cousins to learn my lessons for to-morrow; you know how slow I
am.  If you think I have done you any harm, I ask your forgiveness."

Pierre held out his hand and made him get up.

"Will you be a good fellow, Antoine, and play with us?"

"Yes, I will."

"All right, then; let us forget all about it."

"What are we to play at?" asked Antoine, taking off his coat.

"Thieves and archers," cried one of the boys....

"Splendid!" said Pierre; and using his acknowledged authority, he
divided them into two sides--ten highwaymen, whom he was to command,
and ten archers of the guard, who were to pursue them; Antoine was
among the latter.

The highwaymen, armed with swords and guns obtained from the willows
which grew along the brook, moved off first, and gained the valleys
between the little hills beyond the wood.  The fight was to be
serious, and any prisoner on either side was to be tried immediately.
The robbers divided into twos and threes, and hid themselves in the
ravines.

A few minutes later the archers started in pursuit.  There were
encounters, surprises, skirmishes; but whenever it came to close
quarters, Pierre's men, skilfully distributed, united on hearing his
whistle, and the Army of justice had to retreat.  But there came a
time when this magic signal was no longer heard, and the robbers
became uneasy, and remained crouching in their hiding-places.
Pierre, over-daring, had undertaken to defend alone the entrance of a
dangerous passage and to stop the whole hostile troop there.  Whilst
he kept them engaged, half of his men, concealed on the left, were to
come round the foot of the hill and make a rush on hearing his
whistle; the other half, also stationed at some, little distance,
were to execute the same manoeuvre from above.  The archers would be
caught in a trap, and attacked both in front and rear, would be
obliged to surrender at discretion.  Chance, which not unfrequently
decides the fate of a battle, defeated this excellent stratagem.
Watching intently; Pierre failed to perceive that while his whole
attention was given to the ground in front, the archers had taken an
entirely different road from the one they ought to have followed if
his combination were to succeed.  They suddenly fell upon him from
behind, and before he could blow his whistle, they gagged him with a
handkerchief and tied his hands.  Six remained to keep the field of
battle and disperse the hostile band, now deprived of its chief; the
remaining four conveyed Pierre to the little wood, while the robbers,
hearing no signal, did not venture to stir.  According to agreement,
Pierre Buttel was tried by the archers, who promptly transformed
themselves into a court of justice, and as he had been taken
red-handed, and did not condescend to defend himself, the trial was
not a long affair.  He was unanimously sentenced to be hung, and the
execution was then and there carried out, at the request of the
criminal himself, who wanted the game to be properly played to the
end, and who actually selected a suitable tree for his own execution.

"But, Pierre," said one of the judges, "how can you be held up
there?"

"How stupid you are!" returned the captive.  "I shall only pretend to
be hung, of course.  See here!" and he fastened together several
pieces strong string which had tied some of the other boys' books,
piled the latter together, and standing on tiptoe on this very
insecure basis, fastened one end of the cord to a horizontal bough,
and put his neck into a running knot at the other end, endeavouring
to imitate the contortions of an actual sufferer.  Shouts of laughter
greeted him, and the victim laughed loudest of all.  Three archers
went to call the rest to behold this amusing spectacle; one, tired
out, remained with the prisoner.

"Ah, Hangman," said Pierre, putting out his tongue at him, "are the
books firm?  I thought I felt them give way."

"No," replied Antoine; it was he who remained.  "Don't be afraid,
Pierre."

"It is a good thing; for if they fell I don't think the cord is long
enough."

"Don't you really think so?"

A horrible thought showed itself like a flash on the child's face.
He resembled a young hyena scenting blood for the first time.  He
glanced at the pile of books Pierre was standing on, and compared it
with the length of the cord between the branch and his neck.  It was
already nearly dark, the shadows were deepening in the wood, gleams
of pale light penetrated between the trees, the leaves had become
black and rustled in the wind.  Antoine stood silent and motionless,
listening if any sound could be heard near them.

It would be a curious study for the moralist to observe how the first
thought of crime develops itself in the recesses of the human heart,
and how this poisoned germ grows and stifles all other sentiments; an
impressive lesson might be gathered from this struggle of two
opposing principles, however weak it may be, in perverted natures.
In cases where judgment can discern, where there is power to choose
between good and evil, the guilty person has only himself to blame,
and the most heinous crime is only the action of its perpetrator.  It
is a human action, the result of passions which might have been
controlled, and one's mind is not uncertain, nor one's conscience
doubtful, as to the guilt.  But how can one conceive this taste for
murder in a young child, how imagine it, without being tempted to
exchange the idea of eternal sovereign justice for that of blind
-fatality?  How can one judge without hesitation between the moral
sense which has given way and the instinct which displays itself?
how not exclaim that the designs of a Creator who retains the one and
impels the other are sometimes mysterious and inexplicable, and that
one must submit without understanding?

"Do you hear them coming?" asked Pierre.

"I hear nothing," replied Antoine, and a nervous shiver ran through
all his members.

"So much the worse.  I am tired of being dead; I shall come to life
and run after them.  Hold the books, and I will undo the noose."

"If you move, the books will separate; wait, I will hold them."

And he knelt down, and collecting all his strength, gave the pile a
violent push.

Pierre endeavoured to raise his hands to his throat.  "What are you
doing?" he cried in a suffocating voice.

"I am paying you out;" replied Antoine, folding his arms.

Pierre's feet were only a few inches from the ground, and the weight
of his body at first bent the bough for a moment; but it rose again,
and the unfortunate boy exhausted himself in useless efforts.  At
every movement the knot grew tighter, his legs struggled, his arms
sought vainly something to lay hold of; then his movements slackened,
his limbs stiffened, and his hands sank down.  Of so much life and
vigour nothing remained but the movement of an inert mass turning
round and round upon itself.

Not till then did Antoine cry for help, and when the other boys
hastened up they found him crying and tearing his hair.  So violent
indeed were his sobs and his despair that he could hardly be
understood as he tried to explain how the books had given way under
Pierre, and how he had vainly endeavoured to support him in his arms.

This boy, left an orphan at three years old, had been brought up at
first by a relation who turned him out for theft; afterwards by two
sisters, his cousins, who were already beginning to take alarm at his
abnormal perversity.  This pale and fragile being, an incorrigible
thief, a consummate hypocrite, and a cold-blooded assassin, was
predestined to an immortality of crime, and was to find a place among
the most execrable monsters for whom humanity has ever had to blush;
his name was Antoine-Francois Derues.

Twenty years had gone by since this horrible and mysterious event,
which no one sought to unravel at the time it occurred.  One June
evening, 1771, four persons were sitting in one of the rooms of a
modestly furnished, dwelling on the third floor of a house in the rue
Saint-Victor.  The party consisted of three women and an
ecclesiastic, who boarded, for meals only, with the woman who
tenanted the dwelling; the other two were near neighbours.  They were
all friends, and often met thus in the evening to play cards.  They
were sitting round the card-table, but although it was nearly ten
o'clock the cards had not yet been touched.  They spoke in low tones,
and a half-interrupted confidence had, this evening, put a check on
the usual gaiety.

Someone knocked gently at the door, although no sound of steps on the
creaking wooden staircase had been heard, and a wheedling voice asked
for admittance.  The occupier of the room, Madame Legrand, rose, and
admitted a man of about six-and-twenty, at whose appearance the four
friends exchanged glances, at once observed by the new-comer, who
affected, however, not to see them.  He bowed successively to the
three women, and several times with the utmost respect to the abbe,
making signs of apology for the interruption caused by his
appearance; then, coughing several times, he turned to Madame
Legrand, and said in a feeble voice, which seemed to betoken much
suffering--

"My kind mistress, will you and these other ladies excuse my
presenting myself at such an hour and in such a costume?  I am ill,
and I was obliged to get up."

His costume was certainly singular enough: he was wrapped in a large
dressing-gown of flowered chintz; his head was adorned by a nightcap
drawn up at the top and surmounted by a muslin frill.  His appearance
did not contradict his complaint of illness; he was barely four feet
six in height, his limbs were bony, his face sharp, thin, and pale.
Thus attired, coughing incessantly, dragging his feet as if he had no
strength to lift them, holding a lighted candle in one hand and an
egg in the other, he suggested a caricature-some imaginary invalid
just escaped from M. Purgon.  Nevertheless, no one ventured to smile,
notwithstanding his valetudinarian appearance and his air of affected
humility.  The perpetual blinking of the yellow eyelids which fell
over the round and hollow eyes, shining with a sombre fire which he
could never entirely suppress, reminded one of a bird of prey unable
to face the light, and the lines of his face, the hooked nose, and
the thin, constantly quivering, drawn-in lips suggested a mixture of
boldness and baseness, of cunning and sincerity.  But there is no
book which can instruct one to read the human countenance correctly;
and some special circumstance must have roused the suspicions of
these four persons so much as to cause them to make these
observations, and they were not as usual deceived by the humbug of
this skilled actor, a past master in the art of deception.

He continued after a moment's silence, as if he did not wish to
interrupt their mute observation--

"Will you oblige me by a neighbourly kindness?"

"What is it, Derues?" asked Madame Legrand.  A violent cough, which
appeared to rend his chest, prevented him from answering immediately.
When it ceased, he looked at the abbe, and said, with a melancholy
smile--

"What I ought to ask in my present state of health is your blessing,
my father, and your intercession for the pardon of my sins.  But
everyone clings to the life which God has given him.  We do not
easily abandon hope; moreover, I have always considered it wrong to
neglect such means of preserving our lives as are in our power, since
life is for us only a time of trial, and the longer and harder the
trial the greater our recompense in a better world.  Whatever befalls
us, our answer should be that of the Virgin Mary to the angel who
announced the mystery of the Incarnation: 'Behold the handmaid of the
Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.'"

"You are right," said the abbe, with a severe and inquisitorial look,
under which Derues remained quite untroubled; "it is an attribute of
God to reward and to punish, and the Almighty is not deceived by him
who deceives men.  The Psalmist has said, 'Righteous art Thou, O
Lord, and upright are Thy judgments.'"

"He has said also, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether,'"  Derues promptly replied.  This exchange of
quotations from Scripture might have lasted for hours without his
being at a loss, had the abbe thought fit to continue in this strain;
but such a style of conversation, garnished with grave and solemn
words, seemed almost sacrilegious in the mouth of a man of such
ridiculous appearance--a profanation at once sad and grotesque.
Derues seemed to comprehend the impression it produced, and tuning
again to Madame Legrand, he said--

"We have got a long way from what I came to ask you, my kind friend.
I was so ill that I went early to bed, but I cannot sleep, and I have
no fire.  Would you have the kindness to have this egg mulled for
me?"

"Cannot your servant do that for you?" asked Madame Legrand.

"I gave her leave to go out this evening, and though it is late she
has not yet returned.  If I had a fire, I would not give you so much
trouble, but I do not care to light one at this hour.  You know I am
always afraid of accidents, and they so easily happen!"

"Very well, then," replied Madame Legrand; "go back to your room, and
my servant will bring it to you."

"Thank you," said Derues, bowing,--"many thanks."

As he turned to depart, Madame Legrand spoke again.

"This day week, Derues, you have to pay me half the twelve hundred
livres due for the purchase of my business."

"So soon as that?"

"Certainly, and I want the money.  Have you forgotten the date,
then?"

"Oh dear, I have never looked at the agreement since it was drawn up.
I did not think the time was so near, it is the fault of my bad
memory; but I will contrive to pay you, although trade is very bad,
and in three days I shall have to pay more than fifteen thousand
livres to different people."

He bowed again and departed, apparently exhausted by the effort of
sustaining so long a conversation.

As soon as they were alone, the abbe exclaimed--

"That man is assuredly an utter rascal!  May God forgive him his
hypocrisy!  How is it possible we could allow him to deceive us for
so long?"

"But, my father," interposed one of the visitors, "are you really
sure of what you have just said?"

"I am not now speaking of the seventy-nine Louis d'or which have been
stolen from me, although I never mentioned to anyone but you, and he
was then present, that I possessed such a sum, and although that very
day he made a false excuse for coming to my rooms when I was out.
Theft is indeed infamous, but slander is not less so, and he has
slandered you disgracefully.  Yes, he has spread a report that you,
Madame Legrand, you, his former mistress and benefactress, have put
temptation in his way, and desired to commit carnal sin with him.
This is now whispered the neighbourhood all round us, it will soon be
said aloud, and we have been so completely his dupes, we have helped
him so much to acquire a reputation for uprightness, that it would
now be impossible to destroy our own work; if I were to accuse him of
theft, and you charged him with lying, probably neither of us would
be believed.  Beware, these odious tales have not been spread without
a reason.  Now that your eyes are open, beware of him."

"Yes," replied Madame Legrand, "my brother-in-law warned me three
years ago.  One day Derues said to my sister-in-law,--I remember the
words.  perfectly,--'I should like to be a druggist, because one
would always be able to punish an enemy; and if one has a quarrel
with anyone it would be easy to get rid of him by means of a poisoned
draught.'  I neglected these warnings.  I surmounted the feeling of
repugnance I first felt at the sight of him; I have responded to his
advances, and I greatly fear I may have cause to repent it.  But you
know him as well as I do, who would not have thought his piety
sincere?--who would not still think so?  And notwithstanding all you
have said, I still hesitate to feel serious alarm; I am unwilling to
believe in such utter depravity."

The conversation continued in this strain for some time, and then, as
it was getting late, the party separated.

Next morning early, a large and noisy crowd was assembled in the rue
Saint-Victor before Derues' shop of drugs and groceries.  There was a
confusion of cross questions, of inquiries which obtained no answer,
of answers not addressed to the inquiry, a medley of sound, a
pell-mell of unconnected words, of affirmations, contradictions, and
interrupted narrations.  Here, a group listened to an orator who held
forth in his shirt sleeves, a little farther there were disputes,
quarrels, exclamations of "Poor man!"  "Such a good fellow!"  "My
poor gossip Derues!"  "Good heavens! what will he do now?"  "Alas!
he is quite done for; it is to be hoped his creditors will give him
time!  "Above all this uproar was heard a voice, sharp and piercing
like a cat's, lamenting, and relating with sobs the terrible
misfortune of last night.  At about three in the morning the
inhabitants of the rue St. Victor had been startled out of their
sleep by the cry of "Fire, fire!"  A conflagration had burst forth in
Derues' cellar, and though its progress had been arrested and the
house saved from destruction, all the goods stored therein had
perished.  It apparently meant a considerable loss in barrels of oil,
casks of brandy, boxes of soap, etc., which Derues estimated at not
less than nine thousand livres.

By what unlucky chance the fire had been caused he had no idea.  He
recounted his visit to Madame Legrand, and pale, trembling, hardly
able to sustain himself, he cried--

"I shall die of grief!  A poor man as ill as I am!  I am lost!  I am
ruined!"

A harsh voice interrupted his lamentations, and drew the attention of
the crowd to a woman carrying printed broadsides, and who forced a
passage through the crowd up to the shop door.  She unfolded one of
her sheets, and cried as loudly and distinctly as her husky voice
permitted--

"Sentence pronounced by the Parliament of Paris against John Robert
Cassel, accused and convicted of Fraudulent Bankruptcy!"

Derues looked up and saw a street-hawker who used to come to his shop
for a drink, and with whom he had had a violent quarrel about a month
previously, she having detected him in a piece of knavery, and abused
him roundly in her own style, which was not lacking in energy.  He
had not seen her since.  The crowd generally, and all the gossips of
the quarter, who held Derues in great veneration, thought that the
woman's cry was intended as an indirect insult, and threatened to
punish her for this irreverence.  But, placing one hand on her hip,
and with the other warning off the most pressing by a significant
gesture--

"Are you still befooled by his tricks, fools that you are?  Yes, no
doubt there was a fire in the cellar last night, no doubt his
creditors will be geese enough to let him off paying his debts!  But
what you don't know is, that he didn't really lose by it at all!"

"He lost all his goods!" the crowd cried on all sides.  "More than
nine thousand livres!  Oil and brandy, do you think those won't burn?
The old witch, she drinks enough to know!  If one put a candle near
her she would take fire, fast enough!"

"Perhaps," replied the woman, with renewed gesticulations, "perhaps;
but I don't advise any of you to try.  Anyhow, this fellow here is a
rogue; he has been emptying his cellar for the last three nights;
there were only old empty casks in it and empty packing-cases!  Oh
yes!  I have swallowed his daily lies like everybody else, but I know
the truth by now.  He got his liquor taken away by Michael
Lambourne's son, the cobbler in the rue de la Parcheminerie.  How do
I know?  Why, because the young man came and told me!"

"I turned that woman out of my shop a month ago, for stealing," said
Derues.

Notwithstanding this retaliatory accusation, the woman's bold
assertion might have changed the attitude of the crowd and chilled
the enthusiasm, but at that moment a stout man pressed forward, and
seizing the hawker by the arm, said--

"Go, and hold your tongue, backbiting woman!"

To this man, the honour of Derues was an article of faith; he had not
yet ceased to wonder at the probity of this sainted person, and to
doubt it in the least was as good as suspecting his own.

"My dear friend," he said, "we all know what to think of you.  I know
you well.  Send to me tomorrow, and you shall have what goods you
want, on credit, for as long as is necessary.  Now, evil tongue, what
do you say to that?"

"I say that you are as great a fool as the rest.  Adieu, friend
Derues; go on as you have begun, and I shall be selling your
'sentence' some day"; and dispersing the crowd with a few twirls of
her right arm, she passed on, crying--

"Sentence pronounced by the Parliament of Paris against John Robert
Cassel, accused and convicted of Fraudulent Bankruptcy!"

This accusation emanated from too insignificant a quarter to have any
effect on Derues' reputation.  However resentful he may have been at
the time, he got over it in consequence of the reiterated marks of
interest shown by his neighbours and all the quarter on account of
his supposed ruin, and the hawker's attack passed out of his mind, or
probably she might have paid for her boldness with her life.

But this drunken woman had none the less uttered a prophetic word; it
was the grain of sand on which, later, he was to be shipwrecked.

"All passions," says La Bruyere,--"all passions are deceitful; they
disguise themselves as much as possible from the public eye; they
hide from themselves.  There is no vice which has not a counterfeit
resemblance to some virtue, and which does not profit by it."

The whole life of Derues bears testimony to the truth of this
observation.  An avaricious poisoner, he attracted his victims by the
pretence of fervent and devoted piety, and drew them into the snare
where he silently destroyed them.  His terrible celebrity only began
in 1777, caused by the double murder of Madame de Lamotte and her
son, and his name, unlike those of some other great criminals, does
not at first recall a long series of crimes, but when one examines
this low, crooked, and obscure life, one finds a fresh stain at every
step, and perhaps no one has ever surpassed him in dissimulation, in
profound hypocrisy, in indefatigable depravity.  Derues was executed
at thirty-two, and his whole life was steeped in vice; though happily
so short, it is full of horror, and is only a tissue of criminal
thoughts and deeds, a very essence of evil.  He had no hesitation, no
remorse, no repose, no relaxation; he seemed compelled to lie, to
steal, to poison!  Occasionally suspicion is aroused, the public has
its doubts, and vague rumours hover round him; but he burrows under
new impostures, and punishment passes by.  When he falls into the
hands of human justice his reputation protects him, and for a few
days more the legal sword is turned aside.  Hypocrisy is so
completely a part of his nature, that even when there is no longer
any hope, when he is irrevocably sentenced, and he knows that he can
no longer deceive anyone, neither mankind nor Him whose name he
profanes by this last sacrilege, he yet exclaims, "O Christ!  I shall
suffer even as Thou."  It is only by the light of his funeral pyre
that the dark places of his life can be examined, that this bloody
plot is unravelled, and that other victims, forgotten and lost in the
shadows, arise like spectres at the foot of the scaffold, and escort
the assassin to his doom.

Let us trace rapidly the history of Derues' early years, effaced and
forgotten in the notoriety of his death.  These few pages are not
written for the glorification of crime, and if in our own days, as a
result of the corruption of our manners, and of a deplorable
confusion of all notions of right and wrong, it has been sought to
make him an object; of public interest, we, on our part, only wish to
bring him into notice, and place him momentarily on a pedestal, in
order to cast him still lower, that his fall may be yet greater.
What has been permitted by God may be related by man.  Decaying and
satiated communities need not be treated as children; they require
neither diplomatic handling nor precaution, and it may be good that
they should see and touch the putrescent sores which canker them.
Why fear to mention that which everyone knows?  Why dread to sound
the abyss which can be measured by everyone?  Why fear to bring into
the light of day unmasked wickedness, even though it confronts the
public gaze unblushingly?  Extreme turpitude and extreme excellence
are both in the schemes of Providence; and the poet has summed up
eternal morality for all ages and nations in this sublime
exclamation--

          "Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poem tumultum."

Besides, and we cannot insist too earnestly that our intention must
not be mistaken, if we had wished to inspire any other sentiment than
that of horror, we should have chosen a more imposing personage from
the annals of crime.  There have been deeds which required audacity,
a sort of grandeur, a false heroism; there have been criminals who
held in check all the regular and legitimate forces of society, and
whom one regarded with a mixture of terror and pity.  There is
nothing of that in Derues, not even a trace of courage; nothing but a
shameless cupidity, exercising itself at first in the theft of a few
pence filched from the poor; nothing but the illicit gains and
rascalities of a cheating shopkeeper and vile money-lender, a
depraved cowardice which dared not strike openly, but slew in the
dark.  It is the story of an unclean reptile which drags itself
underground, leaving everywhere the trail of its poisonous saliva.

Such was the man whose life we have undertaken to narrate, a man who
represents a complete type of wickedness, and who corresponds to the
most hideous sketch ever devised by poet or romance-writer: Facts
without importance of their own, which would be childish if recorded
of anyone else, obtain a sombre reflection from other facts which
precede them, and thenceforth cannot be passed over in silence.  The
historian is obliged to collect and note them, as showing the logical
development of this degraded being: he unites them in sequence, and
counts the successive steps of the ladder mounted by the criminal.

We have seen the early exploit of this assassin by instinct; we find
him, twenty years later, an incendiary and a fraudulent bankrupt.
What had happened in the interval?  With how much treachery and crime
had he filled this space of twenty years?  Let us return to his
infancy.

His unconquerable taste for theft caused him to be expelled by the
relations who had taken charge of him.  An anecdote is told which
shows his impudence and incurable perversity.  One day he was caught
taking some money, and was soundly whipped by his cousins.  When this
was over, the child, instead of showing any sorrow or asking
forgiveness, ran away with a sneer, and seeing they were out of
breath, exclaimed--

"You are tired, are you?  Well, I am not!"

Despairing of any control over this evil disposition, the relations
refused to keep him, and sent him to Chartres, where two other
cousins agreed to have him, out of charity.  They were simpleminded
women, of great and sincere piety, who imagined that good example and
religious teaching might have a happy influence on their young
relation.  The result was contrary to their expectation: the sole
fruit of their teaching was that Derues learnt to be a cheat and a
hypocrite, and to assume the mask of respectability.

Here also repeated thefts insured him sound corrections.  Knowing his
cousins' extreme economy, not to say avarice, he mocked them when
they broke a lath over his shoulders: "There now, I am so glad; that
will cost you two farthings!"

His benefactresses' patience becoming exhausted, he left their house,
and was apprenticed to a tinman at Chartres.  His master died, and an
ironmonger of the same town took him as shop-boy, and from this he
passed on to a druggist and grocer.  Until now, although fifteen
years old, he had shown no preference for one trade more than
another, but it was now necessary he should choose some profession,
and his share in the family property amounted to the modest sum of
three thousand five hundred livres.  His residence with this last
master revealed a decided taste, but it was only another evil
instinct developing itself: the poisoner had scented poison, being
always surrounded with drugs which were health-giving or hurtful,
according to the use made of them.  Derues would probably have
settled at Chartres, but repeated thefts obliged him to leave the
town.  The profession of druggist and grocer being one which
presented most chances of fortune, and being, moreover, adapted to
his tastes, his family apprenticed him to a grocer in the rue
Comtesse d'Artois, paying a specified premium for him.

Derues arrived in Paris in 1760.  It was a new horizon, where he was
unknown; no suspicion attached to him, and he felt much at his ease.
Lost in the noise and the crowd of this immense receptacle for every
vice, he had time to found on hypocrisy his reputation as an honest
man.  When his apprenticeship expired, his master proposed to place
him with his sister-in-law, who kept a similar establishment in the
rue St. Victor, and who had been a widow for several years.  He
recommended Derues as a young man whose zeal and intelligence might
be useful in her business, being ignorant of various embezzlements
committed by his late apprentice, who was always clever enough to
cast suspicion on others.  But the negotiation nearly fell through,
because, one day, Derues so far forgot his usual prudence and
dissimulation as to allow himself to make the observation recorded
above to his mistress.  She, horrified, ordered him to be silent, and
threatened to ask her husband to dismiss him.  It required a double
amount of hypocrisy to remove this unfavourable impression; but he
spared no pains to obtain the confidence of the sister-in-law, who
was much influenced in his favour.  Every day he inquired what could
be done for her, every evening he took a basket-load of the goods she
required from the rue Comtesse d'Artois; and it excited the pity of
all beholders to see this weakly young man, panting and sweating
under his heavy burden, refusing any reward, and labouring merely for
the pleasure of obliging, and from natural kindness of heart!  The
poor widow, whose spoils he was already coveting, was completely
duped.  She rejected the advice of her brother-in-law, and only
listened to the concert of praises sung by neighbours much edified by
Derues' conduct, and touched by the interest he appeared to show her.
Often he found occasion to speak of her, always with the liveliest
expressions of boundless devotion.  These remarks were repeated to
the good woman, and seemed all the more sincere to her as they
appeared to have been made quite casually, and she never suspected
they were carefully calculated and thought out long before.

Derues carried dishonesty as far as possible, but he knew how to stop
when suspicion was likely to be aroused, and though always planning
either to deceive or to hurt, he was never taken by surprise.  Like
the spider which spreads the threads of her web all round her, he
concealed himself in a net of falsehood which one had to traverse
before arriving at his real nature.  The evil destiny of this poor
woman, mother of four children, caused her to engage him as her
shopman in the year 1767, thereby signing the warrant for her own
ruin.

Derues began life under his new mistress with a master-stroke.  His
exemplary piety was the talk of the whole quarter, and his first care
had been to request Madame Legrand to recommend him a confessor.  She
sent him to the director of her late husband, Pere Cartault, of the
Carmelite order, who, astonished at the devotion of his penitent,
never failed, if he passed the shop, to enter and congratulate Madame
Legrand on the excellent acquisition she had made in securing this
young man, who would certainly bring her a blessing along with him.
Derues affected the greatest modesty, and blushed at these praises,
and often, when he saw the good father approaching, appeared not to
see him, and found something to do elsewhere; whereby the field was
left clear for his too credulous panegyrists.

But Pere Cartault appeared too indulgent, and Derues feared that his
sins were too easily pardoned; and he dared not find peace in an
absolution which was never refused.  Therefore, before the year was
out, he chose a second confessor, Pere Denys, a Franciscan,
consulting both alternately, and confiding his conscientious scruples
to them.  Every penance appeared too easy, and he added to those
enjoined by his directors continual mortifications of his own
devising, so that even Tartufe himself would have owned his
superiority.

He wore about him two shrouds, to which were fastened relics of
Madame de Chantal, also a medal of St. Francois de Saps, and
occasionally scourged himself.  His mistress related that he had
begged her to take a sitting at the church of St. Nicholas, in order
that he might more easily attend service when he had a day out, and
had brought her a small sum which he had saved, to pay half the
expense.

Moreover, he had slept upon straw during the whole of Lent, and took
care that Madame Legrand heard of this through the servant,
pretending at first to hide it as if it were something wrong.  He
tried to prevent the maid from going into his room, and when she
found out the straw he forbade her to mention it--which naturally
made her more anxious to relate her discovery.  Such a piece of
piety, combined with such meritorious humility, such dread of
publicity, could only increase the excellent opinion which everyone
already had of him.

Every day was marked by some fresh hypocrisy.  One of his sisters, a
novice in the convent of the Ladies of the Visitation of the Virgin,
was to take the veil at Easter.  Derues obtained permission to be
present at the ceremony, and was to start on foot on Good Friday.
When he departed, the shop happened to be full of people, and the
gossips of the neighbourhood inquired where he was going.  Madame
Legrand desired him to have a glass of liqueur (wine he never
touched) and something to eat before starting.

"Oh, madame!" he exclaimed, "do you think I could eat on a day like
this, the day on which Christ was crucified!  I will take a piece of
bread with me, but I shall only eat it at the inn where I intend to
sleep: I mean to fast the whole way."

But this kind of thing was not sufficient.  He wanted an opportunity
to establish a reputation for honesty on a firm basis.  Chance
provided one, and he seized it immediately, although at the expense
of a member of his own family.

One of his brothers, who kept a public-house at Chartres, came to see
him.  Derues, under pretence of showing him the sights of Paris,
which he did not know, asked his mistress to allow him to take in the
brother for a few days, which she granted.  The last evening of his
stay, Derues went up to his room, broke open the box which contained
his clothes, turned over everything it contained, examined the
clothes, and discovering two new cotton nightcaps, raised a cry which
brought up the household.  His brother just then returned, and Derues
called him an infamous thief, declaring that he had stolen the money
for these new articles out of the shop the evening before.  His
brother defended himself, protesting his innocence, and, indignant at
such incomprehensible treachery, endeavoured to turn the tables by
relating some of Antoine's early misdeeds.  The latter, however,
stopped him, by declaring on his honour that he had seen his brother
the evening before go to the till, slip his hand in, and take out
some money.  The brother was confounded and silenced by so audacious
a lie; he hesitated, stammered, and was turned out of the house.
Derues worthily crowned this piece of iniquity by obliging his
mistress to accept the restitution of the stolen money.  It cost him
three livres, twelve sons, but the interest it brought him was the
power of stealing unsuspected.  That evening he spent in prayer for
the pardon of his brother's supposed guilt.

All these schemes had succeeded, and brought him nearer to the
desired goal, for not a soul in the quarter ventured to doubt the
word of this saintly individual.  His fawning manners and insinuating
language varied according to the people addressed.  He adapted
himself to all, contradicting no one, and, while austere himself, he
flattered the tastes of others.  In the various houses where he
visited his conversation was serious, grave, and sententious; and, as
we have seen, he could quote Scripture with the readiness of a
theologian.  In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes,
he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and
spoke the Billingsgate of the market-women, which he had acquired in
the rue Comtesse d'Artois, treating them familiarly, and they
generally addressed him as "gossip Denies." By his own account he
easily judged the characters of the various people with whom he came
in contact.

However, Pere Cartault's prophecy was not fulfilled: the blessing of
Heaven did not descend on the Legrand establishment.  There seemed to
be a succession of misfortunes which all Derues' zeal and care as
shopman could neither prevent nor repair.  He by no means contented
himself with parading an idle and fruitless hypocrisy, and his most
abominable deceptions were not those displayed in the light of day.
He watched by night: his singular organisation, outside the ordinary
laws of nature, appeared able to dispense with sleep.  Gliding about
on tiptoe, opening doors noiselessly, with all the skill of an
accomplished thief, he pillaged shop and cellar, and sold his plunder
in remote parts of the town under assumed names.  It is difficult to
understand how his strength supported the fatigue of this double
existence; he had barely arrived at puberty, and art had been obliged
to assist the retarded development of nature.  But he lived only for
evil, and the Spirit of Evil supplied the physical vigour which was
wanting.  An insane love of money (the only passion he knew) brought
him by degrees back to his starting-point of crime; he concealed it
in hiding-places wrought in the thick walls, in holes dug out by his
nails.  As soon as he got any, he brought it exactly as a wild beast
brings a piece of bleeding flesh to his lair; and often, by the
glimmer of a dark lantern, kneeling in adoration before this shameful
idol, his eyes sparkling with ferocious joy, with a smile which
suggested a hyena's delight over its prey, he would contemplate his
money, counting and kissing it.

These continual thefts brought trouble into the Legrand affairs,
cancelled all profits, and slowly brought on ruin.  The widow had no
suspicion of Derues' disgraceful dealings, and he carefully referred
the damage to other causes, quite worthy of himself.  Sometimes it
was a bottle of oil, or of brandy, or some other commodity, which was
found spilt, broken, or damaged, which accidents he attributed to the
enormous quantity of rats which infested the cellar and the house.
At length, unable to meet her engagements, Madame Legrand made the
business over to him in February, 1770.  He was then twenty-five
years and six months old, and was accepted as a merchant grocer in
August the same year.  By an agreement drawn up between them, Derues
undertook to pay twelve hundred livres for the goodwill, and to lodge
her rent free during the remainder of her lease, which had still nine
years to run.  Being thus obliged to give up business to escape
bankruptcy, Madame Legrand surrendered to her creditors any goods
remaining in her warehouse; and Derues easily made arrangements to
take them over very cheaply.  The first step thus made, he was now
able to enrich himself safely and to defraud with impunity under the
cover of his stolen reputation.

One of his uncles, a flour merchant at Chartres, came habitually
twice a year to Paris to settle accounts with his correspondents.  A
sum of twelve hundred francs, locked up in a drawer, was stolen from
him, and, accompanied by his nephew, he went to inform the police.
On investigation being made, it was found that the chest of drawers
had been broken at the top.  As at the time of the theft of the
seventy-nine Louis from the abbe, Derues was the only person known to
have entered his uncle's room.  The innkeeper swore to this, but the
uncle took pains to justify his nephew, and showed his confidence
shortly after by becoming surety for him to the extent of five
thousand livres.  Derues failed to pay when the time expired, and the
holder of the note was obliged to sue the surety for it.

He made use of any means, even the most impudent, which enabled him
to appropriate other people's property.  A provincial grocer on one
occasion sent him a thousand-weight of honey in barrels to be sold on
commission.  Two or three months passed, and he asked for an account
of the sale.  Derues replied that he had not yet been able to dispose
of it advantageously, and there ensued a fresh delay, followed by the
same question and the same reply.  At length, when more than a year
had passed, the grocer came to Paris, examined his barrels, and found
that five hundred pounds were missing.  He claimed damages from
Derues, who declared he had never received any more, and as the honey
had been sent in confidence, and there was no contract and no receipt
to show, the provincial tradesman could not obtain compensation.

As though having risen by the ruin of Madame Legrand and her four
children was not enough, Derues grudged even the morsel of bread he
had been obliged to leave her.  A few days after the fire in the
cellar, which enabled him to go through a second bankruptcy, Madame
Legrand, now undeceived and not believing his lamentations, demanded
the money due to her, according to their agreement.  Derues pretended
to look for his copy of the contract, and could not find it.  "Give
me yours, madame," said he; "we will write the receipt upon it.  Here
is the money."

The widow opened her purse and took out her copy; Derues snatched it,
and tore it up.  "Now," he exclaimed, "you are paid; I owe you
nothing now.  If you like, I will declare it on oath in court, and no
one will disbelieve my word."

"Wretched man," said the unfortunate widow, "may God forgive your
soul; but your body will assuredly end on the gallows!"

It was in vain that she complained, and told of this abominable
swindle; Derues had been beforehand with her, and the slander he had
disseminated bore its fruits.  It was said that his old mistress was
endeavouring by an odious falsehood to destroy the reputation of a
man who had refused to be her lover.  Although reduced to poverty,
she left the house where she had a right to remain rent free,
preferring the hardest and dreariest life to the torture of remaining
under the same roof with the man who had caused her ruin.

We might relate a hundred other pieces of knavery, but it must not be
supposed that having begun by murder, Derues would draw back and
remain contented with theft.  Two fraudulent bankruptcies would have
sufficed for most people; for him they were merely a harmless
pastime.  Here we must place two dark and obscure stories, two crimes
of which he is accused, two victims whose death groans no one heard.

The hypocrite's excellent reputation had crossed the Parisian bounds.
A young man from the country, intending to start as a grocer in the
capital, applied to Derues for the necessary information and begged
for advice.  He arrived at the latter's house with a sum of eight
thousand livres, which he placed in Derues' hands, asking him for
assistance in finding a business.  The sight of gold was enough to
rouse the instinct of crime in Derues, and the witches who hailed
Macbeth with the promise of royalty did not rouse the latter's
ambitious desires to a greater height than the chance of wealth did
the greed of the assassin; whose hands, once closed over the eight
thousand livres, were never again relaxed.  He received them as a
deposit, and hid them along with his previous plunder, vowing never
to return them.  Several days had elapsed, when one afternoon Derues
returned home with an air of such unusual cheerfulness that the young
man questioned him.  "Have you heard some good news for me?" he
asked, "or have you had some luck yourself?"

"My young friend," answered Derues, "as for me, success depends on my
own efforts, and fortune smiles on me.  But I have promised to be
useful to you, your parents have trusted me, and I must prove that
their confidence is well founded.  I have heard to-day of a business
for disposal in one of the best parts of Paris.  You can have it for
twelve thousand livres, and I wish I could lend you the amount you
want.  But you must write to your father, persuade him, reason with
him; do not lose so good a chance.  He must make a little sacrifice,
and he will be grateful to me later."

In accordance with their son's request, the young man's parents
despatched a sum of four thousand livres, requesting Derues to lose
no time in concluding the purchase.

Three weeks later, the father, very uneasy, arrived in Paris.  He
came to inquire about his son, having heard nothing from him.  Derues
received him with the utmost astonishment, appearing convinced that
the young man had returned home.  One day, he said, the youth
informed him that he had heard from his father, who had given up all
idea of establishing him in Paris, having arranged an advantageous
marriage for him near home; and he had taken his twelve thousand
livres, for which Derues produced a receipt, and started on his
return journey.

One evening, when nearly dark, Derues had gone out with his guest,
who complained of headache and internal pains.  Where did they go?
No one knew; but Denies only returned at daybreak, alone, weary and
exhausted, and the young man was never again heard of.

One of his apprentices was the constant object of reproof.  The boy
was accused of negligence, wasting his time, of spending three hours
over a task which might have been done in less than one.  When Derues
had convinced the father, a Parisian bourgeois, that his son was a
bad boy and a good-for-nothing, he came to this man one day in a
state of wild excitement.

"Your son," he said, "ran away yesterday with six hundred livres,
with which I had to meet a bill to-day.  He knew where I kept this
money, and has taken it."

He threatened to go before a magistrate and denounce the thief, and
was only appeased by being paid the sum he claimed to have lost.  But
he had gone out with the lad the evening before, and returned alone
in the early hours of the morning.

However, the veil which concealed the truth was becoming more and
more transparent every day.  Three bankruptcies had diminished the
consideration he enjoyed, and people began to listen to complaints
and accusations which till now had been considered mere inventions
designed to injure him.  Another attempt at trickery made him feel it
desirable to leave the neighbourhood.

He had rented a house close to his own, the shop of which had been
tenanted for seven or eight years by a wine merchant.  He required
from this man, if he wished to remain where he was, a sum of six
hundred livres as a payment for goodwill.  Although the wine merchant
considered it an exorbitant charge, yet on reflection he decided to
pay it rather than go, having established a good business on these
premises, as was well known.  Before long a still mare arrant piece
of dishonesty gave him an opportunity for revenge.  A young man of
good family, who was boarding with him in order to gain some business
experience, having gone into Derues' shop to make some purchases,
amused himself while waiting by idly writing his name on a piece of
blank paper lying on the counter; which he left there without
thinking more about it.  Derues, knowing the young man had means, as
soon as he had gone, converted the signed paper into a promissory
note for two thousand livres, to his order, payable at the majority
of the signer.  The bill, negotiated in trade, arrived when due at
the wine merchant's, who, much surprised, called his young boarder
and showed him the paper adorned with his signature.  The youth was
utterly confounded, having no knowledge of the bill whatever, but
nevertheless could not deny his signature.  On examining the paper
carefully, the handwriting was recognised as Derues'.  The wine
merchant sent for him, and when he arrived, made him enter a room,
and having locked the door, produced the promissory note.  Derues
acknowledged having written it, and tried various falsehoods to
excuse himself.  No one listened to him, and the merchant threatened
to place the matter in the hands of the police.  Then Derues wept,
implored, fell on his knees, acknowledged his guilt, and begged for
mercy.  He agreed to restore the six hundred livres exacted from the
wine merchant, on condition that he should see the note destroyed and
that the matter should end there.  He was then about to be married,
and dreaded a scandal.

Shortly after, he married Marie-Louise Nicolais; daughter of a
harness-maker at Melun.

One's first impression in considering this marriage is one of
profound sorrow and utmost pity for the young girl whose destiny was
linked with that of this monster.  One thinks of the horrible future;
of youth and innocence blighted by the tainting breath of the
homicide; of candour united to hypocrisy; of virtue to wickedness; of
legitimate desires linked to disgraceful passions; of purity mixed
with corruption.  The thought of these contrasts is revolting, and
one pities such a dreadful fate.  But we must not decide hastily.
Madame Denies has not been convicted of any active part in her
husband's later crimes, but her history, combined with his, shows no
trace of suffering, nor of any revolt against a terrible complicity.
In her case the evidence is doubtful, and public opinion must decide
later.

In 1773, Derues relinquished retail business, and left the Saint
Victor neighbourhood, having taken an apartment in the rue des Deux
Boules, near the rue Bertin-Poiree, in the parish of St. Germain
l'Auxerrois, where he had been married.  He first acted on commission
for the Benedictine-Camalduian fathers of the forest of Senart, who
had heard of him as a man wholly given to piety; then, giving himself
up to usury, he undertook what is known as "business affairs," a
profession which, in such hands, could not fail to be lucrative,
being aided by his exemplary morals and honest appearance.  It was
the more easy for him to impose on others, as he could not be accused
of any of the deadly vices which so often end in ruin--gaming, wine,
and women.  Until now he had displayed only one passion, that of
avarice, but now another developed itself, that of ambition.  He
bought houses and land, and when the money was due, allowed himself
to be sued for it; he bought even lawsuits, which he muddled with all
the skill of a rascally attorney.  Experienced in bankruptcy, he
undertook the management of failures, contriving to make dishonesty
appear in the light of unfortunate virtue.  When this demon was not
occupied with poison, his hands were busy with every social iniquity;
he could only live and breathe in an atmosphere of corruption.

His wife, who had already presented him with a daughter, gave birth
to a son in February 1774.  Derues, in order to better support the
airs of grandeur and the territorial title which he had assumed,
invited persons of distinction to act as sponsors.  The child was
baptized Tuesday, February 15th.  We give the text of the baptismal
register, as a curiosity:--

"Antoine-Maximilian-Joseph, son of Antoine-Francois Derues,
gentleman, seigneur of Gendeville, Herchies, Viquemont, and other
places, formerly merchant grocer; and of Madame Marie-Louise
Nicolais, his wife.  Godfathers, T. H.  and T. P., lords of, etc.
etc.  Godmothers, Madame M. Fr. C. D. V., etc.  etc.

                         "(Signed)       A. F. DERUES, Senior."


But all this dignity did not exclude the sheriff's officers, whom, as
befitted so great a man, he treated with the utmost insolence,
overwhelming them with abuse when they came to enforce an execution.
Such scandals had several times aroused the curiosity of his
neighbours, and did not redound to his credit.  His landlord, wearied
of all this clamour, and most especially weary of never getting any
rent without a fight for it, gave him notice to quit.  Derues removed
to the rue Beaubourg, where he continued to act as commission agent
under the name of Cyrano Derues de Bury.

And now we will concern ourselves no more with the unravelling of
this tissue of imposition; we will wander no longer in this labyrinth
of fraud, of low and vile intrigue, of dark crime of which the clue
disappears in the night, and of which the trace is lost in a doubtful
mixture of blood and mire; we will listen no longer to the cry of the
widow and her four children reduced to beggary, to the groans of
obscure victims, to the cries of terror and the death-groan which
echoed one night through the vaults of a country house near Beauvais.
Behold other victims whose cries are yet louder, behold yet other
crimes and a punishment which equals them in terror!  Let these
nameless ghosts, these silent spectres, lose themselves in the clear
daylight which now appears, and make room for other phantoms which
rend their shrouds and issue from the tomb demanding vengeance.

Derues was now soon to have a chance of obtaining immortality.
Hitherto his blows had been struck by chance, henceforth he uses all
the resources of his infernal imagination; he concentrates all his
strength on one point--conceives and executes his crowning piece of
wickedness.  He employs for two years all his science as cheat,
forger, and poisoner in extending the net which was to entangle a
whole family; and, taken in his own snare, he struggles in vain; in
vain does he seek to gnaw through the meshes which confine him.  The
foot placed on the last rung of this ladder of crime, stands also on
the first step by which he mounts the scaffold.

About a mile from Villeneuve-le-Roi-les-Sens, there stood in 1775 a
handsome house, overlooking the windings of the Yonne on one side,
and on the other a garden and park belonging to the estate of
Buisson-Souef.  It was a large property, admirably situated, and
containing productive fields, wood, and water; but not everywhere
kept in good order, and showing something of the embarrassed fortune
of its owner.  During some years the only repairs had been those
necessary in the house itself and its immediate vicinity.  Here and
there pieces of dilapidated wall threatened to fall altogether, and
enormous stems of ivy had invaded and stifled vigorous trees; in the
remoter portions of the park briers barred the road and made walking
almost impossible.  This disorder was not destitute of charm, and at
an epoch when landscape gardening consisted chiefly in straight
alleys, and in giving to nature a cold and monotonous symmetry, one's
eye rested with pleasure on these neglected clumps, on these waters
which had taken a different course to that which art had assigned to
them, on these unexpected and picturesque scenes.

A wide terrace, overlooking the winding river, extended along the
front of the house.  Three men were walking on it-two priests, and
the owner of Buisson-Souef, Monsieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte.  One
priest was the cure of Villeneuve-le-Roi-lez-Sens, the other was a
Camaldulian monk, who had come to see the cure about a clerical
matter, and who was spending some days at the presbytery.  The
conversation did not appear to be lively.  Every now and then
Monsieur de Lamotte stood still, and, shading his eyes with his hand
from the brilliant sunlight which flooded the plain, and was strongly
reflected from the water, endeavoured to see if some new object had
not appeared on the horizon, then slowly resumed his walk with a
movement of uneasy impatience.  The tower clock struck with a noisy
resonance.

"Six o'clock already!" he exclaimed.  "They will assuredly not arrive
to-day."

"Why despair?" said the cure.  "Your servant has gone to meet them;
we might see their boat any moment."

"But, my father," returned Monsieur de Lamotte, "the long days are
already past.  In another hour the mist will rise, and then they
would not venture on the river."

"Well, if that happens, we shall have to be patient; they will stay
all night at some little distance, and you will see them to-morrow
morning."

"My brother is right," said the other priest.  "Come, monsieur; do
not be anxious."

"You both speak with the indifference of persons to whom family
troubles are unknown."

"What!" said the cure, "do you really think that because our sacred
profession condemns us both to celibacy, we are therefore unable to
comprehend an affection such as yours, on which I myself pronounced
the hallowing benediction of the Church--if you remember--nearly
fifteen years ago?"

"Is it perhaps intentionally, my father, that you recall the date of
my marriage?  I readily admit that the love of one's neighbour may
enlighten you as to another love to which you have yourself been a
stranger.  I daresay it seems odd to you that a man of my age should
be anxious about so little, as though he were a love-sick youth; but
for some time past I have had presentiments of evil, and I am really
becoming superstitious!"

He again stood still, gazing up the river, and, seeing nothing,
resumed his place between the two priests, who had continued their
walk.

"Yes," he continued, "I have presentiments which refuse to be shaken
off.  I am not so old that age can have weakened my powers and
reduced me to childishness, I cannot even say what I am afraid of,
but separation is painful and causes an involuntary terror.  Strange,
is it not?  Formerly, I used to leave my wife for months together,
when she was young and my son only, an infant; I loved her
passionately, yet I could go with pleasure.  Why, I wonder, is it so
different now?  Why should a journey to Paris on business, and a few
hours' delay, make, me so terribly uneasy?  Do you remember, my
father," he resumed, after a pause, turning to the cure," do you
remember how lovely Marie looked on our wedding-day?  Do you remember
her dazzling complexion and the innocent candour of her expression?-
-the sure token of the most truthful and purest of minds!  That is
why I love her so much now; we do not now sigh for one another, but
the second love is stronger than the first, for it is founded on
recollection, and is tranquil and confident in friendship .  .  .  .
It is strange that they have not returned; something must have
happened!  If they do not return this evening, and I do not now think
it possible, I shall go to Paris myself to-morrow."

"I think;" said the other priest, "that at twenty you must indeed
have been excitable, a veritable tinder-box, to have retained so much
energy!  Come, monsieur, try to calm yourself and have patience: you
yourself admit it can only be a few hours' delay."

"But my son accompanied his mother, and he is our only one, and so
delicate!  He alone remains of our three children, and you do not
realise how the affection of parents who feel age approaching is
concentrated on an only child!  If I lost Edouard I should die!"

"I suppose, then, as you let him go, his presence at Paris was
necessary?"

"No; his mother went to obtain a loan which is needed for the
improvements required on the estate."

"Why, then, did you let him go?"

"I would willingly have kept him here, but his mother wished to take
him.  A separation is as trying to her as to me, and we all but
quarrelled over it.  I gave way."

"There was one way of satisfying all three--you might have gone
also."

"Yes, but Monsieur le cure will tell you that a fortnight ago I was
chained to my arm-chair, swearing under my breath like a pagan, and
cursing the follies of my youth!--Forgive me, my father; I mean that
I had the gout, and I forgot that I am not the only sufferer, and
that it racks the old age of the philosopher quite as much as that of
the courtier."

The fresh wind which often rises just at sunset was already rustling
in the leaves; long shadows darkened the course of the Yonne and
stretched across the plain; the water, slightly troubled, reflected a
confused outline of its banks and the clouded blue of the sky.  The
three gentlemen stopped at the end of the terrace and gazed into the
already fading distance.  A black spot, which they had just observed
in the middle of the river, caught a gleam of light in passing a low
meadow between two hills, and for a moment took shape as a barge,
then was lost again, and could not be distinguished from the water.
Another moment, and it reappeared more distinctly; it was indeed a
barge, and now the horse could be seen towing it against the current.
Again it was lost at a bend of the river shaded by willows, and they
had to resign themselves to incertitude for several minutes.  Then a
white handkerchief was waved on the prow of the boat, and Monsieur de
Lamotte uttered a joyful exclamation.

"It is indeed they!" he cried.  "Do you see them, Monsieur le cure?
I see my boy; he is waving the handkerchief, and his mother is with
him.  But I think there is a third person--yes, there is a man, is
there not?  Look well."

"Indeed," said the cure, "if my bad sight does not deceive me, I
should say there was someone seated near the rudder; but it looks
like a child."

"Probably someone from the neighbourhood, who has profited by the
chance of a lift home."

The boat was advancing rapidly; they could now hear the cracking of
the whip with which the servant urged on the tow-horse.  And now it
stopped, at an easy landing-place, barely fifty paces from the
terrace.  Madame de Lamotte landed with her son and the stranger, and
her husband descended from the terrace to meet her.  Long before he
arrived at the garden gate, his son's arms were around his neck.

"Are you quite well, Edouard ?"

"Oh yes, perfectly."

"And your mother?"

"Quite well too.  She is behind, in as great a hurry to meet you as I
am.  But she can't run as I do, and you must go half-way."

"Whom have you brought with you?"

"A gentleman from Paris."

"From Paris?"

"Yes, a Monsieur Derues.  But mamma will tell you all about that.
Here she is."

The cure and the monk arrived just as Monsieur de Lamotte folded his
wife in his arms.  Although she had passed her fortieth year, she was
still beautiful enough to justify her husband's eulogism.  A moderate
plumpness had preserved the freshness and softness of her skin; her
smile was charming, and her large blue eyes expressed both gentleness
and goodness.  Seen beside this smiling and serene countenance, the
appearance of the stranger was downright repulsive, and Monsieur de
Lamotte could hardly repress a start of disagreeable surprise at the
pitiful and sordid aspect of this diminutive person, who stood apart,
looking overwhelmed by conscious inferiority.  He was still more
astonished when he saw his son take him by the hand with friendly
kindness, and heard him say--

"Will you come with me, my friend?  We will follow my father and
mother."

Madame de Lamotte, having greeted the cure, looked at the monk, who
was a stranger to her.  A word or two explained matters, and she took
her husband's arm, declining to answer any questions until she
reached the louse, and laughing at his curiosity.

Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, one of the king's
equerries, seigneur of Grange-Flandre, Valperfond, etc., had married
Marie-Francoise Perier in 1760.  Their fortune resembled many others
of that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than
solid.  Not that the husband and wife had any cause for
self-reproach, or that their estates had suffered from dissipation;
unstained by the corrupt manners of the period, their union had been
a model of sincere affection, of domestic virtue and mutual
confidence.  Marie-Francoise was quite beautiful enough to have made
a sensation in society, but she renounced it of her own accord, in
order to devote herself to the duties of a wife and mother.  The only
serious grief she and her husband had experienced was the loss of
two young children.  Edouard, though delicate from his birth, had
nevertheless passed the trying years of infancy and early
adolescence; he was them nearly fourteen.  With a sweet and rather
effeminate expression, blue eyes and a pleasant smile, he was a
striking likeness of his mother.  His father's affection exaggerated
the dangers which threatened the boy, and in his eyes the slightest
indisposition became a serious malady; his mother shared these fears,
and in consequence of this anxiety Edouard's education had been much
neglected.  He had been brought up at Buisson-Souef, and allowed to
run wild from morning till night, like a young fawn, exercising the
vigour and activity of its limbs.  He had still the simplicity and
general ignorance of a child of nine or ten.

The necessity of appearing at court and suitably defraying the
expenses of his office had made great inroads on Monsieur de
Lamotte's fortune.  He had of late lived at Buisson-Souef in the most
complete retirement; but notwithstanding this too long deferred
attention to his affairs, his property was ruining him, for the place
required a large expenditure, and absorbed a large amount of his
income without making any tangible return.  He had always hesitated
to dispose of the estate on account of its associations; it was there
he had met, courted, and married his beloved wife; there that the
happy days of their youth had been spent; there that they both wished
to grow old together.

Such was the family to which accident had now introduced Derues.  The
unfavourable impression made on Monsieur de Lamotte had not passed
unperceived by him; but, being quite accustomed to the instinctive
repugnance which his first appearance generally inspired, Derues had
made a successful study of how to combat and efface this antagonistic
feeling, and replace it by confidence, using different means
according to the persons he had to deal with.  He understood at once
that vulgar methods would be useless with Monsieur de Lamotte, whose
appearance and manners indicated both the man of the world and the
man of intelligence, and also he had to consider the two priests, who
were both observing him attentively.  Fearing a false step, he
assumed the most simple and insignificant deportment he could,
knowing that sooner or later a third person would rehabilitate him in
the opinion of those present.  Nor did he wait long.

Arrived at the drawing-room, Monsieur de Lamotte requested the
company to be seated.  Derues acknowledged the courtesy by a bow, and
there was a moment of silence, while Edouard and his mother looked at
each other and smiled.  The silence was broken by Madame de Lamotte.

"Dear Pierre," she said, "you are surprised to see us accompanied by
a stranger, but when you hear what he has done for us you will thank
me for having induced him to return here with us."

"Allow me," interrupted Derues, "allow me to tell you what happened.
The gratitude which madame imagines she owes me causes her to
exaggerate a small service which anybody would have been delighted to
render."

"No, monsieur; let me tell it."

"Let mamma tell the story," said Edouard.

"What is it, then?  What happened?" said Monsieur de Lamotte.

"I am quite ashamed," answered Derues; "but I obey your wishes,
madame."

"Yes," replied Madame de Lamotte, "keep your seat, I wish it.
Imagine, Pierre, just six days ago, an accident happened to Edouard
and me which might have had serious consequences."

"And you never wrote to me, Marie?"

"I should only have made you anxious, and to no purpose.  I had some
business in one of the most crowded parts of Paris; I took a chair,
and Edouard walked beside me.  In the rue Beaubourg we were suddenly
surrounded by a mob of low people, who were quarrelling.  Carriages
stopped the way, and the horses of one of these took fright in the
confusion and uproar, and bolted, in spite of the coachman's
endeavours to keep them in hand.  It was a horrible tumult, and I
tried to get out of the chair, but at that moment the chairmen were
both knocked down, and I fell.  It is a miracle I was not crushed.  I
was dragged insensible from under the horses' feet and carried into
the house before which all this took place.  There, sheltered in a
shop and safe from the crowd which encumbered the doorway, I
recovered my senses, thanks to the assistance of Monsieur Derues, who
lives there.  But that is not all: when I recovered I could not walk,
I had been so shaken by the fright, the fall, and the danger I had
incurred, and I had to accept his offer of finding me another chair
when the crowd should disperse, and meanwhile to take shelter in his
rooms with his wife, who showed me the kindest attention."

"Monsieur--" said Monsieur de Lamotte, rising.  But his wife stopped
him.

"Wait a moment; I have not finished yet.  Monsieur Derues came back
in an hour, and I was then feeling better; but before, I left I was
stupid enough to say that I had been robbed in the confusion; my
diamond earrings, which had belonged to my mother, were gone.  You
cannot imagine the trouble Monsieur Derues took to discover the
thief, and all the appeals he made to the police--I was really
ashamed!"

Although Monsieur de Lamotte did not yet understand what motive,
other than gratitude, had induced his wife to bring this stranger
home with her, he again rose from his seat, and going to Derues, held
out his hand.

"I understand now the attachment my son shows for you.  You are wrong
in trying to lessen your good deed in order to escape from our
gratitude, Monsieur Derues."

"Monsieur Derues?" inquired the monk.

"Do you know the name, my father?" asked Madame de Lamotte eagerly.

"Edouard had already told me," said the monk, approaching Derues.

"You live in the, rue Beaubourg, and you are Monsieur Derues,
formerly a retail grocer?"

"The same, my brother."

"Should you require a reference, I can give it.  Chance, madame, has
made you acquainted with a man whose, reputation for piety and honour
is well established; he will permit me to add my praises to yours."

"Indeed, I do not know how I deserve so much honour."

"I am, Brother Marchois, of the Camaldulian order.  You see that I
know you well."

The monk then proceeded to explain that his community had confided
their affairs to Derues' honesty, he undertaking to dispose of the
articles manufactured by the monks in their retreat.  He then
recounted a number of good actions and of marks of piety, which were
heard with pleasure and admiration by those present.  Derues received
this cloud of incense with an appearance of sincere modesty and
humility, which would have deceived the most skilful physiognomist.

When the eulogistic warmth of the good brother began to slacken it
was already nearly dark, and the two priests had barely time to
regain the presbytery without incurring the risk of breaking their
necks in the rough road which led to it.  They departed at once, and
a room was got ready for Derues.

"To-morrow," said Madame de Lamotte as they separated, "you can
discuss with my husband the business on which you came: to-morrow, or
another day, for I beg that you will make yourself at home here, and
the longer you will stay the better it will please us."

The night was a sleepless one for Derues, whose brain was occupied by
a confusion of criminal plans.  The chance which had caused his
acquaintance with Madame de Lamotte, and even more the accident of
Brother Marchois appearing in the nick of time, to enlarge upon the
praises which gave him so excellent a character, seemed like
favourable omens not to be neglected.  He began to imagine fresh
villanies, to outline an unheard-of crime, which as yet he could not
definitely trace out; but anyhow there would be plunder to seize and
blood to spill, and the spirit of murder excited and kept him awake,
just as remorse might have troubled the repose of another.

Meanwhile Madame de Lamotte, having retired with her husband, was
saying to the latter--

"Well, now!  what do you think of my protege, or rather, of the
protector which Heaven sent me?"

"I think that physiognomy is often very deceptive, for I should have
been quite willing to hang him on the strength of his."

"It is true that his appearance is not attractive, and it led me into
a foolish mistake which I quickly regretted.  When I recovered
consciousness, and saw him attending on me, much worse and more
carelessly dressed than he is to-day."

"You were frightened?"

"No, not exactly; but I thought I must be indebted to a man of the
lowest class, to some poor fellow who was really starving, and my
first effort at gratitude was to offer him a piece of gold."

"Did he refuse it?"

"No; he accepted it for the poor of the parish.  Then he told me his
name, Cyrano Derues de Bury, and told me that the shop and the goods
it contained were his own property, and that he occupied an apartment
in the house.  I floundered in excuses, but he replied that he
blessed the mistake, inasmuch as it would enable him to relieve some
unfortunate people.  I was so touched with his goodness that I
offered him a second piece of gold."

"You were quite right, my dear; but what induced you to bring him to
Buisson?  I should have gone to see and thank him the first time I
went to Paris, and meanwhile a letter would have been sufficient.
Did he carry his complaisance and interest so far as to offer you his
escort?"

"Ah! I see you cannot get over your first impression--honestly, is it
not so?"

"Indeed," exclaimed Monsieur de Lamotte, laughing heartily, "it is
truly unlucky for a decent man to have such a face as that!  He ought
to give Providence no rest until he obtains the gift of another
countenance."

"Always these prejudices!  It is not the poor man's fault that he was
born like that."

"Well, you said something about business we were to discuss together
--what is it?"

"I believe he can help us to obtain the money we are in want of."

"And who told him that we wanted any?"

"I did."

"You!  Come, it certainly seems that this gentleman is to be a family
friend.  And pray what induced you to confide in him to this extent?"

"You would have known by now, if you did not interrupt.  Let me tell
you all in order.  The day after my accident I went out with Edouard
about midday, and I went to again express my gratitude for his
kindness.  I was received by Madame Derues, who told me her husband
was out, and that he had gone to my hotel to inquire after me and my
son, and also to see if anything had been heard of my stolen
earrings.  She appeared a simple and very ordinary sort of person,
and she begged me to sit down and wait for her husband.  I thought it
would be uncivil not to do so, and Monsieur Derues appeared in about
two hours.  The first thing he did, after having saluted me and
inquired most particularly after my health, was to ask for his
children, two charming little things, fresh and rosy, whom he covered
with kisses.  We talked about indifferent matters, then he offered me
his services, placed himself at my disposal, and begged me to spare
neither his time nor his trouble.  I then told him what had brought
me to Paris, and also the disappointments I had encountered, for of
all the people I had seen not one had given me a favourable answer.
He said that he might possibly be of some use to me, and the very
next day told 'me that he had seen a capitalist, but could do nothing
without more precise information.  Then I thought it might be better
to bring him here, so that he might talk matters over with you.  When
I first asked him, he refused altogether, and only yielded to my
earnest entreaties and Edouard's.  This is the history, dear, of the
circumstances under which I made Monsieur Derues' acquaintance.  I
hope you do not think I have acted foolishly?"

"Very well," said Monsieur de Lamotte, "I will talk to him
to-morrow, and in any case I promise you I will be civil to him.  I
will not forget that he has been useful to you."  With which promise
the conversation came to a close.

Skilled in assuming any kind of mask and in playing every sort of
part, Derues did not find it difficult to overcome Monsieur de
Lamotte's prejudices, and in order to obtain the goodwill of the
father he made a skilful use of the friendship which the, son had
formed with him.  One can hardly think that he already meditated the
crime which he carried out later; one prefers to believe that these
atrocious plots were not invented so long beforehand.  But he was
already a prey to the idea, and nothing henceforth could turn him
from it.  By what route he should arrive at the distant goal which
his greed foresaw, he knew not as yet, but he had said to himself,
"One day this property shall be mine."  It was the death-warrant of
those who owned it.

We have no details, no information as to Derues' first visit to
Buisson-Souef, but when he departed he had obtained the complete
confidence of the family, and a regular correspondence was carried on
between him and the Lamottes.  It was thus that he was able to
exercise his talent of forgery, and succeeded in imitating the
writing of this unfortunate lady so as to be able even to deceive her
husband.  Several months passed, and none of the hopes which Derues
had inspired were realised; a loan was always on the point of being
arranged, and regularly failed because of some unforeseen
circumstance.  These pretended negotiations were managed by Derues
with so much skill and cunning that instead of being suspected, he
was pitied for having so much useless trouble.  Meanwhile, Monsieur
de Lamotte's money difficulties increased, and the sale of
Buisson-Souef became inevitable.  Derues offered himself as a
purchaser, and actually acquired the property by private contract,
dated December, 1775.  It was agreed between the parties that the
purchase-money of one hundred and thirty thousand livres should not
be paid until 1776, in order to allow Derues to collect the various
sums at his disposal.  It was an important purchase, which, he said,
he only made on account of his interest in Monsieur de Lamotte, and
his wish to put an end to the latter's difficulties.

But when the period agreed on arrived, towards the middle of 1776,
Derues found it impossible to pay.  It is certain that he never meant
to do so; and a special peculiarity of this dismal story is the
avarice of the man, the passion for money which overruled all his
actions, and occasionally caused him to neglect necessary prudence.
Enriched by three bankruptcies, by continual thefts, by usury, the
gold he acquired promptly seemed to disappear.  He stuck at nothing
to obtain it, and once in his grasp, he never let it go again.
Frequently he risked the loss of his character for honest dealing
rather than relinquish a fraction of his wealth.  According to many
credible people, it was generally believed by his contemporaries that
this monster possessed treasures which he had buried in the ground,
the hiding-place of which no one knew, not even his wife.  Perhaps it
is only a vague and unfounded rumour, which should be rejected; or is
it; perhaps, a truth which failed to reveal itself?  It would be
strange if after the lapse of half a century the hiding-place were to
open and give up the fruit of his rapine.  Who knows whether some of
this treasure, accidentally discovered, may not have founded fortunes
whose origin is unknown, even to their possessors?

Although it was of the utmost importance not to arouse Monsieur de
Lamotte's suspicions just at the moment when he ought to be paying
him so large a sum, Derues was actually at this time being sued by
his creditors.  But in those days ordinary lawsuits had no publicity;
they struggled and died between the magistrates and advocates without
causing any sound.  In order to escape the arrest and detention with
which he was threatened, he took refuge at Buisson-Souef with his
family, and remained there from Whitsuntide till the end of November.
After being treated all this time as a friend, Derues departed for
Paris, in order, he said, to receive an inheritance which would
enable him to pay the required purchase-money.

This pretended inheritance was that of one of his wife's relations,
Monsieur Despeignes-Duplessis, who had been murdered in his country
house, near Beauvais.  It has been strongly suspected that Derues was
guilty of this crime.  There are, however, no positive proofs, and we
prefer only to class it as a simple possibility.

Derues had made formal promises to Monsieur de Lamotte, and it was no
longer possible for him to elude them.  Either the payment must now
be made, or the contract annulled.  A new correspondence began
between the creditors and the debtor; friendly letters were
exchanged, full of protestations on one side and confidence on the
other.  But all Derues' skill could only obtain a delay of a few
months.  At length Monsieur de Lamotte, unable to leave Buisson-Souef
himself, on account of important business which required his
presence, gave his wife a power of attorney, consented to another
separation, and sent her to Paris, accompanied by Edouard, and as if
to hasten their misfortunes, sent notice of their coming to the
expectant murderer.

We have passed quickly over the interval between the first meeting of
Monsieur de Lamotte and Derues, and the moment when the victims fell
into the trap: we might easily have invented long conversations, and
episodes which would have brought Derues' profound hypocrisy into
greater relief; but the reader now knows all that we care to show
him.  We have purposely lingered in our narration in the endeavour to
explain the perversities of this mysterious organisation; we have
over-loaded it with all the facts which seem to throw any light upon
this sombre character.  But now, after these long preparations, the
drama opens, the scenes become rapid and lifelike; events, long
impeded, accumulate and pass quickly before us, the action is
connected and hastens to an end.  We shall see Derues like an
unwearied Proteus, changing names, costumes, language, multiplying
himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of
France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such
prodigies of calculation and activity, end by wrecking himself
against a corpse.

The letter written at Buisson-Souef arrived at Paris the morning of
the 14th of December.  In the course of the day an unknown man
presented himself at the hotel where Madame de Lamotte and her son
had stayed before, and inquired what rooms were vacant.  There were
four, and he engaged them for a certain Dumoulin, who had arrived
that morning from Bordeaux, and who had passed through Paris in order
to meet, at some little distance, relations who would return with
him.  A part of the rent was paid in advance, and it was expressly
stipulated that until his return the rooms should not be let to
anyone, as the aforesaid Dumoulin might return with his family and
require them at any moment.  The same person went to other hotels in
the neighbourhood and engaged vacant rooms, sometimes for a stranger
he expected, sometimes for friends whom he could not accommodate
himself.

At about three o'clock, the Place de Greve was full of people,
thousands of heads crowded the windows of the surrounding houses.  A
parricide was to pay the penalty of his crime--a crime committed
under atrocious circumstances, with an unheard-of refinement of
barbarity.  The punishment corresponded to the crime: the wretched
man was broken on the wheel.  The most complete and terrible silence
prevailed in the multitude eager for ghastly emotions.  Three times
already had been heard the heavy thud of the instrument which broke
the victim's limbs, and a loud cry escaped the sufferer which made
all who heard it shudder with horror, One man only, who, in spite of
all his efforts, could not get through the crowd and cross the
square, remained unmoved, and looking contemptuously towards the
criminal, muttered, "Idiot! he was unable to deceive anyone!"

A few moments later the flames began to rise from the funeral pile,
the crowd began to move, and the than was able to make his way
through and reach one of the streets leading out of the square.

The sky was overcast, and the grey daylight hardly penetrated the
narrow lane, hideous and gloomy as the name it bore, and which; only
a few years ago, still wound like a long serpent through the mire of
this quarter.  Just then it was deserted, owing to the attraction of
the execution close by.  The man who had just left the square
proceeded slowly, attentively reading all the inscriptions on the
doors.  He stopped at Number 75, where on the threshold of a shop sat
a stout woman busily knitting, over whom one read in big yellow
letters, "Widow Masson." He saluted the woman, and asked--

"Is there not a cellar to let in this house?"

"There is, master," answered the widow.

"Can I speak to the owner?"

"And that is myself, by your leave."

"Will you show me the cellar?  I am a provincial wine merchant, my
business often brings me to Paris, and I want a cellar where I could
deposit wine which I sell on commission."

They went down together.  After examining the place, and ascertaining
that it was not too damp for the expensive wine which he wished to
leave there, the man agreed about the rent, paid the first term in
advance, and was entered on the widow Masson's books under the name
of Ducoudray.  It is hardly necessary to remark that it should have
been Derues.

When he returned home in the evening, his wife told him that a large
box had arrived.

"It is all right," he said, "the carpenter from whom I ordered it is
a man of his word."  Then he supped, and caressed his children.  The
next day being Sunday, he received the communion, to the great
edification of the devout people of the neighbourhood.

On Monday the 16th Madame de Lamotte and Edouard, descending from the
Montereau stagecoach, were met by Derues and his wife.

"Did my husband write to you, Monsieur Derues?" inquired Madame de
Lamotte.

"Yes, madame, two days ago; and I have arranged our dwelling for your
reception."

"What! but did not Monsieur de Lamotte ask you to engage the rooms I
have had before at the Hotel de France?"

"He did not say so, and if that was your idea I trust you will change
it.  Do not deprive me of the pleasure of offering you the
hospitality which for so long I have accepted from you.  Your room is
quite ready, also one for this dear boy," and so saying he took
Edouard's hand; "and I am sure if you ask his opinion, he will say
you had better be content to stay with me."

"Undoubtedly," said the boy; "and I do not see why there need be any
hesitation between friends."

Whether by accident, or secret presentiment, or because she foresaw a
possibility of business discussions between them, Madame de Lamotte
objected to this arrangement.  Derues having a business appointment
which he was bound to keep, desired his wife to accompany the
Lamottes to the Hotel de France, and in case of their not being able
to find rooms there, mentioned three others as the only ones in the
quarter where they could be comfortably accommodated.  Two hours
later Madame de Lamotte and her son returned to his house in the rue
Beaubourg.

The house which Derues occupied stood opposite the rue des Menoriers,
and was pulled down quite lately to make way for the rue Rambuteau.
In 1776 it was one of the finest houses of the rue Beaubourg, and it
required a certain income to be able to live there, the rents being
tolerably high.  A large arched doorway gave admittance to a passage,
lighted at the other end by a small court, on the far side of which
was the shop into which Madame de Lamotte had been taken on the
occasion of the accident.  The house staircase was to the right of
the passage; and the Derues' dwelling on the entresol.  The first
room, lighted by a window looking into the court, was used as a
dining room, and led into a simply furnished sitting-room, such as
was generally found among the bourgeois and tradespeople of this
period.  To the right of the sitting-room was a large closet, which
could serve as a small study or could hold a bed; to the left was a
door opening into the Derues' bedroom, which had been prepared for
Madame de Lamotte.  Madame Derues would occupy one of the two beds
which stood in the alcove.  Derues had a bed made up in the
sitting-room, and Edouard was accommodated in the little study.

Nothing particular happened during the first few days which followed
the Lamottes' arrival.  They had not come to Paris only on account of
the Buisson-Souef affairs.  Edouard was nearly sixteen, and after
much hesitation his parents had decided on placing him in some school
where his hitherto neglected education might receive more attention.
Derues undertook to find a capable tutor, in whose house the boy
would be brought up in the religious feeling which the cure of
Buisson and his own exhortations had already tended to develop.
These proceedings, added to Madame de Lamotte's endeavours to collect
various sums due to her husband, took some time.  Perhaps, when on
the point of executing a terrible crime, Derues tried to postpone the
fatal moment, although, considering his character, this seems
unlikely, for one cannot do him the honour of crediting him with a
single moment of remorse, doubt, or pity.  Far from it, it appears
from all the information which can be gathered, that Derues, faithful
to his own traditions, was simply experimenting on his unfortunate
guests, for no sooner were they in his house than both began to
complain of constant nausea, which they had never suffered from
before.  While he thus ascertained the strength of their
constitution, he was able, knowing the cause of the malady, to give
them relief, so that Madame de Lamotte, although she grew daily
weaker, had so much confidence in him as to think it unnecessary to
call in a doctor.  Fearing to alarm her husband, she never mentioned
her sufferings, and her letters only spoke of the care and kind
attention which she received.

On the 15th of January, 1777, Edouard was placed in a school in the
rue de l'Homme Arme.  His mother never saw him again.  She went out
once more to place her husband's power of attorney with a lawyer in
the rue de Paon.  On her return she felt so weak and broken-down that
she was obliged to go to bed and remain there for several days.  On
January 29th the unfortunate lady had risen, and was sitting near the
window which overlooked the deserted rue des Menetriers, where clouds
of snow were drifting before the wind.  Who can guess the sad
thoughts which may have possessed her?--all around dark, cold, and
silent, tending to produce painful depression and involuntary dread.
To escape the gloomy ideas which besieged her, her mind went back to
the smiling times of her youth and marriage.  She recalled the time
when, alone at Buisson during her husband's enforced absences, she
wandered with her child in the cool and shaded walks of the park, and
sat out in the evening, inhaling the scent of the flowers, and
listening to the murmur of the water, or the sound of the whispering
breeze in the leaves.  Then, coming back from these sweet
recollections to reality, she shed tears, and called on her husband
and son.  So deep was her reverie that she did not hear the room door
open, did not perceive that darkness had come on.  The light of a
candle, dispersing the shadows, made her start; she turned her head,
and saw Derues coming towards her.  He smiled, and she made an effort
to keep back the tears which were shining in her eyes, and to appear
calm.

"I am afraid I disturb you," he said.  "I came to ask a favour,
madame."

"What is it, Monsieur Derues?" she inquired.

"Will you allow me to have a large chest brought into this room?  I
ought to pack some valuable things in it which are in my charge, and
are now in this cupboard.  I am afraid it will be in your way."

"Is it not your own house, and is it not rather I who am in the way
and a cause of trouble?  Pray have it brought in, and try to forget
that I am here.  You are most kind to me, but I wish I could spare
you all this trouble and that I were fit to go back to Buisson.  I
had a letter from my husband yesterday----"

"We will talk about that presently, if you wish it," said Derues.
"I will go and fetch the servant to help me to carry in this chest.
I have put it off hitherto, but it really must be sent in three
days."

He went away, and returned in a few minutes.  The chest was carried
in, and placed before the cupboard at the foot of the bed.  Alas!
the poor lady little thought it was her own coffin which stood before
her!

The maid withdrew, and Derues assisted Madame de Lamotte to a seat
near the fire, which he revived with more fuel.  He sat down opposite
to her, and by the feeble light of the candle placed on a small table
between them could contemplate at leisure the ravages wrought by
poison on her wasted features.

"I saw your son to-day," he said: "he complains that you neglect
him, and have not seen him for twelve days.  He does not know you
have been ill, nor did I tell him.  The dear boy! he loves you so
tenderly."

"And I also long to see him.  My friend, I cannot tell you what
terrible presentiments beset me; it seems as if I were threatened
with some great misfortune; and just now, when you came in, I could
think only of death.  What is the cause of this languor and weakness?
It is surely no temporary ailment.  Tell me the truth: am I not
dreadfully altered? and do you not think my husband will be shocked
when he sees me like this?"

"You are unnecessarily anxious," replied Derues; "it is rather a
failing of yours.  Did I not see you last year tormenting yourself
about Edouard's health, when he was not even thinking of being ill?
I am not so soon alarmed.  My own old profession, and that of
chemistry, which I studied in my youth, have given me some
acquaintance with medicine.  I have frequently been consulted, and
have prescribed for patients whose condition was supposed to be
desperate, and I can assure you I have never seen a better and
stronger constitution than yours.  Try to calm yourself, and do not
call up chimeras; because a mind at ease is the greatest enemy of
illness.  This depression will pass, and then you will regain your
strength."

"May God grant it! for I feel weaker every day."

"We have still some business to transact together.  The notary at
Beauvais writes that the difficulties which prevented his paying over
the inheritance of my wife's relation, Monsieur Duplessis, have
mostly disappeared.  I have a hundred thousand livres at my
disposal,--that is to say, at yours,--and in a month at latest I
shall be able to pay off my debt.  You ask me to be sincere," he
continued, with a tinge of reproachful irony; "be sincere in your
turn, madame, and acknowledge that you and your husband have both
felt uneasy, and that the delays I have been obliged to ask for have
not seemed very encouraging to you?"

"It is true," she replied; "but we never questioned your good
faith."

"And you were right.  One is not always able to carry out one's
intentions; events can always upset our calculations; but what really
is in our power is the desire to do right--to be honest; and I can
say that I never intentionally wronged anyone.  And now.  I am happy
in being able to fulfil my promises to you.  I trust when I am the
owner of Buisson-Souef you will not feel obliged to leave it."

"Thank you; I should like to come occasionally, for all my happy
recollections are connected with it.  Is it necessary for me to
accompany you to Beauvais?"

"Why should you not?  The change would do you good."

She looked up at him and smiled sadly.  "I am not in a fit state to
undertake it."

"Not if you imagine that you are unable, certainly.  Come, have you
any confidence in me?"

"The most complete confidence, as you know."

"Very well, then: trust to my care.  This very evening I will prepare
a draught for you to take to-morrow morning, and I will even now fix
the duration of this terrible malady which frightens you so much.  In
two days I shall fetch Edouard from his school to celebrate the
beginning of your convalescence, and we will start, at latest, on
February 1st.  You are astonished at what I say, but you shall see if
I am not a good doctor, and much cleverer than many who pass for such
merely because the have obtained a diploma."

"Then, doctor, I will place myself in your hands."

"Remember what I say.  You will leave this on February 1st."

"To begin this cure, can you ensure my sleeping to-night?"

"Certainly.  I will go now, and send my wife to you.  She will bring
a draught, which you must promise to take."

"I will exactly follow your prescriptions.  Goodnight, my friend."

"Good-night, madame; and take courage"; and bowing low, he left the
room.

The rest of the evening was spent in preparing the fatal medicine.
The next morning, an hour or two after Madame de Lamotte had
swallowed it, the maid who had given it to her came and told Derues
the invalid was sleeping very heavily and snoring, and asked if she
ought to be awoke.  He went into the room, and, opening the curtains,
approached the bed.  He listened for some time, and recognised that
the supposed snoring was really he death-rattle.  He sent the servant
off into the country with a letter to one of his friends, telling her
not to return until the Monday following, February 3rd.  He also sent
away his wife, on some unknown pretext, and remained alone with his
victim.

So terrible a situation ought to have troubled the mind of the most
hardened criminal.  A man familiar with murder and accustomed to shed
blood might have felt his heart sink, and, in the absence of pity,
might have experienced disgust at the sight of this prolonged and
useless torture; but Derues, calm and easy, as if unconscious of
evil, sat coolly beside the bed, as any doctor might have done.  From
time to time he felt the slackening pulse, and looked at the glassy
and sightless eyes which turned in their orbits, and he saw without
terror the approach of night, which rendered this awful 'tete-a-tete'
even more horrible.  The most profound silence reigned in the house,
the street was deserted, and the only sound heard was caused by an
icy rain mixed with snow driven against the glass, and occasionally
the howl of the wind, which penetrated the chimney and scattered the
ashes.  A single candle placed behind the curtains lighted this
dismal scene, and the irregular flicker of its flame cast weird
reflections and dancing shadows an the walls of the alcove.  There
came a lull in the wind, the rain ceased, and during this instant of
calm someone knocked, at first gently, and then sharply, at the outer
door.  Derues dropped the dying woman's hand and bent forward to
listen.  The knock was repeated, and he grew pale.  He threw the
sheet, as if it were a shroud, over his victim's head drew the
curtains of the alcove, and went to the door.  "Who is there?" he
inquired.

"Open, Monsieur Derues," said a voice which he recognised as that of
a woman of Chartres whose affairs he managed, and who had entrusted
him with sundry deeds in order that he might receive the money due to
her.  This woman had begun to entertain doubts as to Derues' honesty,
and as she was leaving Paris the next day, had resolved to get the
papers out of his hands.

"Open the door," she repeated.  "Don't you know my voice?"

"I am sorry I cannot let you in.  My servant is out: she has taken
the key and locked the door outside."

"You must let me in," the woman continued; "it is absolutely
necessary I should speak to you."

"Come to-morrow."

"I leave Paris to-morrow, and I must have those papers to-night."

He again refused, but she spoke firmly and decidedly.  "I must come
in.  The porter said you were all out, but, from the rue des
Menetriers I could see the light in your room.  My brother is with
me, and I left him below.  I shall call him if you don't open the
door."

"Come in, then," said Derues; "your papers are in the sitting-room.
Wait here, and I will fetch them."  The woman looked at him and took
his hand.  "Heavens! how pale you are!  What is the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter: will you wait here?  "But she would not
release his arm, and followed him into the sitting-room, where Derues
began to seek hurriedly among the various papers which covered a
table.  "Here they are," he said; "now you can go."

"Really," said the woman, examining her deeds carefully, "never yet
did I see you in such a hurry to give up things which don't belong to
you.  But do hold that candle steadily; your hand is shaking so that
I cannot see to read."

At that moment the silence which prevailed all round was broken by a
cry of anguish, a long groan proceeding from the chamber to the right
of the sitting-room.

"What is that?" cried the woman.  "Surely it is a dying person!"

The sense of the danger which threatened made Derues pull himself
together.  "Do not be alarmed," he said.  "My wife has been seized
with a violent fever; she is quite delirious now, and that is why I
told the porter to let no one come up."

But the groans in the next room continued, and the unwelcome visitor,
overcome by terror which she could neither surmount nor explain, took
a hasty leave, and descended the staircase with all possible
rapidity.  As soon as he could close the door, Derues returned to the
bedroom.

Nature frequently collects all her expiring strength at the last
moment of existence.  The unhappy lady struggled beneath her
coverings; the agony she suffered had given her a convulsive energy,
and inarticulate sounds proceeded from her mouth.  Derues approached
and held her on the bed.  She sank back on the pillow, shuddering
convulsively, her hands plucking and twisting the sheets, her teeth
chattering and biting the loose hair which fell over her face and
shoulders.  "Water! water!" she cried; and then, "Edouard,--my
husband!--Edouard!--is it you?" Then rising with a last effort, she
seized her murderer by the arm, repeating, "Edouard!--oh!" and then
fell heavily, dragging Derues down with her.  His face was against
hers; he raised his head, but the dying hand, clenched in agony, had
closed upon him like a vise. The icy fingers seemed made of iron and
could not be opened, as though the victim had seized on her assassin
as a prey, and clung to the proof of his crime.

Derues at last freed himself, and putting his hand on her heart, "It
is over," he remarked; "she has been a long time about it.  What
o'clock is it?  Nine!  She has struggled against death for twelve
hours!"

While the limbs still retained a little warmth, he drew the feet
together, crossed the hands on the breast, and placed the body in the
chest.  When he had locked it up, he remade the bed, undressed
himself, and slept comfortably in the other one.

The next day, February 1st, the day he had fixed for the "going out"
of Madame de Lamotte, he caused the chest to be placed on a hand-cart
and carried at about ten o'clock in the morning to the workshop of a
carpenter of his acquaintance called Mouchy, who dwelt near the
Louvre.  The two commissionaires employed had been selected in
distant quarters, and did not know each other.  They were well paid,
and each presented with a bottle of wine.  These men could never be
traced.  Derues requested the carpenter's wife to allow the chest to
remain in the large workshop, saying he had forgotten something at
his own house, and would return to fetch it in three hours.  But,
instead of a few hours, he left it for two whole days--why, one does
not know, but it may be supposed that he wanted the time to dig a
trench in a sort of vault under the staircase leading to the cellar
in the rue de la Mortellerie.  Whatever the cause, the delay might
have been fatal, and did occasion an unforeseen encounter which
nearly betrayed him.  But of all the actors in this scene he alone
knew the real danger he incurred, and his coolness never deserted him
for a moment.

The third day, as he walked alongside the handcart on which the chest
was being conveyed, he was accosted at Saint Germain l'Auxerrois by a
creditor who had obtained a writ of execution against him, and at the
imperative sign made by this man the porter stopped.  The creditor
attacked Derues violently, reproaching him for his bad faith in
language which was both energetic and uncomplimentary; to which the
latter replied in as conciliatory a manner as he could assume.  But
it was impossible to silence the enemy, and an increasing crowd of
idlers began to assemble round them.

"When will you pay me?" demanded the creditor.  "I have an execution
against you.  What is there in that box?  Valuables which you cart
away secretly, in order to laugh at my just claims, as you did two
years ago?"

Derues shuddered all over; he exhausted himself in protestations; but
the other, almost beside himself, continued to shout.

"Oh!" he said, turning to the crowd, "all these tricks and grimaces
and signs of the cross are no good.  I must have my money, and as I
know what his promises are worth, I will pay myself!  Come, you
knave, make haste.  Tell me what there is in that box; open it, or I
will fetch the police."

The crowd was divided between the creditor and debtor, and possibly a
free fight would have begun, but the general attention was distracted
by the arrival of another spectator.  A voice heard above all the
tumult caused a score of heads to turn, it was the voice of a woman
crying:

"The abominable history of Leroi de Valine, condemned to death at the
age of sixteen for having poisoned his entire family!"

Continually crying her wares, the drunken, staggering woman
approached the crowd, and striking out right and left with fists and
elbows, forced her way to Derues.

"Ah! ah!" said she, after looking him well over, "is it you, my
gossip Derues!  Have you again a little affair on hand like the one
when you set fire to your shop in the rue Saint-Victor?"

Derues recognised the hawker who had abused him on the threshold of
his shop some years previously, and whom he had never seen since.
"Yes, yes," she continued, "you had better look at me with your
little round cat's eyes.  Are you going to say you don't know me?"

Derues appealed to his creditor.  "You see," he said, "to what
insults you are exposing me.  I do not know this woman who abuses
me."

"What!--you don't know me!  You who accused me of being a thief!  But
luckily the Maniffets have been known in Paris as honest people for
generations, while as for you----"

"Sir," said Derues, "this case contains valuable wine which I am
commissioned to sell.  To-morrow I shall receive the money for it;
to-morrow, in the course of the day, I will pay what I owe you.  But
I am waited for now, do not in Heaven's name detain me longer, and
thus deprive me of the means of paying at all."

"Don't believe him, my good man," said the hawker; "lying comes
natural to him always."

"Sir, I promise on my oath you shall be paid tomorrow; you had better
trust the word of an honest man rather than the ravings of a drunken
woman."

The creditor still hesitated, but, another person now spoke in
Derues' favour; it was the carpenter Mouchy, who had inquired the
cause of the quarrel.

"For God's sake," he exclaimed, "let the gentleman go on.  That chest
came from my workshop, and I know there is wine inside it; he told my
wife so two days ago."

"Will you be surety for me, my friend?" asked Derues.

"Certainly I will; I have not known you for ten years in order to
leave you in trouble and refuse to answer for you.  What the devil
are respectable people to be stopped like this in a public place?
Come, sir, believe his word, as I do."

After some more discussion, the porter was at last allowed to proceed
with his hand-cart.  The hawker wanted to interfere, but Mouchy
warned her off and ordered her to be silent.  "Ah! ah!" she cried,
"what does it matter to me?  Let him sell his wine if he can; I shall
not drink any on his premises.  This is the second time he has found
a surety to my knowledge; the beggar must have some special secret
for encouraging the growth of fools.  Good-bye, gossip Derues; you
know I shall be selling your history some day.  Meanwhile----

"The abominable history of Leroi de Valine, condemned to death at the
age of sixteen for having poisoned his entire family!"

Whilst she amused the people by her grimaces and grotesque gestures,
and while Mouchy held forth to some of them, Derues made his escape.
Several times between Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois and the rue de la
Mortellerie he nearly fainted, and was obliged to stop.  While the
danger lasted, he had had sufficient self-control to confront it
coolly, but now that he calculated the depth of the abyss which for a
moment had opened beneath his feet, dizziness laid hold on him.

Other precautions now became necessary.  His real name had been
mentioned before the commissionaire, and the widow Masson, who owned
the cellar, only knew him as Ducoudray.  He went on in front, asked
for the keys, which till then had been left with her, and the chest
was got downstairs without any awkward questions.  Only the porter
seemed astonished that this supposed wine, which was to be sold
immediately, should be put in such a place, and asked if he might
come the next day and move it again.  Derues replied that someone was
coming for it that very day.  This question, and the disgraceful
scene which the man had witnessed, made it necessary to get rid of
him without letting him see the pit dug under the staircase.  Derues
tried to drag the chest towards the hole, but all his strength was
insufficient to move it.  He uttered terrible imprecations when he
recognised his own weakness, and saw that he would be obliged to
bring another stranger, an informer perhaps, into this charnel-house,
where; as yet, nothing betrayed his crimes.  No sooner escaped from
one peril than he encountered another, and already he had to struggle
against his own deeds.  He measured the length of the trench, it was
too short.  Derues went out and repaired to the place where he had
hired the labourer who had dug it out, but he could not find the man,
whom he had only seen once, and whose name he did not know.  Two
whole days were spent in this fruitless search, but on the third, as
he was wandering on one of the quays at the time labourers were to be
found there, a mason, thinking he was looking for someone, inquired
what he wanted.  Derues looked well at the man, and concluding from
his appearance that he was probably rather simpleminded, asked--

"Would you like to earn a crown of three livres by an easy job?"

"What a question, master!" answered the mason.  "Work is so scarce
that I am going back into the country this very evening."

"Very well!  Bring your tools, spade, and pickaxe, and follow me."

They both went down to the cellar, and the mason was ordered to dig
out the pit till it was five and a half feet deep.  While the man
worked, Derues sat beside the chest and read.  When it was half done,
the mason stopped for breath, and leaning on his spade, inquired why
he wanted a trench of such a depth.  Derues, who had probably
foreseen the question, answered at once, without being disconcerted--

"I want to bury some bottled wine which is contained in this case."

"Wine!" said the other.  "Ah!  you are laughing at me, because you
think I look a fool!  I never yet heard of such a recipe for
improving wine."

"Where do you come from?"

"D'Alencon."

"Cider drinker!  You were brought up in Normandy, that is clear.
Well, you can learn from me, Jean-Baptiste Ducoudray, a wine grower
of Tours, and a wine merchant for the last ten years, that new wine
thus buried for a year acquires the quality and characteristics of
the oldest brands."

"It is possible," said the mason, again taking his spade, "but all
the same it seems a little odd to me."

When he had finished, Derues asked him to help to drag the chest
alongside the trench, so that it might be easier to take out the
bottles and arrange them: The mason agreed, but when he moved the
chest the foetid odour which proceeded from it made him draw back,
declaring that a smell such as that could not possibly proceed from
wine.  Derues tried to persuade him that the smell came from drains
under the cellar, the pipe of which could be seen.  It appeared to
satisfy him, and he again took hold of the chest, but immediately let
it go again, and said positively that he could not execute Derues'
orders, being convinced that the chest must contain a decomposing
corpse.  Then Derues threw himself at the man's feet and acknowledged
that it was the dead body of a woman who had unfortunately lodged in
his house, and who had died there suddenly from an unknown malady,
and that, dreading lest he should be accused of having murdered her,
he had decided to conceal the death and bury her here.

The mason listened, alarmed at this confidence, and not knowing
whether to believe it or not.  Derues sobbed and wept at his feet,
beat his breast and tore out his hair, calling on God and the saints
as witnesses of his good faith and his innocence.  He showed the book
he was reading while the mason excavated: it was the Seven
Penitential Psalms.  "How unfortunate I am!" he cried.  "This woman
died in my house, I assure you--died suddenly, before I could call a
doctor.  I was alone; I might have been accused, imprisoned, perhaps
condemned for a crime I did not commit.  Do not ruin me!  You leave
Paris to-night, you need not be uneasy; no one would know that I
employed you, if this unhappy affair should ever be discovered.  I do
not know your name, I do not wish to know it, and I tell you mine, it
is Ducoudray.  I give myself up to you, but have some pity!--if not
for me, yet for my wife and my two little children--for these poor
creatures whose only support I am!"

Seeing that the mason was touched, Derues opened the chest.

"Look," he said, "examine the body of this woman, does it show any
mark of violent death?  My God!" he continued, joining his hands and
in tones of despairing agony,--"my God, Thou who readest all hearts,
and who knowest my innocence, canst Thou not ordain a miracle to save
an honest man?  Wilt Thou not command this dead body to bear witness
for me?"

The mason was stupefied by this flow of language.  Unable to restrain
his tears, he promised to keep silence, persuaded that Derues was
innocent, and that appearances only were against him.  The latter,
moreover, did not neglect other means of persuasion; he handed the
mason two gold pieces, and between them they buried the body of
Madame de Lamotte.

However extraordinary this fact, which might easily be supposed
imaginary, may appear, it certainly happened.  In the examination at
his trial.  Derues himself revealed it, repeating the story which had
satisfied the mason.  He believed that this man had denounced him: he
was mistaken, for this confidant of his crime, who might have been
the first to put justice on his track, never reappeared, and but for
Derues' acknowledgment his existence would have remained unknown.

This first deed accomplished, another victim was already appointed.
Trembling at first as to the consequences of his forced confession,
Derues waited some days, paying, however, his creditor as promised.
He redoubles his demonstrations of piety, he casts a furtive glance
on everyone he meets, seeking for some expression of distrust.  But
no one avoids him, or points him out with a raised finger, or
whispers on seeing him; everywhere he encounters the customary
expression of goodwill.  Nothing has changed; suspicion passes over
his head without alighting there.  He is reassured, and resumes his
work.  Moreover, had he wished to remain passive, he could not have
done so; he was now compelled to follow that fatal law of crime which
demands that blood must be effaced with blood, and which is compelled
to appeal again to death in order to stifle the accusing voice
already issuing from the tomb.

Edouard de Lamotte, loving his mother as much as she loved him,
became uneasy at receiving no visits, and was astonished at this
sudden indifference.  Derues wrote to him as follows:

"I have at length some good news for you, my dear boy, but you must
not tell your mother I have betrayed her secret; she would scold me,
because she is planning a surprise for you, and the various steps and
care necessary in arranging this important matter have caused her
absence.  You were to know nothing until the 11th or 12th of this
month, but now that all is settled, I should blame myself if I
prolonged the uncertainty in which you have been left, only you must
promise me to look as much astonished as possible.  Your mother, who
only lives for you, is going to present you with the greatest gift a
youth of your age can receive--that of liberty.  Yes, dear boy, we
thought we had discovered that you have no very keen taste for study,
and that a secluded life will suit neither your character nor your
health.  In saying this I utter no reproach, for every man is born
with his own decided tastes, and the way to success and happiness
is-often-to allow him to follow these instincts.  We have had long
discussions on this subject--your mother and I--and we have thought
much about your future; she has at last come to a decision, and for
the last ten days has been at Versailles, endeavouring to obtain your
admission as a royal page.  Here is the mystery, this is the reason
which has kept her from you, and as she knew you would hear it with
delight, she wished to have the pleasure of telling you herself.
Therefore, once again, when you see her, which will be very soon, do
not let her see I have told you; appear to be greatly surprised.  It
is true that I am asking you to tell a lie, but it is a very innocent
one, and its good intention will counteract its sinfulness--may God
grant we never have worse upon our consciences!  Thus, instead of
lessons and the solemn precepts of your tutors, instead of a
monotonous school-life, you are going to enjoy your liberty; also the
pleasures of the court and the world.  All that rather alarms me, and
I ought to confess that I at first opposed this plan.  I begged your
mother  to reflect, to consider that in this new existence you would
run great risk of losing the religious feeling which inspires you,
and which I have had the happiness, during my sojourn at Buisson-
Souef, of  further developing in your mind.  I still recall with
emotion your fervid and sincere aspirations towards the Creator when
you approached the Sacred Table for the first time, and when,
kneeling beside you, and envying the purity of heart and innocence of
soul which appeared to animate your countenance as with a divine
radiance, I besought God that, in default of my own virtue, the love
for heavenly Truth with which I have inspired you might be reckoned
to my account.  Your piety is my work,  Edouard, and I defended it
against your mother's plans; but she replied that in every career a
man is master of his own good or evil actions; and as I have no
authority over you, and friendship only gives me the right to advise,
I must give way.  If this be your vocation, then follow it.

"My occupations are so numerous (I have to collect from different
sources this hundred thousand livres intended to defray the greater
part of the Buisson purchase) that I have not a moment in which to
come and see you this week.  Spend the time in reflection, and write
to me fully what you think about this plan.  If, like me, you feel
any scruples, you must tell them to your mother, who decidedly wants
only to make you happy.  Speak to me freely, openly.  It is arranged
that I am to fetch you on the 11th of this month, and escort you to
Versailles, where Madame de Lamotte will be waiting to receive you
with the utmost tenderness.  Adieu, dear boy; write to me.  Your
father knows nothing as yet; his consent will be asked after your
decision."

The answer to this letter did not have to be waited for: it was such
as Derues expected; the lad accepted joyfully.  The answer was, for
the murderer, an arranged plea of defence, a proof which, in a given
case, might link the present with the past.

On the morning of February 11th, Shrove Tuesday, he went to fetch the
young de Lamotte from his school, telling the master that he was
desired by the youth's mother to conduct him to Versailles.  But,
instead, he took him to his own house, saying that he had a letter
from Madame de Lamotte asking them not to come  till the next day; so
they started on Ash Wednesday, Edouard having breakfasted on
chocolate.  Arrived at Versailles, they stopped at the Fleur-de-lys
inn, but there the sickness which the boy had complained of during
the journey became very  serious, and the innkeeper, having young
children,  and believing that he recognised symptoms of smallpox,
which just then was ravaging Versailles, refused to receive them,
saying he had no vacant room.  This might have disconcerted anyone
but Derues, but his audacity, activity, and resource seemed to
increase with each fresh obstacle.  Leaving Edouard in a room on the
ground floor which had no communication with the rest of the inn, he
went at once to look for lodgings, and hastily explored the town.
After a fruitless search, he found at last, at the junction of the
rue Saint-Honore with that of the Orangerie, a cooper named Martin,
who had a furnished room to spare.  This he hired at thirty sous per
day for himself and his nephew, who had been taken suddenly ill,
under the  name of Beaupre.  To avoid being questioned later,  he
informed the cooper in a few words that he was a doctor; that he had
come to Versailles in order to place his nephew in one of the offices
of the town; that in a few days the latter's mother would arrive to
join him in seeing and making application to influential persons
about the court, to whom he had letters of introduction.  As soon as
he had delivered this fable with all the appearance of truth with
which he knew so well how to disguise his falsehoods, he went back to
the young de Lamotte, who was already so exhausted that he was hardly
able to drag himself as far as the cooper's house.  He fainted on
arrival, and was carried into the hired room, where Derues begged to
be left alone with him, and only asked for certain beverages which he
told the people how to prepare.

Whether it was that the strength of youth fought against the poison,
or that Derues took pleasure in watching the sufferings of his
victim, the agony of the poor lad was prolonged until the fourth day.
The sickness continuing incessantly, he sent the cooper's wife for a
medicine which he prepared and administered himself.  It produced
terrible pain, and Edouard's cries brought the cooper and his wife
upstairs.  They represented to Derues that he ought to call in a
doctor and consult with him, but he refused decidedly, saying that a
doctor hastily fetched might prove to be an ignorant person with whom
he could not agree, and that he could not allow one so dear to him to
be prescribed for and nursed by anyone but himself.

"I know what the malady is," he continued, raising his eyes to
heaven; "it is one that has to be concealed rather than acknowledged.
Poor youth! whom I love as my own son, if God, touched by my tears
and thy suffering, permits me to save thee, thy whole life will be
too short for thy blessings and thy gratitude!"  And as Madame Martin
asked what this malady might be, he answered with hypocritical
blushes--

"Do not ask, madame; there are things of which you do not know even
the name."

At another time, Martin expressed his surprise that the young man's
mother had not yet appeared, who, according to Derues, was to have
met him at Versailles.  He asked how she could know that they were
lodging in his house, and if he should send to meet her at any place
where she was likely to arrive.

"His mother," said Derues, looking compassionately at Edouard, who
lay pale, motionless, and as if insensible,--"his mother!  He calls
for her incessantly.  Ah! monsieur, some families are greatly to be
pitied!  My entreaties prevailed on her to decide on coming hither,
but will she keep her promise?  Do not ask me to tell you more; it is
too painful to have to accuse a mother of having forgotten her duties
in the presence of her son .  .  .  there are secrets which ought not
to be told--unhappy woman!"

Edouard moved, extended his arms, and repeated, "Mother!  .  .  .
mother!"

Derues hastened to his side and took his hands in his, as if to warm
them.

"My mother!" the youth repeated.  "Why have I not seen her?  She was
to have met me."

You shall soon see her, dear boy; only keep quiet."

"But just now I thought she was dead."

"Dead!" cried Derues.  "Drive away these sad thoughts.  They are
caused by the fever only."

"No!  oh no! .  .  .  I heard a secret voice which said, 'Thy mother
is dead!' .  .  .  And then I beheld a livid corpse before me .  .  .
It was she! .  .  .  I knew her well! and she seemed to have suffered
so much----"

"Dear boy, your mother is not dead .  .  .  .  My God! what terrible
chimeras you conjure up!  You will see her again, I assure you; she
has arrived already.  Is it not so, madame?" he asked, turning
towards the Martins, who were both leaning against the foot of the
bed, and signing to them to support this pious falsehood, in order to
calm the young man.  "Did she not arrive and come to his bedside and
kiss him while he slept, and she will soon come again?"

"Yes, yes," said Madame Martin, wiping her eyes; "and she begged my
husband and me to help your uncle to take great care of you--"

The youth moved again, and looking round him with a dazed expression,
said, "My uncle--?"

"You had better go," said Derues in a whisper to the Martins.  "I am
afraid he is delirious again; I will prepare a draught, which will
give him a little rest and sleep."

"Adieu, then, adieu," answered Madame Martin; "and may Heaven bless
you for the care you bestow on this poor young man!"

On Friday evening violent vomiting appeared to have benefited the
sufferer.  He had rejected most of the poison, and had a fairly quiet
night.  But on the Saturday morning Derues sent the cooper's little
girl to buy more medicine, which he prepared, himself, like the
first.  The day was horrible, and about six in the evening, seeing
his victim was at the last gasp, he opened a little window
overlooking the shop and summoned the cooper, requesting him to go at
once for a priest.  When the latter arrived he found Derues in tears,
kneeling at the dying boy's bedside.  And now, by the light of two
tapers placed on a table, flanking the holy water-stoup, there began
what on one side was an abominable and sacrilegious comedy, a
disgraceful parody of that which Christians consider most sacred and
most dear; on the other, a pious and consoling ceremony.  The cooper
and his wife, their eyes bathed in tears, knelt in the middle of the
room, murmuring such prayers as they could remember.

Derues gave up his place to the priest, but as Edouard did not answer
the latter's questions, he approached the bed, and bending over the
sufferer, exhorted him to confession.

"Dear boy," he said, "take courage; your sufferings here will be
counted to you above: God will weigh ahem in the scales of His
infinite mercy.  Listen to the words of His holy minister, cast your
sins into His bosom, and obtain from Him forgiveness for your
faults."

"I am in such terrible pain!" cried Edouard.  "Water! water!
Extinguish the fire which consumes me!"

A violent fit came on, succeeded by exhaustion and the death-rattle.
Derues fell on his knees, and the priest administered extreme
unction.  There was then a moment of absolute silence, more
impressive than cries and sobs.  The priest collected himself for a
moment, crossed himself, and began to pray.  Derues also crossed
himself, and repeated in a low voice, apparently choked by grief

"Go forth, O Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the
Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, the
Son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy
Ghost, who was poured out upon thee."

The youth struggled in his bed, and a convulsive movement agitated
his limbs.  Derues continued--

"When thy soul departs from this body may it be admitted to the holy
Mountain of Sion, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, to the numerous company
of Angels, and to the Church of the First-born, whose names are
written in Heaven----"

"Mother!  .  .  .  My mother!" cried Edouard.  Derues resumed--

"Let God arise, and let the Powers of Darkness be dispersed!  let the
Spirits of Evil, who reign over the air, be put to flight; let them
not dare to attack a soul redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus
Christ."

"Amen," responded the priest and the Martins.

There was another silence, broken only by the stifled sobs of Derues.
The priest again crossed himself and took up the prayer.

"We beseech Thee, O beloved and only Son of God, by the merits of Thy
sacred Passion, Thy Cross and Thy Death, to deliver this Thy servant
from the pains of Hell, and to lead him to that happy place whither
Thou didst vouchsafe to lead the thief, who, with Thee, was bound
upon the Cross: Thou, who art God, living and reigning with the
Father and the Holy Ghost."

"Amen," repeated those present.  Derues now took up the prayer, and
his voice mingled with the dying gasps of the sufferer.

"And there was a  darkness over all the earth----

"To Thee, O Lord, we commend the soul of this Thy servant, that,
being dead to the world, he may, live to Thee: and the sins he hath
committed through the frailty of his mortal nature, do Thou in Thy
most merciful goodness, forgive and wash away.  Amen."

After which all present sprinkled holy water on the body....

When the priest had retired, shown out by Madame Martin, Derues said
to her husband--

"This unfortunate young man has died without the consolation of
beholding his mother....  His last thought was for her.... There now
remains the last duty, a very painful one to accomplish, but my poor
nephew imposed it on me.  A few hours ago, feeling that his end was
near, he asked me, as a last mark of friendship, not to entrust these
final duties to the hands of strangers."

While he applied himself to the necessary work in presence of the
cooper, who was much affected by the sight of such sincere and
profound affliction, Derues added, sighing--

"I shall always grieve for this dear boy.  Alas! that evil living
should have caused his early death!"

When he had finished laying out the body, he threw some little
packets into the fire which he professed to have found in the youth's
pockets, telling  Martin, in order to support this assertion, that
they contained drugs suitable to this disgraceful malady.

He spent the night in the room with the corpse, as he had done in the
case of Madame de Lamotte, and the next day, Sunday, he sent Martin
to the parish church of St. Louis, to arrange for a funeral of the
simplest kind; telling him to fill up the certificate in the name of
Beaupre, born at Commercy, in Lorraine.  He declined himself either
to go to the church or to appear at the funeral, saying that his
grief was too great.  Martin, returning from the funeral, found him
engaged in prayer.  Derues gave him the dead youth's clothes and
departed, leaving some money to be given to the poor of the parish,
and for masses to be said for the repose of the soul of the dead.

He arrived at home in the evening, found his wife entertaining some
friends; and told them he had just come from Chartres, where he had
been summoned on business.  Everyone noticed his unusual air of
satisfaction, and he sang several songs during supper.

Having accomplished these two crimes, Derues did not remain idle.
When the murderer's part of his nature was at rest, the thief
reappeared.  His extreme avarice now made him regret the expense'
caused by the deaths of Madame de Lamotte and her son, and he wished
to recoup himself.  Two days after his return from Versailles, he
ventured to present himself at Edouard's school.  He told the master
that he had received a letter from Madame de Lamotte, saying that she
wished to keep her son, and asking him to obtain Edouard's
belongings.  The schoolmaster's wife, who was present, replied that
that could not be; that Monsieur de Lamotte would have known of his
wife's intention; that she would not have taken such a step without
consulting him; and that only the evening before, they had received a
present of game from Buisson-Souef, with a letter in which Monsieur
de Lamotte entreated them to take great, care of his son.

"If what you say is true," she continued, "Madame de Lamotte is no
doubt acting on your advice in taking away her son.  But I will write
to Buisson."

"You had better not do anything in the matter;" said Derues, turning
to the schoolmaster.  "It is quite possible that Monsieur de Lamotte
does not know.  I am aware that his wife does not always consult him.
She is at Versailles, where I took Edouard to her, and I will inform
her of your objection."

To insure impunity for these murders, Derues had resolved on the
death of Monsieur de Lamotte; but before executing this last crime,
he wished for some proof of the recent pretended agreements between
himself and Madame de Lamotte.  He would not wait for the
disappearance of the whole family before presenting himself as the
lawful proprietor, of Buisson-Souef.  Prudence required him to
shelter himself behind a deed which should have been executed by that
lady.  On February 27th he appeared at the office of Madame de
Lamotte's lawyer in the rue du Paon, and, with all the persuasion of
an artful tongue, demanded the power of attorney on that lady's
behalf, saying that he had, by private contract, just paid a hundred
thousand livres on the total amount of purchase, which money was now
deposited with a notary. The lawyer, much astonished that an affair
of such importance should have been arranged without any reference to
himself, refused to give up the deed to anyone but Monsieur or Madame
de Lamotte, and inquired why the latter did not appear herself.
Derues replied that she was at Versailles, and that he was to send
the deed to her there.  He repeated his request and the lawyer his
refusal, until Derues retired, saying he would find means to compel
him to give up the deed.  He actually did, the same day, present a
petition to the civil authority, in which Cyrano Derues de Bury sets
forth arrangements, made with Madame de Lamotte, founded on the deed
given by her husband, and requires permission to seize and withdraw
said deed from the custody in which it remains at present.  The
petition is granted.  The lawyer objects that he can only give up the
deed to either Monsieur or Madame de Lamotte, unless he be otherwise
ordered.  Derues has the effrontery to again appeal to the civil
authority, but, for the reasons given by that public officer, the
affair is adjourned.

These two futile efforts might have compromised Derues had they been
heard of at Buisson-Souef; but everything seemed to conspire in the
criminal's favour: neither the schoolmaster's wife nor the lawyer
thought of writing to Monsieur de Lamotte.  The latter, as yet
unsuspecting, was tormented by other anxieties, and kept at home by
illness.

In these days, distance is shortened, and one can travel from
Villeneuve-le-Roi-les-Sens to Paris in a few hours.  This was not the
case in 1777, when private industry and activity, stifled by routine
and privilege, had not yet experienced the need of providing the
means for rapid communication.  Half a day was required to go from
the capital to Versailles; a journey of twenty leagues required at
least two days and a night, and bristled with obstacles ind delays of
all kinds.  These difficulties of transport, still greater during bad
weather, and a long and serious attack of gout, explain why Monsieur
ale Lamotte, who was so ready to take alarm, had remained separated
from his wife from the middle of December to the end of February.  He
had received reassuring letters from her, written at first with
freedom and simplicity; but he thought he noticed a gradual change in
the later ones, which appeared to proceed more from the mind than the
heart.  A style which aimed at being natural was interspersed with
unnecessary expressions of affection, unusual between married people
well assured of their mutual love.  Monsieur de Lamotte observed and
exaggerated these peculiarities, and though endeavouring to persuade
himself that he was mistaken, he could not forget them, or regain his
usual tranquility.  Being somewhat ashamed of his anxiety, he kept
his fears to himself.

One morning, as he was sunk in a large armchair by the fire, his
sitting-room door opened, and the cure entered, who was surprised by
his despondent, sad, and pale appearance.  "What is the matter?" he
inquired, "Have you had an extra bad night?"

"Yes," answered Monsieur de Lamotte.

"Well, have you any news from Paris?"

"Nothing for a whole week: it is odd, is it not?"

"I am always hoping that this sale may fall through; it drags on for
so very long; and I believe that Monsieur Derues, in spite of what
your wife wrote a month ago, has not as much money as he pretends to
have.  Do you know that it is said that Monsieur Despeignes-
Duplessis, Madame Derues' relative, whose money they inherited, was
assassinated?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"It is a common report in the country, and was brought here by a man
who came recently from Beauvais."

"Have the murderers been discovered?"

"Apparently not; justice seems unable to discover anything at all."

Monsieur de Lamotte hung his head, and his countenance assumed an
expression of painful thought, as though this news affected him
personally.

"Frankly," resumed the cure, "I believe you will remain Seigneur du
Buisson-Souef, and that I shall be spared the pain of writing another
name over your seat in the church of Villeneuve."

"The affair must be settled in a few days, for I can wait no longer;
if the purchaser be not Monsieur Derues, it will have to be someone
else.  "What makes you think he is short of money?"

"Oh!  oh!" said the cure, "a man who has money either pays his debts,
or is a cheat.  Now Heaven preserve me from suspecting Monsieur
Derues' honesty!"

"What do you know about him?"

"Do you remember Brother Marchois of the Camaldulians, who came to
see me last spring, and who was here the day Monsieur Derues arrived,
with your wife and Edouard?"

"Perfectly.  Well?"

"Well, I happened to tell him in one of my letters that Monsieur
Derues had become the purchaser of Buisson-Souef, and that I believed
the arrangements were concluded.  Thereupon Brother Marchois wrote
asking me to remind him that he owes them a sum of eight hundred
livres, and that, so far, they have not seen a penny of it."

"Ah!" said Monsieur de Lamotte, "perhaps I should have done better
not to let myself be deluded by his fine promises.  He certainly has
money on his tongue, and when once one begins to listen to him, one
can't help doing what he wants.  All the same, I had rather have had
to deal with someone else."

"And is it this which worries you, and makes you seem so anxious?"

"This and other things."

"What, then?"

"I am really ashamed to own it, but I am a credulous and timid as any
old woman.  Now do not laugh at me too much.  Do you believe in
dreams?"

"Monsieur," said the cure, smiling, "you should never ask a coward
whether he is afraid, you only risk his telling a lie.  He will say
'No,' but he means 'Yes.'"

"And are you a coward, my father?"

"A little.  I don't precisely believe all the nursery, tales, or in
the favourable or unfavourable meaning of some object seen during our
sleep, but--"

A sound of steps interrupted them, a servant entered, announcing
Monsieur Derues.

On hearing the name, Monsieur de Lamotte felt troubled in spite of
himself, but, overcoming the impression, he rose to meet the visitor.

"You had better stay," he said to the cure, who was also rising to
take leave.  "Stay; we have probably nothing to say which cannot be
said before you."

Derues entered the room, and, after the usual compliments, sat down
by the fire, opposite Monsieur de Lamotte.


"You did not expect me," he said, "and I ought to apologise for
surprising you thus."

Give me some news of my wife," asked Monsieur de Lamotte anxiously.

"She has never been better.  Your son is also to perfect health."

"But why are you alone?  Why does not Marie accompany you?  It is ten
weeks since she went to Paris."

"She has not yet quite finished the business with which you entrusted
her.  Perhaps I am partly the cause of this long absence, but one
cannot transact business as quickly as one would wish.  But, you have
no doubt heard from her, that all is finished, or nearly so, between
us.  We have drawn up a second private contract, which annuls the
former agreement, and I have paid over a sum of one hundred thousand
livres."

"I do not comprehend," said Monsieur de Lamotte.  "What can induce my
wife not to inform me of this?"

"You did not know?"

"I know nothing.  I was wondering just now with Monsieur le cure why
I did not hear from her."

"Madame de Lamotte was going to write to you, and I do not know what
can have hindered her."

"When did you leave her?"

"Several days ago.  I have not been at Paris; I am returning from
Chartres.  I believed you were informed of everything."

Monsieur de Lamotte remained silent for some moments.  Then, fixing
his eyes upon Derues' immovable countenance, he said, with some
emotion--

"You are a husband and father, sir; in the name of this double and
sacred affection which is, not unknown to you, do not hide anything
from me: I fear some misfortune has happened to my wife which you are
concealing."

Derues' physiognomy expressed nothing but a perfectly natural
astonishment.

"What can have suggested such ideas to you; dear sir?"  In saying
this he glanced at the cure; wishing to ascertain if this distrust
was Monsieur de Lamotte's own idea, or had been suggested to him.
The movement was so rapid that neither of the others observed it.
Like all knaves, obliged by their actions to be continually on the
watch, Derues possessed to a remarkable extent the art of seeing all
round him without appearing to observe anything in particular.  He
decided that as yet he had only to combat a suspicion unfounded on
proof, and he waited till he should be attacked more seriously.

"I do not know," he said, "what may have happened during my absence;
pray explain yourself, for you are making me share your disquietude."

"Yes, I am exceedingly anxious; I entreat you, tell me the whole
truth.  Explain this silence, and this absence prolonged beyond all
expectation.  You finished your business with Madame de Lamotte
several days ago: once again, why did she not write?  There is no
letter, either from her or my son!  To-morrow I shall send someone to
Paris."

"Good heavens!" answered Derues, "is there nothing but an accident
which could cause this delay?  .  .  .  Well, then," he continued,
with the embarrassed look of a man compelled to betray a confidence,-
-"well, then, I see that in order to reassure you, I shall have to
give up a secret entrusted to me."

He then told Monsieur de Lamotte that his wife was no longer at
Paris, but at Versailles, where she was endeavouring to obtain an
important and lucrative appointment, and that, if she had left him in
ignorance of her efforts in this direction; it was only to give him
an agreeable surprise.  He added that she had removed her son from
the school, and hoped to place him either in the riding school or
amongst the royal pages.  To prove his words, he opened his
paper-case, and produced the letter written by Edouard in answer to
the one quoted above.

All this was related so simply, and with such an appearance of good
faith, that the cure was quite convinced.  And to Monsieur de Lamotte
the plans attributed to his wife were not entirely improbably.
Derues had learnt indirectly that such a career for Edouard had been
actually under consideration.  However, though Monsieur de Lamotte's
entire ignorance prevented him from making any serious objection, his
fears were not entirely at rest, but for the present he appeared
satisfied with the explanation.

The cure resumed the conversation.  "What you tell us ought to drive
away gloomy ideas.  Just now, when you were announced, Monsieur de
Lamotte was confiding his troubles to me.  I was as concerned as he
was, and I could say nothing to help him; never did visitor arrive
more apropos.  Well, my friend, what now remains of your vain
terrors?  What was it you were saying just as Monsieur Derues
arrived?  .  .  .  Ah! we were discussing dreams, you asked if I
believed in them."

Monsieur, de Lamotte, who had sunk back in his easy-chair and seemed
lost in his reflections, started on hearing these words.  He raised
his head and looked again at Derues.  But the latter had had time to
note the impression produced by the cure's remark, and this renewed
examination did not disturb him.

"Yes," said Monsieur de Lamotte, "I had asked that question."

"And I was going to answer that there are certain secret warnings
which can be received by the soul long before they are intelligible
to the bodily senses-revelations not understood at first, but which
later connect themselves with realities of which they are in some way
the precursors.  Do you agree with me, Monsieur Derues?"

"I have no opinion on such a subject, and must leave the discussion
to more learned people than myself.  I do not know whether such
apparitions really mean anything or not, and I have not sought to
fathom these mysteries, thinking them outside the realm of human
intelligence."

"Nevertheless," said the cure, "we are obliged to recognise their
existence."

"Yes, but without either understanding or explaining them, like many
other eternal truths.  I follow the rule given in the Imitation o f
Jesus Christ: 'Beware, my son, of considering too curiously the
things beyond thine intelligence.'"

"And I also submit, and avoid too curious consideration.  But has not
the soul knowledge of many wondrous things which we can yet neither
see nor touch?  I repeat, there are things which cannot be denied."

Derues listened attentively, continually on his guard; and afraid, he
knew not why, of becoming entangled in this conversation, as in a
trap.  He carefully watched Monsieur de Lamotte, whose eyes never
left him.  The cure resumed--

"Here is an instance which I was bound to accept, seeing it happened
to myself.  I was then twenty, and my mother lived in the
neighbourhood of Tours, whilst I was at the seminary of Montpellier.
After several years of separation, I had obtained permission to go
and see her.  I wrote, telling her of this good news, and I received
her answer--full of joy and tenderness.  My brother and sister were
to be informed, it was to be a family meeting, a real festivity; and
I started with a light and joyous heart.  My impatience was so great,
that, having stopped for supper at a village inn some ten leagues
from Tours, I would not wait till the next morning for the coach
which went that way, but continued the journey on foot and walked all
night.  It was a long and difficult road, but happiness redoubled my
strength.  About an hour after sunrise I saw distinctly the smoke and
the village roofs, and I hurried on to surprise my family a little
sooner.  I never felt more active, more light-hearted and gay;
everything seemed to smile before and around me.  Turning a corner of
the hedge, I met a peasant whom I recognised.  All at once it seemed
as if a veil spread over my sight, all my hopes and joy suddenly
vanished, a funereal idea took possession of me, and I said, taking
the hand of the man, who had not yet spoken--

"'My mother is dead, I am convinced my mother is dead!'

"He hung down his head and answered--

"'She is to be buried this morning!'

"Now whence came this revelation?  I had seen no one, spoken to no
one; a moment before I had no idea of it!"

Derues made a gesture of surprise.  Monsieur de Lamotte put his hand
to his eyes, and said to the cure--

"Your presentiments were true; mine, happily, are unfounded.  But
listen, and tell me if in the state of anxiety which oppressed me I
had not good reason for alarm and for fearing some fatal misfortune."

His eyes again sought Derues.  "Towards the middle of last night I at
length fell asleep, but, interrupted every moment, this sleep was
more a fatigue than a rest; I seemed to hear confused noises all
round me.  I saw brilliant lights which dazzled me, and then sank
back into silence and darkness.  Sometimes I heard someone weeping
near my bed; again plaintive voices called to me out of the darkness.
I stretched out my arms, but nothing met them, I fought with
phantoms; at length a cold hand grasped mine and led me rapidly
forward.  Under a dark and damp vault a woman lay on the ground,
bleeding, inanimate--it was my wife!  At the same moment, a groan
made me look round, and I beheld a man striking my son with a dagger.
I cried out and awoke, bathed in cold perspiration, panting under
this terrible vision.  I was obliged to get up, walk about, and speak
aloud, in order to convince myself it was only a dream.  I tried to
go to sleep again, but the same visions still pursued me.  I saw
always the same man armed with two daggers streaming with blood; I
heard always the cries of his two victims.  When day came, I felt
utterly broken, worn-out; and this morning, you, my father, could see
by my despondency what an impression this awful night had made upon
me."

During this recital Derues' calmness never gave way for a single
moment, and the most skilful physiognomist could only have discovered
an expression of incredulous curiosity on his countenance.

"Monsieur le cure's story," said he, "impressed me much; yours only
brings back my uncertainty.  It is less possible than ever to deliver
any opinion on this serious question of dreams, since the second
instance contradicts the first."

"It is true," answered the cure, "no possible conclusion can be drawn
from two facts which contradict each other, and the best thing we can
do is to choose a less dismal subject of conversation."

"Monsieur Derues;" asked Monsieur de Lamatte, "if you are not too
tired with your journey, shall we go and look at the last
improvements I have made?  It is now your affair to decide upon them,
since I shall shortly be only your guest here."

"Just as I have been yours for long enough, and I trust you will
often give me the opportunity of exercising hospitality in my turn.
But you are ill, the day is cold and damp; if you do not care to go
out, do not let me disturb you.  Had you not better stay by the fire
with Monsieur le cure?  For me, Heaven be thanked!  I require no
assistance.  I will look round the park, and come back presently to
tell you what I think.  Besides, we shall have plenty of time to talk
about it.  With your permission, I should like to stay two or three
days."

"I shall be pleased if you will do so."

Derues went out, sufficiently uneasy in his mind, both on account of
his reception of Monsieur de Lamotte's fears and of the manner in
which the latter had watched him during the conversation.  He walked
quickly up and down the park--

"I have been foolish, perhaps; I have lost twelve or fifteen days,
and delayed stupidly from fear of not foreseeing everything.  But
then, how was I to imagine that this simple, easily deceived man
would all at once become suspicious?  What a strange dream!  If I had
not been on my guard, I might have been disconcerted.  Come, come, I
must try to disperse these ideas and give him something else to think
about."

He stopped, and after a few minutes consideration turned back towards
the house.

As soon as he had left the room, Monsieur de Lamotte had bent over
towards the cure, and had said--

"He did not show any emotion, did--he?"

"None whatever."

"He did not start when I spoke of the man armed with those two
daggers?"

"No.  But put aside these ideas; you must see they are mistaken."

"I did not tell everything, my father: this murderer whom I saw in my
dream--was Derues himself!  I know as well as you that it must be a
delusion, I saw as well as you did that he remained quite calm, but,
in spite of myself, this terrible dream haunts me .  .  .  .There, do
not listen to me, do not let me talk about it; it only makes me blush
for myself."

Whilst Derues remained at Buisson-Souef, Monsieur de Lamotte received
several letters from his wife, some from Paris, some from Versailles.
She remarked that her son and herself were perfectly well....  The
writing was so well imitated that no one could doubt their
genuineness.  However, Monsieur de Lamotte's suspicions continually
increased and he ended by making the cure share his fears.  He also
refused to go with Derues to Paris, in spite of the latter's
entreaties.  Derues, alarmed at the coldness shown him, left
Buisson-Souef, saying that he intended to take possession about the
middle of spring.

Monsieur de Lamotte was, in spite of himself, still detained by
ill-health.  But a new and inexplicable circumstance made him resolve
to go to Paris and endeavour to clear up the mystery which appeared
to surround his wife and son.  He received an unsigned letter in
unknown handwriting, and in which Madame de Lamotte's reputation was
attacked with a kind of would-be reticence, which hinted that she was
an unfaithful wife and that in this lay the cause of her long
absence.  Her husband did not believe this anonymous denunciation,
but the fate of the two beings dearest to him seemed shrouded in so
much obscurity that he could delay no longer, and started for Paris.

His resolution not to accompany Derues had saved his life.  The
latter could not carry out his culminating crime at Buisson-Souef; it
was only in Paris that his victims would disappear without his being
called to account.  Obliged to leave hold of his prey, he endeavoured
to bewilder him in a labyrinth where all trace of truth might be
lost.  Already, as he had arranged beforehand, he had called calumny
to his help, and prepared the audacious lie which was to vindicate
himself should an accusation fall upon his head.  He had hoped that
Monsieur de Lamotte would fall defenceless into his hands; but now a
careful examination of his position, showing the impossibility of
avoiding an explanation had become inevitable, made him change all
his plans, and compelled him to devise an infernal plot, so skilfully
laid that it bid fair to defeat all human sagacity.

Monsieur de Lamotte arrived in Paris early in March.  Chance decided
that he should lodge in the rue de la Mortellerie, in a house not far
from the one where his wife's body lay buried.  He went to see
Derues, hoping to surprise him, and determined to make him speak, but
found he was not at home.  Madame Derues, whether acting with the
discretion of an accomplice or really ignorant of her husband's
proceedings, could not say where he was likely to be found.  She said
that he told her nothing about his actions, and that Monsieur de
Lamotte must have observed during their stay at Buisson (which was
true) that she never questioned him, but obeyed his wishes in
everything; and that he had now gone away without saying where he was
going.  She acknowledged that Madame de Lamotte had lodged with them
for six weeks, and that she knew that lady had been at Versailles,
but since then she had heard nothing.  All Monsieur de Lamotte's
questions, his entreaties, prayers, or threats, obtained no other
answer.  He went to the lawyer in the rue de Paon, to the
schoolmaster, and found the same uncertainty, the same ignorance.
His wife and his son had gone to Versailles, there the clue ended
which ought to guide his investigations.  He went to this town; no
one could give him any information, the very name of Lamotte was
unknown.  He returned to Paris, questioned and examined the people of
the quarter, the proprietor of the Hotel de France, where his wife
had stayed on her former visit; at length, wearied with useless
efforts, he implored help from justice.  Then his complaints ceased;
he was advised to maintain a prudent silence, and to await Derues'
return.

The latter thoroughly understood that, having failed to dissipate
Monsieur de Lamotte's fears, there was no longer an instant to lose,
and that the pretended private contract of February 12th would not of
itself prove the existence of Madame de Lamotte.  This is how he
employed the time spent by the unhappy husband in fruitless
investigation.

On March 12th, a woman, her face hidden in the hood of her cloak, or
"Therese," as it was then called, appeared in the office of Maitre
N-----, a notary at Lyons.  She gave her name as Marie Francoise
Perffier, wife of Monsieur Saint-Faust de Lamotte, but separated, as
to goods and estate, from him.  She caused a deed to be drawn up,
authorising her husband to receive the arrears of thirty thousand
livres remaining from the price of the estate of Buisson-Souef,
situated near Villeneuve-le-Roi-lez-Sens.  The deed was drawn up and
signed by Madame de Lamotte, by the notary, and one of his
colleagues.

This woman was Derues.  If we remember that he only arrived at
Buisson February 28th, and remained there for some days, it becomes
difficult to understand how at that period so long a journey as that
from Paris to Lyons could have been accomplished with such rapidity.
Fear must have given him wings.  We will now explain what use he
intended to make of it, and what fable, a masterpiece of cunning and
of lies, he had invented.

On his arrival in Paris he found a summons to appear before the
magistrate of police.  He expected this, and appeared quite tranquil,
ready to answer any questions.  Monsieur de Lamotte was present.  It
was a formal examination, and the magistrate first asked why he had
left Paris.

"Monsieur," replied Derues, "I have nothing to hide, and none of my
actions need fear the daylight, but before replying, I should like to
understand my position.  As a domiciled citizen I have a right to
require this.  Will you kindly inform me why I have been summoned to
appear before you, whether on account of anything personal to myself,
or simply to give information as to something which may be within my
knowledge?"

"You are acquainted with this gentleman, and cannot therefore be
ignorant of the cause of the present inquiry."

"I am, nevertheless, quite in ignorance of it."

"Be good enough to answer my question.  Why did you leave Paris?  And
where have you been?"

"I was absent for business reasons."

"What business?"

"I shall say no more."

"Take care! you have incurred serious suspicions, and silence will
not tend to clear you."

Derues hung down his head with an air of resignation; and Monsieur de
Lamotte, seeing in this attitude a silent confession of crime,
exclaimed, "Wretched man! what have you done with my wife and my
son?"

"Your son!--" said Derues slowly and with peculiar emphasis.  He
again cast down his eyes.

The magistrate conducting the inquiry was struck by the expression of
Derues' countenance and by this half answer, which appeared to hide a
mystery and to aim at diverting attention by offering a bait to
curiosity.  He might have stopped Derues at the moment when he sought
to plunge into a tortuous argument, and compelled him to answer with
the same clearness and decision which distinguished Monsieur de
Lamotte's question; but he reflected that the latter's inquiries,
unforeseen, hasty, and passionate, were perhaps more likely to
disconcert a prepared defence than cooler and more skilful tactics.
He therefore changed his plans, contenting "himself for the moment
with the part of an observer only, and watching a duel between two
fairly matched antagonists.

"I require: you to tell me what has become of them," repeated
Monsieur de Lamotte.  "I have been to Versailles, you assured me they
were there."

"And I told you the truth, monsieur."

"No one has seen them, no one knows them; every trace is lost.  Your
Honour, this man must be compelled to answer, he must say what has
become of my wife and son!"

"I excuse your anxiety, I understand your trouble, but why appeal to
me?  Why am I supposed to know what may have happened to them?"

"Because I confided them to your care."

"As a friend, yes, I agree.  Yes, it is quite true that last December
I received a letter from you informing me of the impending arrival of
your wife and son.  I received them in my own house, and showed them
the same hospitality which I had received from you.  I saw them both,
your son often, your wife every day, until the day she left me to go
to Versailles.  Yes, I also took Edouard to his mother, who was
negotiating an appointment for him.  I have already told you all
this, and I repeat it because it is the truth.  You believed me then:
why do you not believe me now?  Why has what I say become strange and
incredible?  If your wife and your son have disappeared, am I
responsible?  Did you transmit your authority to me?  And now, in
what manner are you thus calling me to account?  Is it to the friend
who might have pitied, who might have aided your search, that you
thus address yourself?  Have you come to confide in me, to ask for
advice, for consolation?  No, you accuse me; very well! then I refuse
to speak, because, having no proofs, you yet accuse an honest man;
because your fears, whether real or imaginary, do not excuse you for
casting, I know not what odious suspicions, on a blameless
reputation, because I have the right to be offended.  Monsieur" he
continued, turning to the magistrate, "I believe you will appreciate
my moderation, and will allow me to retire.  If charges are brought
against me, I am quite ready to meet them, and to show what they are
really worth.  I shall remain in Paris, I have now no business which
requires my presence elsewhere."

He emphasised these last words, evidently intending to draw attention
to them.  It did not escape the magistrate, who inquired--

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing beyond my words, your Honour, Have I your permission to
retire?"

"No, remain; you are pretending not to understand."

"I do not understand these insinuations so covertly made."

Monsieur de Lamotte rose, exclaiming--

"Insinuations!  What more can I say to compel you to answer?  My wife
and son have disappeared.  It is untrue that, as you pretend, they
have been at Versailles.  You deceived me at Buisson-Souef, just as
you are deceiving me now, as you are endeavouring to deceive justice
by inventing fresh lies.  Where are they?  What has become of them?
I am tormented by all the fears possible to a husband and father; I
imagine all the most terrible misfortunes, and I accuse you to your
face of having caused their death!  Is this sufficient, or do you
still accuse me of covert insinuations?"

Derues turned to the magistrate.  "Is this charge enough to place me
in the position of a criminal if I do not give a satisfactory
explanation?"

"Certainly; you should have thought of that sooner."

"Then," he continued, addressing Monsieur de Lamotte, "I understand
you persist in this odious accusation?"

"I certainly persist in it."

"You have forgotten our friendship, broken all bonds between us: I am
in your eyes only a miserable assassin?  You consider my silence as
guilty, you will ruin me if I do not speak?"

"It is true."

" There is still time for reflection; consider what you are doing; I
will forget your insults and your anger.  Your trouble is great
enough without my reproaches being added to it.  But you desire that
I should speak, you desire it absolutely?"

"I do desire it."

"Very well, then; it shall be as you wish."

Derues surveyed Monsieur de Lamotte with a look which seemed to say,
"I pity you." He then added, with a sigh--

"I am now ready to answer.  Your Honour, will you have the kindness
to resume my examination?"

Derues had succeeded in taking up an advantageous position.  If he
had begun narrating the extraordinary romance he had invented, the
least penetrating eye must have perceived its improbability, and one
would have felt it required some support at every turn.  But since he
had resisted being forced to tell it, and apparently only ceded to
Monsieur de Lamotte's violent persistency, the situation was changed;
and this refusal to speak, coming from a man who thereby compromised
his personal safety, took the semblance of generosity, and was likely
to arouse the magistrate's curiosity and prepare his mind for unusual
and mysterious revelations.  This was exactly what Derues wanted, and
he awaited the interrogation with calm and tranquillity.

"Why did you leave Paris?" the magistrate demanded a second time.

"I have already had the honour to inform you that important business
necessitated my absence."

"But you refused to explain the nature of this business.  Do you
still persist in this refusal?"

"For the moment, yes.  I will explain it later."

"Where have you been?  Whence do you return?"

"I have been to Lyons, and have returned thence."

"What took you there?

"I will tell you later."

"In the month of December last, Madame de Lamotte and her son came to
Paris?

"That is so."

"They both lodged in your house?"

"I have no reason to deny it."

"But neither she herself, nor Monsieur de Lamotte, had at first
intended that she should accept a lodging in the house which you
occupied."

"That is quite true.  We had important accounts to settle, and Madame
de Lamotte told me afterwards that she feared some dispute on the
question of money might arise between us--at least, that is the
reason she gave me.  She was mistaken, as the event proved, since I
always intended to pay, and I have paid.  But she may have had
another reason which she preferred not to give."

"It was the distrust of this man which she felt," exclaimed Monsieur
de Lamotte.  Derues answered only with a melancholy smile.

"Silence, monsieur," said the magistrate, "silence; do not
interrupt."  Then addressing Derues--

"Another motive?  What motive do you suppose?"

"Possibly she preferred to be more free, and able to receive any
visitor she wished."

"What do you mean?"

"It is only supposition on my part, I do not insist upon it."

"But the supposition appears to contain a hint injurious to Madame de
Lamotte's reputation?"

"No, oh no!" replied Derues, after a moment's silence.

This sort of insinuation appeared strange to the magistrate, who
resolved to try and force Derues to abandon these treacherous
reticences behind which he sheltered himself.  Again recommending
silence to Monsieur de Lamotte, he continued to question Derues, not
perceiving that he was only following the lead skilfully given by the
latter, who drew him gradually on by withdrawing himself, and that
all the time thus gained was an advantage to the accused.

"Well," said the magistrate, "whatever Madame de Lamotte's motives
may have been, it ended in her coming to stay with you.  How did you
persuade her to take this step?"

"My wife accompanied her first to the Hotel de France, and then to
other hotels.  I said no more than might be deemed allowable in a
friend; I could not presume to persuade her against her will.  When I
returned home, I was surprised to find her there with her son.  She
could not find a disengaged room in any of the hotels she tried, and
she then accepted my offer."

"What date was this?"

"Monday, the 16th of last December."

"And when did she leave your house?"

"On the 1st of February."

"The porter cannot remember having seen her go out on that day."

"That is possible.  Madame de Lamotte went and came as her affairs
required.  She was known, and no more attention would be paid to her
than to any other inmate."

"The porter also says that for several days before this date she was
ill, and obliged to keep her room?"

"Yes, it was a slight indisposition, which had no results, so slight
that it seemed unnecessary to call in a doctor.  Madame de Lamotte
appeared preoccupied and anxious.  I think her mental attitude
influenced her health."

"Did you escort her to Versailles?"

"No; I went there to see her later."

"What proof can you give of her having actually stayed there?"

"None whatever, unless it be a letter which I received from her."

"You told Monsieur de, Lamotte that she was exerting herself to
procure her son's admission either as a king's page or into the
riding school.  Now, no one at Versailles has seen this lady, or even
heard of her."

"I only repeated what she told me."

"Where was she staying?"

"I do not know."

"What!  she wrote to you, you went to see her, and yet you do not
know where she was lodging?"

"That is so."

"But it is impossible."

"There are many things which would appear impossible if I were to
relate them, but which are true, nevertheless."

"Explain yourself."

"I only received one letter from Madame de Lamotte, in which she
spoke of her plans for Edouard, requesting me to send her her son on
a day she fixed, and I told Edouard of her projects.  Not being able
to go to the school to see him, I wrote, asking if he would like to
give up his studies and become a royal page.  When I was last at
Buisson-Souef, I showed his answer to Monsieur de Lamotte; it is
here."

And he handed over a letter to the magistrate, who read it, and
passing it on to Monsieur de Lamotte, inquired--

"Did you then, and do you now, recognise your son's handwriting?"

"Perfectly, monsieur."

"You took Edouard to Versailles?"

"I did."

"On what day?"

"February 11th, Shrove Tuesday.  It is the only time I have been to
Versailles.  The contrary might be supposed; for I have allowed it to
be understood that I have often seen Madame de Lamotte since she left
my house, and was acquainted with all her actions, and that the
former confidence and friendship still existed between us.  In
allowing this, I have acted a lie, and transgressed the habitual
sincerity of my whole life."

This assertion produced a bad impression on the magistrate.  Derues
perceived it, and to avert evil consequences, hastened to add--

"My conduct can only be appreciated when it is known in entirety.  I
misunderstood the meaning of Madame de Lamotte's letter.  She asked
me to send her her son, I thought to oblige her by accompanying him,
and not leaving him to go alone.  So we travelled together, and
arrived at Versailles about midday.  As I got down from the coach I
saw Madame de Lamotte at the palace gate, and observed, to my
astonishment, that my presence displeased her.  She was not alone."

He stopped, although he had evidently reached the most interesting
point of his story.

"Go on," said the magistrate; "why do you stop now?"

"Because what I have to say is so painful--not to me, who have to
justify myself, but for others, that I hesitate."

"Go on."

"Will you then interrogate me, please?"

"Well, what happened in this interview?"

Derues appeared to collect himself for a moment, and then said with
the air of a man who has decide on speaking out at last--

"Madame de Lamotte was not alone; she was attended by a gentleman
whom I did not know, whom I never saw either at Buisson-Souef or in
Paris, and whom I have never seen again since.  I will ask you to
allow me to recount everything; even to the smallest details.  This
man's face struck me at once, on account of a singular resemblance;
he paid no attention to me at first, and I was able to examine him at
leisure.  His manners were those of a man belonging to the highest
classes of society, and his dress indicated wealth.  On seeing
Edouard, he said to Madame de Lamotte--

"'So this is he?' and he then kissed him tenderly.  This and the
marks of undisguised pleasure which he evinced surprised me, and I
looked at Madame de Lamotte, who then remarked with some asperity--

"'I did not expect to see you, Monsieur Derues.  I had not asked you
to accompany my son.'

"Edouard seemed quite as much surprised as I was.  The stranger gave
me a look of haughty annoyance, but seeing I did not avoid his glance
his countenance assumed a more gentle expression, and Madame de
Lamotte introduced him as a person who took great interest in
Edouard."

"It is a whole tissue of imposture!" exclaimed Monsieur de Lamotte.

"Allow me to finish," answered Derues.  "I understand your doubts,
and that you are not anxious to believe what I say, but I have been
brought here by legal summons to tell the truth, and I am going to
tell it.  You can then weigh the two accusations in the balance, and
choose between them.  The reputation of an honourable man is as
sacred, as important, as worthy of credit as the reputation of a
woman, and I never heard that the virtue of the one was more fragile
than that of the other."

Monsieur de Lamotte, thunderstruck by such a revelation, could not
contain his impatience and indignation.

"This, then," he said, "is the explanation of an anonymous letter
which I received, and of the injurious suggestions' concerning my
wife's honour which it contained; it was written to give an
appearance of probability to this infamous legend.  The whole thing
is a disgraceful plot, and no doubt Monsieur Derues wrote the letter
himself."

"I know nothing about it," said Derues unconcernedly, "and the
explanation which you profess to find in it I should rather refer to
something else I am going to mention.  I did not know a secret
warning had been sent to you: I now learn it from you, and I
understand perfectly that such a letter, may have been written.  But
that you have received such a warning ought surely to be a reason for
listening patiently and not denouncing all I say as imposture."

While saying this Derues mentally constructed the fresh falsehood
necessitated by the interruption, but no variation of countenance
betrayed his thought.  He had an air of dignity natural to his
position.  He saw that, in spite of clear-headedness and long
practice in studying the most deceptive countenances, the magistrate
so far had not scented any of his falsehoods, and was getting
bewildered in the windings of this long narrative, through which
Derues led him as he chose; and he resumed with confidence--

"You know that I made Monsieur de Lamotte's acquaintance more than a
year ago, and I had reason to believe his friendship as sincere as my
own.  As a friend, I could not calmly accept the suspicion which then
entered my mind, nor could I conceal my surprise.  Madame de Lamotte
saw this, and understood from my looks that I was not satisfied with
the explanation she wished me to accept.  A glance of intelligence
passed between her and her friend, who was still holding Edouard's
hand.  The day, though cold, was fine, and she proposed a walk in the
park.  I offered her my arm, and the stranger walked in front with
Edouard.  We had a short conversation, which has remained indelibly
fixed in my memory.

"'Why did you come?' she inquired.

"I did not answer, but looked sternly at her, in order to discompose
her.  At length I said--

"'You should have written, madame, and warned me that my coming would
be indiscreet.'

"She seemed much disconcerted, and exclaimed--

"'I am lost!  I see you guess everything, and will tell my husband.
I am an unhappy woman, and a sin once committed can never be erased
from the pages of a woman's life!  Listen, Monsieur Derues, listen, I
implore you!  You see this man, I shall not tell you who he is, I
shall not give his name .  .  .  but I loved him long ago; I should
have been his wife, and had he not been compelled to leave France, I
should have married no one else.'"

Monsieur de Lamotte started, and grew pale.

"What is the matter?" the magistrate inquired.

"Oh! this dastardly wretch is profiting by his knowledge of secrets
which a long intimacy has enabled him to discover.  Do not believe
him, I entreat you, do not believe him!"

Derues resumed.  "Madame de Lamotte continued: 'I saw him again
sixteen years ago, always in hiding, always proscribed.  To-day he
reappears under a name which is not his own: he wishes to link my
fate with his; he has insisted on seeing Edouard.  But I shall escape
him.  I have invented this fiction of placing my son among the, royal
pages to account for my stay here.  Do not contradict me, but help
me; for a little time ago I met one of Monsieur de Lamotte's friends,
I am afraid he suspected something.  Say you have seen me several
times; as you have come, let it be known that you brought Edouard
here.  I shall return to Buisson as soon as possible, but will you go
first, see my husband, satisfy him if he is anxious?  I am in your
hands; my honour, my reputation, my very life, are at your mercy; you
can either ruin or help to save me.  I may be guilty, but I am not
corrupt.  I have wept for my sin day after day, and I have already
cruelly expiated it.'"

This execrable calumny was not related without frequent interruptions
on the part of Monsieur de Lamotte.  He was, however, obliged to own
to himself that it was quite true that Marie Perier had really been
promised to a man whom an unlucky affair had driven into exile, and
whom he had supposed to be dead.  This revelation, coming from
Derues, who had the strongest interest in lying, by no means
convinced him of his wife's dishonour, nor destroyed the feelings of
a husband and father; but Derues was not speaking for him lone, and
what appeared incredible to Monsieur de Lamotte might easily seem
less improbable to the colder and less interested judgment of the
magistrate.

"I was wrong," Derues continued, "in allowing myself to be touched by
her tears, wrong in believing in her repentance, more wrong still in
going to Buisson to satisfy her husband.  But I only consented on
conditions: Madame de Lamotte promised me to return shortly to Paris,
vowing that her son should never know the truth, and that the rest of
her life should be devoted to atoning for her sin by a boundless
devotion.  She then begged me to leave her, and told me she would
write to me at Paris to fix the day of her return.  This is what
happened, and this is why I went to Buissan and gave my support to a
lying fiction.  With one word I might have destroyed the happiness of
seventeen years.  I did not wish to do so.  I believed in the
remorse; I believe in it still, in spite of all appearances; I have
refused to speak this very day, and made every effort to prolong an
illusion which I know it will be terrible to lose."

There was a moment of silence.  This fable, so atrociously ingenious,
was simply and impressively narrated, and with an air of candour well
contrived to impose on the magistrate, or, at least, to suggest grave
doubts to his mind.  Derues, with his usual cunning, had conformed
his language to the quality of his listener.  Any tricks, profession
of piety, quotations from sacred books, so largely indulged in when
he wished to bamboozle people of a lower class, would here have told
against him.  He knew when to abstain, and carried the art of
deception far enough to be able to lay aside the appearance of
hypocrisy.  He had described all the circumstances without
affectation, and if this unexpected accusation was wholly unproved,
it yet rested on a possible fact, and did not appear absolutely
incredible.  The magistrate went through it all again, and made him
repeat every detail, without being able to make him contradict
himself or show the smallest embarrassment.  While interrogating
Derues, he kept his eyes fixed upon him; and this double examination
being quite fruitless, only increased his perplexity.  However, he
never relaxed the incredulous severity of his demeanour, nor the
imperative and threatening tone of his voice.

"You acknowledge having been at Lyons?" he asked.

"I have been there."

"At the beginning of this examination you said you would explain the
reason of this journey later."

"I am ready to do so, for the journey is connected with the facts I
have just narrated; it was caused by them."

"Explain it."

"I again ask permission to relate fully.  I did not hear from
Versailles: I began to fear Monsieur de Lamotte's anxiety would bring
him to Paris.  Bound by the promise I had made to his wife to avert
all suspicion and to satisfy any doubts he might conceive, and, must
I add, also remembering that it was important for me to inform him of
our new arrangements, and of this payment of a hundred thousand
livres."

"That payment is assuredly fictitious," interrupted Monsieur de
Lamotte; "we must have some proof of it."

"I will prove it presently," answered Derues.  "So I went to Buisson,
as I have already told you.  On my return I found a letter from
Madame de Lamotte, a letter with a Paris stamp, which had arrived
that morning.  I was surprised that she should write, when actually
in Paris; I opened the letter, and was still more surprised.  I have
not the letter with me, but I recollect the sense of it perfectly, if
not the wording, and I can produce it if necessary.  Madame de
Lamotte was at Lyons with her son and this person whose name I do not
know, and whom I do not care to mention before her husband.  She had
confided this letter to a person who was coming to Paris, and who was
to bring it me; but this individual, whose name was Marquis,
regretted that having to start again immediately, he was obliged to
entrust it to the post.  This is the sense of its contents.  Madame
de Lamotte wrote that she found herself obliged to follow this
nameless person to Lyons; and she begged me to send her news of her
husband and of the state of his affairs, but said not one single word
of any probable return.  I became very uneasy at the news of this
clandestine departure.  I had no security except a private contract
annulling our first agreement on the payment of one hundred thousand
livres, and that this was not a sufficient and regular receipt I
knew, because the lawyer had already refused to surrender Monsieur de
Lamotte's power of attorney.  I thought over all the difficulties
which this flight, which would have to be kept secret, was likely to
produce, and I started for Lyons without writing or giving any notice
of my intention.  I had no information, I did not even know whether
Madame de Lamotte was passing by another name, as at Versailles, but
chance decreed that I met her the very day of my arrival.  She was
alone, and complained bitterly of her fate, saying she had been
compelled to follow this individual to Lyons, but that very soon she
would be free and would return to Paris.  But I was struck by the
uncertainty of her manner, and said I should not leave her without
obtaining a deed in proof of our recent arrangements.  She refused at
first, saying it was unnecessary, as she would so soon return; but I
insisted strongly.  I told her I had already com promised myself by
telling Monsieur de Lamotte that she was at Versailles, endeavouring
to procure an appointment for her son; that since she had been
compelled to come to Lyons, the same person might take her elsewhere,
so that she might disappear any day, might leave France without
leaving any trace, without any written acknowledgment of her own
dishonour; and that when all these falsehoods were discovered, I
should appear in the light of an accomplice.  I said also that, as
she had unfortunately lodged in my house in Paris, and had requested
me to remove her son from his school, explanations would be required
from me, and perhaps I should be accused of this double
disappearance.  Finally, I declared that if she did not give me some
proofs of her existence, willingly or unwillingly, I would go at once
to a magistrate.  My firmness made her reflect.  'My good Monsieur
Derues,' she said, 'I ask your forgiveness for all the trouble I have
caused you.  I will give you this deed to-morrow, to-day it is too
late; but come to this same place to-morrow, and you shall see me
again.'  I hesitated, I confess, to let her go.  'Ah,' she said,
grasping my hands, 'do not suspect me of intending to deceive you!  I
swear that I will meet you here at four o'clock.  It is enough that I
have ruined myself, and perhaps my son, without also entangling you
in my unhappy fate.  Yes, you are right; this deed is important,
necessary for you, and you shall have it.  But do not show yourself
here; if you were seen, I might not be able to do what I ought to do.
To-morrow you shall see me again, I swear it.'  She then left me.
The next day, the 12th, of March, I was exact at the rendezvous, and
Madame de Lamotte arrived a moment later.  She gave me a deed,
authorising her husband to receive the arrears of thirty thousand
livres remaining from the purchase-money of Buisson-Souef.  I
endeavoured again to express my opinion of her conduct; she listened
in silence, as if my words affected her deeply.  We were walking
together, when she told me she had some business in a house we were
passing, and asked me to wait for her.  I waited more than an hour,
and then discovered that this house, like many others in Lyons, had
an exit in another street; and I understood that Madame de Lamotte
had escaped by this passage, and that I might wait in vain.
Concluding that trying to follow her would be useless, and seeing
also that any remonstrance would be made in vain, I returned to
Paris, deciding to say nothing as yet, and to conceal the truth as
long as possible.  I still had hopes, and I did not count on being so
soon called on to defend myself: I thought that when I had to speak,
it would be as a friend, and not as an accused person.  This, sir, is
the explanation of my conduct, and I regret that this justification,
so easy for myself, should be so cruelly painful for another.  You
have seen the efforts which I made to defer it."

Monsieur de Lamotte had heard this second part of Derues' recital
with a more silent indignation, not that he admitted its probability,
but he was confounded by this monstrous imposture, and, as it were,
terror-stricken by such profound hypocrisy.  His mind revolted at the
idea of his wife being accused of adultery; but while he repelled
this charge with decision, he saw the confirmation of his secret
terrors and presentiments, and his heart sank within him at the
prospect of exploring this abyss of iniquity.  He was pale, gasping
for breath, as though he himself had been the criminal, while
scorching tears furrowed his cheeks.  He tried to speak, but his
voice failed; he wanted to fling back at Derues the names of traitor
and assassin, and he was obliged to bear in silence the look of
mingled grief and pity which the latter bestowed upon him.

The magistrate, calmer, and master of his emotions, but tolerably
bewildered in this labyrinth of cleverly connected lies, thought it
desirable to ask some further questions.

"How," said he, "did you obtain this sum of a hundred thousand livres
which you say you paid over to Madame de Lamotte?"

"I have been engaged in business for several years, and have acquired
some fortune."

"Nevertheless, you have postponed the obligation of making this
payment several times, so that Monsieur de Lamotte had begun to feel
uneasiness on the subject.  This was the chief reason of his wife's
coming to Paris."

"One sometimes experiences momentary difficulties, which presently
disappear."

"You say you have a deed given you at Lyons by Madame de Lamotte,
which you were to give to her husband?"

"It is here."

The magistrate examined the deed carefully, and noted the name of the
lawyer in whose office it had been drawn up.

"You may go," he said at last.

"What!" exclaimed Monsieur de Lamotte.

Derues stopped, but the magistrate signed to him to go, intimating,
however, that he was on no account to leave Paris.

"But," said Monsieur de Lamotte, when they were alone, "this man is
indeed guilty.  My wife has not betrayed me!  She!--forget her duties
as a wife! she was virtue incarnate!  Ah! I assure you these terrible
calumnies are invented to conceal double crime!  I throw myself at
your feet,--I implore your justice!"

"Rise, monsieur.  This is only a preliminary examination, and I
confess that, so far, he comes well out of it, for imagination can
hardly understand such a depth of deceit.  I watched him closely the
whole time, and I could discover no sign of alarm, no contradiction,
in either face or language; if guilty, he must be the greatest
hypocrite that ever existed.  But I shall neglect nothing: if a
criminal is allowed to flatter himself with impunity, he frequently
forgets to be prudent, and I have seen many betray themselves when
they thought they had nothing to fear.  Patience, and trust to the
justice of both God and man."

Several days passed, and Derues flattered him self the danger was
over: his every action mean while was most carefully watched, but so
that he remained unaware of the surveillance.  A police officer named
Mutel, distinguished for activity and intelligence beyond his
fellows, was charged with collecting information and following any
trail.  All his bloodhounds were in action, and hunted Paris
thoroughly, but could trace nothing bearing on the fate of Madame de
Lamotte and her son.  Mutel, however, soon discovered that in the rue
Saint Victor, Derues had failed--three successive times, that he had
been pursued by numerous creditors, and been often near imprisonment
for debt, and that in 1771 he had been publicly accused of
incendiarism.  He reported on these various circumstances, and then
went himself to Derues' abode, where he obtained no results.  Madame
Derues declared that she knew nothing whatever, and the police,
having vainly searched the whole house, had to retire.  Derues
himself was absent; when he returned he found another order to appear
before the magistrate.

His first success had encouraged him.  He appeared before the
magistrate accompanied by a lawyer and full of confidence,
complaining loudly that the police, in searching during his absence,
had offended against the rights of a domiciled burgess, and ought to
have awaited his return.  Affecting a just indignation at Monsieur de
Lamotte's conduct towards him, he presented a demand that the latter
should be declared a calumniator, and should pay damages for the
injury caused to his reputation.  But this time his effrontery and
audacity were of little avail, the magistrate easily detected him in
flagrant lies.  He declared at first that he had paid the hundred
thousand livres with his own money but when reminded of his various
bankruptcies, the claims of his creditors, and the judgments obtained
against him as an insolvent debtor, he made a complete volte-face,
and declared he had borrowed the money from an advocate named Duclos,
to whom he had given a bond in presence of a notary.  In spite of all
his protestations, the magistrate committed him to solitary
confinement at Fort l'Eveque.

As yet, nothing was publicly known; but vague reports and gossip,
carried from shop to shop, circulated among the people, and began to
reach the higher classes of society.  The infallible instinct which
is aroused among the masses is truly marvellous; a great crime is
committed, which seems at first likely to defeat justice, and the
public conscience is aroused.  Long before the tortuous folds which
envelop the mystery can be penetrated, while it is still sunk in
profound obscurity, the voice of the nation, like an excited hive,
buzzes around the secret; though the magistrates doubt, the public
curiosity fixes itself, and never leaves go; if the criminal's
hiding-place is changed, it follows the track, points it out,
descries it in the gloom.  This is what happened on the news of
Derues' arrest.  The affair was everywhere discussed, although the
information was incomplete, reports inexact, and no real publicity to
be obtained.  The romance which Derues had invented by way of
defence, and which became known as well as Monsieur de Lamotte's
accusation, obtained no credence whatever; on the contrary, all the
reports to his discredit were eagerly adopted.  As yet, no crime
could be traced, but the public presentiment divined an atrocious
one.  Have we not often seen similar agitations?  The names of
Bastide, of Castaing, of Papavoine, had hardly been pronounced before
they completely absorbed all the public attention, and this had to be
satisfied, light had to be thrown on the darkness: society demanded
vengeance.

Derues felt some alarm in his dungeon, but his presence of mind and
his dissimulation in no wise deserted him, and he swore afresh every
day to the truth of his statements.  But his last false assertion
turned against him: the bond for a hundred thousand livres which he
professed to have given to Duclos was a counterfeit which Duclos had
annulled by a sort of counter declaration made the same day.  Another
circumstance, intended to ensure his safety, only redoubled
suspicion.  On April 8th, notes payable to order to the amount of
seventy-eight thousand livres, were received by Monsieur de Lamotte's
lawyer, as if coming from Madame de Lamotte.  It appeared
extraordinary that these notes, which arrived in an ordinary stamped
envelope, should not be accompanied by any letter of advice, and
suspicion attached to Madame Derues, who hitherto had remained
unnoticed.  An inquiry as to where the packet had been posted soon
revealed the office, distinguished by a letter of the alphabet, and
the postmaster described a servant-maid who had brought the letter
and paid for it.  The description resembled the Derues' servant; and
this girl, much alarmed, acknowledged, after a great deal of
hesitation, that she had posted the letter in obedience to her
mistress's orders.  Whereupon Madame Derues was sent as a prisoner to
Fort l'Eveque, and her husband transferred to the Grand-Chatelet.  On
being interrogated, she at length owned that she had sent these notes
to Monsieur de Lamotte's lawyer, and that her husband had given them
her in an envelope hidden in the soiled linen for which she had
brought him clean in exchange.

All this certainly amounted to serious presumptive evidence of guilt,
and if Derues had shown himself to the multitude, which followed
every phase of the investigation with increasing anxiety, a thousand
arms would have willingly usurped the office of the executioner; but
the distance thence to actual proof of murder was enormous for the
magistracy.  Derues maintained his tranquillity, always asserting
that Madame de Lamotte and her son were alive, and would clear him by
their reappearance.  Neither threats nor stratagems succeeded in
making him contradict himself, and his assurance shook the strongest
conviction.  A new difficulty was added to so much uncertainty.

A messenger had been sent off secretly with all haste to Lyons; his
return was awaited for a test which it was thought would be decisive.

One morning Derues was fetched from his prison and taken to a lower
hall of the Conciergerie.  He received no answers to the questions
addressed to his escort, and this silence showed him the necessity of
being on his guard and preserving his imperturbable demeanour
whatever might happen.  On arriving, he found the commissioner of
police, Mutel, and some other persons.  The hall being very dark, had
been illuminated with several torches, and Derues was so placed that
the light fell strongly on his face, and was then ordered to look
towards a particular part of the hall.  As he did so, a door opened,
and a man entered.  Derues beheld him with indifference, and seeing
that the stranger was observing him attentively, he bowed to him as
one might bow to an unknown person whose curiosity seems rather
unusual.

It was impossible to detect the slightest trace of emotion, a hand
placed on his heart would not have felt an increased pulsation, yet
this stranger's recognition would be fatal!

Mutel approached the new-comer and whispered--

"Do you recognise him?"

"No, I do not."

"Have the kindness to leave the room for a moment; we will ask you to
return immediately."

This individual was the lawyer in whose office at Lyons the deed had
been drawn up which Derues had signed, disguised as a woman, and
under the name of Marie-Francoise Perier, wife of the Sieur de
Lamotte.

A woman's garments were brought in, and Derues was ordered to put
them on, which he did readily, affecting much amusement.  As he was
assisted to disguise himself, he laughed, stroked his chin and
assumed mincing airs, carrying effrontery so far as to ask for a
mirror.

"I should like to see if it is becoming," he said; "perhaps I might
make some conquests."

The lawyer returned: Derues was made to pass before him, to sit at a
table, sign a paper, in fact to repeat everything it was imagined he
might have said or done in the lawyer's office.  This second attempt
at identification succeeded no better than the first.  The lawyer
hesitated; then, understanding all the importance of his deposition,
he refused to swear to anything, and finally declared that this was
not the person who had come to him at Lyons.

"I am sorry, sir," said Derues, as they removed him, "that you should
have been troubled by having to witness this absurd comedy.  Do not
blame me for it; but ask Heaven to enlighten those who do not fear to
accuse me.  As for me, knowing that my innocence will shortly be made
clear, I pardon them henceforth."

Although justice at this period was generally expeditious, and the
lives of accused persons were by no means safe-guarded as they now
are, it was impossible to condemn Derues in the absence of any
positive proofs of guilt.  He knew this, and waited patiently in his
prison for the moment when he should triumph over the capital
accusation which weighed against him.  The storm no longer thundered
over his head, the most terrible trials were passed, the examinations
became less frequent, and there were no more surprises to dread.  The
lamentations of Monsieur de Lamotte went to the hearts of the
magistrates, but his certainty could not establish theirs, and they
pitied, but could not avenge him.  In certain minds a sort of
reaction favourable to the prisoner began to set in.  Among the dupes
of Derues' seeming piety, many who at first held their peace under
these crushing accusations returned to their former opinion.  The
bigots and devotees, all who made a profession of kneeling in the
churches, of publicly crossing themselves and dipping their fingers
in the holy water, and who lived on cant and repetitions of "Amen"
and "Alleluia," talked of persecution, of martyrdom, until Derues
nearly became a saint destined by the Almighty to find canonisation
in a dungeon.  Hence arose quarrels and arguments; and this abortive
trial, this unproved accusation, kept the public imagination in a
constant ferment.

To the greater part of those who talk of the "Supreme Being," and who
expect His intervention in human affairs, "Providence" is only a
word, solemn and sonorous, a sort of theatrical machine which sets
all right in the end, and which they glorify with a few banalities
proceeding from the lips, but not from the heart.  It is true that
this unknown and mysterious Cause which we call "God" or "Chance"
often appears so exceedingly blind and deaf that one may be permitted
to wonder whether certain crimes are really set apart for punishment,
when so many others apparently go scot-free.  How many murders remain
buried in the night of the tomb! how many outrageous and avowed
crimes have slept peacefully in an insolent and audacious prosperity!
We know the names of many criminals, but who can tell the number of
unknown and forgotten victims?  The history of humanity is twofold,
and like that of the invisible world, which contains marvels
unexplored by the science of the visible one, the history recounted
in books is by no means the most curious and strange.  But without
delaying over questions such as these, without protesting here
against sophistries which cloud the conscience and hide the presence
of an avenging Deity, we leave the facts to the general judgment, and
have now to relate the last episode in this long and terrible drama.

Of all the populous quarters of Paris which commented on the "affaire
Derues," none showed more excitement than that of the Greve, and
amongst all the surrounding streets none could boast more numerous
crowds than the rue de la Mortellerie.  Not that a secret instinct
magnetised the crowd in the very place where the proof lay buried,
but that each day its attention was aroused by a painful spectacle.
A pale and grief-stricken man, whose eyes seemed quenched in tears,
passed often down the street, hardly able to drag himself along; it
was Monsieur de Lamotte, who lodged, as we have said, in the rue de
la Mortellerie, and who seemed like a spectre wandering round a tomb.
The crowd made way and uncovered before him, everybody respected such
terrible misfortune, and when he had passed, the groups formed up
again, and continued discussing the mystery until nightfall.

On April 17th, about four in the afternoon, a score of workmen and
gossiping women had collected in front of a shop.  A stout woman,
standing on the lowest step, like an orator in the tribune, held
forth and related for the twentieth time what she knew, or rather,
did not know.  There were listening ears and gaping mouths, even a
slight shudder ran through the group; for the widow Masson,
discovering a gift of eloquence at the age of sixty, contrived to
mingle great warmth and much indignation in her recital.  All at once
silence fell on the crowd, and a passage was made for Monsieur de
Lamotte.  One man ventured to ask--

"Is there anything fresh to-day?"

A sad shake of the head was the only answer, and the unhappy man
continued his way.

"Is that Monsieur de Lamotte?" inquired a particularly dirty woman,
whose cap, stuck on the side of her, head, allowed locks of grey hair
to straggle from under it.  "Ah!  is that Monsieur de Lamotte?"

"Dear me!" said a neighbour, "don't you know him by this time?  He
passes every day."

"Excuse me!  I don't belong to this quarter, and--no offence--but it
is not so beautiful as to bring one out of curiosity!  Nothing
personal--but it is rather dirty."

Madame is probably accustomed to use a carriage."

"That would suit you better than me, my dear, and would save your
having to buy shoes to keep your feet off the ground!"

The crowd seemed inclined to hustle the speaker,--

"Wait a moment!" she continued, "I didn't mean to offend anyone.  I
am a poor woman, but there's no disgrace in that, and I can afford a
glass of liqueur.  Eh, good gossip, you understand, don't you?  A
drop of the best for Mother Maniffret, and if my fine friend there
will drink with me to settle our difference, I will stand her a
glass."

The example set by the old hawker was contagious, and instead of
filling two little glasses only, widow Masson dispensed a bottleful.

"Come, you have done well," cried Mother Maniffret; "my idea has
brought you luck."

"Faith! not before it was wanted, either!"

"What! are you complaining of trade too?"

"Ah! don't mention it; it is miserable!"

"There's no trade at all.  I scream myself hoarse all day, and choke
myself for twopence halfpenny.  I don't know what's to come of it
all.  But you seem to have a nice little custom."

"What's the good of that, with a whole house on one's hands?  It's
just my luck; the old tenants go, and the new ones don't come."

"What's the matter, then?"

"I think the devil's in it.  There was a nice man on the first
floor-gone; a decent family on the third, all right except that the
man beat his wife every night, and made such a row that no one could
sleep--gone also.  I put up notices--no one even looks at them!  A
few months ago--it was the middle of December, the day of the last
execution--"

"The 15th, then," said the hawker.  "I cried it, so I know; it's my
trade, that."

"Very well, then, the 15th," resumed widow Masson.  "On that day,
then, I let the cellar to a man who said he was a wine merchant, and
who paid a term in advance, seeing that I didn't know him, and
wouldn't have lent him a farthing on the strength of his good looks.
He was a little bit of a man, no taller than that,"--contemptuously
holding out her hand,--"and he had two round eyes which I didn't like
at, all.  He certainly paid, he did that, but we are more than half
through the second term and I have no news of my tenant."

"And have you never seen him since?"

"Yes, once--no, twice.  Let's see--three times, I am sure.  He came
with a hand-cart and a commissionaire, and had a big chest taken
downstairs--a case which he said contained wine in bottles....

"No, he came before that, with a workman I think.

"Really, I don't know if it was before or after--doesn't matter.
Anyhow, it was bottled wine.  The third time he brought a mason, and
I am sure they quarreled.  I heard their voices.  He carried off the
key, and I have seen neither him nor his wine again.  I have another
key, and I went down one day; perhaps the rats have drunk the wine
and eaten the chest, for there certainly is nothing there any more
than there is in my hand now.  Nevertheless, I saw what I saw.  A big
chest, very big, quite new, and corded all round with strong rope."

"Now, what day was that?  "asked the hawker.

"What day?  Well, it was--no, I can't remember."

"Nor I either; I am getting stupid.  Let's have another little
glass-shall we? just to clear our memories!"

The expedient was not crowned with success, the memories failed to
recover themselves.  The crowd waited, attentive, as may be supposed.
Suddenly the hawker exclaimed:

"What a fool I am!  I am going to find that, if only I have still got
it."

She felt eagerly in the pocket of her underskirt, and produced
several pieces of dirty, crumpled paper.  As she unfolded one after
another, she asked:

"A big chest, wasn't it?"

"Yes, very big."

"And quite new?"

"Quite new."

"And corded?"

"Yes, I can see it now."

"So can I, good gracious!  It was the day when I sold the history of
Leroi de Valines, the 1st of February."

"Yes, it was a Saturday; the next day was Sunday."

"That's it, that's it!--Saturday, February 1st.  Well, I know that
chest too!  I met your wine merchant on the Place du Louvre, and he
wasn't precisely enjoying himself: one of his creditors wanted to
seize the chest, the wine, the whole kettle of fish!  A little man,
isn't he?--a scarecrow?"

"Just SO."

"And has red hair?"

"That's the man."

"And looks a hypocrite?"

"You've hit it exactly."

"And he is a hypocrite!  enough to make one shudder!  No doubt he
can't pay his rent!  A thief, my dears, a beggarly thief, who set
fire to his own cellar, and who accused me of trying to steal from
him, while it was he who cheated me, the villain, out of a piece of
twenty-four sous.  It's lucky I turned up here!  Well, well, we shall
have some fun!  Here's another little business on your hands, and you
will have to say where that wine has got to, my dear gossip Derues."

"Derues!" cried twenty voices all at once.

"What!  Derues who is in Prison?"

"Why, that's Monsieur de Lamotte's man."

"The man who killed Madame de Lamotte?"

"The man who made away with her son?"

"A scoundrel, my dears, who accused me of stealing, an absolute
monster!"

"It is just a little unfortunate," said widow Masson, "that it isn't
the man.  My tenant calls himself Ducoudray.  There's his name on the
register."

"Confound it, that doesn't look like it at all," said the hawker:
"now that's a bore!  Oh yes, I have a grudge against that thief, who
accused me of stealing.  I told him I should sell his history some
day.  When that happens, I'll treat you all round."

As a foretaste of the fulfilment of this promise, the company
disposed of a second bottle of liqueur, and, becoming excited, they
chattered at random for some time, but at length slowly dispersed,
and the street relapsed into the silence of night.  But, a few hours
later, the inhabitants were surprised to see the two ends occupied by
unknown people, while other sinister-looking persons patrolled it all
night, as if keeping guard.  The next morning a carriage escorted by
police stopped at the widow Masson's door.  An officer of police got
out and entered a neighbouring house, whence he emerged a quarter of
an hour later with Monsieur de Lamotte leaning on his arm.  The
officer demanded the key of the cellar which last December had been
hired from the widow Masson by a person named Ducoudray, and went
down to it with Monsieur de Lamotte and one of his subordinates.

The carriage standing at the door, the presence of the commissioner
Mutel, the chatter of the previous evening, had naturally roused
everybody's imagination.  But this excitement had to be kept for home
use: the whole street was under arrest, and its inhabitants were
forbidden to leave their houses.  The windows, crammed with anxious
faces, questioning each other, in the expectation of something
wonderful, were a curious sight; and the ignorance in which they
remained, these mysterious preparations, these orders silently
executed, doubled the curiosity, and added a sort of terror: no one
could see the persons who had accompanied the police officer; three
men remained in the carriage, one guarded by the two others.  When
the heavy coach turned into the rue de la Mortellerie, this man had
bent towards the closed window and asked--

"Where are we?"

And when they answered him, he said--

"I do not know this street; I was never in it."

After saying this quite quietly, he asked--

"Why am I brought here?"

As no one replied, he resumed his look of indifference, and betrayed
no emotion, neither when the carriage stopped nor when he saw
Monsieur de Lamotte enter the widow Masson's house.

The officer reappeared on the threshold, and ordered Derues to be
brought in.

The previous evening, detectives, mingling with the crowd, had
listened to the hawker's story of having met Derues near the Louvre
escorting a large chest.  The police magistrate was informed in the
course of the evening.  It was an indication, a ray of light, perhaps
the actual truth, detached from obscurity by chance gossip; and
measures were instantly taken to prevent anyone either entering or
leaving the street without being followed and examined.  Mutel
thought he was on the track, but the criminal might have accomplices
also on the watch, who, warned in time, might be able to remove the
proofs of the crime, if any existed.

Derues was placed between two men who each held an arm.  A third went
before, holding a torch. The commissioner, followed by men also
carrying torches, and provided with spades and pickaxes, came behind,
and in this order they descended to the vault.  It was a dismal and
terrifying procession; anyone beholding these dark and sad
countenances, this pale and resigned man, passing thus into these
damp vaults illuminated by the flickering glare of torches, might
well have thought himself the victim of illusion and watching some
gloomy execution in a dream.  But all was real and when light
penetrated this dismal charnel-house it seemed at once to illuminate
its secret depths, so that the light of truth might at length
penetrate these dark shadows, and that the voice of the dead would
speak from the earth and the walls.

"Wretch!" exclaimed Monsieur de Lamotte, when he saw Derues appear,
"is it here that you murdered my wife and my son?"

Derues looked calmly at him, and replied--

"I beg you, sir, not to add insult to the misfortunes you have
already caused.  If you stood in my place and I were in yours, I
should feel some pity and respect for so terrible a position.  What
do you want me? and why am I brought here?"

He did not know the events of last evening, and could only mentally
accuse the mason who had helped to bury the chest.  He felt that he
was lost, but his audacity never forsook him.

"You are here, in the first place, to be confronted with this woman,"
said the officer, causing the widow Masson to stand opposite to him.

"I do not know her."

"But I know you, and know you well.  It was you who hired this cellar
under the name of Ducoudray."

Derues shrugged his shoulders and answered bitterly--

"I can understand a man being condemned to the torture if he is
guilty, but that in order to accomplish one's mission as accuser, and
to discover a criminal, false witnesses who can give no evidence
should be brought a hundred leagues, that the rabble should be roused
up, that divers faces and imaginary names should be bestowed on an
innocent man, in order to turn a movement of surprise or an indignant
gesture to his disadvantage, all this is iniquitous, and goes beyond
the right of judgment bestowed upon men by God.  I do not know this
woman, and no matter what she says or does, I shall say no more."

Neither the skill nor threats of the police officer could shake this
resolution.  It was to no purpose that the widow Masson repeated and
asseverated that she recognised him as her tenant Ducoudray, and that
he had had a large case of wine taken down into the cellar; Derues
folded his arms, and remained as motionless as if he had been blind
and deaf.

The walls were sounded, the stones composing them carefully examined,
the floor pierced in several places, but nothing unusual was
discovered.

Would they have to give it up?  Already the officer was making signs
to this effect, when the man who had remained at first below with
Monsieur de Lamotte, and who, standing in shadow, had carefully
watched Derues when he was brought down, came forward, and pointing
to the recess under the stairs, said--

"Examine this corner.  The prisoner glanced involuntarily in this
direction when he came down; I have watched him, and it is the only
sign he has given.  I was the only person who could see him, and he
did not see me.  He is very clever, but one can't be for ever on
one's guard, and may the devil take me if I haven't scented the
hiding-place."

"Wretch!" said Derues to himself, "then you have had your hand on me
for a whole hour, and amused yourself by prolonging my agony!  Oh! I
ought to have known it; I have found my master.  Never mind, you
shall learn nothing from my face, nor yet from the decaying body you
will find; worms and poison can only have left an unrecognisable
corpse."

An iron rod sunk into the ground, encountered a hard substance some
four feet below.  Two men set to work, and dug with energy.  Every
eye was fixed upon this trench increasing in depth with every
shovelful of earth which the two labourers cast aside.  Monsieur de
Lamotte was nearly fainting, and his emotion impressed everyone
except Derues.  At length the silence was broken by the spades
striking heavily on wood, and the noise made everyone shudder.  The
chest was uncovered and hoisted out of the trench; it was opened, and
the body of a woman was seen, clad only in a chemise, with a red and
white headband, face downwards.  The body was turned over, and
Monsieur de Lamotte recognised his wife, not yet disfigured.

The feeling of horror was so great that no one spoke or uttered a
sound.  Derues, occupied in considering the few chances which
remained to him, had not observed that, by the officer's order, one
of the guards had left the cellar before the men began to dig.
Everybody had drawn back both from the corpse and the murderer, who
alone had not moved, and who was repeating prayers.  The flame of the
torches placed on the ground cast a reddish light on this silent and
terrible scene.

Derues started and turned round on hearing a terrified cry behind
him.  His wife had just been brought to the cellar.  The commissioner
seized her with one hand, and taking a torch in the other, compelled
her to look down on the body.

"It is Madame de Lamotte!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, yes," she answered, overwhelmed with terror,--" yes, I
recognise her!"

Unable to support the sight any longer, she grew pale and fainted
away.  She and her husband were removed separately.  One would have
supposed the discovery was already known outside, for the people
showered curses and cries of "Assassin!" and "Poisoner!" on the
carriage which conveyed Derues.  He remained silent during the drive,
but before re-entering his dungeon, he said--

"I must have been mad when I sought to hide the death and burial of
Madame de Lamotte from public knowledge.  It is the only sin I have
committed, and, innocent of aught else, I resign myself as a
Christian to the judgment of God."

It was the only line of defence which remained open to him, and he
clung to it, with the hope of imposing on the magistrates by
redoubled hypocrisy and pious observances.  But all this laboriously
constructed scaffolding of lies was shaken to its base and fell away
piece by piece.  Every moment brought fresh and overwhelming
revelations.  He professed that Madame de Lamotte had died suddenly
in his house, and that, fearing suspicion, he had buried her
secretly.  But the doctors called on to examine the body declared
that she had been poisoned with corrosive sublimate and opium.  The
pretended payment was clearly an odious imposture, the receipt a
forgery!  Then, like a threatening spectre, arose another question,
to which he found no reply, and his own invention turned against him.

Why, knowing his mother was no more, had he taken young de Lamotte to
Versailles?  What had become of the youth?  What had befallen, him?
Once on the track, the cooper with whom he had lodged on the 12th of
February was soon discovered, and an Act of Parliament ordered the
exhumation of the corpse buried under the name of Beaupre, which the
cooper identified by a shirt which he had given for the burial.
Derues, confounded by the evidence, asserted that the youth died of
indigestion and venereal disease.  But the doctors again declared the
presence of corrosive sublimate and opium.  All this evidence of
guilt he met with assumed resignation, lamenting incessantly for
Edouard, whom he declared he had loved as his own son.  "Alas!" he
said, "I see that poor boy every night!  But it softens my grief to
know that he was not deprived of the last consolations of religion!
God, who sees me, and who knows my innocence, will enlighten the
magistrates, and my honour will be vindicated."

The evidence being complete, Derues was condemned by sentence of the
Chatelet, pronounced April 30th, and confirmed by Parliament, May
5th.  We give the decree as it is found in the archives:

"This Court having considered the trial held before the Provost of
Paris, or his Deputy-Lieutenant at the Chatelet, for the satisfaction
of the aforesaid Deputy at the aforesaid Chatelet, at the request of
the Deputy of the King's Attorney General at the aforesaid Court,
summoner and plaintiff, against Antoine-Francois Derues, and
Marie-Louise Nicolais, his wife, defendants and accused, prisoners in
the prisons of the Conciergerie of the Palace at Paris, who have
appealed from the sentence given at the aforesaid trial, the
thirtieth day of April 1777, by which the aforesaid Antoine-Francois
Derues has been declared duly attainted and convicted of attempting
unlawfully to appropriate without payment, the estate of Buissony
Souef, belonging to the Sieur and Dame de Saint Faust de Lamotte,
from whom he had bought the said estate by private contract on the
twenty-second day of December 1775, and also of having unworthily
abused the hospitality shown by him since the sixteenth day of
December last towards the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, who arrived in
Paris on the aforesaid day in order to conclude with him the bargain
agreed on in December 1775, and who, for this purpose, and at his
request, lodged with her son in the house of the said Derues, who of
premeditated design poisoned the said Dame de Lamotte, whether by a
medicine composed and prepared by him on the thirtieth day of January
last, or by the beverages and drinks administered by him after the
aforesaid medicine (he having taken the precaution to send his
servant into the country for two or three days), and to keep away
strangers from the room where the said Dame de Lamotte was lying),
from the effects of which poison the said Dame de Lamotte died on the
night of the said thirty-first day of January last; also of having
kept her demise secret, and of having himself enclosed in a chest the
body of the said Dame de Lamotte, which he then caused to be secretly
transported to a cellar in the rue de la Mortellerie hired by him for
this purpose, under the assumed name of Ducoudray, wherein he buried
it himself, or caused it to be buried; also of having persuaded the
son of the above Dame de Lamotte (who, with his mother, had lodged in
his house from the time of their arrival in Paris until the fifteenth
day of January, last,--and who had then been placed in a school that
the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte was at Versailles and desired him to
join her there, and, under this pretence, of having conducted the
said younger Sieur de Lamotte, the twelfth day of February (after
having given him some chocolate), to the aforesaid town of
Versailles, to a lodging hired at a cooper's, and of having there
wilfully poisoned him, either in the chocolate taken by the said
younger Sieur de Lamotte before starting, or in beverages and
medicaments which the said Derues himself prepared, mixed, and
administered to the aforesaid Sieur de Lamotte the younger, during
the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth days of February
last, having kept him lying ill in the aforesaid hired room, and
having refused to call in physicians or surgeons, notwithstanding the
progress of the malady, and the representations made to him on the
subject, saying that he himself was a physician and surgeon; from
which poison the said Sieur de Lamotte the younger died on the
fifteenth day of February last, at nine o'clock in the evening, in
the arms of the aforesaid Derues, who, affecting the deepest grief,
and shedding tears, actually exhorted the aforesaid Sieur de Lamotte
to confession, and repeated the prayers for the dying; after which he
himself laid out the body for burial, saying that the deceased had
begged him to do so, and telling the people of the house that he had
died of venereal disease; also of having caused him to be buried the
next day in the churchyard of the parish church of Saint Louis at the
aforesaid Versailles, and of having entered the deceased in the
register of the said parish under a false birthplace, and the false
name of Beaupre, which name the said Derues had himself assumed on
arriving at the said lodging, and had given to the said Sieur de
Lamotte the younger, whom he declared to be his nephew.  Also, to
cover these atrocities, and in order to appropriate to himself the
aforesaid estate of Buisson-Souef, he is convicted of having
calumniated the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, and of having used various
manoeuvres and practised several deceptions, to wit--

"First, in signing, or causing to be signed, the names of the above
Dame de Lamotte to a deed of private contract between the said Derues
and his wife on one side and the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte by right
of a power of attorney given by her husband on the other (the which
deed is dated the twelfth day of February, and was therefore written
after the decease of the said Dame de Lamotte); by which deed the
said Dame de Lamotte appears to change the previous conventions
agreed on in the first deed of the twenty-second of December in the
year 1775, and acknowledges receipt from the said Derues of a sum of
one hundred thousand livres, as being the price of the estate of
Buisson;

"Secondly, in signing before a notary, the ninth day of February
last, a feigned acknowledgment for a third part of a hundred thousand
livres, in order to give credence to the pretended payment made by
him;

"Thirdly, in announcing and publishing, and attesting even by oath at
the time of an examination before the commissioner Mutel, that he had
really paid in cash to the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte the aforesaid
hundred thousand livres, and that she, being provided with this
money, had fled with her son and a certain person unknown;

"Fourthly, in depositing with a notary the deed of private contract
bearing the pretended receipt for the above sum of one hundred
thousand livres, end pursuing at law the execution of this deed and
of his claim to the possession of the said estate;

"Fifthly, in signing or causing to be signed by another person,
before the notaries of the town of Lyons, whither he had gone for
this purpose, a deed dated the twelfth day of March, by which the
supposed Dame de Lamotte appeared to accept the payment of the
hundred thousand livres, and to give authority to the Sieur de
Lamotte, her husband, to receive the arrears of the remainder of the
price of the said estate, the which deed he produced as a proof of
the existence of the said Dame de Lamotte;

"Sixthly, in causing to be sent, by other hands, under the name of
the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, to a lawyer, on the eighth day o f
April 1777 (at a time when he was in prison, and had been compelled
to abandon the fable that he had paid the aforesaid sum of one
hundred thousand livres in hard cash, and had substituted a pretended
payment made in notes), the notes pretended to have been given by him
in payment to the said Dame de Lamotte

"Seventh, and finally, in maintaining constantly, until the discovery
of the body of the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte, that the said Dame was
still alive, and that he had seen her at the town of Lyons, as has
been stated above.

"In atonement has been condemned, etc.  etc.  etc.

"His goods are hereby declared acquired and confiscated to the King,
or to whomsoever His Majesty shall appoint, first deducting the sum
of two hundred livres as fine for the King, in case the confiscation
is not to the sole profit of His Majesty; and also the sum of six
hundred livres for masses to be said for the repose of the souls of
the aforesaid Dame de Lamotte and her son.  And, before being
executed, the said Antoine-Francois Derues shall suffer the question
ordinary and extraordinary, in order that from his mouth may be
learned the truth of these facts, and also the names of his
accomplices.  And the decision of the judges in the proceedings with
regard to the above-mentioned Marie-Louise Nicolais, wife of Derues,
is delayed until after the execution of the above sentence.  It is
also decreed that the mortuary act of the aforesaid de Lamotte the
younger, dated the sixteenth day of February last, in the register of
deaths belonging to the parish church of Saint-Louis at Versailles,
be amended, and his correct names be substituted, in order that the
said Sieur de Lamotte, the father, and other persons interested, may
produce said names before the magistrates if required.  And it is
also decreed that this sentence be printed and published by the
deputy of the Attorney-General at the Chatelet, and affixed to the
walls in the usual places and cross roads of the town, provostship
and viscounty of Paris, and wherever else requisite.

"With regard to the petition of Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de
Lamotte, a Royal Equerry, Sieur de Grange-Flandre, Buisson-Souef,
Valperfond, and other places, widower and inheritor of Marie Francois
Perier, his wife, according to their marriage contract signed before
Baron and partner, notaries at Paris, the fifth day of September
1762, whereby he desires to intervene in the action brought against
Derues and his accomplices, concerning the assassination and
poisoning committed on the persons of the wife and son of the said
Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, on the accusation made by him to the
Deputy Attorney-General of the King at the Chatelet at present
pending in the Court, on the report of the final judgment given in
the said action the 3oth of April last, and which allowed the
intervention; it is decreed that there shall be levied on the goods
left by the condemned, before the rights of the Treasury, and
separate from them, the sum of six thousand livres, or such other sum
as it shall please the Court to award; from which sum the said
Saint-Faust de Lamotte shall consent to deduct the sum of two
thousand seven hundred and forty-eight livres, which he acknowledges
has been sent or remitted to him by the said Derues and his wife at
different times; which first sum of six thousand livres, or such
other, shall be employed by the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte,
who is authorised to found therewith, in the parish church of Saint
Nicholas de Villeneuve-le-Roy, in which parish the estate of
Buisson-Souef is situate, and which is mentioned in the action, an
annual and perpetual service for the repose of the souls of the wife
and son of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, of which an act
shall be inserted in the decree of intervention, and a copy of this
act or decree shall be inscribed upon a stone which shall be set in
the wall of the said church of Saint Nicholas de Villeneuve-le-Roy,
in such place as is expedient.  And the deed of contract for private
sale, made between the late spouse of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust
de Lamotte and the above-named Derues and his wife, is hereby
declared null and void, as having had no value in absence of any
payment or realisation of contract before a notary; and the pretended
agreement of the twelfth day of February last, as also all other
deeds fabricated by the said Derues or others, named in the above
action, as also any which may hereafter be presented, are hereby
declared to be null and void.

"The Court declares the judgment pronounced by the magistrates of the
Chatelet against the above named Derues to be good and right, and his
appeal against the same to be bad and ill-founded.

"It is decreed that the sentence shall lose its full and entire
effect with regard to Marie-Louise Nicolais, who is condemned to the
ordinary fine of twelve livres.  The necessary relief granted on the
petition of Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, the second day
of May this present month, and delay accorded until after the
suspended judgment pronounced with regard to the said Marie-Louise
Nicolais.

                         "(Signed) De Gourgues, President.
                                   "OUTREMONT, Councillor."


Derues' assurance and calmness never deserted him for one moment.
For three-quarters of an hour he harangued the Parliament, and his
defence was remarkable both for its presence of mind and the art with
which he made the most of any circumstances likely to suggest doubts
to the magistrates and soften the severity of the first sentence.
Found guilty on every point, he yet protested that he was innocent of
poisoning.  Remorse, which often merely means fear of punishment, had
no place in his soul, and torture he seemed not to dread.  As strong
in will as he was weak in body, he desired to die like a martyr in
the faith of his religion, which was hypocrisy, and the God whom he
gloried on the scaffold was the god of lies.

On May 6th, at seven in the morning, the sentence of execution was
read to him.  He listened calmly, and when it was finished, remarked:

"I had not anticipated so severe a sentence."


A few hours later the instruments of torture were got ready.  He was
told that this part of his punishment would be remitted if he would
confess his crimes and the names of his accomplices.  He replied:

"I have no more to say.  I know what terrible torture awaits me, I
know I must die to-day, but I have nothing to confess."

He made no resistance when his knees and legs were bound, and endured
the torture courageously.  Only, in a moment of agony, he exclaimed:

"Accursed money! has thou reduced me to this?"

Thinking that pain would overcome his resolution, the presiding
magistrate bent towards him, and said:

"Unhappy man! confess thy crime, since death is near at hand."

He recovered his firmness, and, looking at the magistrate, replied:

"I know it, monseigneur; I have perhaps not three hours to live."

Thinking that his apparently feeble frame could not endure the last
wedges, the executioner was ordered to stop.  He was unbound and laid
on a mattress, and a glass of wine was brought, of which he only
drank a few drops; after this, he made his confession to the priest.
For, dinner, they brought him soup and stew, which he ate eagerly,
and inquiring of the gaoler if he could have something more, an
entree was brought in addition.  One might have thought that this
final repast heralded, not death but deliverance.  At length three
o'clock struck the hour appointed for leaving the prison.

According to the report of credible persons whom we have consulted,
Paris on this occasion presented a remarkable appearance, which those
who saw it were never able to forget.  The great anthill was troubled
to its very lowest depth.  Whether by accident or design, the same
day had been fixed for a function which ought to have proved a
considerable counter attraction.  A great festival in honour of a
German prince was given on the Plaine de Grenelle, at which all the
court was present; and probably more than one great lady regretted
missing the emotions of the Place de Greve, abandoned to the rabble
and the bourgeoisie.  The rest of the city was deserted, the streets
silent, the houses closed.  A stranger transported suddenly into such
a solitude might have reasonably thought that during the night the
town had been smitten by the Angel of Death, and that only a
labyrinth of vacant buildings remained, testifying to the life and
turmoil of the preceding day.  A dark and dense atmosphere hung over
the abandoned town; lightning furrowed the heavy motionless clouds;
in the distance the occasional rumble of thunder was heard, answered
by the cannon of the royal fete.  The crowd was divided between the
powers of heaven and earth: the terrible majesty of the Eternal on
one side, on the other the frivolous pomp of royalty--eternal
punishment and transient grandeur in opposition.  Like the waters of
a flood leaving dry the fields which they have covered, so the waves
of the multitude forsook their usual course.  Thousands of men and
women crowded together along the route which the death-cart would
take; an ocean of heads undulated like the ears in a wheatfield.  The
old houses, hired at high rates, quivered under the weight of eager
spectators, and the window sashes had been removed to afford a better
view.

Attired in the shirt worn by condemned criminals, and bearing a
placard both in front and behind, with the words "Wilful Poisoner,"
Derues descended the great staircase of the Chatelet with a firm
step.  It was at this moment, on seeing the crucifix, that he
exclaimed, "O Christ, I shall suffer like Thee!" He mounted the
tumbril, looking right and left amongst the crowd.  During the
progress he recognised and bowed to several of his old associates,
and bade adieu in a clear voice to the former mistress of his
'prentice days, who has recorded that she never saw him look so
pleasant.  Arrived at the door of Notre Dame, where the clerk was
awaiting him, he descended from the tumbril without assistance, took
a lighted wax taper weighing two pounds in his hand, and did penance,
kneeling, bareheaded and barefooted, a rope round his neck, repeating
the words of the death-warrant.  He then reascended the cart in the
midst of the cries and execrations of the populace, to which he
appeared quite insensible.  One voice only, endeavouring to dominate
the tumult, caused him to turn his head: it was that of the hawker
who was crying his sentence, and who broke off now and then to say--

"Well! my poor gossip Derues, how do you like that fine carriage
you're in?  Oh yes, mutter your prayers and look up to heaven as much
as you like, you won't take us in now.  Ah! thief who said I stole
from you!  Wasn't I right when I said I should be selling your
sentence some day?"

Then, adding her own wrongs to the list of crimes, she declared that
the Parliament had condemned him as much for having falsely accused
her of theft as for having poisoned Madame de Lamotte and her son!

When arrived at the scaffold, he gazed around him, and a sort of
shiver of impatience ran through the crowd.  He smiled, and as if
anxious to trick mankind for the last time, asked to be taken to the
Hotel de Ville, which was granted, in the hope that he would at last
make some confession; but he only persisted in saying that he was
guiltless of poisoning.  He had an interview with his wife, who
nearly fainted on seeing him, and remained for more than a quarter of
an hour unable to say a word.  He lavished tender names upon her, and
professed much affliction at seeing her in so miserable a condition.

When she was taken away, he asked permission to embrace her, and took
a most touching farewell.  His last words have been preserved.

"My dear wife," he said, "I recommend our beloved children to your
care: bring them up in the fear of God.  You must go to Chartres, you
will there see the bishop, on whom I had the honour of waiting when I
was there last, and who has always been kind to me; I believe he has
thought well of me, and that I may hope he will take pity on you and
on our children."

It was now seven in the evening, and the crowd began to murmur at the
long delay.  At length the criminal reappeared.  An onlooker who saw
him go to the Hotel de Ville, and who was carried by the movement of
the crowd to the foot of the scaffold, says that when handed over to
the executioner he took off his clothes himself.  He kissed the
instrument of punishment with devotion, then extended himself on the
St. Andrew's cross, asking with a resigned smile that they would make
his sufferings as short as possible.  As soon as his head was
covered, the executioner gave the signal.  One would have thought a
very few blows would have finished so frail a being, but he seemed as
hard to kill as the venomous reptiles which must be crushed and cut
to pieces before life is extinct, and the coup de grace was found
necessary.  The executioner uncovered his head and showed the
confessor that the eyes were closed and that the heart had ceased to
beat.  The body was then removed from the cross, the hands and feet
fastened together, and it was thrown on the funeral pile.

While the execution was proceeding the people applauded.  On the
morrow they bought up the fragments of bone, and hastened to buy
lottery tickets, in the firm conviction that these precious relics
would bring luck to the fortunate possessors!

In 1777, Madame Derues was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and
confined at the Salpetriere.  She was one of the first victims who
perished in the prison massacres.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "DERUES", CELEBRATED CRIMES, v5
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 5 (of 8), Part 2

By Alexandre Dumas, Pere



LA CONSTANTIN

1660

CHAPTER I

Before beginning our story, we must warn the reader that it will not
be worth his while to make researches among contemporary or other
records as to the personage whose name it bears.  For in truth
neither Marie Leroux, widow of Jacques Constantin, nor her
accomplice, Claude Perregaud, was of sufficient importance to find a
place on any list of great criminals, although it is certain that
they were guilty of the crimes with which they were charged.  It may
seem strange that what follows is more a history of the retribution
which overtook the criminals than a circumstantial description of the
deeds for which they were punished; but the crimes were so revolting,
and so unsuitable for discussion, that it was impossible for us to
enter into any details on the subject, so that what we offer in these
pages is, we confess quite openly, not a full, true, and particular
account of a certain series of events leading up to a certain result;
it is not even a picture wherein that result is depicted with
artistic completeness, it is only an imperfect narrative imperfectly
rounded off.  We feel sure, however, that the healthy-minded reader
will be grateful for our reticence and total disregard of proportion.
In spite of the disadvantage which such a theme imposes on any writer
with a deep sense of responsibility, we have resolved to let in some
light on these obscure figures; for we can imagine no more effective
way of throwing into high relief the low morals and deep corruption
into which all classes of society had sunk at the termination of the
factious dissensions of the Fronde, which formed such a fitting
prelude to the licence of the reign of the grand roi.

After this explanation, we shall, without further preamble, introduce
the reader to a little tavern in Paris, situated in the rue
Saint-Andre-des-Arts, on an evening in November 1658.

It was about seven o'clock.  Three gentlemen were seated at one of
the tables in a low, smoky room.  They had already emptied several
bottles, and one of them seemed to have just suggested some madcap
scheme to the others, the thought of which sent them off into shouts
of laughter.

"Pardu!" said one of them, who was the first to recover his breath,
"I must say it would be an excellent trick."

"Splendid!" said another; "and if you like, Commander de Jars, we can
try it this very evening."

"All right, my worthy king's treasurer, provided my pretty nephew
here won't be too much shocked," and as he spoke de Jars gave to the
youngest of the three a caressing touch on the cheek with the back of
his hand.

"That reminds me, de Jars!" said the treasurer, "that word you have
just said piques my curiosity.  For some months now this little
fellow here, Chevalier de Moranges, follows you about everywhere like
your shadow.  You never told us you had a nephew.  Where the devil
did you get him?"

The commander touched the chevalier's knee under the table, and he,
as if to avoid speaking, slowly filled and emptied his glass.

"Look here," said the treasurer, "do you want to hear a few plain
words, such as I shall rap out when God takes me to task about the
peccadilloes of my past life?  I don't believe a word about the
relationship.  A nephew must be the son of either a brother or a
sister.  Now, your only sister is an abbess, and your late brother's
marriage was childless.  There is only one way of proving the
relationship, and that is to confess that when your brother was young
and wild he and Love met, or else Madame l'Abbesse----."

"Take care, Treasurer Jeannin!  no slander against my sister!"

" Well, then, explain; you can't fool me!  May I be hanged if I leave
this place before I have dragged the secret out of you!  Either we
are friends or we are not.  What you tell no one else you ought to
tell me.  What! would you make use of my purse and my sword on
occasion and yet have secrets from me?  It's too bad: speak, or our
friendship is at an end!  I give you fair warning that I shall find
out everything and publish it abroad to court and city: when I strike
a trail there's no turning me aside.  It will be best for you to
whisper your secret voluntarily into my ear, where it will be as safe
as in the grave."

"How full of curiosity you are, my good friend!" said de Jars,
leaning one elbow on the table, and twirling the points of his
moustache with his hand; "but if I were to wrap my secret round the
point of a dagger would you not be too much afraid of pricking your
fingers to pull it off?"

"Not I," said the king's treasurer, beginning to twirl his moustache
also: "the doctors have always told me that I am of too full a
complexion and that it would do me all the good in the world to be
bled now and then.  But what would be an advantage to me would be
dangerous to you.  It's easy to see from your jaundiced phiz that for
you blood-letting is no cure."

"And you would really go that length?  You would risk a duel if I
refused to let you get to the bottom of my mystery?"

"Yes, on my honour!  Well, how is it to be?"

"My dear boy," said de Jars to the youth, "we are caught, and may as
well yield gracefully.  You don't know this big fellow as well as I
do.  He's obstinacy itself.  You can make the most obstinate donkey
go on by pulling its tail hard enough, but when Jeannin gets a notion
into his pate, not all the legions of hell can get it out again.
Besides that, he's a skilful fencer, so there's nothing for it but to
trust him."

"Just as you like," said the young man; "you know all my
circumstances and how important it is that my secret should be kept."

"Oh! among Jeannin's many vices there are a few virtues, and of these
discretion is the greatest, so that his curiosity is harmless.  A
quarter of an hour hence he will let himself be killed rather than
reveal what just now he is ready to risk his skin to find out,
whether we will or no."

Jeannin nodded approvingly, refilled the glasses, and raising his to
his lips, said in a tone of triumph--

"I am listening, commander."

"Well, if it must be, it must.  First of all, learn that my nephew is
not my nephew at all."

"Go on."

"That his name is not Moranges."

"And the next?"

"I am not going to reveal his real name to you."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know ft myself, and no more does the chevalier."

"What' nonsense!"

"No nonsense at all, but the sober truth.  A few months ago the
chevalier carne to Paris, bringing me a letter of introduction from a
German whom I used to know years ago.  This letter requested me to
look after the bearer and help him in his investigations.  As you
said just now, Love and someone once met somewhere, and that was
about all was known as to his origin.  Naturally the young man wants
to cut a figure in the world, and would like to discover the author
of his existence, that he may have someone at hand to pay the debts
he is going to incur.  We have brought together every scrap of
information we could collect as to this person, hoping to find
therein a clue that we could follow up.  To be quite open with you,
and convince you at the same time how extremely prudent and discreet
we must be, I must tell you that we think we have found one, and that
it leads to no less a dignitary than a Prince of the Church.  But if
he should get wind of our researches too soon everything would be at
an end, don't you see?  So keep your tongue between your teeth."

"Never fear," said Jeannin.

"Now, that's what I call speaking out as a friend should.  I wish you
luck, my gallant Chevalier de Moranges, and until you unearth your
father, if you want a little money, my purse is at your service.  On
my word, de Jars, you must have been born with a caul.  There never
was your equal for wonderful adventures.  This one promises
well-spicy intrigues, scandalous revelations, and you'll be in the
thick of it all.  You're a lucky fellow!  It's only a few months
since you had the most splendid piece of good fortune sent you
straight from heaven.  A fair lady falls in love with you and makes
you carry her off from the convent of La Raquette.  But why do you
never let anyone catch a glimpse of her?  Are you jealous?  Or is it
that she is no such beauty, after all, but old and wrinkled, like
that knave of a Mazarin?"

"I know what I'm about," answered de Jars, smiling; "I have my very
good reasons.  The elopement caused a great deal of indignation, and
it's not easy to get fanatics to listen to common sense.  No, I am
not in the least jealous; she is madly in love with me.  Ask my
nephew."

"Does he know her?"

"We have no secrets from each other; the confidence between us is
without a flaw.  The fair one, believe me, is good to look on, and is
worth all the ogling, fan-flirting baggages put together that one
sees at court or on the balconies of the Palais Roy: ah! I'll answer
for that.  Isn't she, Moranges?"

"I'm quite of your opinion," said the youth; exchanging with de jars
a singularly significant look; "and you had better treat her well,
uncle, or I shall play you some trick."

"Ah!  ah!" cried Jeannin.  "You poor fellow!  I very much fear that
you are warming a little serpent in your bosom.  Have an eye to this
dandy with the beardless chin!  But joking apart, my boy, are you
really on good terms with the fair lady?"

"Certainly I am."

"And you are not uneasy, commander?"

" Not the least little bit."

"He is quite right. I answer for her as for my self, you know; as
long as he loves her she will love him; as long as he is faithful she
will be faithful.  Do you imagine that a woman who insists on her
lover carrying her off can so easily turn away from the man of her
choice?  I know her well; I have had long talks with her, she and I
alone: she is feather-brained, given to pleasure, entirely without
prejudices and those stupid scruples which spoil the lives of other
women; but a good sort on the whole; devoted to my uncle, with no
deception about her; but at the same time extremely jealous, and has
no notion of letting herself be sacrificed to a rival.  If ever she
finds herself deceived, good-bye to prudence and reserve, and then--"

A look and a touch of the commander's knee cut this panegyric short,
to which the treasurer was listening with open-eyed astonishment.

"What enthusiasm!" he exclaimed.  "Well, and then----"

"Why, then," went on the young man, with a laugh, "if my uncle
behaves badly, I, his nephew, will try to make up for his
wrong-doing: he can't blame me then.  But until then he may be quite
easy, as he well knows."

"Oh yes, and in proof of that I am going to take Moranges with me
to-night.  He is young and inexperienced, and it will be a good
lesson for him to see how a gallant whose amorous intrigues did not
begin yesterday sets about getting even with a coquette.  He can turn
it to account later on.

"On my word," said Jeannin, "my notion is that he is in no great need
of a teacher; however, that's your business, not mine.  Let us return
to what we were talking about just now.  Are we agreed; and shall we
amuse ourselves by paying out the lady in, her own coin?"

"If you like."

"Which of us is to begin?"

De Jars struck the table with the handle of his dagger.

"More wine, gentlemen?" said the drawer, running up.

"No, dice; and be quick about it."

"Three casts each and the highest wins," said Jeannin.  "You begin."

"I throw for myself and nephew."  The dice rolled on the table.

"Ace and three."

"It's my turn now.  Six and five."

"Pass it over.  Five and two."

"We're equal.  Four and two."

"Now let me.  Ace and blank."

"Double six."

"You have won."

"And I'm off at once, said Jeannin, rising, and muffling himself in
his mantle, "It's now half-past seven.  We shall see each other
again at eight, so I won't say good-bye."

"Good luck to you!"

Leaving the tavern and turning into the rue Pavee, he took the
direction of the river.




CHAPTER II

In 1658, at the corner of the streets Git-le-Coeur and Le Hurepoix
(the site of the latter being now occupied by the Quai des Augustins
as far as Pont Saint-Michel), stood the great mansion which Francis I
had bought and fitted up for the Duchesse d'Etampes.  It was at this
period if not in ruins at least beginning to show the ravages of
time.  Its rich interior decorations had lost their splendour and
become antiquated.  Fashion had taken up its abode in the Marais,
near the Place Royale, and it was thither that profligate women and
celebrated beauties now enticed the humming swarm of old rakes and
young libertines.  Not one of them all would have thought of residing
in the mansion, or even in the quarter, wherein the king's mistress
had once dwelt.  It would have been a step downward in the social
scale, and equivalent to a confession that their charms were falling
in the public estimation.  Still, the old palace was not empty; it
had, on the contrary, several tenants.  Like the provinces of
Alexander's empire, its vast suites of rooms had been subdivided; and
so neglected was it by the gay world that people of the commonest
description strutted about with impunity where once the proudest
nobles had been glad to gain admittance.  There in semi-isolation and
despoiled of her greatness lived Angelique-Louise de Guerchi,
formerly companion to Mademoiselle de Pons and then maid of honour to
Anne of Austria.  Her love intrigues and the scandals they gave rise
to had led to her dismissal from court.  Not that she was a greater
sinner than many who remained behind, only she was unlucky enough or
stupid enough to be found out.  Her admirers were so indiscreet that
they had not left her a shred of reputation, and in a court where a
cardinal is the lover of a queen, a hypocritical appearance of
decorum is indispensable to success.  So Angelique had to suffer for
the faults she was not clever enough to hide.  Unfortunately for her,
her income went up and down with the number and wealth of her
admirers, so when she left the court all her possessions consisted of
a few articles she had gathered together out of the wreck of her
former luxury, and these she was now selling one by one to procure
the necessaries of life, while she looked back from afar with an
envious eye at the brilliant world from which she had been exiled,
and longed for better days.  All hope was not at an end for her.  By
a strange law which does not speak well for human nature, vice finds
success easier to attain than virtue.  There is no courtesan, no
matter how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend
against the world an honour of which no vestige remains.  A man who
doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself
inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to
falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will
stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished
reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote
his life to the attempt to restore lustre to the unclean thing dulled
by the touch of many fingers.  In her days of prosperity Commander de
Jars and the king's treasurer had both fluttered round Mademoiselle
de Guerchi, and neither had fluttered in vain.  Short as was the
period necessary to overcome her scruples, in as short a period it
dawned on the two candidates for her favour that each had a
successful rival in the other, and that however potent as a reason
for surrender the doubloons of the treasurer had been, the personal
appearance of the commander had proved equally cogent.  As both had
felt for her only a passing fancy and not a serious passion, their
explanations with each other led to no quarrel between them; silently
and simultaneously they withdrew from her circle, without even
letting her know they had found her out, but quite determined to
revenge, themselves on her should a chance ever offer.  However,
other affairs of a similar nature had intervened to prevent their
carrying out this laudable intention; Jeannin had laid siege to a
more inaccessible beauty, who had refused to listen to his sighs for
less than 30 crowns, paid in advance, and de Jars had become quite
absorbed by his adventure with the convent boarder at La Raquette,
and the business of that young stranger whom he passed off as his
nephew.  Mademoiselle de Guerchi had never seen them again; and with
her it was out of sight out of mind.  At the moment when she comes
into our story she was weaving her toils round a certain Duc de
Vitry, whom she had seen at court, but whose acquaintance she had
never made, and who had been absent when the scandalous occurrence
which led to her disgrace came to light.  He was a man of from
twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, who idled his life away: his
courage was undoubted, and being as credulous as an old libertine, he
was ready to draw his sword at any moment to defend the lady whose
cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint
there was a smirch on her virtue.  Being deaf to all reports, he
seemed one of those men expressly framed by heaven to be the
consolation of fallen women; such a man as in our times a retired
opera-dancer or a superannuated professional beauty would welcome
with open arms.  He had only one fault--he was married.  It is true
he neglected his wife, according to the custom of the time, and it is
probably also true that his wife cared very little about his
infidelities.  But still she was an insurmountable obstacle to the
fulfilment of Mademoiselle de Guerchi's hopes, who but for her might
have looked forward to one day becoming a duchess.

For about three weeks, however, at the time we are speaking of, the
duke had neither crossed her threshold nor written.  He had told her
he was going for a few days to Normandy, where he had large estates,
but had remained absent so long after the date he had fixed for his
return that she began to feel uneasy.  What could be keeping him?
Some new flame, perhaps.  The anxiety of the lady was all the more
keen, that until now nothing had passed between them but looks of
languor and words of love.  The duke had laid himself and all he
possessed at the feet of Angelique, and Angelique had refused his
offer.  A too prompt surrender would have justified the reports so
wickedly spread against her; and, made wise by experience, she was
resolved not to compromise her future as she had compromised her
past.  But while playing at virtue she had also to play at
disinterestedness, and her pecuniary resources were consequently
almost exhausted.  She had proportioned the length of her resistance
to the length of her purse, and now the prolonged absence of her
lover threatened to disturb the equilibrium which she had established
between her virtue and her money.  So it happened that the cause of
the lovelorn Duc de Vitry was in great peril just at the moment when
de Jars and Jeannin resolved to approach the fair one anew.  She was
sitting lost in thought, pondering in all good faith on the small
profit it was to a woman to be virtuous, when she heard voices in the
antechamber.  Then her door opened, and the king's treasurer walked
in.

As this interview and those which follow took place in the presence
of witnesses, we are obliged to ask the reader to accompany us for a
time to another part of the same house.

We have said there were several tenants: now the person who occupied
the rooms next to those in which Mademoiselle de Guerchi lived was a
shopkeeper's widow called Rapally, who was owner of one of the
thirty-two houses which then occupied the bridge Saint-Michel.  They
had all been constructed at the owner's cost, in return for a lease
for ever.  The widow Rapally's avowed age was forty, but those who
knew her longest added another ten years to that: so, to avoid error,
let us say she was forty-five.  She was a solid little body, rather
stouter than was necessary for beauty; her hair was black, her
complexion brown, her eyes prominent and always moving; lively,
active, and if one once yielded to her whims, exacting beyond
measure; but until then buxom and soft, and inclined to pet and spoil
whoever, for the moment, had arrested her volatile fancy.  Just as we
make her acquaintance this happy individual was a certain Maitre
Quennebert, a notary of Saint Denis, and the comedy played between
him and the widow was an exact counterpart of the one going on in the
rooms of Mademoiselle de Guerchi, except that the roles were
inverted; for while the lady was as much in love as the Duc de Vitry,
the answering devotion professed by the notary was as insincere as
the disinterested attachment to her lover displayed by the whilom
maid of honour.

Maitre Quennebert was still young and of attractive appearance, but
his business affairs were in a bad way.  For long he had been
pretending not to understand the marked advances of the widow, and he
treated her with a reserve and respect she would fain have dispensed
with, and which sometimes made her doubt of his love.  But it was
impossible for her as a woman to complain, so she was forced to
accept with resignation the persistent and unwelcome consideration
with which he surrounded her.  Maitre Quennebert was a man of common
sense and much experience, and had formed a scheme which he was
prevented from carrying out by an obstacle which he had no power to
remove.  He wanted, therefore, to gain time, for he knew that the day
he gave the susceptible widow a legal right over him he would lose
his independence.  A lover to whose prayers the adored one remains
deaf too long is apt to draw back in discouragement, but a woman
whose part is restricted to awaiting those prayers, and answering
with a yes or no, necessarily learns patience.  Maitre Quennebert
would therefore have felt no anxiety as to the effect of his
dilatoriness on the widow, were it not for the existence of a distant
cousin of the late Monsieur Rapally, who was also paying court to
her, and that with a warmth much greater than had hitherto been
displayed by himself.  This fact, in view of the state of the
notary's affairs, forced him at last to display more energy.  To make
up lost ground and to outdistance his rival once more, he now began
to dazzle the widow with fine phrases and delight her with
compliments; but to tell the truth all this trouble was superfluous;
he was beloved, and with one fond look he might have won pardon for
far greater neglect.

An hour before the treasurer's arrival there had been a knock at the
door of the old house, and Maitre Quennebert, curled, pomaded, and
prepared for conquest, had presented himself at the widow's.  She
received him with a more languishing air than usual, and shot such
arrows at him froth her eyes that to escape a fatal wound he
pretended to give way by degrees to deep sadness.  The widow,
becoming alarmed, asked with tenderness--

"What ails you this evening?"

He rose, feeling he had nothing to fear from his rival, and, being
master of the field, might henceforth advance or recede as seemed
best for his interests.

"What ails me?" he repeated, with a deep sigh.  "I might deceive you,
might give you a misleading answer, but to you I cannot lie.  I am in
great trouble, and how to get out of it I don't know."

"But tell me what it is," said the widow, standing up in her turn.

Maitre Quennebert took three long strides, which brought him to the
far end of the room, and asked--

"Why do you want to know?  You can't help me.  My trouble is of a
kind a man does not generally confide to women."

"What is it?  An affair of honour?

"Yes."

"Good God!  You are going to fight!" she exclaimed, trying to seize
him by the arm.  "You are going to fight!"

"Ah! if it were nothing worse than that!" said Quennebert, pacing up
and down the room: "but you need not be alarmed; it is only a money
trouble.  I lent a large sum, a few months ago, to a friend, but the
knave has run away and left me in the lurch.  It was trust money, and
must be replaced within three days.  But where am I to get two
thousand francs?"

"Yes, that is a large sum, and not easy to raise at such short
notice."

"I shall be obliged to have recourse to some Jew, who will drain me
dry.  But I must save my good name at all costs."

Madame Rapally gazed at him in consternation.  Maitre Quennebert,
divining her thought, hastened to add--

"I have just one-third of what is needed."

"Only one-third?"

"With great care, and by scraping together all I possess, I can make
up eight hundred livres.  But may I be damned in the next world, or
punished as a swindler in this, and one's as bad as the other to me,
if I can raise one farthing more."

"But suppose someone should lend you the twelve hundred francs, what
then?"

"Pardieu!  I should accept them," cried the notary as if he had not
the least suspicion whom she could mean.  "Do you happen to know
anyone, my dear Madame Rapally?"

The widow nodded affirmatively, at the same time giving him a
passionate glance.

"Tell me quick the name of this delightful person, and I shall go to
him to-morrow morning.  You don't know what a service you are
rendering me.  And I was so near not telling you of the fix I was in,
lest you should torment yourself uselessly.  Tell me his name."

"Can you not guess it?"

"How should I guess it?"

"Think well.  Does no one occur to you?"

"No, no one," said Quennebert, with the utmost innocence.

"Have you no friends?"

"One or two."

"Would they not be glad to help you?"

"They might.  But I have mentioned the matter to no one."

"To no one?"

"Except you."

"Well?"

"Well, Madame Rapally--I hope I don't understand you; it's not
possible; you would not humiliate me.  Come, come, it's a riddle, and
I am too stupid to solve it.  I give it up.  Don't tantalise me any
longer; tell me the name."

The widow, somewhat abashed by this exhibition of delicacy on the
part of Maitre Quennebert, blushed, cast down her eyes, and did not
venture to speak.

As the silence lasted some time, it occurred to the notary that he
had been perhaps too hasty in his supposition, and he began to cast
round for the best means of retrieving his blunder.

"You do not speak," he said; "I see it was all a joke."

"No," said the widow at last in a timid voice, "it was no joke; I was
quite in earnest.  But the way you take things is not very
encouraging."

"What do you mean?"

"Pray, do you imagine that I can go on while you glare at me with
that angry frown puckering your forehead, as if you had someone
before you who had tried to insult you?"

A sweet smile chased the frown from the notary's brow.  Encouraged by
the suspension of hostilities, Madame Rapally with sudden boldness
approached him, and, pressing one of his hands in both her own,
whispered--

" It is I who am going to lend you the money."

He repulsed her gently, but with an air of great dignity, and said--

"Madame, I thank you, but I cannot accept."

"Why can't you?"

At this he began to walk round and round the room, while the widow,
who stood in the middle, turned as upon a pivot, keeping him always
in view. This circus-ring performance lasted some minutes before
Quennebert stood still and said--

"I cannot be angry with you, Madame Rapally,  I know your offer was
made out of the kindness of your heart,--but I must repeat that it is
impossible for me to accept it."

"There you go again!  I don't understand you at all!  Why can't you
accept?  What harm would it do?"

"If there were no other reason, because people might suspect that I
confided my difficulties to you in the hope of help."

"And supposing you did, what then?  People speak hoping to be
understood.  You wouldn't have minded asking anyone else."

"So you really think I did come in that hope?"

"Mon Dieu!  I don't think anything at all that you don't want.  It
was I who dragged the confidence from you by my questions, I know
that very well.  But now that you have told me your secret, how can
you hinder me from sympathising with you, from desiring to aid you?
When I learned your difficulty, ought I to have been amused, and gone
into fits of laughter?  What! it's an insult to be in a position to
render you a service!  That's a strange kind of delicacy!"

"Are you astonished that I should feel so strongly about it?"

"Nonsense!  Do you still think I meant to offend you?  I look on you
as the most honourable man in the world.  If anyone were to tell me
that he had seen you commit a base action, I should reply that it was
a lie.  Does that satisfy you?"

"But suppose they got hold of it in the city, suppose it were
reported that Maitre Quennebert had taken money from Madame de
Rapally, would it be the same as if they said Maitre Quennebert had
borrowed twelve hundred livres from Monsieur Robert or some other
business man?"

"I don't see what difference it could make."

"But I do."

"What then?"

"It's not easy to express, but----"

"But you exaggerate both the service and the gratitude you ought to
feel.  I think I know why you refuse.  You're ashamed to take it as a
gift, aren't you."

"Yes, I am."

"Well, I'm not going to make you a gift.  Borrow twelve hundred
livres from me.  For how long do you want the money?"

"I really don't know how soon I can repay you."

"Let's say a year, and reckon the interest.  Sit down there, you
baby, and write out a promissory note."

Maitre Quennebert made some further show of resistance, but at last
yielded to the widow's importunity.  It is needless to say that the
whole thing was a comedy on his part, except that he really needed
the money.  But he did not need it to replace a sum of which a
faithless friend had robbed him, but to satisfy his own creditors,
who, out of all patience with him, were threatening to sue him, and
his only reason for seeking out Madame de Rapally was to take
advantage of her generous disposition towards himself.  His feigned
delicacy was intended to induce her to insist so urgently, that in
accepting he should not fall too much in her esteem, but should seem
to yield to force.  And his plan met with complete success, for at
the end of the transaction he stood higher than ever in the opinion
of his fair creditor, on account of the noble sentiments he had
expressed.  The note was written out in legal form and the money
counted down on the spot.

"How glad I am!" said she then, while Quennebert still kept up some
pretence of delicate embarrassment, although he could not resist
casting a stolen look at the bag of crowns lying on the table beside
his cloak.  "Do you intend to go back to Saint Denis to-night?"

Even had such been his intention, the notary would have taken very
good care not to say so; for he foresaw the accusations of imprudence
that would follow, the enumeration of the dangers by the way; and it
was quite on the cards even that, having thus aroused his fears, his
fair hostess should in deference to them offer him hospitality for
the night, and he did not feel inclined for an indefinitely prolonged
tete-a-tete.

"No;" he said, "I am going to sleep at Maitre Terrasson's, rue des
Poitevins; I have sent him word to expect me.  But although his house
is only a few yards distant, I must leave you earlier than I could
have wished, on account of this money."

"Will you think of me?"

"How can you ask?" replied Quennebert, with a sentimental expression.
"You have compelled me to accept the money, but--I shall not be happy
till I have repaid you.  Suppose this loan should make us fall out?"

"You may be quite sure that if you don't pay when the bill falls due,
I shall have recourse to the law."

"Oh, I know that very well."

"I shall enforce all my rights as a creditor."

"I expect nothing else."

"I shall show no pity."

And the widow gave a saucy laugh and shook her finger at him.

"Madame Rapally," said the notary, who was most anxious to bring this
conversation to an end, dreading every moment that it would take a
languishing tone,-"Madame Rapally, will you add to your goodness by
granting me one more favour?"

"What is it?"

"The gratitude that is simulated is not difficult to bear, but
genuine, sincere gratitude, such as I feel, is a heavy burden, as I
can assure you.  It is much easier to give than to receive.  Promise
me, then, that from now till the year is up there shall be no more
reference between us to this money, and that we shall go on being
good friends as before.  Leave it to me to make arrangements to
acquit myself honourably of my obligations towards you.  I need say
no more; till a year's up, mum's the word."

"It shall be as you desire, Maitre Quennebert," answered Madame
Rapally, her eyes shining with delight.  "It was never my intention
to lay you under embarrassing obligations, and I leave it all to you.
Do you know that I am beginning to believe in presentiments?"

"You becoming superstitious!  Why, may I ask?"

"I refused to do a nice little piece of ready-money business this
morning."

"Did you?"

"Yes, because I had a sort of feeling that made me resist all
temptation to leave myself without cash.  Imagine!  I received a
visit to-day from a great lady who lives in this house--in the suite
of apartments next to mine."

"What is her name?"

"Mademoiselle de Guerchi."

"And what did she want with you?"

"She called in order to ask me to buy, for four hundred livres, some
of her jewels which are well worth six hundred, for I understand such
things; or should I prefer it to lend her that sum and keep the
jewels as security?  It appears that mademoiselle is in great
straits.  De Guerchi--do you know the name?"

"I think I have heard it."

"They say she has had a stormy past, and has been greatly talked of;
but then half of what one hears is lies.  Since she came to live here
she has been very quiet.  No visitors except one--a nobleman, a duke-
-wait a moment!  What's his name?  The Duc-Duc de Vitry; and for over
three weeks even he hasn't been near her.  I imagine from this
absence that they have fallen out, and that she is beginning to feel
the want of money."

"You seem to be intimately acquainted with this young woman's
affairs."

"Indeed I am, and yet I never spoke to her till this morning."

"How did you get your information, then?"

"By chance.  The room adjoining this and one of those she occupies
were formerly one large room, which is now divided into two by a
partition wall covered with tapestry; but in the two corners the
plaster has crumbled away with time, and one can see into the room
through slits in the tapestry without being seen oneself.  Are you
inquisitive?"

"Not more than you, Madame Rapally."

"Come with me.  Someone knocked at the street door a few moments ago;
there's no one else in the douse likely to have visitors at this
hour.  Perhaps her admirer has come back."

"If so, we are going to witness a scene of recrimination or
reconciliation.  How delightful!"

Although he was not leaving the widow's lodgings, Maitre Quennebert
took up his hat and cloak and the blessed bag of crown pieces, and
followed Madame Rapally on tiptoe, who on her side moved as slowly as
a tortoise and as lightly as she could.  They succeeded in turning
the handle of the door into the next room without making much noise.

"'Sh!" breathed the widow softly; "listen, they are speaking."

She pointed to the place where he would find a peep-hole in one
corner of the room, and crept herself towards the corresponding
corner.  Quennebert, who was by no means anxious to have her at his
side, motioned to her to blow out the light.  This being done, he
felt secure, for he knew that in the intense darkness which now
enveloped them she could not move from her place without knocking
against the furniture between them, so he glued his face to the
partition.  An opening just large enough for one eye allowed him to
see everything that was going on in the next room.  Just as he began
his observations, the treasurer at Mademoiselle de Guerchi's
invitation was about to take a seat near her, but not too near for
perfect respect.  Both of them were silent, and appeared to labour
under great embarrassment at finding themselves together, and
explanations did not readily begin.  The lady had not an idea of the
motive of the visit, and her quondam lover feigned the emotion
necessary to the success of his undertaking.  Thus Maitre Quennebert
had full time to examine both, and especially Angelique.  The reader
will doubtless desire to know what was the result of the notary's
observation.




CHAPTER III

ANGELIQUE-LOUISE DE GUERCHI was a woman of about twenty-eight years
of age, tall, dark, and well made.  The loose life she had led had,
it is true, somewhat staled her beauty, marred the delicacy of her
complexion, and coarsened the naturally elegant curves of her figure;
but it is such women who from time immemorial have had the strongest
attraction for profligate men.  It seems as if dissipation destroyed
the power to perceive true beauty, and the man of pleasure must be
aroused to admiration by a bold glance and a meaning smile, and will
only seek satisfaction along the trail left by vice.  Louise-
Angelique was admirably adapted for her way of life; not that her
features wore an expression of shameless effrontery, or that the
words that passed her lips bore habitual testimony to the disorders
of her existence, but that under a calm and sedate demeanour there
lurked a secret and indefinable charm.  Many other women possessed
more regular features, but none of them had a greater power of
seduction.  We must add that she owed that power entirely to her
physical perfections, for except in regard to the devices necessary
to her calling, she showed no cleverness, being ignorant, dull and
without inner resources of any kind.  As her temperament led her to
share the desires she excited, she was really incapable of resisting
an attack conducted with skill and ardour, and if the Duc de Vitry
had not been so madly in love, which is the same as saying that he
was hopelessly blind, silly, and dense to everything around him, he
might have found a score of opportunities to overcome her resistance.
We have already seen that she was so straitened in money matters that
she had been driven to try to sell her jewels that very, morning.

Jeannin was the first to 'break silence.

"You are astonished at my visit, I know, my charming Angelique.  But
you must excuse my thus appearing so unexpectedly before you.  The
truth is, I found it impossible to leave Paris without seeing you
once more."

"Thank you for your kind remembrance," said she, "but I did not at
all expect it."

"Come, come, you are offended with me."

She gave him a glance of mingled disdain and resentment; but he went
on, in a timid, wistful tone--

"I know that my conduct must have seemed strange to you, and I
acknowledge that nothing can justify a man for suddenly leaving the
woman he loves--I do not dare to say the woman who loves him--without
a word of explanation.  But, dear Angelique, I was jealous."

"Jealous!" she repeated incredulously.

"I tried my best to overcome the feeling, and I hid my suspicions
from you.  Twenty times I came to see you bursting with anger and
determined to overwhelm you with reproaches, but at the sight of your
beauty I forgot everything but that I loved you.  My suspicions
dissolved before a smile; one word from your lips charmed me into
happiness.  But when I was again alone my terrors revived, I saw my
rivals at your feet, and rage possessed me once more.  Ah! you never
knew how devotedly I loved you."

She let him speak without interruption; perhaps the same thought was
in her mind as in Quennebert's, who, himself a past master in the art
of lying; was thinking--

"The man does not believe a word of what he is saying."

But the treasurer went on--

"I can see that even now you doubt my sincerity."

"Does my lord desire that his handmaiden should be blunt?  Well, I
know that there is no truth in what you say."

"Oh!  I can see that you imagine that among the distractions of the
world I have kept no memory of you, and have found consolation in the
love of less obdurate fair ones.  I have not broken in on your
retirement; I have not shadowed your steps; I have not kept watch on
your actions; I have not surrounded you with spies who would perhaps
have brought me the assurance, 'If she quitted the world which
outraged her, she was not driven forth by an impulse of wounded pride
or noble indignation; she did not even seek to punish those who
misunderstood her by her absence; she buried herself where she was
unknown, that she might indulge in stolen loves.'  Such were the
thoughts that came to me, and yet I respected your hiding-place; and
to-day I am ready to believe you true, if you will merely say, 'I
love no one else!'"

Jeannin, who was as fat as a stage financier, paused here to gasp;
for the utterance of this string of banalities, this rigmarole of
commonplaces, had left him breathless.  He was very much dissatisfied
with his performance; and ready to curse his barren imagination.  He
longed to hit upon swelling phrases and natural and touching
gestures, but in vain.  He could only look at Mademoiselle de Guerchi
with a miserable, heart-broken air.  She remained quietly seated,
with the same expression of incredulity on her features.

So there was nothing for it but to go on once more.

"But this one assurance that I ask you will not give.  So what I
have--been told is true: you have given your love to him."

She could not check a startled movement.

"You see it is only when I speak of him that I can overcome in you
the insensibility which is killing me.  My suspicions were true after
all: you deceived me for his sake.  Oh! the instinctive feeling of
jealousy was right which forced me to quarrel with that man, to
reject the perfidious friendship which he tried to force upon me.  He
has returned to town, and we shall meet!  But why do I say
'returned'?  Perhaps he only pretended to go away, and safe in this
retreat has flouted with impunity, my despair and braved my
vengeance!"

Up to this the lady had played a waiting game, but now she grew quite
confused, trying to discover the thread of the treasurer's thoughts.
To whom did he refer?  The Duc de Vitry?  That had been her first
impression.  But the duke had only been acquainted with her for a few
months--since she had--left Court.  He could not therefore have
excited the jealousy of her whilom lover; and if it were not he, to
whom did the words about rejecting "perfidious friendship," and
"returned to town," and so on, apply?  Jeannin divined her
embarrassment, and was not a little proud of the tactics which would,
he was almost sure; force her to expose herself.  For there are
certain women who can be thrown into cruel perplexity by speaking to
them of their love-passages without affixing a proper name label to
each.  They are placed as it were on the edge of an abyss, and forced
to feel their way in darkness.  To say "You have loved" almost
obliges them to ask "Whom?"

Nevertheless, this was not the word uttered by Mademoiselle de
Guerchi while she ran through in her head a list of possibilities.
Her answer was--

"Your language astonishes me; I don't understand what you mean."

The ice was broken, and the treasurer made a plunge.  Seizing one of
Angelique's hands, he asked--

"Have you never seen Commander de Jars since then?"

"Commander de Jars!" exclaimed Angelique.

"Can you swear to me, Angelique, that you love him not?"

"Mon Dieu!  What put it into your head that I ever cared for him?
It's over four months since I saw him last, and I hadn't an idea
whether he was alive or dead.  So he has been out of town?  That's
the first I heard of it."

"My fortune is yours, Angelique!  Oh! assure me once again that you
do not love him--that you never loved him!" he pleaded in a faltering
voice, fixing a look of painful anxiety upon her.

He had no intention of putting her out of countenance by the course
he took; he knew quite well that a woman like Angelique is never more
at her ease than when she has a chance of telling an untruth of this
nature.  Besides, he had prefaced this appeal by the magic words, "My
fortune' is yours!" and the hope thus aroused was well worth a
perjury.  So she answered boldly and in a steady voice, while she
looked straight into his eyes--

"Never!"

"I believe you!" exclaimed Jeannin, going down on his knees and
covering with his kisses the hand he still held.  "I can taste
happiness again.  Listen, Angelique.  I am leaving Paris; my mother
is dead, and I am going back to Spain.  Will you follow me thither?"

"I---follow you?"

"I hesitated long before finding you out, so much did I fear a
repulse.  I set out to-morrow.  Quit Paris, leave the world which has
slandered you, and come with me.  In a fortnight we shall be man and
wife."

"You are not in earnest!"

"May I expire at your feet if I am not!  Do you want me to sign the
oath with my blood?"

"Rise," she said in a broken voice.  "Have I at last found a man to
love me and compensate me for all the abuse that has been showered on
my head?  A thousand times I thank you, not for what you are doing
for me, but for the balm you pour on my wounded spirit.  Even if you
were to say to me now, 'After all, I am obliged to give you up' the
pleasure of knowing you esteem me would make up for all the rest.  It
would be another happy memory to treasure along with my memory of our
love, which was ineffaceable, although you so ungratefully suspected
me of having deceived you."

The treasurer appeared fairly intoxicated with joy.  He indulged in a
thousand ridiculous extravagances and exaggerations, and declared
himself the happiest of men.  Mademoiselle de Guerchi, who was
desirous of being prepared for every peril, asked him in a coaxing
tone--

"Who can have put it into your head to be jealous of the commander?
Has he been base enough to boast that I ever gave him my love?"

"No, he never said anything about you; but someway I was afraid."

She renewed her assurances.  The conversation continued some time in
a sentimental tone.  A thousand oaths, a thousand protestations of
love were, exchanged.  Jeannin feared that the suddenness of their
journey would inconvenience his mistress, and offered to put it off
for some days; but to this she would not consent, and it was arranged
that the next day at noon a carriage should call at the house and
take Angelique out of town to an appointed place at which the
treasurer was to join her.

Maitre Quennebert, eye and ear on the alert, had not lost a word of
this conversation, and the last proposition of the treasurer changed
his ideas.

"Pardieu!" he said to himself, "it looks as if this good man were
really going to let himself be taken in and done for.  It is singular
how very clear-sighted we can be about things that don't touch us.
This poor fly is going to let himself be caught by a very clever
spider, or I'm much mistaken.  Very likely my widow is quite of my
opinion, and yet in what concerns herself she will remain
stone-blind.  Well, such is life!  We have only two parts to choose
between: we must be either knave or fool.  What's Madame Rapally
doing, I wonder?"

At this moment he heard a stifled whisper from the opposite corner of
the room, but, protected by the distance and the darkness, he let the
widow murmur on, and applied his eye once more to his peephole.  What
he saw confirmed his opinion.  The damsel was springing up and down,
laughing, gesticulating, and congratulating herself on her unexpected
good fortune.

"Just imagine!  He loves me like that!" she was saying to herself.
"Poor Jeannin!  When I remember how I used to hesitate.  How
fortunate that Commander de Jars, one of the most vain and indiscreet
of men, never babbled about me!  Yes, we must leave town to-morrow
without fail.  I must not give him time to be enlightened by a chance
word.  But the Duc de Vitry?  I am really sorry for him.  However,
why did he go away, and send no word?  And then, he's a married man.
Ah! if I could only get back again to court some day!...  Who would
ever have expected such a thing?  Good God!  I must keep talking to
myself, to be sure I'm not dreaming.  Yes, he was there, just now, at
my feet, saying to me, 'Angelique, you are going to become my wife.'
One thing is sure, he may safely entrust his honour to my care.  It
would be infamous to betray a man who loves me as he does, who will
give me his name.  Never, no, never will I give him cause to reproach
me!  I would rather ----"

A loud and confused noise on the stairs interrupted this soliloquy.
At one moment bursts of laughter were heard, and the next angry
voices.  Then a loud exclamation, followed by a short silence.  Being
alarmed at this disturbance in a house which was usually so quiet,
Mademoiselle de Guerchi approached the door of her room, intending
either to call for protection or to lock herself in, when suddenly it
was violently pushed open.  She recoiled with fright, exclaiming--

"Commander de Jars!"

"On my word!" said Quennebert behind the arras, "'tis as amusing as a
play!  Is the commander also going to offer to make an honest woman
of her?  But what do I see?"

He had just caught sight of the young man on whom de Jars had
bestowed the title and name of Chevalier de Moranges, and whose
acquaintance the reader has already made at the tavern in the rue
Saint-Andre-des-Arts.  His appearance had as great an effect on the
notary as a thunderbolt.  He stood motionless, trembling, breathless;
his knees ready to give way beneath him; everything black before his
eyes.  However, he soon pulled himself together, and succeeded in
overcoming the effects of his surprise and terror.  He looked once
more through the hole in the partition, and became so absorbed that
no one in the whole world could have got a word from him just then;
the devil himself might have shrieked into his ears unheeded, and a
naked sword suspended over his head would not have induced him to
change his place.




CHAPTER IV

Before Mademoiselle de Guerchi had recovered from her fright the
commander spoke.

"As I am a gentleman, my beauty, if you were the Abbess of
Montmartre, you could not be more difficult of access.  I met a
blackguard on the stairs who tried to stop me, and whom I was obliged
to thrash soundly.  Is what they told me on my return true?  Are you
really doing penance, and do you intend to take the veil?"

"Sir," answered Angelique, with great dignity, "whatever may be my
plans, I have a right to be surprised at your violence and at your
intrusion at such an hour."

"Before we go any farther," said de Jars, twirling round on his
heels, "allow me to present to you my nephew, the Chevalier de
Moranges."

"Chevalier de Moranges!" muttered Quennebert, on whose memory in that
instant the name became indelibly engraven.

"A young man," continued the commander, "who has come back with me
from abroad.  Good style, as you see, charming appearance.  Now, you
young innocent, lift up your great black eyes and kiss madame's hand;
I allow it."

"Monsieur le commandeur, leave my room; begone, or I shall call----"

"Whom, then?  Your lackeys?  But I have beaten the only one you keep,
as I told you, and it will be some time before he'll be in a
condition to light me downstairs: 'Begone,' indeed!  Is that the way
you receive an old friend?  Pray be seated, chevalier."

He approached Mademoiselle de Guerchi, and, despite her resistance,
seized hold of one of her hands, and forcing her to sit down, seated
himself beside her.

"That's right, my girl," said he; "now let us talk sense.  I
understand that before a stranger you consider  yourself obliged to
appear astonished at my ways of going on.  But he knows all about us,
and nothing he may see or hear will surprise him.  So a truce to
prudery!  I came back yesterday, but I could not make out your
hiding-place till to-day.  Now I'm not going to ask you to tell me
how you have gone on in my absence.  God and you alone know, and
while He will tell me nothing, you would only tell me fibs, and I
want to save you from that venial sin at least.  But here I am, in as
good spirits as ever, more in love than ever, and quite ready to
resume my old habits."

Meantime the lady, quite subdued by his noisy entrance and ruffianly
conduct, and seeing that an assumption of dignity would only draw
down on her some fresh impertinence, appeared to resign herself to
her position.  All this time Quennebert never took his eyes from the
chevalier, who sat with his face towards the partition.  His
elegantly cut costume accentuated his personal advantages.  His jet
black hair brought into relief the whiteness of his forehead; his
large dark eyes with their veined lids and silky lashes had a
penetrating and peculiar expression--a mixture of audacity and
weakness; his thin and somewhat pale lips were apt to curl in an
ironical smile; his hands were of perfect beauty, his feet of dainty
smallness, and he showed with an affectation of complaisance a
well-turned leg above his ample boots, the turned down tops of which,
garnished with lace, fell in irregular folds aver his ankles in the
latest fashion.  He did not appear to be more than eighteen years of
age, and nature had denied his charming face the distinctive sign of
his sex for not the slightest down was visible on his chin, though a
little delicate pencilling darkened his upper lip: His slightly
effeminate style of beauty, the graceful curves of his figure, his
expression, sometimes coaxing, sometimes saucy, reminding one of a
page, gave him the appearance of a charming young scapegrace destined
to inspire sudden passions and wayward fancies.  While his pretended
uncle was making himself at home most unceremoniously, Quennebert
remarked that the chevalier at once began to lay siege to his fair
hostess, bestowing tender and love-laden glances on her behind that
uncle's back.  This redoubled his curiosity.

"My dear girl," said the commander, "since I saw you last I have come
into a fortune of one hundred thousand livres, neither more nor less.
One of my dear aunts took it into her head to depart this life, and
her temper being crotchety and spiteful she made me her sole heir, in
order to enrage those of her relatives who had nursed her in her
illness.  One hundred thousand livres!  It's a round sum--enough to
cut a great figure with for two years.  If you like, we shall
squander it together, capital and interest.  Why do you not speak?
Has anyone else robbed me by any chance of your heart?  If that were
so, I should be in despair, upon my word-for the sake of the
fortunate individual who had won your favour; for I will brook no
rivals, I give you fair warning."

"Monsieur le commandeur," answered Angelique, "you forget, in
speaking to me in that manner, I have never given you any right to
control my actions."

"Have we severed our connection?"

At this singular question Angelique started, but de Jars continued--

"When last we parted we were on the best of terms, were we not?  I
know that some months have elapsed since then, but I have explained
to you the reason of my absence.  Before filling up the blank left by
the departed we must give ourselves space to mourn.  Well, was I
right in my guess?  Have you given me a successor?"

Mademoiselle de Guerchi had hitherto succeeded in controlling her
indignation, and had tried to force herself to drink the bitter cup
of humiliation to the dregs; but now she could bear it no longer.
Having thrown a look expressive of her suffering at the young
chevalier, who continued to ogle her with great pertinacity, she
decided on bursting into tears, and in a voice broken by sobs she
exclaimed that she was miserable at being treated in this manner,
that she did not deserve it, and that Heaven was punishing her for
her error in yielding to the entreaties of the commander.  One would
have sworn she was sincere and that the words came from her heart.
If Maitre Quennebert had not witnessed the scene with Jeannin, if he
had not known how frail was the virtue of the weeping damsel, he
might have been affected by her touching plaint.  The chevalier
appeared to be deeply moved by Angelique's grief, and while his,
uncle was striding up and down the room and swearing like a trooper,
he gradually approached her and expressed by signs the compassion he
felt.

Meantime the notary was in a strange state of mind.  He had not yet
made up his mind whether the whole thing was a joke arranged between
de Jars and Jeannin or not, but of one thing he was quite convinced,
the sympathy which Chevalier de Moranges was expressing by passionate
sighs and glances was the merest hypocrisy.  Had he been alone,
nothing would have prevented his dashing head foremost into this
imbroglio, in scorn of consequence, convinced that his appearance
would be as terrible in its effect as the head of Medusa.  But the
presence of the widow restrained him.  Why ruin his future and dry up
the golden spring which had just begun to gush before his eyes, for
the sake of taking part in a melodrama?  Prudence and self-interest
kept him in the side scenes.

The tears of the fair one and the glances of the chevalier awoke no
repentance in the breast of the commander; on the contrary, he began
to vent his anger in terms still more energetic.  He strode up and
down the oaken floor till it shook under his spurred heels; he stuck
his plumed hat on the side of his head, and displayed the manners of
a bully in a Spanish comedy.  Suddenly he seemed to have come to a
swift resolution: the expression of his face changed from rage to icy
coldness, and walking up to Angelique, he said, with a composure more
terrible than the wildest fury--

"My rival's name?"

"You shall never learn it from me!"

"Madame, his name?"

"Never!  I have borne your insults too long.  I am not responsible to
you for my actions."

"Well, I shall learn it, in spite of you, and I know to whom to
apply.  Do you think you can play fast and loose with me and my love?
No, no!  I used to believe in you; I turned, a deaf ear to your
traducers.  My mad passion for you became known; I was the jest and
the butt of the town.  But you have opened my eyes, and at last I see
clearly on whom my vengeance ought to fall.  He was formerly my
friend, and I would believe nothing against him; although I was often
warned, I took no notice.  But now I will seek him out, and say to
him, 'You have stolen what was mine; you are a scoundrel!  It must be
your life, or mine!'  And if, there is justice in heaven, I shall
kill him!  Well, madame, you don't ask me the name of this man!  You
well know whom I mean!"

This threat brought home to Mademoiselle de Guerchi how imminent was
her danger.  At first she had thought the commander's visit might be
a snare laid to test her, but the coarseness of his expressions, the
cynicism of his overtures in the presence of a third person, had
convinced her she was wrong.  No man could have imagined that the
revolting method of seduction employed could meet with success, and
if the commander had desired to convict her of perfidy he would have
come alone and made use of more persuasive weapons.  No, he believed
he still had claims on her, but even if he had, by his manner of
enforcing them he had rendered them void.  However, the moment he
threatened to seek out a rival whose identity he designated quite
clearly, and reveal to him the secret it was so necessary to her
interests to keep hidden, the poor girl lost her head.  She looked at
de Jars with a frightened expression, and said in a trembling voice--

"I don't know whom you mean."

"You don't know?  Well, I shall commission the king's treasurer,
Jeannin de Castille, to come here to-morrow and tell you, an hour
before our duel."

"Oh no!  no!  Promise me you will not do that!" cried she, clasping
her hands.

"Adieu, madame."

"Do not leave me thus!  I cannot let you go till you give me your
promise!"

She threw herself on her knees and clung with both her hands to de
Jars' cloak, and appealing to Chevalier de Moranges, said--

"You are young, monsieur; I have never done you any harm; protect me,
have pity on me, help me to soften him!"

"Uncle," said the chevalier in a pleading tone, "be generous, and
don't drive this woman to despair."

"Prayers are useless!" answered the commander.

"What do you want me to do?" said Angelique.  "Shall I go into a
convent to atone?  I am ready to go.  Shall I promise never to see
him again?  For God's sake, give me a little time; put off your
vengeance for one single day!  To-morrow evening, I swear to you, you
will have nothing more to fear from me.  I thought myself forgotten
by you and abandoned; and how should I think otherwise?  You left me
without a word of farewell, you stayed away and never sent me a line!
And how do you know that I did not weep when you deserted me, leaving
me to pass my days in monotonous solitude?  How do you know that I
did not make every effort to find out why you were so long absent
from my side?  You say you had left town but how was I to know that?
Oh!  promise me, if you love me, to give up this duel!  Promise me
not to seek that man out to-morrow!"

The poor creature hoped to work wonders with her eloquence, her
tears, her pleading glances.  On hearing her prayer for a reprieve of
twenty-four hours, swearing that after that she would never see
Jeannin again, the commander and the chevalier were obliged to bite
their lips to keep from laughing outright.  But the former soon
regained his self-possession, and while Angelique, still on her knees
before him, pressed his hands to her bosom, he forced her to raise
her head, and looking straight into her eyes, said--

"To-morrow, madame, if not this evening, he shall know everything,
and a meeting shall take place."

Then pushing her away, he strode towards the door.

"Oh!  how unhappy I am!" exclaimed Angelique.

She tried to rise and rush after him, but whether she was really
overcome by her feelings, or whether she felt the one chance of
prevailing left her was to faint, she uttered a heartrending cry, and
the chevalier had no choice but to support her sinking form.

De Jars, on seeing his nephew staggering under this burden, gave a
loud laugh, and hurried away.  Two minutes later he was once more at
the tavern in the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts.

"How's this?  Alone?" said Jeannin.

"Alone."

"What have you done with the chevalier?"

"I left him with our charmer, who was unconscious, overcome with
grief, exhausted Ha! ha! ha!  She fell fainting into his arms!  Ha!
ha! ha!"

"It's quite possible that the young rogue, being left with her in
such a condition, may cut me out."

"Do you think so?--Ha! ha! ha!"

And de Jars laughed so heartily and so infectiously that his worthy
friend was obliged to join in, and laughed till he choked.

In the short silence which followed the departure of the commander,
Maitre Quennebert could hear the widow still murmuring something, but
he was less disposed than ever to attend to her.

"On my word," said he, "the scene now going on is more curious than
all that went before.  I don't think that a man has ever found
himself in such a position as mine.  Although my interests demand
that I remain here and listen, yet my fingers are itching to box the
ears of that Chevalier de Moranges.  If there were only some way of
getting at a proof of all this!  Ah! now we shall hear something; the
hussy is coming to herself."

And indeed Angelique had opened her eyes and was casting wild looks
around her; she put her hand to her brow several times, as if trying
to recall clearly what had happened.

"Is he gone?" she exclaimed at last.  "Oh, why did you let him go?
You should not have minded me, but kept him here."

"Be calm," answered the chevalier, "be calm, for heaven's sake.  I
shall speak to my uncle and prevent his ruining your prospects.  Only
don't weep any more, your tears break my heart.  Ah, my God!  how
cruel it is to distress you so!  I should never be able to withstand
your tears; no matter what reason I had for anger, a look from you
would make me forgive you everything."

"Noble young man!" said Angelique.

"Idiot!" muttered Maitre Quennebert; "swallow the honey of his words,
do But how the deuce is it going to end?  Not Satan himself ever
invented such a situation."

"But then I could never believe you guilty without proof, irrefutable
proof; and even then a word from you would fill my mind with doubt
and uncertainty again.  Yes, were the whole world to accuse you and
swear to your guilt, I should still believe your simple word.  I am
young, madam, I have never known love as yet--until an instant ago I
had no idea that more quickly than an image can excite the admiration
of the eye, a thought can enter the heart and stir it to its depths,
and features that one may never again behold leave a lifelong memory
behind.  But even if a woman of whom I knew absolutely nothing were
to appeal to me, exclaiming, 'I implore your help, your protection!'
I should, without stopping to consider, place my sword and my arm at
her disposal, and devote myself to her service.  How much more
eagerly would I die for you, madam, whose beauty has ravished my
heart!  What do you demand of me?  Tell me what you desire me to do."

"Prevent this duel; don't allow an interview to take place between
your uncle and the man whom he mentioned.  Tell me you will do this,
and I shall be safe; for you have never learned to lie; I know."

"Of course he hasn't, you may be sure of that, you simpleton!"
muttered Maitre Quennebert in his corner.  "If you only knew what a
mere novice you are at that game compared with the chevalier!  If you
only knew whom you had before you!"

"At your age," went on Angelique, "one cannot feign--the heart is not
yet hardened, and is capable of compassion.  But a dreadful idea
occurs to me--a horrible suspicion!  Is it all a devilish trick--a
snare arranged in joke?  Tell me that it is not all a pretence!  A
poor woman encounters so much perfidy.  Men amuse themselves by
troubling her heart and confusing her mind; they excite her vanity,
they compass her round with homage, with flattery, with temptation,
and when they grow tired of fooling her, they despise and insult her.
Tell me, was this all a preconcerted plan?  This love, this jealousy,
were they only acted?"

"Oh, madame," broke in the chevalier, with an expression of the
deepest indignation, "how can you for an instant imagine that a human
heart could be so perverted?  I am not acquainted with the man whom
the commander accused you of loving, but whoever he may be I feel
sure that he is worthy of your love, and that he would never have
consented to such a dastardly joke.  Neither would my uncle; his
jealousy mastered him and drove him mad--

"But I am not dependent on him; I am my own master, and can do as I
please.  I will hinder this duel; I will not allow the illusion and
ignorance of him who loves you and, alas that I must say it, whom you
love, to be dispelled, for it is in them he finds his happiness.  Be
happy with him!  As for me, I shall never see you again; but the
recollection of this meeting, the joy of having served you, will be
my consolation."

Angelique raised her beautiful eyes, and gave the chevalier a long
look which expressed her gratitude more eloquently than words.

"May I be hanged!" thought Maitre Quennebert, "if the baggage isn't
making eyes at him already!  But one who is drowning clutches at a
straw."

"Enough, madam," said the chevalier; "I understand all you would say.
You thank me in his name, and ask me to leave you: I obey-yes,
madame, I am going; at the risk of my life I will prevent this
meeting, I will stifle this fatal revelation.  But grant me one last
prayer-permit me to look forward to seeing you once more before I
leave this city, to which I wish I had never come.  But I shall quit
it in a day or two, to-morrow perhaps--as soon as I know that your
happiness is assured.  Oh!  do not refuse my last request; let the
light of your eyes shine on me for the last time; after that I shall
depart--I shall fly far away for ever.  But if perchance, in spite of
every effort, I fail, if the commander's jealousy should make him
impervious to my entreaties--to my tears, if he whom you love should
come and overwhelm you with reproaches and then abandon you, would
you drive me from your presence if I should then say, 'I love you'?
Answer me, I beseech you."

"Go!" said she, "and prove worthy of my gratitude--or my love."

Seizing one of her hands, the chevalier covered it with passionate
kisses.

"Such barefaced impudence surpasses everything I could have
imagined!" murmured Quennebert: "fortunately, the play is over for
to-night; if it had gone on any longer, I should have done something
foolish.  The lady hardly imagines what the end of the comedy will
be."

Neither did Quennebert.  It was an evening of adventures.  It was
written that in the space of two hours Angelique was to run the gamut
of all the emotions, experience all the vicissitudes to which a life
such as she led is exposed: hope, fear, happiness, mortification,
falsehood, love that was no love, intrigue within intrigue, and, to
crown all, a totally unexpected conclusion.




CHAPTER V

The chevalier was still holding Angelique's hand when a step
resounded outside, and a voice was heard.

"Can it be that he has come back?" exclaimed the damsel, hastily
freeing herself from the passionate embrace of the chevalier.  "It's
not possible!  Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu! it's his voice!"

She grew pale to the lips, and stood staring at the door with
outstretched arms, unable to advance or recede.

The chevalier listened, but felt sure the approaching voice belonged
neither to the commander nor to the treasurer.

"'His voice'?" thought Quennebert to himself.  "Can this be yet
another aspirant to her favour?"

The sound came nearer.

"Hide yourself!" said Angelique, pointing to a door opposite to the
partition behind which the widow and the notary were ensconced.
"Hide yourself there!--there's a secret staircase--you can get out
that way."

"I hide myself!" exclaimed Moranges, with a swaggering air.  "What
are you thinking of?  I remain."

It would have been better for him to have followed her advice, as may
very well have occurred to the youth two minutes later, as a tall,
muscular young man entered in a state of intense excitement.
Angelique rushed to meet him, crying--

"Ah!  Monsieur le duc, is it you?"

"What is this I hear, Angelique?" said the Duc de Vitry.  "I was told
below that three men had visited you this evening; but only two have
gone out--where is the third?  Ha!  I do not need long to find him,"
he added, as he caught sight of the chevalier, who stood his ground
bravely enough.

"In Heaven's name!" cried Angelique,--"in Heaven's name, listen to
me!"

"No, no, not a word.  Just now I am not questioning you.  Who are
you, sir?"

The chevalier's teasing and bantering disposition made him even at
that critical moment insensible to fear, so he retorted insolently

"Whoever I please to be, sir; and on my word I find the tone in which
you put your question delightfully amusing."

The duke sprang forward in a rage, laying his hand on his sword.
Angelique tried in vain to restrain him.

"You want to screen him from my vengeance, you false one!" said he,
retreating a few steps, so as to guard the door.  "Defend your life,
sir!"

"Do you defend yours!"

Both drew at the same moment.

Two shrieks followed, one in the room, the other behind the tapestry,
for neither Angelique nor the widow had been able to restrain her
alarm as the two swords flashed in air.  In fact the latter had been
so frightened that she fell heavily to the floor in a faint.

This incident probably saved the young man's life; his blood had
already begun to run cold at the sight of his adversary foaming with
rage and standing between him and the door, when the noise of the
fall distracted the duke's attention.

"What was that?" he cried.  "Are there other enemies concealed here
too?  "And forgetting that he was leaving a way of escape free, he
rushed in the direction from which the sound came, and lunged at the
tapestry-covered partition with his sword.  Meantime the chevalier,
dropping all his airs of bravado, sprang from one end of the room to
the other like a cat pursued by a dog; but rapid as were his
movements, the duke perceived his flight, and dashed after him at the
risk of breaking both his own neck and the chevalier's by a chase
through unfamiliar rooms and down stairs which were plunged in
darkness.

All this took place in a few seconds, like a flash of lightning.
Twice, with hardly any interval, the street door opened and shut
noisily, and the two enemies were in the street, one pursued and the
other pursuing.

"My God!  Just to think of all that has happened is enough to make
one die of fright!" said Mademoiselle de Guerchi.  "What will come
next, I should like to know?  And what shall I say to the duke when
he comes back?"

Just at this instant a loud cracking sound was heard in the room.
Angelique stood still, once more struck with terror, and recollecting
the cry she had heard.  Her hair, which was already loosened, escaped
entirely from its bonds, and she felt it rise on her head as the
figures on the tapestry moved and bent towards her.  Falling on her
knees and closing her eyes, she began to invoke the aid of God and
all the saints.  But she soon felt herself raised by strong arms, and
looking round, she found herself in the presence of an unknown man,
who seemed to have issued from the ground or the walls, and who,
seizing the only light left unextinguished in the scuffle, dragged
her more dead than alive into the next room.

This man was, as the reader will have already guessed, Maitre
Quennebert.  As soon as the chevalier and the duke had disappeared,
the notary had run towards the corner where the widow lay, and having
made sure that she was really unconscious, and unable to see or hear
anything, so that it would be quite safe to tell her any story he
pleased next day, he returned to his former position, and applying
his shoulder to the partition, easily succeeded in freeing the ends
of the rotten laths from the nails which held there, and, pushing
them before him, made an aperture large enough to allow of his
passing through into the next apartment.  He applied himself to this
task with such vigour, and became so absorbed in its accomplishment,
that he entirely forgot the bag of twelve hundred livres which the
widow had given him.

"Who are you?  What do you want with me?" cried Mademoiselle de
Guerchi, struggling to free herself.

"Silence!" was Quennebert's answer.

"Don't kill me, for pity's sake!"

"Who wants to kill you?  But be silent; I don't want your shrieks to
call people here.  I must be alone with you for a few moments.  Once
more I tell you to be quiet, unless you want me to use violence.  If
you do what I tell you, no harm shall happen to you."

"But who are you, monsieur?"

"I am neither a burglar nor a murderer; that's all you need to know;
the rest is no concern of yours.  Have you writing materials at
hand?"

"Yes, monsieur; there they are, on that table."

"Very well.  Now sit down at the table."

"Why?"

"Sit down, and answer my questions."

"The first man who visited you this evening was M. Jeannin, was he
not?"

"Yes, M. Jeannin de Castille."

"The king's treasurer?"

"Yes."

"All right.  The second was Commander de Jars, and the young man he
brought with him was his nephew, the Chevalier de Moranges.  The last
comer was a duke; am I not right?"

"The Duc de Vitry."

"Now write from my dictation."

He spoke very slowly, and Mademoiselle de Guerchi, obeying his
commands, took up her pen.

"'To-day,'" dictated Quennebert,--"'to-day, this twentieth day of the
month of November, in the year of the Lord 1658, I--

"What is your full name?"

"Angelique-Louise de Guerchi."

"Go on!  'I, Angelique-Louise de Guerchi, was visited, in the rooms
which--I occupy, in the mansion of the Duchesse d'Etampes, corner of
the streets Git-le-Coeur and du Hurepoix, about half-past seven
o'clock in the evening, in the first place, by Messire Jeannin de
Castille, King's Treasurer; in the second place, by Commander de
Jars, who was accompanied by a young man, his nephew, the Chevalier
de Moranges; in the third place, after the departure of Commander de
Jars, and while I was alone with the Chevalier de Moranges, by the
Duc de Vitry, who drew his sword upon the said chevalier and forced
him to take flight.'

"Now put in a line by itself, and use capitals

"'DESCRIPTION OF THE CHEVALIER DE MORANGES."

"But I only saw him for an instant," said Angelique, "and I can't
recall----

"Write, and don't talk.  I can recall everything, and that is all
that is wanted."

"'Height about five feet.' The chevalier," said Quennebert,
interrupting himself, "is four feet eleven inches three lines and a
half, but I don't need absolute exactness."  Angelique gazed at him
in utter stupefaction.

"Do you know him, then?" she asked.

"I saw him this evening for the first time, but my eye is very
accurate.

"'Height about five feet; hair black, eyes ditto, nose aquiline,
mouth large, lips compressed, forehead high, face oval, complexion
pale, no beard.'

"Now another line, and in capitals:

"'SPECIAL MARKS.'

"'A small mole on the neck behind the right ear, a smaller mole on
the left hand.'

"Have you written that?  Now sign it with your full name."

"What use are you going to make of this paper?"

"I should have told you before, if I had desired you to know.  Any
questions are quite useless.  I don't enjoin secrecy on you,
however," added the notary, as he folded the paper and put it into
his doublet pocket.  "You are quite free to tell anyone you like
that you have written the description of the Chevalier de Moranges at
the dictation of an unknown man, who got into your room you don't
know how, by the chimney or through the ceiling perhaps, but who was
determined to leave it by a more convenient road.  Is there not a
secret staircase?  Show me where it is.  I don't want to meet anyone
on my way out."

Angelique pointed out a door to him hidden by a damask curtain, and
Quennebert saluting her, opened it and disappeared, leaving Angelique
convinced that she had seen the devil in person.  Not until the next
day did the sight of the displaced partition explain the apparition,
but even then so great was her fright, so deep was the terror which
the recollection of the mysterious man inspired, that despite the
permission to tell what had happened she mentioned her adventure to
no one, and did not even complain to her neighbour, Madame Rapally,
of the inquisitiveness which had led the widow to spy on her actions.





CHAPTER VI

We left de Jars and Jeannin, roaring with laughter, in the tavern in
the rue Saint Andre-des-Arts.

"What!" said the treasurer, "do you really think that Angelique
thought I was in earnest in my offer?--that she believes in all good
faith I intend to marry her?"

"You may take my word for it.  If it were not so, do you imagine she
would have been in such desperation?  Would she have fainted at my
threat to tell you that I had claims on her as well as you?  To get
married!  Why, that is the goal of all such creatures, and there is
not one of them who can understand why a man of honour should blush
to give her his name.  If you had only seen her terror, her tears!
They would have either broken your heart or killed you with
laughter."

"Well," said Jeannin, "it is getting late.  Are we going to wait for
the chevalier?"

"Let us call, for him."

"Very well.  Perhaps he has made up his mind to stay.  If so, we
shall make a horrible scene, cry treachery and perjury, and trounce
your nephew well.  Let's settle our score and be off."

They left the wine-shop, both rather the worse for the wine they had
so largely indulged in.  They felt the need of the cool night air, so
instead of going down the rue Pavee they resolved to follow the rue
Saint-Andre-des-Arts as far as the Pont Saint-Michel, so as to reach
the mansion by a longer route.

At the very moment the commander got up to leave the tavern the
chevalier had run out of the mansion at the top of his speed.  It was
not that he had entirely lost his courage, for had he found it
impossible to avoid his assailant it is probable that he would have
regained the audacity which had led him to draw his sword.  But he
was a novice in the use of arms, had not reached full physical
development, and felt that the chances were so much against him that
he would only have faced the encounter if there were no possible way
of escape.  On leaving the house he had turned quickly into the rue
Git-le-Coeur; but on hearing the door close behind his pursuer he
disappeared down the narrow and crooked rue de l'Hirondelle, hoping
to throw the Duc de Vitry off the scent.  The duke, however, though
for a moment in doubt, was guided by the sound of the flying
footsteps.  The chevalier, still trying to send him off on a false
trail, turned to the right, and so regained the upper end of the rue
Saint-Andre, and ran along it as far as the church, the site of which
is occupied by the square of the same name to-day.  Here he thought
he would be safe, for, as the church was being restored and enlarged,
heaps of stone stood all round the old pile.  He glided in among
these, and twice heard Vitry searching quite close to him, and each
time stood on guard expecting an onslaught.  This marching and
counter-marching lasted for some minutes; the chevalier began to hope
he had escaped the danger, and eagerly waited for the moment when the
moon which had broken through the clouds should again withdraw behind
them, in order to steal into some of the adjacent streets under cover
of the darkness.  Suddenly a shadow rose before him and a threatening
voice cried--

" Have I caught you at last, you coward?"

The danger in which the chevalier stood awoke in him a flickering
energy, a feverish courage, and he crossed blades with his assailant.
A strange combat ensued, of which the result was quite uncertain,
depending entirely on chance; for no science was of any avail on a
ground so rough that the combatants stumbled at every step, or struck
against immovable masses, which were one moment clearly lit up, and
the next in shadow.  Steel clashed on steel, the feet of the
adversaries touched each other, several times the cloak of one was
pierced by the sword of the other, more than once the words "Die
then!" rang out.  But each time the seemingly vanquished combatant
sprang up unwounded, as agile and as lithe and as quick as ever,
while he in his turn pressed the enemy home.  There was neither truce
nor pause, no clever feints nor fencer's tricks could be employed on
either side; it was a mortal combat, but chance, not skill, would
deal the death-blow.  Sometimes a rapid pass encountered only empty
air; sometimes blade crossed blade above the wielders' heads;
sometimes the fencers lunged at each other's breast, and yet the
blows glanced aside at the last moment and the blades met in air once
more.  At last, however, one of the two, making a pass to the right
which left his breast unguarded, received a deep wound.  Uttering a
loud cry, he recoiled a step or two, but, exhausted by the effort,
tripped arid fell backward over a large stone, and lay there
motionless, his arms extended in the form of a cross.

The other turned and fled.

"Hark, de Jars!" said Jeannin, stopping, "There's fighting going on
hereabouts; I hear the clash of swords."

Both listened intently.

"I hear nothing now."

"Hush!  there it goes again.  It's by the church."

"What a dreadful cry!"

They ran at full speed towards the place whence it seemed to come,
but found only solitude, darkness, and silence.  They looked in every
direction.

"I can't see a living soul," said Jeannin, "and I very much fear that
the poor devil who gave that yell has mumbled his last prayer,"

"I don't know why I tremble so," replied de Jars; "that heart-rending
cry made me shiver from head to foot.  Was it not something like the
chevalier's voice?"

"The chevalier is with La Guerchi, and even if he had left her this
would not have been his way to rejoin us.  Let us go on and leave the
dead in peace."

"Look, Jeannin!  what is that in front of us?"

"On that stone?  A man who has fallen!"

"Yes, and bathed in blood," exclaimed de Jars, who had darted to his
side.  "Ah! it's he! it's he!  Look, his eyes are closed, his hands
cold!  My child he does not hear me!  Oh, who has murdered him?"

He fell on his knees, and threw himself on the body with every mark
of the most violent despair.

"Come, come," said Jeannin, surprised at such an explosion of grief
from a man accustomed to duels, and who on several similar occasions
had been far from displaying much tenderness of heart, "collect
yourself, and don't give way like a woman.  Perhaps the wound is not
mortal.  Let us try to stop the bleeding and call for help."

"No, no--"

"Are you mad?"

"Don't call, for Heaven's sake!  The wound is here, near the heart.
Your handkerchief, Jeannin, to arrest the flow of blood.  There--now
help me to lift him."

"What does that mean?" cried Jeannin, who had just laid his hand on
the chevalier.  "I don't know whether I'm awake or asleep!  Why, it's
a---"

"Be silent, on your life!  I shall explain everything--but now be
silent; there is someone looking at us."

There was indeed a man wrapped in a mantle standing motionless some
steps away.

"What are you doing here?" asked de Jars.

"May I ask what you are doing, gentlemen?" retorted Maitre
Quennebert, in a calm and steady voice.

"Your curiosity may cost you dear, monsieur; we are not in the habit
of allowing our actions to be spied on."

"And I am not in the habit of running useless risks, most noble
cavaliers.  You are, it is true, two against one; but," he added,
throwing back his cloak and grasping the hilts of a pair of pistols
tucked in his belt, "these will make us equal.  You are mistaken as
to my intentions.  I had no thought of playing the spy; it was chance
alone that led me here; and you must acknowledge that finding you in
this lonely spot, engaged as you are at this hour of the night, was
quite enough to awake the curiosity of a man as little disposed to
provoke a quarrel as to submit to threats."

"It was chance also that brought us here.  We were crossing the
square, my friend and I, when we heard groans.  We followed the
sound, and found this young gallant, who is a stranger to us, lying
here, with a wound in his breast."

As the moon at that moment gleamed doubtfully forth, Maitre
Quennebert bent for an instant over the body of the wounded man, and
said:

"I know him more than you.  But supposing someone were to come upon
us here, we might easily be taken for three assassins holding a
consultation over the corpse of our victim.  What were you going to
do?"

"Take him to a doctor.  It would be inhuman to leave him here, and
while we are talking precious time is being lost."

"Do you belong to this neighbourhood?"

"No," said the treasurer.

"Neither do I," said Quennebert.  "but I believe I have heard the
name of a surgeon who lives close by, in the rue Hauteville."

"I also know of one," interposed de Jars, "a very skilful man."

"You may command me."

"Gladly, monsieur; for he lives some distance from here."

"I am at your service."

De Jars and Jeannin raised the chevalier's shoulders, and the
stranger supported his legs, and carrying their burden in this order,
they set off.

They walked slowly, looking about them carefully, a precaution
rendered necessary by the fact that the moon now rode in a cloudless
sky.  They glided over the Pont Saint-Michel between the houses that
lined both sides, and, turning to the right, entered one of the
narrow streets of the Cite, and after many turnings, during which
they met no one, they stopped at the door of a house situated behind
the Hotel-de-Ville.

"Many thanks, monsieur," said de Jars,--"many thanks; we need no
further help."

As the commander spoke, Maitre Quennebert let the feet of the
chevalier fall abruptly on the pavement, while de Jars and the
treasurer still supported his body, and, stepping back two paces, he
drew his pistols from his belt, and placing a finger on each trigger,
said--

"Do not stir, messieurs, or you are dead men."  Both, although
encumbered by their burden, laid their hands upon their swords.

"Not a movement, not a sound, or I shoot."

There was no reply to this argument, it being a convincing one even
for two duellists.  The bravest man turns pale when he finds himself
face to face with sudden inevitable death, and he who threatened
seemed to be one who would, without hesitation, carry out his
threats.  There was nothing for it but obedience, or a ball through
them as they stood.

"What do you want with us, sir?" asked Jeannin.

Quennebert, without changing his attitude, replied--

"Commander de Jars, and you, Messire Jeannin de Castille, king's
treasurer,--you see, my gentles, that besides the advantage of arms
which strike swiftly and surely, I have the further advantage of
knowing who you are, whilst I am myself unknown,--you will carry the
wounded man into this house, into which I will not enter, for I have
nothing to do within; but I shall remain here; to await your return.
After you have handed over the patient to the doctor, you will
procure paper and write---now pay great attention--that on November
20th, 1658, about midnight, you, aided by an unknown man, carried to
this house, the address of which you will give, a young man whom you
call the Chevalier de Moranges, and pass off as your nephew--"

"As he really is."

"Very well."

"But who told you--?"

"Let me go on: who had been wounded in a fight with swords on the
same night behind the church of Saint-Andre-des-Arts by the Duc de
Vitry."

"The Duc de Vitry!--How do you know that?"

"No matter how, I know it for a fact.  Having made this declaration,
you will add that the said Chevalier de Moranges is no other than
Josephine-Charlotte Boullenois, whom you, commander, abducted four
months ago from the convent of La Raquette, whom you have made your
mistress, and whom you conceal disguised as a man; then you will add
your signature.  Is my information correct?"

De Jars and Jeannin were speechless with surprise for a few instants;
then the former stammered--

"Will you tell us who you are?"

"The devil in person, if you like.  Well, will you do as I order?
Supposing that I am awkward enough not to kill you at two paces, do
you want me to ask you in broad daylight and aloud what I now ask at
night and in a whisper?  And don't think to put me off with a false
declaration, relying on my not being able to read it by the light of
the moon; don't think either that you can take me by surprise when
you hand it me: you will bring it to me with your swords sheathed as
now.  If this condition is not observed, I shall fire, and the noise
will bring a crowd about us.  To-morrow I shall speak differently
from to-day: I shall proclaim the truth at all the street corners, in
the squares, and under the windows of the Louvre.  It is hard, I
know, for men of spirit to yield to threats, but recollect that you
are in my power and that there is no disgrace in paying a ransom for
a life that one cannot defend.  What do you say?"

In spite of his natural courage, Jeannin, who found himself involved
in an affair from which he had nothing to gain, and who was not at
all desirous of being suspected of having helped in an abduction,
whispered to the commander--

"Faith!  I think our wisest course is to consent."

De Jars, however, before replying, wished to try if he could by any
chance throw his enemy off his guard for an instant, so as to take
him unawares.  His hand still rested on the hilt of his sword,
motionless, but ready to draw.

"There is someone coming over yonder," he cried,--"do you hear?"

"You can't catch me in that way," said Quennebert.  "Even were there
anyone coming, I should not look round, and if you move your hand all
is over with you."

"Well," said Jeannin, "I surrender at discretion--not on my own
account, but out of regard for my friend and this woman.  However, we
are entitle to some pledge of your silence.  This statement that you
demand, once written,--you can ruin us tomorrow by its means."

"I don't yet know what use I shall make of it, gentlemen.  Make up
your minds, or you will have nothing but a dead body to place--in the
doctor's hands.  There is no escape for you."

For the first time the wounded man faintly groaned.

"I must save her!" cried de Jars,--"I yield."

"And I swear upon my honour that I will never try to get this woman
out of your hands, and that I will never interfere with your
conquest.  Knock, gentlemen, and remain as long as may be necessary.
I am patient.  Pray to God, if you will, that she may recover; my one
desire is that she may die."

They entered the house, and Quennebert, wrapping himself once more in
his mantle, walked up and down before it, stopping to listen from
time to time.  In about two hours the commander and the treasurer
came out again, and handed him a written paper in the manner agreed
on.

"I greatly fear that it will be a certificate of death," said de
Jars.

"Heaven grant it, commander!  Adieu, messieurs."

He then withdrew, walking backwards, keeping the two friends covered
with his pistols until he had placed a sufficient distance between
himself and them to be out of danger of an attack.

The two gentlemen on their part walked rapidly away, looking round
from time to time, and keeping their ears open.  They were very much
mortified at having been forced to let a mere boor dictate to them,
and anxious, especially de Jars, as to the result of the wound.




CHAPTER VII

On the day following this extraordinary series of adventures,
explanations between those who were mixed up in them, whether as
actors or spectators, were the order of the day.  It was not till
Maitre Quennebert reached the house of the friend who had offered to
put him up for the night that it first dawned on him, that the
interest which the Chevalier de Moranges had awakened in his mind had
made him utterly forget the bag containing the twelve hundred livres
which he owed to the generosity of the widow.  This money being
necessary to him, he went back to her early next morning.  He found
her hardly recovered from her terrible fright.  Her swoon had lasted
far beyond the time when the notary had left the house; and as
Angelique, not daring to enter the bewitched room, had taken refuge
in the most distant corner of her apartments, the feeble call of the
widow was heard by no one.  Receiving no answer, Madame Rapally
groped her way into the next room, and finding that empty, buried
herself beneath the bedclothes, and passed the rest of the night
dreaming of drawn swords, duels, and murders.  As soon as it was
light she ventured into the mysterious room once more; without
calling her servants, and found the bag of crowns lying open on the
floor, with the coins scattered all around, the partition broken, and
the tapestry hanging from it in shreds.  The widow was near fainting
again: she imagined at first she saw stains of blood everywhere, but
a closer inspection having somewhat reassured her, she began to pick
up the coins that had rolled  to right and left, and was agreeably
surprised to  find the tale complete.  But how and why had Maitre
Quennebert abandoned them?  What had become of him?  She had got lost
in the most absurd  suppositions and conjectures when the notary
appeared.  Discovering from the first words she uttered that she was
in complete ignorance of all that had taken place, he explained to
her that when the interview between the chevalier and Mademoiselle
de Guerchi had just at the most interesting moment been so
unceremoniously interrupted by the arrival of the duke, he had become
so absorbed in  watching them that he had not noticed that the
partition was bending before the pressure of his body, and that just
as the duke drew his sword it suddenly gave way, and he, Quennebert,
being thus left without support, tumbled head foremost into the next
room, among a perfect chaos of overturned furniture and lamps; that
almost before he could rise he was forced to draw in self-defence,
and had to make his escape, defending himself against both the duke
and the chevalier; that they had pursued him so hotly, that when he
found himself free he was too far from the house and the hour was too
advanced to admit of his returning, Quennebert added innumerable
protestations of friendship, devotion, and gratitude, and, furnished
with his twelve hundred crowns, went away, leaving the widow
reassured as to his safety, but still shaken from her fright.

While the notary was thus soothing the widow, Angelique was
exhausting all the expedients her trade had taught her in the attempt
to remove the duke's suspicions.  She asserted she was the victim of
an unforeseen attack which nothing in her conduct had ever
authorised.  The young Chevalier de Moranges had, gained admittance,
she declared, under the pretext that he brought her news from the
duke, the one man who occupied her thoughts, the sole object of her
love.  The chevalier had seen her lover, he said, a few days before,
and by cleverly appealing to things back, he had led her to fear that
the duke had grown tired of her, and that a new conquest was the
cause of his absence.  She had not believed these insinuations,
although his long silence would have justified the most mortifying
suppositions, the most cruel doubts.  At length the chevalier had
grown bolder, and had declared his passion for her; whereupon she had
risen and ordered him to leave her.  Just at that moment the duke had
entered, and had taken the natural agitation and confusion of the
chevalier as signs of her guilt.  Some explanation was also necessary
to account for the presence of the two other visitors of whom he had
been told below stairs.  As he knew nothing at all about them, the
servant who admitted them never having seen either of them before,
she acknowledged that two gentlemen had called earlier in the
evening; that they had refused to send in their names, but as they
had said they had come to inquire about the duke, she suspected them
of having been in league with the chevalier in the attempt to ruin
her reputation, perhaps they had even promised to help him to carry
her off, but she knew nothing positive about them or their plans.
The duke, contrary to his wont, did not allow himself to be easily
convinced by these lame explanations, but unfortunately for him the
lady knew how to assume an attitude favourable to her purpose.  She
had been induced, she said, with the simple confidence born of love,
to listen to people who had led her to suppose they could give her
news of one so dear to her as the duke.  From this falsehood she
proceeded to bitter reproaches: instead of defending herself, she
accused him of having left her a prey to anxiety; she went so far as
to imply that there must be some foundation for the hints of the
chevalier, until at last the duke, although he was not guilty of the
slightest infidelity, and had excellent reasons to give in
justification of his silence, was soon reduced to a penitent mood,
and changed his threats into entreaties for forgiveness.  As to the
shriek he had heard, and which he was sure had been uttered by the
stranger who had forced his way into her room after the departure of
the others, she asserted that his ears must have deceived him.
Feeling that therein lay her best chance of making things smooth, she
exerted herself to convince him that there was no need for other
information than she could give, and did all she could to blot the
whole affair from his memory; and her success was such that at the
end of the interview the duke was more enamoured and more credulous
than ever, and believing he had done her wrong, he delivered himself
up to her, bound hand and foot.  Two days later he installed his
mistress in another dwelling....

Madame Rapally also resolved to give up her rooms, and removed to a
house that belonged to her, on the Pont Saint-Michel.

The commander took the condition of Charlotte Boullenois very much to
heart.  The physician under whose care he had placed her, after
examining  her wounds, had not given much hope of her recovery.  It
was not that de Jars was capable of a lasting love, but Charlotte was
young and possessed great beauty, and the  romance and mystery
surrounding their connection gave it piquancy.  Charlotte's disguise,
too, which enabled de Jars to conceal his success and yet flaunt it
in the face, as it were, of public morality and curiosity, charmed
him by its audacity, and above all he was carried away by the bold
and uncommon character of the girl, who, not content with  a prosaic
intrigue, had trampled underfoot all social prejudices and
proprieties, and plunged at once  into unmeasured and unrestrained
dissipation; the singular mingling in her nature of the vices of both
sexes; the unbridled licentiousness of the courtesan coupled with the
devotion of a man for horses, wine, and fencing; in short, her
eccentric character, as it would now be called, kept a passion alive
which would else have quickly died away in  his blase heart.  Nothing
would induce him to follow Jeannin's advice to leave Paris for at
least a few weeks, although he shared Jeannin's fear that the
statement they had been forced to give the stranger would bring them
into trouble.  The treasurer, who had no love affair on hand, went
off; but the commander bravely held his ground, and at the end of
five or six days, during which no one disturbed him, began to think
the only result of the incident would be the anxiety it had caused
him.

Every evening as soon as it was dark he betook himself to the
doctor's, wrapped in his cloak, armed to the teeth, and his hat
pulled down over his eyes.  For two days and nights, Charlotte, whom
to avoid confusion we shall continue to call the Chevalier de
Moranges, hovered between life and death.  Her youth and the strength
of her constitution enabled her at last to overcome the fever, in
spite of the want of skill of the surgeon Perregaud.

Although de Jars was the only person who visited the chevalier, he
was not the only one who was anxious about the patient's health.
Maitre Quennebert, or men engaged by him to watch, for he did not
want to attract attention, were always prowling about the
neighbourhood, so that he was kept well informed of everything that
went on: The instructions he gave to these agents were, that if a
funeral should leave the house, they were to find out the name of the
deceased, and then to let him know without delay.  But all these
precautions seemed quite useless: he always received the same answer
to all his questions, "We know nothing."  So at last he determined to
address himself directly to the man who could give him information on
which he could rely.

One night the commander left the surgeon's feeling more cheerful than
usual, for the chevalier had passed a good day, and there was every
hope that he was on the road to complete recovery.  Hardly had de
Jars gone twenty paces when someone laid a hand on his shoulder.  He
turned and saw a man whom, in the darkness, he did not recognise.

"Excuse me for detaining you, Commander de Jars," said Quennebert,
"but I have a word to say to you."

"Ali! so it's you, sir," replied the commander.  "Are you going at
last to give me the opportunity I was so anxious for?"

"I don't understand."

"We are on more equal terms this time; to-day you don't catch me
unprepared, almost without weapons, and if you are a man of honour
you will measure swords with me."

"Fight a duel with you! why, may I ask?  You have never insulted me."

"A truce to pleasantry, sir; don't make me regret that I have shown
myself more generous than you.  I might have killed you just now had
I wished.  I could have put my pistol to your breast and fired, or
said to you, 'Surrender at discretion!' as you so lately said to me."

"And what use would that have been?"

"It would have made a secret safe that you ought never to have
known."

"It would have been the most unfortunate thing for you that could
have happened, for if you had killed me the paper would have spoken.
So!  you think that if you were to assassinate me you would only have
to stoop over my dead body and search my pockets, and, having found
the incriminating document, destroy it.  You seem to have formed no
very high opinion of my intelligence and common sense.  You of the
upper classes don't need these qualities, the law is on, your side.
But when a humble individual like myself, a mere nobody, undertakes
to investigate a piece of business about which those in authority are
not anxious to be enlightened, precautions are necessary.  It's not
enough for him to have right on his side, he must, in order to secure
his own safety, make good use of his skill, courage, and knowledge.
I have no desire to humiliate you a second time, so I will say no
more.  The paper is in the hands of my notary, and if a single day
passes without his seeing me he has orders to break the seal and make
the contents public.  So you see chance is still on my side.  But now
that you are warned there is no need for me to bluster.  I am quite
prepared to acknowledge your superior rank, and if you insist upon
it, to speak to you uncovered."

"What do you desire to know, sir?"

"How is the Chevalier de Moranges getting on?"

"Very badly, very badly."

"Take care, commander; don't deceive me.  One is so easily tempted to
believe what one hopes, and I hope so strongly that I dare not
believe what you say.  I saw you coming out of the house, not at all
with the air of a man who had just heard bad news, (quite the
contrary) you looked at the sky, and rubbed your hands, and walked
with a light, quick step, that did not speak of grief."

"You're a sharp observer, sir."

"I have already explained to you, sir, that when one of us belonging
to a class hardly better than serfs succeeds by chance or force of
character in getting out of the narrow bounds in which he was born,
he must keep both eyes and ears open.  If I had doubted your word as
you have doubted mine on the merest suspicion, you would have said to
your servants, 'Chastise this rascal.'  But I am obliged to prove to
you that you did not tell me the truth.  Now I am sure that the
chevalier is out of danger."

"If you were so well informed why did you ask me?"

"I only knew it by your asserting the contrary."

"What do you mean?" cried de Jars, who was growing restive under this
cold, satirical politeness.

"Do me justice, commander.  The bit chafes, but yet you must
acknowledge that I have a light hand.  For a full week you have been
in my power.  Have I disturbed your quiet?  Have I betrayed your
secret?  You know I have not.  And I shall continue to act in the
same manner.  I hope with all my heart, however great would be your
grief; that the chevalier may die of his wound.  I have not the same
reasons for loving him that you have, so much you can readily
understand, even if I do not explain the cause of my interest in his
fate.  But in such a matter hopes count for nothing; they cannot make
his temperature either rise or fall.  I have told you I have no wish
to force the chevalier to resume his real name.  I may make use of
the document and I may not, but if I am obliged to use it I shall
give you warning.  Will you, in return, swear to me upon your honour
that you will keep me informed as to the fate of the chevalier,
whether you remain in Paris or whether you leave?  But let this
agreement be a secret between us, and do not mention it to the
so-called Moranges."

"I have your oath, monsieur, that you will give me notice before you
use the document I have given you against me, have I?  But what
guarantee have I that you will keep your word?"

"My course of action till to-day, and the fact that I have pledged
you my word of my own free will."

"I see, you hope not to have long to wait for the end."

"I hope not; but meantime a premature disclosure would do me as much
harm as you.  I have not the slightest rancour against you,
commander; you have robbed me of no treasure; I have therefore no
compensation to demand.  What you place such value on would be only a
burden to me, as it will be to you later on.  All I want is, to know
as soon as it is no longer in your possession, whether it has been
removed by the will of God or by your own, I am right in thinking
that to-day there is some hope of the chevalier's recovery, am I
not?"

"Yes, Sir,"

"Do you give me your promise that if ever he leave this house safe
and sound you will let me know?"

"I give you my promise,"

"And if the result should be different, you will also send me word?"

"Certainly.  But to whom shall I address my message?"

"I should have thought that since our first meeting you would have
found out all about me, and that to tell you my name would be
superfluous.  But I have no reason to hide it: Maitre Quennebert,
notary, Saint-Denis.  I will not detain you any longer now,
commander; excuse a simple citizen for dictating conditions to a
noble such as you.  For once chance has been on my side although a
score of times it has gone against me."

De Jars made no reply except a nod, and walked away quickly,
muttering words of suppressed anger between his teeth at all the--
humiliations to which he had been obliged to submit so meekly.

"He's as insolent as a varlet who has no fear of a larruping before
his eyes: how the rapscallion gloried in taking advantage of his
position!  Taking-off his hat while putting his foot on my neck!  If
ever I can be even with you, my worthy scrivener, you'll pass a very
bad quarter of an hour, I can tell you."

Everyone has his own idea of what constitutes perfect honour.  De
Jars, for instance, would have allowed himself to be cut up into
little pieces rather than have broken the promise he had given
Quennebert a week ago, because it was given in exchange for his life,
and the slightest paltering with his word under those circumstances
would have been dastardly.  But the engagement into which he had just
entered had in his eyes no such moral sanction; he had not been
forced into it by threats, he had escaped by its means no serious
danger, and therefore in regard to it his conscience was much more
accommodating.  What he should best have liked to do, would have been
to have sought out the notary and provoked him by insults to send him
a challenge.

That a clown such as that could have any chance of leaving the ground
alive never entered his head.  But willingly as he would have
encompassed his death in this manner, the knowledge that his secret
would not die with Quennebert restrained him, for when everything
came out he felt that the notary's death would be regarded as an
aggravation of his original offence, and in spite of his rank he was
not at all certain that if he were put on his trial even now he would
escape scot free, much less if a new offence were added to the
indictment.  So, however much he might chafe against the bit, he felt
he must submit to the bridle.

"By God!" said he, "I know what the clodhopper is after; and even if
I must suffer in consequence, I shall take good care that he cannot
shake off his bonds.  Wait a bit!  I can play the detective too, and
be down on him without letting him see the hand that deals the blows.
It'll be a wonder if I can't find a naked sword to suspend above his
head."

However, while thus brooding over projects of vengeance, Commander de
Jars kept his word, and about a month after the interview above
related he sent word to Quennebert that the Chevalier de Moranges had
left Perregaud's completely recovered from his wound.  But the nearly
fatal result of the chevalier's last prank seemed to have subdued his
adventurous spirit; he was no longer seen in public, and was soon
forgotten by all his acquaintances with the exception of Mademoiselle
de Guerchi.  She faithfully treasured up the memory of his words of
passion, his looks of love, the warmth of his caresses, although at
first she struggled hard to chase his image from her heart.  But as
the Due de Vitry assured her that he had killed him on the spot, she
considered it no breach of faith to think lovingly of the dead, and
while she took the goods so bounteously provided by her living lover,
her gentlest thoughts, her most enduring regrets, were given to one
whom she never hoped to see again.




CHAPTER VIII

With the reader's permission, we must now jump over an interval of
rather more than a year, and bring upon the stage a person who,
though only of secondary importance, can no longer be left behind the
scenes.

We have already said that the loves of Quennebert and Madame Rapally
were regarded with a jealous eye by a distant cousin of the lady's
late husband.  The love of this rejected suitor, whose name was
Trumeau, was no more sincere than the notary's, nor were his motives
more honourable.  Although his personal appearance was not such as to
lead him to expect that his path would be strewn with conquests, he
considered that his charms at least equalled those of his defunct
relative; and it may be said that in thus estimating them he did not
lay himself--open to the charge of overweening vanity.  But however
persistently he preened him self before the widow, she vouchsafed him
not one glance.  Her heart was filled with the love of his rival, and
it is no easy thing to tear a rooted passion out of a widow's heart
when that widow's age is forty-six, and she is silly enough to
believe that the admiration she feels is equalled by the admiration
she inspires, as the unfortunate Trumeau found to his cost.  All his
carefully prepared declarations of love, all his skilful insinuations
against Quennebert, brought him nothing but scornful rebuffs.  But
Trumeau was nothing if not persevering, and he could not habituate
himself to the idea of seeing the widow's fortune pass into other
hands than his own, so that every baffled move only increased his
determination to spoil his competitor's game.  He was always on the
watch for a chance to carry tales to the widow, and so absorbed did
he become in this fruitless pursuit, that he grew yellower and more
dried up from day to day, and to his jaundiced eye the man who was at
first simply his rival became his mortal enemy and the object of his
implacable hate, so that at length merely to get the better of him,
to outwit him, would, after so long-continued and obstinate a
struggle and so many defeats, have seemed to him too mild a
vengeance, too incomplete a victory.

Quennebert was well aware of the zeal with which the indefatigable
Trumeau sought to injure him.  But he regarded the manoeuvres of his
rival with supreme unconcern, for he knew that he could at any time
sweep away the network of cunning machinations, underhand
insinuations, and malicious hints, which was spread around him, by
allowing the widow to confer on him the advantages she was so anxious
to bestow.  The goal, he knew, was within his reach, but the problem
he had to solve was how to linger on the way thither, how to defer
the triumphal moment, how to keep hope alive in the fair one's breast
and yet delay its fruition.  His affairs were in a bad way.  Day by
day full possession of the fortune thus dangled before his eyes, and
fragments of which came to him occasionally by way of loan, was
becoming more and more indispensable, and tantalising though it was,
yet he dared not put out his hand to seize it.  His creditors dunned
him relentlessly: one final reprieve had been granted him, but that
at an end, if he could not meet their demands, it was all up with his
career and reputation.

One morning in the beginning of February 1660, Trumeau called to see
his cousin.  He had not been there for nearly a month, and Quennebert
and the widow had begun to think that, hopeless of success, he had
retired from the contest.  But, far from that, his hatred had grown
more intense than ever, and having come upon the traces of an event
in the past life of his rival which if proved would be the ruin of
that rival's hopes, he set himself to gather evidence.  He now made
his appearance with beaming looks, which expressed a joy too great
for words.  He held in one hand a small scroll tied with a ribbon.
He found the widow alone, sitting in a large easy-chair before the
fire.  She was reading for the twentieth time a letter which
Quenriebert had written her the evening before.  To judge by the
happy and contented expression of the widow's face, it must have been
couched in glowing terms.  Trumeau guessed at once from whom the
missive came, but the sight of it, instead of irritating him, called
forth a smile.

"Ah!  so it's you, cousin?" said the widow, folding the precious
paper and slipping it into the bosom of her dress.  "How do you do?
It's a long time since I saw you, more than a fortnight, I think.
Have you been ill?"

"So you remarked my absence!  That is very flattering, my dear
cousin; you do not often spoil me by such attentions.  No, I have not
been ill, thank God, but I thought it better not to intrude upon you
so often.  A friendly call now and then such as to-day's is what you
like, is it not?  By the way, tell me about your handsome suitor,
Maitre Quennebert; how is he getting along?"

"You look very knowing, Trumeau: have you heard of anything
happening to him?"

"No, and I should be exceedingly sorry to hear that anything
unpleasant had happened to him."

Now you are not saying what you think, you know you can't bear him."

"Well, to speak the truth, I have no great reason to like him.  If it
were not for him, I should perhaps have been happy to-day; my love
might have moved your heart.  However, I have become resigned to my
loss, and since your choice has fallen on him,--and here he.
sighed,--"well, all I can say is, I hope you may never regret it."

"Many thanks for your goodwill, cousin; I am delighted to find you in
such a benevolent mood.  You must not be vexed because I could not
give you the kind of love you wanted; the heart, you know, is not
amenable to reason."

"There is only one thing I should like to ask."

"What is it?"

"I mention it for your good more than for my own.  If you want to be
happy, don't let this handsome quill-driver get you entirely into his
hands.  You are saying to yourself that because of my ill-success
with you I am trying to injure him; but what if I could prove that he
does not love you as much as he pretends--?"

"Come, come, control your naughty tongue!  Are you going to begin
backbiting again?  You are playing a mean part, Trumeau.  I have
never hinted to Maitre Quennebert all the nasty little ways in which
you have tried to put a spoke in his wheel, for if he knew he would
ask you to prove your words, and then you would look very foolish.".

"Not at all, I swear to you.  On the contrary, if I were to tell all
I know in his presence, it is not I who would be disconcerted.  Oh!
I am weary of meeting with nothing from you but snubs, scorn, and
abuse.  You think me a slanderer when I say, 'This gallant wooer of
widows does not love you for yourself but for your money-bags.  He
fools you by fine promises, but as to marrying you--never, never!'"

"May I ask you to repeat that?" broke in Madame Rapally,

"Oh! I know what I am saying.  You will never be Madame Quennebert."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Jealousy has eaten away whatever brains you used to possess,
Trumeau.  Since I saw you last, cousin, important changes have taken
place: I was just going to send you to-day an invitation to my
wedding."

"To your wedding?"

"Yes; I am to be married to-morrow."

"To-morrow?  To Quennebert?" stammered Trumeau.

"To Quennebert," repeated the widow in a tone of triumph.

"It's not possible!" exclaimed Trumeau.

"It is so possible that you will see us united tomorrow.  And for the
future I must beg of you to regard Quennebert no longer as a rival
but as my husband, whom to offend will be to offend me."

The tone in which these words were spoken no longer left room for
doubt as to the truth of the news.  Trumeau looked down for a few
moments, as if reflecting deeply before definitely making up his
mind.  He twisted the little roll of papers between his fingers, and
seemed to be in doubt whether to open it and give it to Madame
Rapally to read or not.  In the end, however, he put it in his
pocket, rose, and approaching his cousin, said--

"I beg your pardon, this news completely changes my opinion.  From
the moment Maitre Quennebert becomes your husband I shall not have a
word to say against him.  My suspicions were unjust, I confess it
frankly, and I hope that in consideration of the motives which
prompted me you will forget the warmth of my attacks.  I shall make
no protestations, but shall let the future show how sincere is my
devotion to your interests."

Madame Rapally was too happy, too certain of being loved, not to
pardon easily.  With the self-complacency and factitious generosity
of a woman who feels herself the object of two violent passions, she
was so good as to feel pity for the lover who was left out in the
cold, and offered him her hand.  Trumeau kissed it with every outward
mark of respect, while his lips curled unseen in a smite of mockery.
The cousins parted, apparently the best of friends, and on the
understanding that Trumeau would be present at the nuptial
benediction, which was to be given in a church beyond the town hall,
near the house in which the newly-married couple were to live; the
house on the Pont Saint-Michel having lately been sold to great
advantage.

"On my word," said Trumeau, as he went off, "it would have been a
great mistake to have spoken.  I have got that wretch of a Quennebert
into my clutches at last; and there is nobody but himself to blame.
He is taking the plunge of his own free will, there is no need for me
to shove him off the precipice."

The ceremony took place next day.  Quennebert conducted his
interesting bride to the altar, she hung with ornaments like the
shrine of a saint, and, beaming all over with smiles, looked so
ridiculous that the handsome bridegroom reddened to the roots of his
hair with shame.  Just as they entered the church, a coffin, on which
lay a sword, and which was followed by a single mourner, who from his
manners and dress seemed to belong to the class of nobles, was
carried in by the same door.  The wedding guests drew back to let the
funeral pass on, the living giving precedence to the dead.  The
solitary mourner glanced by chance at Quennebert, and started as if
the sight of him was painful.

"What an unlucky meeting!" murmured Madame Rapally; "it is sure to be
a bad omen."

"It's sure to be the exact opposite," said Quennebert smiling.

The two ceremonies took place simultaneously in two adjoining
chapels; the funeral dirges which fell on the widow's ear full of
sinister prediction seemed to have quite another meaning for
Quennebert, for his features lost their look of care, his wrinkles
smoothed themselves out, till the guests, among whom was Trumeau, who
did not suspect the secret of his relief from suspense, began to
believe, despite their surprise, that he was really rejoiced at
obtaining legal possession of the charming Madame Rapally.

As for her, she fleeted the daylight hours by anticipating the joyful
moment when she would have her husband all to herself.  When night
came, hardly had she entered the nuptial chamber than she uttered a
piercing shriek.  She had just found and read a paper left on the bed
by Trumeau, who before leaving had contrived to glide into the room
unseen.  Its contents were of terrible import, so terrible that the
new-made wife fell unconscious to the ground.

Quennebert, who, without a smile, was absorbed in reflections on the
happiness at last within his grasp, heard the noise from the next
room, and rushing in, picked up his wife.  Catching sight of the
paper, he also uttered a cry of anger and astonishment, but in
whatever circumstances he found himself he was never long uncertain
how to act.  Placing Madame Quennebert, still unconscious, on the
bed, he called her maid, and, having impressed on her that she was to
take every care of her mistress, and above all to tell her from him
as soon as she came to herself that there was no cause for alarm, he
left the house at once.  An hour later, in spite of the efforts of
the servants, he forced his way into the presence of Commander de
Jars.  Holding out the fateful document to him, he said:

"Speak openly, commander!  Is it you who in revenge for your long
constraint have done this?  I can hardly think so, for after what has
happened you know that I have nothing to fear any longer.  Still,
knowing my secret and unable to do it in any other way, have you
perchance taken your revenge by an attempt to destroy my future
happiness by sowing dissension and disunion between me and my wife?"

The commander solemnly assured him that he had had no hand in
bringing about the discovery.

'Then if it's not you, it must be a worthless being called Trumeau,
who, with the unerring instinct of jealousy, has run the truth to
earth.  But he knows only half: I have never been either so much in
love or so stupid as to allow myself to be trapped.  I have given you
my promise to be discreet and not to misuse my power, and as long as
was compatible with my own safety I have kept my word.  But now you
must see that I am bound to defend myself, and to do that I shall be
obliged to summon you as a witness.  So leave Paris tonight and seek
out some safe retreat where no one can find you, for to-morrow I
shall speak.  Of course if I am quit for a woman's tears, if no more
difficult task lies before me than to soothe a weeping wife, you can
return immediately; but if, as is too probable, the blow has been
struck by the hand of a rival furious at having been defeated, the
matter will not so easily be cut short; the arm of the law will be
invoked, and then I must get my head out of the noose which some
fingers I know of are itching to draw tight."

"You are quite right, sir," answered the commander; "I fear that my
influence at court is not strong enough to enable me to brave the
matter out.  Well, my success has cost me dear, but it has cured me
for ever of seeking out similar adventures.  My preparations will not
take long, and to-morrow's dawn will find me far from Paris."

Quennebert bowed and withdrew, returning home to console his Ariadne.




CHAPTER IX

The accusation hanging over the head of Maitre Quennebert was a very
serious one, threatening his life, if proved.  But he was not uneasy;
he knew himself in possession of facts which would enable him to
refute it triumphantly.

The platonic love of Angelique de Guerchi for the handsome Chevalier
de Moranges had resulted, as we have seen, in no practical wrong to
the Duc de Vitry.  After her reconciliation with her lover, brought
about by the eminently satisfactory explanations she was able to give
of her conduct, which we have already laid before our readers, she
did not consider it advisable to shut her heart to his pleadings much
longer, and the consequence was that at the end of a year she found
herself in a condition which it was necessary to conceal from
everyone.  To Angelique herself, it is true, the position was not
new, and she felt neither grief nor shame, regarding the coming event
as a means of making her future more secure by forging a new link in
the chain which bound the duke to her.  But he, sure that but for
himself  Angelique would never have strayed from virtue's path, could
not endure the thought of her losing her reputation and becoming an
object for scandal to point her finger at; so that Angelique, who
could not well seem less careful of her good name than he, was
obliged to turn his song of woe into a duet, and consent to certain
measures being taken.

One evening, therefore, shortly before Maitre Quennebert's marriage,
the fair lady set out, ostensibly on a journey which was to last a
fortnight or three weeks.  In reality she only made a circle in a
post-chaise round Paris, which she re-entered at one of the barriers,
where the duke awaited her with a sedan-chair.  In this she was
carried to the very house to which de Jars had brought his pretended
nephew after the duel.  Angelique, who had to pay dearly for her
errors, remained there only twenty-four hours, and then left in her
coffin, which was hidden in a cellar under the palace of the Prince
de Conde, the body being covered with quicklime.  Two days after this
dreadful death, Commander de Jars presented himself at the fatal
house, and engaged a room in which he installed the chevalier.

This house, which we are about to ask the reader to enter with us,
stood at the corner of the rue de la Tixeranderie and the rue
Deux-Portes.  There was nothing in the exterior of it to distinguish
it from any other, unless perhaps two brass plates, one of
which bore the words MARIE LEROUX-CONSTANTIN, WIDOW, CERTIFIED
MIDWIFE, and the other CLAUDE PERREGAUD, SURGEON.  These plates were
affixed to the blank wall in the rue de la Tixeranderie, the windows
of the rooms on that side looking into the courtyard.  The house
door, which opened directly on the first steps of a narrow winding
stair, was on the other side, just beyond the low arcade under whose
vaulted roof access was gained to that end of the rue des
Deux-Portes.  This house, though dirty, mean, and out of repair,
received many wealthy visitors, whose brilliant equipages waited for
them in the neighbouring streets.  Often in the night great ladies
crossed its threshold under assumed names and remained there for
several days, during which La Constantin and Claude Perregaud, by an
infamous use of their professional knowledge, restored their clients
to an outward appearance of honour, and enabled them to maintain
their reputation for virtue.  The first and second floors contained a
dozen rooms in which these abominable mysteries were practised.  The
large apartment, which served as waiting and consultation room, was
oddly furnished, being crowded with objects of strange and unfamiliar
form.  It resembled at once the operating-room of a surgeon, the
laboratory of a chemist and alchemist, and the den of a sorcerer.
There, mixed up together in the greatest confusion, lay instruments
of all sorts, caldrons and retorts, as well as books containing the
most absurd ravings of the human mind.  There were the twenty folio
volumes of Albertus Magnus; the works of his disciple, Thomas de
Cantopre, of Alchindus, of Averroes, of Avicenna, of Alchabitius, of
David de Plaine-Campy, called L'Edelphe, surgeon to Louis XIII and
author of the celebrated book The Morbific Hydra Exterminated by the
Chemical Hercules.  Beside a bronze head, such as the monk Roger
Bacon possessed, which answered all the questions that were addressed
to it and foretold the future by means of a magic mirror and the
combination of the rules of perspective, lay an eggshell, the same
which had been used by Caret, as d'Aubigne tells us, when making men
out of germs, mandrakes, and crimson silk, over a slow fire.  In the
presses, which had sliding-doors fastening with secret springs, stood
Jars filled with noxious drugs, the power of which was but too
efficacious; in prominent positions, facing each other, hung two
portraits, one representing Hierophilos, a Greek physician, and the
other Agnodice his pupil, the first Athenian midwife.

For several years already La Constantin and Claude Perregaud had
carried on their criminal practices without interference.  A number
of persons were of course in the secret, but their interests kept
them silent, and the two accomplices had at last persuaded themselves
that they were perfectly safe.  One evening, however, Perregaud came
home, his face distorted by terror and trembling in every limb.  He
had been warned while out that the suspicions of the authorities had
been aroused in regard to him and La Constantin.  It seemed that some
little time ago, the Vicars-General had sent a deputation to the
president of the chief court of justice, having heard from their
priests that in one year alone six hundred women had avowed in the
confessional that they had taken drugs to prevent their having
children.  This had been sufficient to arouse the vigilance of the
police, who had set a watch on Perregaud's house, with the result
that that very night a raid was to be made on it.  The two criminals
took hasty counsel together, but, as usual under such circumstances,
arrived at no practical conclusions.  It was only when the danger was
upon them that they recovered their presence of mind.  In the dead of
night loud knocking at the street door was heard, followed by the
command to open in the name of the king.

"We can yet save ourselves!" exclaimed surgeon, with a sudden flash
of inspiration.

Rushing into the room where the pretended chevalier was lying, he
called out--

"The police are coming up!  If they discover your sex you are lost,
and so am I.  Do as I tell you."

At a sign from him, La Constantin went down and opened the door.
While the rooms on the first floor were being searched, Perregaud
made with a lancet a superficial incision in the chevalier's right
arm, which gave very little pain, and bore a close resemblance to a
sword-cut.  Surgery and medicine were at that time so inextricably
involved, required such apparatus, and bristled with such scientific
absurdities, that no astonishment was excited by the extraordinary
collection of instruments which loaded the tables and covered the
floors below: even the titles of certain treatises which there had
been no time to destroy, awoke no suspicion.

Fortunately for the surgeon and his accomplice, they had only one
patient--the chevalier--in their house when the descent was made.
When the chevalier's room was reached, the first thing which the
officers of the law remarked were the hat, spurred boots, and sword
of the patient.  Claude Perregaud hardly looked up as the room was
invaded; he only made a sign to those--who came in to be quiet, and
went on dressing the wound.  Completely taken in, the officer in
command merely asked the name of the patient and the cause of the
wound.  La Constantin replied that it' was the young Chevalier de
Moranges, nephew of Commander de Jars, who had had an affair of
honour that same night, and being sightly wounded had been brought
thither by his uncle hardly an hour before.  These questions and the
apparently trustworthy replies elicited by them being duly taken
down, the uninvited visitors retired, having discovered nothing to
justify their visit.

All might have been well had there been nothing the matter but the
wound on the chevalier's sword-arm.  But at the moment when Perregaud
gave it to him the poisonous nostrums employed by La Constantin were
already working in his blood.  Violent fever ensued, and in three
days the chevalier was dead.  It was his funeral which had met
Quennebert's wedding party at the church door.

Everything turned out as Quennebert had anticipated.  Madame
Quennebert, furious at the deceit which had been practised on her,
refused to listen to her husband's justification, and Trumeau, not
letting the grass grow under his feet, hastened the next day to
launch an accusation of bigamy against the notary; for the paper
which had been found in the nuptial camber was nothing less than an
attested copy of a contract of marriage concluded between Quennebert
and Josephine-Charlotte Boullenois.  It was by the merest chance that
Trumeau had come on the record of the marriage, and he now challenged
his rival to produce a certificate of the death of his first wife.
Charlotte Boullenois, after two years of marriage, had demanded a
deed of separation, which demand Quennebert had opposed.  While the
case was going on she had retired to the convent of La Raquette,
where her intrigue with de Jars began.  The commander easily induced
her to let herself be carried off by force.  He then concealed his
conquest by causing her to adopt male attire, a mode of dress which
accorded marvellously well with her peculiar tastes and rather
masculine frame.  At first Quennebert had instituted an active but
fruitless search for his missing wife, but soon became habituated to
his state of enforced single blessedness, enjoying to the full the
liberty it brought with it.  But his business had thereby suffered,
and once having made the acquaintance of Madame Rapally, he
cultivated it assiduously, knowing her fortune would be sufficient to
set him straight again with the world, though he was obliged to
exercise the utmost caution and reserve in has intercourse with her,
as she on her side displayed none of these qualities.  At last,
however, matters came to such a pass that he must either go to prison
or run the risk of a second marriage.  So he reluctantly named a day
for the ceremony, resolving to leave Paris with Madame Rapally as
soon as he had settled with his creditors.

In the short interval which ensued, and while Trumeau was hugging the
knowledge of the discovery he had made, a stroke of luck had brought
the pretended chevalier to La Constantin.  As Quennebert had kept an
eye on de Jars and was acquainted with all his movements, he was
aware of everything that happened at Perregaud's, and as Charlotte's
death preceded his second marriage by one day, he knew that no
serious consequences would ensue from the legal proceedings taken
against him.  He produced the declarations made by Mademoiselle de
Guerchi and the commander, and had the body exhumed.  Extraordinary
and improbable as his defence appeared at first to be, the exhumation
proved the truth of his assertions.  These revelations, however, drew
the eye of justice again on Perregaud and his partner in crime, and
this time their guilt was brought home to them.  They were condemned
by parliamentary decree to "be hanged by the neck till they were
dead, on a gallows erected for that purpose at the cross roads of the
Croix-du-Trahoir; their bodies to remain there for twenty-four hours,
then to be cut down and brought back to Paris, where they were to be
exposed an a gibbet," etc., etc.

It was proved that they had amassed immense fortunes in the exercise
of their infamous calling.  The entries in the books seized at their
house, though sparse, would have led, if made public, to scandals,
involving many in high places; it was therefore judged best to limit
the accusation to the two deaths by blood-poisoning of Angelique de
Querchi and Charlotte Boullenois.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "LA CONSTANTIN"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 5, by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 6(of 8), Part 1

By Alexandre Dumas, Pere




JOAN OF NAPLES
1343-1382



CHAPTER I

In the night of the 15th of January 1343, while the inhabitants of
Naples lay wrapped in peaceful slumber, they were suddenly awakened
by the bells of the three hundred churches that this thrice blessed
capital contains.  In the midst of the disturbance caused by so rude
a call the first bought in the mind of all was that the town was on
fire, or that the army of some enemy had mysteriously landed under
cover of night and could put the citizens to the edge of the sword.
But the doleful, intermittent sounds of all these fills, which
disturbed the silence at regular and distant intervals, were an
invitation to the faithful pray for a passing soul, and it was soon
evident that no disaster threatened the town, but that the king alone
was in danger.

Indeed, it had been plain for several days past that the greatest
uneasiness prevailed in Castel Nuovo; the officers of the crown were
assembled regularly twice a day, and persons of importance, whose
right it was to make their way into the king's apartments, came out
evidently bowed down with grief.  But although the king's death was
regarded as a misfortune that nothing could avert, yet the whole
town, on learning for certain of the approach of his last hour, was
affected with a sincere grief, easily understood when one learns that
the man about to die, after a reign of thirty-three years, eight
months, and a few days, was Robert of Anjou, the most wise, just, and
glorious king who had ever sat on the throne of Sicily.  And so he
carried with him to the tomb the eulogies and regrets of all his
subjects.

Soldiers would speak with enthusiasm of the long wars he had waged
with Frederic and Peter of Aragon, against Henry VII and Louis of
Bavaria; and felt their hearts beat high, remembering the glories of
campaigns in Lombardy and Tuscany; priests would gratefully extol his
constant defence of the papacy against Ghibelline attacks, and the
founding of convents, hospitals, and churches throughout his kingdom;
in the world of letters he was regarded as the most learned king in
Christendom; Petrarch, indeed, would receive the poet's crown from no
other hand, and had spent three consecutive days answering all the
questions that Robert had deigned to ask him on every topic of human
knowledge.  The men of law, astonished by the wisdom of those laws
which now enriched the Neapolitan code, had dubbed him the Solomon of
their day; the nobles applauded him for protecting their ancient
privileges, and the people were eloquent of his clemency, piety, and
mildness.  In a word, priests and soldiers, philosophers and poets,
nobles and peasants, trembled when they thought that the government
was to fall into the hands of a foreigner and of a young girl,
recalling those words of Robert, who, as he followed in the funeral
train of Charles, his only son, turned as he reached the threshold of
the church and sobbingly exclaimed to his barons about him, "This day
the crown has fallen from my head: alas for me! alas for you!"

Now that the bells were ringing for the dying moments of the good
king, every mind was full of these prophetic words: women prayed
fervently to God; men from all parts of the town bent their steps
towards the royal palace to get the earliest and most authentic news,
and after waiting some moments, passed in exchanging sad reflections,
were obliged to return as they had come, since nothing that went on
in the privacy of the family found its way outside--the castle was
plunged in complete darkness, the drawbridge was raised as usual, and
the guards were at their post.

Yet if our readers care to be present at the death of the nephew of
Saint Louis and the grandson of Charles of Anjou, we may conduct them
into the chamber of the dying man.  An alabaster lamp suspended from
the ceiling serves to light the vast and sombre room, with walls
draped in black velvet sewn with golden fleur-de-lys.  Near the wall
which faces the two entrance doors that at this moment are both shut
close, there stands beneath a brocaded canopy an ebony bed, supported
on four twisted columns carved with symbolic figures.  The king,
after a struggle with a violent paroxysm, has fallen swooning in the
arms of his confessor and his doctor, who each hold one of his dying
hands, feeling his pulse anxiously and exchanging looks of
intelligence.  At the foot of the bed stands a woman about fifty
years of age, her hands clasped, her eyes raised to heaven, in an
attitude of resigned grief: this woman is the queen, No tears dim her
eyes: her sunken cheek has that waxen yellow tinge that one sees on
the bodies of saints preserved by miracle.  In her look is that
mingling of calm and suffering that points to a soul at once tried by
sorrow and imbued with religion.  After the lapse of an hour, while
no movement had disturbed the profound silence which reigned about
the bed of death, the king trembled slightly; opened his eyes, and
endeavoured feebly to raise his head.  They thanking the physician
and priest with a smile, who had both hastened to arrange his
pillows, he begged the queen to come near, and told her in a low
voice that he would speak with her a moment alone.  The doctor and
confessor retired, deeply bowing, and the king followed them with his
eyes up to the moment when one of the doors closed behind them.  He
passed his hand across his brow, as though seeking to collect his
thoughts, and rallying all his forces for the supreme effort,
pronounced these words:

"What I must say to you, Sancha, has no concern with those two good
persons who were here a moment ago: their task is ended.  One has
done all for my body that human science could teach him, and all that
has come of it is that my death is yet a little deferred; the other
has now absolved me of all my sins, and assured me of God's
forgiveness, yet cannot keep from me those dread apparitions which in
this terrible hour arise before me.  Twice have you seen me battling
with a superhuman horror.  My brow has been bathed in sweat, my limbs
rigid, my cries have been stifled by a hand of iron.  Has God
permitted the Evil Spirit to tempt me?  Is this remorse in phantom
shape?  These two conflicts I have suffered have so subdued my
strength that I can never endure a third.  Listen then, my Sandra,
for I have instructions to give you on which perhaps the safety of my
soul depends."

"My lord and my master," said the queen in the most gentle accents of
submission, "I am ready to listen to your orders; and should it be
that God, in the hidden designs of His providence, has willed to call
you to His glory while we are plunged in grief, your last wishes
shall be fulfilled here on earth most scrupulously and exactly.
But," she added, with all the solicitude of a timid soul, "pray
suffer me to sprinkle drops of holy water and banish the accursed one
from this chamber, and let me offer up some part of that service of
prayer that you composed in honour of your sainted brother to implore
God's protection in this hour when we can ill afford to lose it."

Then opening a richly bound book, she read with fervent devotion
certain verses of the office that Robert had written in a very pure
Latin for his brother Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, which was, in use in
the Church as late as the time of the Council of Trent.

Soothed by the charm of the prayers he had himself composed, the king
was near forgetting the object of the interview he had so solemnly
and eagerly demanded and letting himself lapse into a state of vague
melancholy, he murmured in a subdued voice, "Yes, yes, you are
right; pray for me, for you too are a saint, and I am but a poor
sinful man."

"Say not so, my lord," interrupted Dona Sancha; "you are the
greatest, wisest, and most just king who has ever sat upon the throne
of Naples."

"But the throne is usurped," replied Robert in a voice of gloom; "you
know that the kingdom belonged to my elder brother, Charles Martel;
and since Charles was on the throne of Hungary, which he inherited
from his mother, the kingdom of Naples devolved by right upon his
eldest son, Carobert, and not on me, who am the third in rank of the
family.  And I have suffered myself to be crowned in my nephew's
stead, though he was the only lawful-king; I have put the younger
branch in the place of the elder, and for thirty-three years I have
stifled the reproaches of my conscience.  True, I have won battles,
made laws, founded churches; but a single word serves to give the lie
to all the pompous titles showered upon me by the people's
admiration, and this one word rings out clearer in my ears than all
the, flattery of courtiers, all the songs of poets, all the orations
of the crowd:--I am an usurper!"

"Be not unjust towards yourself, my lord, and bear in mind that if
you did not abdicate in favour of the rightful heir, it was because
you wished to save the people from the worst misfortunes.  Moreover,"
continued the queen, with that air of profound conviction that an
unanswerable argument inspires, "you have remained king by the
consent and authority of our Holy Father the sovereign pontiff, who
disposes of the throne as a fief belonging to the Church."

"I have long quieted my scruples thus," replied the dying man, "and
the pope's authority has kept me silent; but whatever security one
may pretend to feel in one's lifetime, there yet comes a dreadful
solemn hour when all illusions needs must vanish: this hour for me
has come, and now I must appear before God, the one unfailing judge."

"If His justice cannot fail, is not His mercy infinite?" pursued the
queen, with the glow of sacred inspiration.  "Even if there were good
reason for the fear that has shaken your soul, what fault could not
be effaced by a repentance so noble?  Have you not repaired the wrong
you may have done your nephew Carobert, by bringing his younger son
Andre to your kingdom and marrying him to Joan, your poor Charles's
elder daughter?  Will not they inherit your crown?"

"Alas!" cried Robert, with a deep sigh, "God is punishing me perhaps
for thinking too late of this just reparation.  O my good and noble
Sandra, you touch a chord which vibrates sadly in my heart, and you
anticipate the unhappy confidence I was about to make.  I feel a
gloomy presentiment--and in the hour of death presentiment is
prophecy--that the two sons of my nephew, Louis, who has been King of
Hungary since his father died, and Andre, whom I desired to make King
of Naples, will prove the scourge of my family.  Ever since Andre set
foot in our castle, a strange fatality has pursued and overturned my
projects.  I had hoped that if Andre and Joan were brought up
together a tender intimacy would arise between the two children; and
that the beauty of our skies, our civilisation, and the attractions
of our court would end by softening whatever rudeness there might be
in the young Hungarian's character; but in spite of my efforts all
has tended to cause coldness, and even aversion, between the bridal
pair.  Joan, scarcely fifteen, is far ahead of her age.  Gifted with
a brilliant and mobile mind, a noble and lofty character, a lively
and glowing fancy, now free and frolicsome as a child, now grave and
proud as a queen, trustful and simple as a young girl, passionate and
sensitive as a woman, she presents the most striking contrast to
Andre, who, after a stay of ten years at our court, is wilder, more
gloomy, more intractable than ever.  His cold, regular features,
impassive countenance, and indifference to every pleasure that his
wife appears to love, all this has raised between him and Joan a
barrier of indifference, even of antipathy.  To the tenderest
effusion his reply is no more than a scornful smile or a frown, and
he never seems happier than when on a pretext of the chase he can
escape from the court.  These, then, are the two, man and wife, on
whose heads my crown shall rest, who in a short space will find
themselves exposed to every passion whose dull growl is now heard
below a deceptive calm, but which only awaits the moment when I
breathe my last, to burst forth upon them."

"O my God, my God!" the queen kept repeating in her grief: her arms
fell by her side, like the arms of a statue weeping by a tomb.

"Listen, Dona Sandra.  I know that your heart has never clung to
earthly vanities, and that you only wait till God has called me to
Himself to withdraw to the convent of Santa Maria delta Croce,
founded by yourself in the hope that you might there end your days.
Far be it from me to dissuade you from your sacred vocation, when I
am myself descending into the tomb and am conscious of the
nothingness of all human greatness.  Only grant me one year of
widowhood before you pass on to your bridal with the Lord, one year
in which you will watch over Joan and her husband, to keep from them
all the dangers that threaten.  Already the woman who was the
seneschal's wife and her son have too much influence over our grand-
daughter; be specially careful, and amid the many interests,
intrigues, and temptations that will surround the young queen,
distrust particularly the affection of Bertrand d'Artois, the beauty
of Louis of Tarentum; and the ambition of Charles of Durazzo."

The king paused, exhausted by the effort of speaking; then turning on
his wife a supplicating glance and extending his thin wasted hand, he
added in a scarcely audible voice:

"Once again I entreat you, leave not the court before a year has
passed.  Do you promise me?"

"I promise, my lord."

"And now," said Robert, whose face at these words took on a new
animation, "call my confessor and the physician and summon the
family, for the hour is at hand, and soon I shall not have the
strength to speak my last words."

A few moments later the priest and the doctor re-entered the room,
their faces bathed, in tears.  The king thanked them warmly for their
care of him in his last illness, and begged them help to dress him in
the coarse garb of a Franciscan monk, that God, as he said, seeing
him die in poverty, humility, and penitence, might the more easily
grant him pardon.  The confessor and doctor placed upon his naked
feet the sandals worn by mendicant friars, robed him in a Franciscan
frock, and tied the rope about his waist.  Stretched thus upon his
bed, his brow surmounted by his scanty locks, with his long white
beard, and his hands crossed upon his breast, the King of Naples
looked like one of those aged anchorites who spend their lives in
mortifying the flesh, and whose souls, absorbed in heavenly
contemplation, glide insensibly from out their last ecstasy into
eternal bliss.  Some time he lay thus with closed eyes, putting up a
silent prayer to God; then he bade them light the spacious room as
for a great solemnity, and gave a sign to the two persons who stood,
one at the head, the other at the foot of the bed.  The two folding
doors opened, and the whole of the royal family, with the queen at
their head and the chief barons following, took their places in
silence around the dying king to hear his last wishes.

His eyes turned toward Joan, who stood next him on his right hand,
with an indescribable look of tenderness and grief.  She was of a
beauty so unusual and so marvellous, that her grandfather was
fascinated by the dazzling sight, and mistook her for an angel that
God had sent to console him on his deathbed.  The pure lines of her
fine profile, her great black liquid eyes, her noble brow uncovered,
her hair shining like the raven's wing, her delicate mouth, the whole
effect of this beautiful face on the mind of those who beheld her was
that of a deep melancholy and sweetness, impressing itself once and
for ever.  Tall and slender, but without the excessive thinness of
some young girls, her movements had that careless supple grace that
recall the waving of a flower stalk in the breeze.  But in spite of
all these smiling and innocent graces one could yet discern in
Robert's heiress a will firm and resolute to brave every obstacle,
and the dark rings that circled her fine eyes plainly showed that her
heart was already agitated by passions beyond her years.

Beside Joan stood her younger sister, Marie, who was twelve or
thirteen years of age, the second daughter of Charles, Duke of
Calabria, who had died before her birth, and whose mother, Marie of
Valois, had unhappily been lost to her from her cradle.  Exceedingly
pretty and shy, she seemed distressed by such an assembly of great
personages, and quietly drew near to the widow of the grand
seneschal, Philippa, surnamed the Catanese, the princesses'
governess, whom they honoured as a mother.  Behind the princesses and
beside this lady stood her son, Robert of Cabane, a handsome young
man, proud and upright, who with his left hand played with his slight
moustache while he secretly cast on Joan a glance of audacious
boldness.  The group was completed by Dona Cancha, the young
chamberwoman to the princesses, and by the Count of Terlizzi, who
exchanged with her many a furtive look and many an open smile.  The
second group was composed of Andre, Joan's husband, and Friar Robert,
tutor to, the young prince, who had come with him from Budapesth, and
never left him for a minute.  Andre was at this time perhaps eighteen
years old: at first sight one was struck by the extreme regularity of
his features, his handsome, noble face, and abundant fair hair; but
among all these Italian faces, with their vivid animation, his
countenance lacked expression, his eyes seemed dull, and something
hard and icy in his looks revealed his wild character and foreign
extraction.  His tutor's portrait Petrarch has drawn for us: crimson
face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked; proud in poverty,
rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous and deformed
limbs barely concealed beneath his friar's frock.

In the third group stood the widow of Philip, Prince of Tarentum, the
king's brother, honoured at the court of Naples with the title of
Empress of Constantinople, a style inherited by her as the
granddaughter of Baldwin II.  Anyone accustomed to sound the depths
of the human heart would at one glance have perceived that this woman
under her ghastly pallor concealed an implacable hatred, a venomous
jealousy, and an all-devouring ambition.  She had her three sons
about her--Robert, Philip and Louis, the youngest.  Had the king
chosen out from among his nephews the handsomest, bravest, and most
generous, there can be no doubt that Louis of Tarentum would have
obtained the crown.  At the age of twenty-three he had already
excelled the cavaliers of most renown in feats of arms; honest,
loyal, and brave, he no sooner conceived a project than he promptly
carried it out.  His brow shone in that clear light which seems to,
serve as a halo of success to natures so privileged as his; his fine
eyes, of a soft and velvety black, subdued the hearts of men who
could not resist their charm, and his caressing smile made conquest
sweet.  A child of destiny, he had but to use his will; some power
unknown, some beneficent fairy had watched over his birth, and
undertaken to smooth away all obstacles, gratify all desires.

Near to him, but in the fourth group, his cousin Charles of Duras
stood and scowled.  His mother, Agnes, the widow of the Duke of
Durazzo and Albania, another of the king's brothers, looked upon him
affrighted, clutching to her breast her two younger sons, Ludovico,
Count of Gravina, and Robert, Prince of Morea.  Charles, pale-faced,
with short hair and thick beard, was glancing with suspicion first at
his dying uncle and then at Joan and the little Marie, then again at
his cousins, apparently so excited by tumultuous thoughts that he
could not stand still.  His feverish uneasiness presented a marked
contrast with the calm, dreamy face of Bertrand d'Artois, who, giving
precedence to his father Charles, approached the queen at the foot of
the bed, and so found himself face to face with Joan.  The young man
was so absorbed by the beauty of the princess that he seemed to see
nothing else in the room.

As soon as Joan and Andre; the Princes of Tarentum and Durazzo, the
Counts of Artois, and Queen Sancha had taken their places round the
bed of death, forming a semicircle, as we have just described, the
vice-chancellor passed through the rows of barons, who according to
their rangy were following closely after the princes of the blood;
and bowing low before the king, unfolded a parchment sealed with the
royal seal, and read in a solemn voice, amid a profound silence:

"Robert, by the grace of God King of Sicily and Jerusalem, Count of
Provence, Forcalquier, and Piedmont, Vicar of the Holy Roman Church,
hereby nominates and declares his sole heiress in the kingdom of
Sicily on this side and the other side of the strait, as also in the
counties of Provence, Forcalquier, and Piedmont, and in all his
other territories, Joan, Duchess of Calabria, elder daughter of the
excellent lord Charles, Duke of Calabria, of illustrious memory.

"Moreover, he nominates and declares the honourable lady Marie,
younger daughter of the late Duke of Calabria, his heiress in the
county of Alba and in the jurisdiction of the valley of Grati and the
territory of Giordano, with all their castles and dependencies; and
orders that the lady thus named receive them in fief direct from the
aforesaid duchess and her heirs; on this condition, however, that if
the duchess give and grant to her illustrious sister or to her
assigns the sum of 10,000 ounces of gold by way of compensation, the
county and jurisdiction aforesaid--shall remain in the possession of
the duchess and her heirs.

"Moreover, he wills and commands, for private and secret reasons,
that the aforesaid lady Marie shall contract a marriage with the very
illustrious prince, Louis, reigning King of Hungary.  And in case any
impediment should appear to this marriage by reason of--the union
said to be already arranged and signed between the King of Hungary
and the King of Bohemia and his daughter, our lord the king commands
that the illustrious lady Marie shall contract a marriage with the
elder son of the mighty lord Don Juan, Duke of Normandy, himself the
elder son of the reigning King of France."

At this point Charles of Durazzo gave Marie a singularly meaning
look, which escaped the notice of all present, their attention being
absorbed by the reading of Robert's will.  The young girl herself,
from the moment when she first heard her own name, had stood confused
and thunderstruck, with scarlet cheeks, not daring to raise her eyes.

The vice-chancellor continued:

"Moreover, he has willed and commanded that the counties of
Forcalquier and Provence shall in all perpetuity be united to his
kingdom, and shall form one sole and inseparable dominion, whether or
not there be several sons or daughters or any other reason of any
kind for its partition, seeing that this union is of the utmost
importance for the security and common prosperity of the kingdom and
counties aforesaid.

"Moreover, he has decided and commanded that in case of the death of
the Duchess Joan--which God avert!--without lawful issue of her body,
the most illustrious lord Andre, Duke of Calabria, her husband, shall
have the principality of Salerno, with the title fruits, revenues,
and all the rights thereof, together with the revenue of 2000 ounces
of gold for maintenance.

"Moreover, he has decided and ordered that the Queen above all, and
also the venerable father Don Philip of Cabassole, Bishop of
Cavaillon, vice-chancellor of the kingdom of Sicily, and the
magnificent lords Philip of Sanguineto, seneschal of Provence,
Godfrey of Marsan, Count of Squillace, admiral of the kingdom, and
Charles of Artois, Count of Aire, shall be governors, regents, and
administrators of the aforesaid lord Andre and the aforesaid ladies
Joan and Marie, until such time as the duke, the duchess, and the
very illustrious lady Marie shall have attained their twenty-fifth
year," etc.  etc.

When the vice-chancellor had finished reading, the king sat up, and
glancing round upon his fair and numerous family, thus spoke:

"My children, you have heard my last wishes.  I have bidden you all
to my deathbed, that you may see how the glory of the world passes
away.  Those whom men name the great ones of the earth have more
duties to perform, and after death more accounts to render: it is in
this that their greatness lies.  I have reigned thirty-three years,
and God before whom I am about to appear, God to whom my sighs have
often arisen during my long and painful life, God alone knows the
thoughts that rend my heart in the hour of death.  Soon shall I be
lying in the tomb, and all that remains of me in this world will live
in the memory of those who pray for me.  But before I leave you for
ever, you, oh, you who are twice my daughters, whom I have loved with
a double love, and you my nephews who have had from me all the care
and affection of a father, promise me to be ever united in heart and
in wish, as indeed you are in my love.  I have lived longer than your
fathers, I the eldest of all, and thus no doubt God has wished to
tighten the bonds of your affection, to accustom you to live in one
family and to pay honour to one head.  I have loved you all alike, as
a father should, without exception or preference.  I have disposed of
my throne according to the law of nature and the inspiration of my
conscience: Here are the heirs of the crown of Naples; you, Joan, and
you, Andre, will never forget the love and respect that are due
between husband and wife, and mutually sworn by you at the foot of
the altar; and you, my nephews all; my barons, my officers, render
homage to your lawful sovereigns; Andre of Hungary, Louis of
Tarentum, Charles of Durazzo, remember that you are brothers; woe to
him who shall imitate the perfidy of Cain!  May his blood fall upon
his own head, and may he be accursed by Heaven as he is by the mouth
of a dying man; and may the blessing of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit descend upon that man whose heart is good, when the Lord
of mercy shall call to my soul Himself!"

The king remained motionless, his arms raised, his eyes fixed on
heaven, his cheeks extraordinarily bright, while the princes, barons,
and officers of the court proffered to Joan and her husband the oath
of fidelity and allegiance.  When it was the turn of the Princes of
Duras to advance, Charles disdainfully stalked past Andre, and
bending his knee before the princess, said in a loud voice, as he
kissed her hand--

"To you, my queen, I pay my homage."

All looks were turned fearfully towards the dying man, but the good
king no longer heard.  Seeing him fall back rigid and motionless,
Dona Sancha burst into sobs, and cried in a voice choked with tears

"The king is dead; let us pray for his soul."

At the very same moment all the princes hurried from the room, and
every passion hitherto suppressed in the presence of the king now
found its vent like a mighty torrent breaking through its banks.

"Long live Joan!  "Robert of Cabane, Louis of Tarentum, and Bertrand
of Artois were the first to exclaim, while the prince's tutor,
furiously breaking through the crowd and apostrophising the various
members of the council of regency, cried aloud in varying tones of
passion, "Gentlemen, you have forgotten the king's wish already; you
must cry, 'Long live Andre!' too"; then, wedding example to precept,
and himself making more noise than all the barons together, he cried
in a voice of thunder--

"Long live the King of Naples!"

But there was no echo to his cry, and Charles of Durazzo, measuring
the Dominican with a terrible look, approached the queen, and taking
her by the hand, slid back the curtains of the balcony, from which
was seen the square and the town of Naples.  So far as the eye could
reach there stretched an immense crowd, illuminated by streams of
light, and thousands of heads were turned upward towards Castel Nuovo
to gather any news that might be announced.  Charles respectfully
drawing back and indicating his fair cousin with his hand,
cried out--

"People of Naples, the King is dead: long live the Queen!"

"Long live Joan, Queen of Naples!" replied the people, with a single
mighty cry that resounded through every quarter of the town.

The events that on this night had followed each other with the
rapidity of a dream had produced so deep an impression on Joan's
mind, that, agitated by a thousand different feelings, she retired to
her own rooms, and shutting herself up in her chamber, gave free vent
to her grief.  So long as the conflict of so many ambitions waged
about the tomb, the young queen, refusing every consolation that was
offered her, wept bitterly for the death of her grandfather, who had
loved her to the point of weakness.  The king was buried with all
solemnity in the church of Santa Chiara, which he had himself founded
and dedicated to the Holy Sacrament, enriching it with magnificent
frescoes by Giotto and other precious relics, among which is shown
still, behind the tribune of the high altar, two columns of white
marble taken from Solomon's temple.  There still lies Robert,
represented on his tomb in the dress of a king and in a monk's frock,
on the right of the monument to his son Charles, the Duke of
Calabria.




CHAPTER II

As soon as the obsequies were over, Andre's tutor hastily assembled
the chief Hungarian lords, and it was decided in a council held in
the presence of the prince and with his consent, to send letters to
his mother, Elizabeth of Poland, and his brother, Louis of Hungary,
to make known to them the purport of Robert's will, and at the same
time to lodge a complaint at the court of Avignon against the conduct
of the princes and people of Naples in that they had proclaimed Joan
alone Queen of Naples, thus overlooking the rights of her husband,
and further to demand for him the pope's order for Andre's
coronation.  Friar Robert, who had not only a profound knowledge of
the court intrigues, but also the experience of a philosopher and all
a monk's cunning, told his pupil that he ought to profit by the
depression of spirit the king's death had produced in Joan, and ought
not to suffer her favourites to use this time in influencing her by
their seductive counsels.

But Joan's ability to receive consolation was quite as ready as her
grief had at first been impetuous the sobs which seemed to be
breaking her heart ceased all at once; new thoughts, more gentle,
less lugubrious, took possession of the young queen's mind; the trace
of tears vanished, and a smile lit up her liquid eyes like the sun's
ray following on rain.  This change, anxiously awaited, was soon
observed by Joan's chamberwoman: she stole to the queen's room, and
falling on her knees, in accents of flattery and affection, she
offered her first congratulations to her lovely mistress.  Joan
opened her arms and held her in a long embrace; far Dona Cancha was
far more to her than a lady-in-waiting; she was the companion of
infancy, the depositary of all her secrets, the confidante of her
most private thoughts.  One had but to glance at this young girl to
understand the fascination she could scarcely fail to exercise over
the queen's mind.  She had a frank and smiling countenance, such as
inspires confidence and captivates the mind at first sight.  Her face
had an irresistible charm, with clear blue eyes, warm golden hair,
mouth bewitchingly turned up at the corners, and delicate little
chin.  Wild, happy, light of heart, pleasure and love were the breath
of her being; her dainty refinement, her charming inconstancies, all
made her at sixteen as lovely as an angel, though at heart she was
corrupt.  The whole court was at her feet, and Joan felt more
affection for her than for her own sister.

"Well, my dear Cancha," she murmured, with a sigh, "you find me very
sad and very unhappy!"

"And you find me, fair queen," replied the confidante, fixing an
admiring look on Joan,--"you find me just the opposite, very happy
that I can lay at your feet before anyone else the proof of the joy
that the people of Naples are at this moment feeling.  Others perhaps
may envy you the crown that shines upon your brow, the throne which
is one of the noblest in the world, the shouts of this entire town
that sound rather like worship than homage; but I, madam, I envy you
your lovely black hair, your dazzling eyes, your more than mortal
grace, which make every man adore you."

"And yet you know, my Cancha, I am much to be pitied both as a queen
and as a woman: when one is fifteen a crown is heavy to wear, and I
have not the liberty of the meanest of my subjects--I mean in my
affections; for before I reached an age when I could think I was
sacrificed to a man whom I can never love."

"Yet, madam," replied Cancha in a more insinuating voice, "in this
court there is a young cavalier who might by virtue of respect, love,
and devotion have made you forget the claims of this foreigner, alike
unworthy to be our king and to be your husband."

The queen heaved a heavy sigh.

"When did you lose your skill to read my heart?" she cried.  "Must I
actually tell you that this love is making me wretched?  True, at the
very first this unsanctioned love was a keen joy: a new life seemed
to wake within my heart; I was drawn on, fascinated by the prayers,
the tears, and the despair of this man, by the opportunities that his
mother so easily granted, she whom I had always looked upon as my own
mother; I have loved him....  O my God, I am still so young, and my
past is so unhappy.  At times strange thoughts come into my mind: I
fancy he no longer loves me, that he never did love me; I fancy he
has been led on by ambition, by self-interest, by some ignoble
motive, and has only feigned a feeling that he has never really felt.
I feel myself a coldness I cannot account for; in his presence I am
constrained, I am troubled by his look, his voice makes me tremble: I
fear him; I would sacrifice a year of my life could I, never have
listened to him."

These words seemed to touch the young confidante to the very depths
of her soul; a shade of sadness crossed her brow, her eyelids
dropped, and for some time she answered nothing, showing sorrow
rather than surprise.  Then, lifting her head gently, she said, with
visible embarrassment--

"I should never have dared to pass so severe a judgment upon a man
whom my sovereign lady has raised above other men by casting upon him
a look of kindness; but if Robert of Cabane has deserved the reproach
of inconstancy and ingratitude, if he has perjured himself like a
coward, he must indeed be the basest of all miserable beings,
despising a happiness which other men might have entreated of God the
whole time of their life and paid for through eternity.  One man I
know, who weeps both night and day without hope or consolation,
consumed by a slow and painful malady, when one word might yet avail
to save him, did it come from the lips of my noble mistress."

"I will not hear another word," cried Joan, suddenly rising; "there
shall be no new cause for remorse in my life.  Trouble has come upon
me through my loves, both lawful and criminal; alas! no longer will I
try to control my awful fate, I will bow my head without a murmur.
I am the queen, and I must yield myself up for the good of my
subjects."

"Will you forbid me, madam," replied Dona Cancha in a kind,
affectionate tone--"will you forbid me to name Bertrand of Artois in
your presence, that unhappy man, with the beauty of an angel and the
modesty of a girl?  Now that you are queen and have the life and
death of your subjects in your own keeping, will you feel no kindness
towards an unfortunate one whose only fault is to adore you, who
strives with all his mind and strength to bear a chance look of yours
without dying of his joy?"

"I have struggled hard never to look on him," cried the queen, urged
by an impulse she was not strong enough to conquer: then, to efface
the impression that might well have been made on her friend's mind,
she added severely, "I forbid you to pronounce his name before me;
and if he should ever venture to complain, I bid you tell him from me
that the first time I even suspect the cause of his distress he will
be banished for ever from my presence."

"Ah, madam, dismiss me also; for I shall never be strong enough to do
so hard a bidding: the unhappy man who cannot awake in your heart so
much as a feeling of pity may now be struck down by yourself in your
wrath, for here he stands; he has heard your sentence, and come to
die at your feet."

The last words were spoken in a louder voice, so that they might be
heard from outside, and Bertrand of Artois came hurriedly into the
room and fell on his knees before the queen.  For a long time past
the young lady-in-waiting had perceived that Robert of Cabane had,
through his own fault, lost the love of Joan;--for his tyranny had
indeed become more unendurable to her than her husband's.

Dona Cancha had been quick enough to perceive that the eyes of her
young mistress were wont to rest with a kind of melancholy gentleness
on Bertrand, a young man of handsome appearance but with a sad and
dreamy expression; so when she made up her mind to speak in his
interests, she was persuaded that the queen already loved him.
Still, a bright colour overspread Joan's face, and her anger would
have fallen on both culprits alike, when in the next room a sound of
steps was heard, and the voice of the grand seneschal's widow in
conversation with her son fell on the ears of the three young people
like a clap of thunder.  Dona Cancha, pale as death, stood trembling;
Bertrand felt that he was lost--all the more because his presence
compromised the queen; Joan only, with that wonderful presence of
mind she was destined to preserve in the most difficult crises of her
future life, thrust the young man against the carved back of her bed,
and concealed him completely beneath the ample curtain: she then
signed to Cancha to go forward and meet the governess and her son.

But before we conduct into the queen's room these two persons, whom
our readers may remember in Joan's train about the bed of King
Robert, we must relate the circumstances which had caused the family
of the Catanese to rise with incredible rapidity from the lowest
class of the people to the highest rank at court.  When Dona Violante
of Aragon, first wife of Robert of Anjou, became the mother of
Charles, who was later on the Duke of Calabria, a nurse was sought
for the infant among the most handsome women of the people.  After
inspecting many women of equal merit as regards beauty, youth; and,
health, the princess's choice lighted on Philippa, a young Catanese.
woman, the wife of a fisherman of Trapani, and by condition a
laundress.  This young woman, as she washed her linen on the bank of
a stream, had dreamed strange dreams: she had fancied herself
summoned to court, wedded to a great personage, and receiving the
honours of a great lady.  Thus when she was called to Castel Nuovo
her joy was great, for she felt that her dreams now began to be
realised. Philippa was installed at the court, and a few months after
she began to nurse the child the fisherman was dead and she was a
widow.  Meanwhile Raymond of Cabane, the major-domo of King Charles
II's house, had bought a negro from some corsairs, and having had him
baptized by his own name, had given him his liberty; afterwards
observing that he was able and intelligent, he had appointed him head
cook in the king's kitchen; and then he had gone away to the war.
During the absence of his patron the negro managed his own affairs at
the court so cleverly, that in a short time he was able to buy land,
houses, farms, silver plate, and horses, and could vie in riches with
the best in the kingdom; and as he constantly won higher favour in
the royal family, he passed on from the kitchen to the wardrobe.  The
Catanese had also deserved very well of her employers, and as a
reward for the care she had bestowed on the child, the princess
married her to the negro, and he, as a wedding gift, was granted the
title of knight.

From this day forward, Raymond of Cabane and Philippa the laundress
rose in the world so rapidly that they had no equal in influence at
court.  After the death of Dona Violante, the Catanese became the
intimate friend of Dona Sandra, Robert's second wife, whom we
introduced to our readers at the beginning of this narrative.
Charles, her foster son, loved her as a mother, and she was the
confidante of his two wives in turn, especially of the second wife,
Marie of Valois.  And as the quondam laundress had in the end learned
all the manners and customs of the court, she was chosen at the birth
of Joan and her sister to be governess and mistress over the young
girls, and at this juncture Raymond was created major-domo.  Finally,
Marie of Valois on her deathbed commended the two young princesses to
her care, begging her to look on them as her own-daughters.  Thus
Philippa the Catanese, honoured in future as foster mother of the
heiress to the throne of Naples, had power to nominate her husband
grand seneschal, one of the seven most important offices in the
kingdom, and to obtain knighthood for her sons.  Raymond of Cabane
was buried like a king in a marble tomb in the church of the Holy
Sacrament, and there was speedily joined by two of his sons.  The
third, Robert, a youth of extraordinary strength and beauty, gave up
an ecclesiastical career, and was himself made major-domo, his two
sisters being married to the Count of Merlizzi and the Count of
Morcone respectively.  This was now the state of affairs, and the
influence of the grand seneschal's widow seemed for ever established,
when an unexpected event suddenly occurred, causing such injury as
might well suffice to upset the edifice of her fortunes that had been
raised stone by stone patiently and slowly: this edifice was now
undermined and threatened to fall in a single day.  It was the sudden
apparition of Friar Robert, who followed to the court of Rome his
young pupil, who from infancy had been Joan's destined husband, which
thus shattered all the designs of the Catanese and seriously menaced
her future.  The monk had not been slow to understand that so long as
she remained at the court, Andre would be no more than the slave,
possibly even the victim, of his wife.  Thus all Friar Robert's
thoughts were obstinately concentrated on a single end, that of
getting rid of the Catanese or neutralising her influence.  The
prince's tutor and the governess of the heiress had but to exchange
one glance, icy, penetrating, plain to read: their looks met like
lightning flashes of hatred and of vengeance.  The Catanese, who felt
she was detected, lacked courage to fight this man in the open, and
so conceived the hope of strengthening her tottering empire by the
arts of corruption and debauchery.  She instilled by degrees into her
pupil's mind the poison of vice, inflamed her youthful imagination
with precocious desires, sowed in her heart the seeds of an
unconquerable aversion for her husband, surrounded the poor child
with abandoned women, and especially attached to her the beautiful
and attractive Dona Cancha, who is branded by contemporary authors
with the name of a courtesan; then summed up all these lessons in
infamy by prostituting Joan to her own son.  The poor girl, polluted
by sin before she knew what life was, threw her whole self into this
first passion with all the ardour of youth, and loved Robert of
Cabane so violently, so madly, that the Catanese congratulated
herself on the success of her infamy, believing that she held her
prey so fast in her toils that her victim would never attempt to
escape them.

A year passed by before Joan, conquered by her infatuation, conceived
the smallest suspicion of her lover's sincerity.  He, more ambitious
than affectionate, found it easy to conceal his coldness under the
cloak of a brotherly intimacy, of blind submission, and of unswerving
devotion; perhaps he would have deceived his mistress for a longer
time had not Bertrand of Artois fallen madly in love with Joan.
Suddenly the bandage fell from the young girl's eyes; comparing the
two with the natural instinct of a woman beloved which never goes
astray, she perceived that Robert of Cabane loved her for his own
sake, while Bertrand of Artois would give his life to make her happy.
A light fell upon her past: she mentally recalled the circumstances
that preceded and accompanied her earliest love; and a shudder went
through her at the thought that she had been sacrificed to a cowardly
seducer by the very woman she had loved most in the world, whom she
had called by the name of mother.

Joan drew back into herself, and wept-bitterly.  Wounded by a single
blow in all her affections, at first her grief absorbed her; then,
roused to sudden anger, she proudly raised her head, for now her love
was changed to scorn.  Robert, amazed at her cold and haughty
reception of him, following on so great a love, was stung by jealousy
and wounded pride.  He broke out into bitter reproach and violent
recrimination, and, letting fall the mask, once for all lost his
place in Joan's heart.

His mother at last saw that it was time to interfere: she rebuked her
son, accusing him of upsetting all her plans by his clumsiness.

"As you have failed to conquer her by love," she said, "you must now
subdue her by fear.  The secret of her honour is in our hands, and
she will never dare to rebel.  She plainly loves Bertrand of Artois,
whose languishing eyes and humble sighs contrast in a striking manner
with your haughty indifference and your masterful ways.  The mother
of the Princes of Tarentum, the Empress of Constantinople, will
easily seize an occasion of helping on the princess's love so as to
alienate her more and more from her husband: Cancha will be the go
between, and sooner or later we shall find Bertrand at Joan's feet.
Then she will be able to refuse us nothing."

While all this was going on, the old king died, and the Catanese, who
had unceasingly kept on the watch for the moment she had so plainly
foreseen, loudly called to her son, when she saw Bertrand slip into
Joan's apartment, saying as she drew him after her--

"Follow me, the queen is ours."

It was thus that she and her son came to be there.  Joan, standing in
the middle of the chamber, pallid, her eyes fixed on the curtains of
the bed, concealed her agitation with a smile, and took one step
forward towards her governess, stooping to receive the kiss which the
latter bestowed upon her every morning.  The Catanese embraced her
with affected cordiality, and turning, to her son, who had knelt
upon one knee, said, pointing to Robert--

"My fair queen, allow the humblest of your subjects to offer his
sincere congratulations and to ay his homage at your feet."

"Rise, Robert," said Joan, extending her hand kindly, and with no
show of bitterness.  "We were brought up together, and I shall never
forget that in our childhood--I mean those happy days when we were
both innocent--I called you my brother."

"As you allow me, madam," said Robert, with an ironical smile, "I too
shall always remember the names you formerly gave me."

"And I," said the Catanese, "shall forget that I speak to the Queen
of Naples, in embracing once more my beloved daughter.  Come, madam,
away with care: you have wept long enough; we have long respected
your grief.  It is now time to show yourself to these good
Neapolitans who bless Heaven continually for granting them a queen so
beautiful and good; it is time that your favours upon the heads of
your faithful subjects; and my son, who surpasses all in his
fidelity, comes first to ask a favour of you, in order that he may
serve you yet more zealously."

Joan cast on Robert a withering look, and, speaking to the Catanese,
said with a scornful air--

"You know, madam, I can refuse your son nothing."

"All he asks," continued the lady, "is a title which is his due, and
which he inherited from his father--the title of Grand Seneschal of
the Two Sicilies: I trust, my, daughter, you will have no difficulty
in granting this."

"But I must consult the council of regency."

"The council will hasten to ratify the queen's wishes," replied
Robert, handing her the parchment with an imperious gesture: "you
need only speak to the Count of Artois."

And he cast a threatening glance at the curtain, which had slightly
moved.

"You are right," said the queen at once; and going up to a table she
signed the parchment with a trembling hand.

"Now, my daughter, I have come in the name of all the care I bestowed
on your infancy, of all the maternal love I have lavished on you, to
implore a favour that my family will remember for evermore."

The queen recoiled one' step, crimson with astonishment and rage; but
before she could find words to reply, the lady continued in a voice
that betrayed no feeling--

"I request you to make my son Count of Eboli."

"That has nothing to do with me, madam; the barons of this kingdom
would revolt to a man if I were on my own authority to exalt to one
of the first dignities the son of a---"

"A laundress and a negro; you would say, madam?" said Robert, with a
sneer.  "Bertrand of Artois would be annoyed perhaps if I had a title
like his."

He advanced a step towards the bed, his hand upon the hilt of his
sword.

"Have mercy, Robert!" cried the queen, checking him: "I will do all
you ask."

And she signed the parchment naming him Count of Eboli.

"And now," Robert went on impudently, "to show that my new title is
not illusory, while you are busy about signing documents, let me have
the privilege of taking part in the councils of the crown: make a
declaration that, subject to your good pleasure, my mother and I are
to have a deliberative voice in the council whenever an important
matter is under discussion."

"Never!" cried Joan, turning pale.  "Philippa end Robert, you abuse
my weakness and treat your queen shamefully.  In the last few days I
have wept and suffered continually, overcome by a terrible grief; I
have no strength to turn to business now.  Leave me, I beg: I feel my
strength gives, way."

"What, my daughter," cried the Catanese hypocritically, "are you
feeling unwell?  Come and lie down at once."  And hurrying to the
bed, she took hold of the curtain that concealed the Count of Artois.

The queen uttered a piercing cry, and threw herself before Philippa
with the fury of a lioness.  "Stop!" she cried in a choking voice;
"take the privilege you ask, and now, if you value your own life,
leave me."

The Catanese and her son departed instantly, not even waiting to
reply, for they had got all they wanted; while Joan, trembling, ran
desperately up to Bertrand, who had angrily drawn his dagger, and
would have fallen upon the two favourites to take vengeance for the
insults they had offered to the queen; but he was very soon disarmed
by the lovely shining eyes raised to him in supplication, the two
arms cast about him, and the tears shed by Joan: he fell at her feet
and kissed them rapturously, with no thought of seeking excuse for
his presence, with no word of love, for it was as if they had loved
always: he lavished the tenderest caresses on her, dried her tears,
and pressed his trembling lips upon her lovely head.  Joan began to
forget her anger, her vows, and her repentance: soothed by the music
of her lover's speech, she returned uncomprehending monosyllables:
her heart beat till it felt like breaking, and once more she was
falling beneath love's resistless spell, when a new interruption
occurred, shaking her roughly out of her ecstasy; but this time the
young count was able to pass quietly and calmly into a room
adjoining, and Joan prepared to receive her importunate visitor with
severe and frigid dignity.

The individual who arrived at so inopportune a moment was little
calculated to smooth Joan's ruffled brow, being Charles, the eldest
son of the Durazzo family.  After he had introduced his fair cousin
to the people as their only legitimate sovereign, he had sought on
various occasions to obtain an interview with her, which in all
probability would be decisive.  Charles was one of those men who to
gain their end recoil at nothing; devoured by raging ambition and
accustomed from his earliest years to conceal his most ardent desires
beneath a mask of careless indifference, he marched ever onward, plot
succeeding plot, towards the object he was bent upon securing, and
never deviated one hair's-breadth from the path he had marked out,
but only acted with double prudence after each victory, and with
double courage after each defeat.  His cheek grew pale with joy; when
he hated most, he smiled; in all the emotions of his life, however
strong, he was inscrutable.  He had sworn to sit on the throne of
Naples, and long had believed himself the rightful heir, as being
nearest of kin to Robert of all his nephews.  To him the hand of Joan
would have been given, had not the old king in his latter days
conceived the plan of bringing Andre from Hungary and re-establishing
the elder branch in his person, though that had long since been
forgotten.  But his resolution had never for a moment been weakened
by the arrival of Andre in the kingdom, or by the profound
indifference wherewith Joan, preoccupied with other passion, had
always received the advances of her cousin Charles of Durazzo.
Neither the love of a woman nor the life of a man was of any account
to him when a crown was weighed in the other scale of the balance.

During the whole time that the queen had remained invisible, Charles
had hung about her apartments, and now came into her presence with
respectful eagerness to inquire for his cousin's health.  The young
duke had been at pains to set off his noble features and elegant
figure by a magnificent dress covered with, golden fleur-de-lys and
glittering with precious stones.  His doublet of scarlet velvet and
cap of the same showed up--by their own splendour the warm colouring
of his skin, while his face seemed illumined by his black eyes that
shone keen as an eagle's.

Charles spoke long with his cousin of the people's enthusiasm on her
accession and of the brilliant destiny before her; he drew a hasty
but truthful sketch of the state of the kingdom; and while he
lavished praises on the queen's wisdom, he cleverly pointed out what
reforms were most urgently needed by the country; he contrived to put
so much warmth, yet so much reserve, into his speech that he
destroyed the disagreeable impression his arrival had produced.  In
spite of the irregularities of her youth and the depravity brought
about by her wretched education, Joan's nature impelled her to noble
action: when the welfare of her subjects was concerned, she rose
above the limitations of her age and sex, and, forgetting her strange
position, listened to the Duke of Durazzo with the liveliest interest
and the kindliest attention.  He then hazarded allusions to the
dangers that beset a young queen, spoke vaguely of the difficulty in
distinguishing between true devotion and cowardly complaisance or
interested attachment; he spoke of the ingratitude of many who had
been loaded with benefits, and had been most completely trusted.
Joan, who had just learned the truth of his words by sad experience,
replied with a sigh, and after a moment's silence added--

May God, whom I call to witness for the loyalty and uprightness of my
intentions, may God unmask all traitors and show me my true friends!
I know that the burden laid upon me is heavy, and I presume not on my
strength, but I trust that the tried experience, of those counsellors
to whom my uncle entrusted me, the support of my family, and your
warm and sincere friendship above all, my dear cousin, will help me
to accomplish my duty."

"My sincerest prayer is that you may succeed, my fair cousin, and I
will not darken with doubts and fears a time that ought to be given
up to joy; I will not mingle with the shouts of gladness that rise on
all sides to proclaim you queen, any vain regrets over that blind
fortune which has placed beside the woman whom we all alike adore,
whose single glance would make a man more blest than the angels, a
foreigner unworthy of your love and unworthy of your throne."

"You forget, Charles," said the queen, putting out her hand as though
to check his words, "Andre is my husband, and it was my grandfather's
will that he should reign with me."

"Never!" cried the duke indignantly; "he King of Naples! Nay, dream
that the town is shaken to its very foundations, that the people rise
as one man, that our church bells sound a new Sicilian vespers,
before the people of Naples will endure the rule of a handful of wild
Hungarian drunkards, a deformed canting monk, a prince detested by
them even as you are beloved!"

"But why is Andre blamed?  What has he done?"

"What has he done?  Why is he blamed, madam?  The people blame him as
stupid, coarse, a savage; the nobles blame him for ignoring their
privileges and openly supporting men of obscure birth; and I,
madam,"--here he lowered his voice, "I blame him for making you
unhappy."

Joan shuddered as though a wound had been touched by an unkind hand;
but hiding her emotion beneath an appearance of calm, she replied in
a voice of perfect indifference--

"You must be dreaming, Charles; who has given you leave to suppose I
am unhappy?"

"Do not try to excuse him, 'my dear cousin," replied Charles eagerly;
"you will injure yourself without saving him."

The queen looked fixedly at her cousin, as though she would read him
through and through and find out the meaning of his words; but as she
could not give credence to the horrible thought that crossed her
mind, she assumed a complete confidence in her cousin's friendship,
with a view to discovering his plans, and said carelessly--

"Well, Charles, suppose I am not happy, what remedy could you offer
me that I might escape my lot?"

"You ask me that, my dear cousin?  Are not all remedies good when you
suffer, and when you wish for revenge?"

"One must fly to those means that are possible.  Andre will not
readily give up his pretensions: he has a party of his own, and in
case of open rupture his brother the King of Hungary may declare war
upon us, and bring ruin and desolation upon our kingdom."

The Duke of Duras faintly smiled, and his countenance assumed a
sinister, expression.

"You do not understand me," he said.

"Then explain without circumlocution," said the queen, trying to
conceal the convulsive shudder that ran through her limbs.

"Listen, Joan," said Charles, taking his cousin's hand and laying it
upon his heart: "can you feel that dagger?"

"I can," said Joan, and she turned pale.

"One word from you--and--"

"Yes?"

"To-morrow you will be free."

"A murder!" cried Joan, recoiling in horror: "then I was not
deceived; it is a murder that you have proposed."

"It is a necessity," said the duke calmly: "today I advise; later on
you will give your orders."

"Enough, wretch!  I cannot tell if you are more cowardly or more
rash: cowardly, because you reveal a criminal plot feeling sure that
I shall never denounce you; rash, because in revealing it to me you
cannot tell what witnesses are near to hear it all."

"In any case, madam, since I have put myself in your hands, you must
perceive that I cannot leave you till I know if I must look upon
myself as your friend or as your enemy."

"Leave me," cried Joan, with a disdainful gesture; "you insult your
queen."

"You forget, my dear cousin, that some day I may very likely have a
claim to your kingdom."

"Do not force me to have you turned out of this room," said Joan,
advancing towards the door.

"Now do not get excited, my fair cousin; I am going: but at least
remember that I offered you my hand and you refused it.  Remember
what I say at this solemn moment: to-day I am the guilty man; some
day perhaps I may be the judge."

He went away slowly, twice turning his head, repeating in the
language of signs his menacing prophecy.  Joan hid her face in her
hands, and for a long time remained plunged in dismal reflections;
then anger got the better of all her other feelings, and she summoned
Dona Cancha, bidding her not to allow anybody to enter, on any
pretext whatsoever.

This prohibition was not for the Count of Artois, for the reader will
remember that he was in the adjoining room.




CHAPTER III

Night fell, and from the Molo to the Mergellina, from the Capuano
Castle to the hill of St. Elmo, deep silence had succeeded the myriad
sounds that go up from the noisiest city in the world.  Charles of
Durazzo, quickly walking away from the square of the Correggi, first
casting one last look of vengeance at the Castel Nuovo, plunged into
the labyrinth of dark streets that twist and turn, cross and recross
one another, in this ancient city, and after a quarter of an hour's
walking, that was first slow, then very rapid, arrived at his ducal
palace near the church of San Giovanni al Mare. He gave certain
instructions in a harsh, peremptory tone to a page who took his sword
and cloak.  Then Charles shut himself into his room, without going up
to see his poor mother, who was weeping, sad and solitary over her
son's ingratitude, and like every other mother taking her revenge by
praying God to bless him.

The Duke of Durazzo walked up and down his room several times like a
lion in a cage, counting the minutes in a fever of impatience, and
was on the point of summoning a servant and renewing his commands,
when two dull raps on the door informed him that the person he was
waiting for had arrived.  He opened at once, and a man of about.
fifty, dressed in black from head to foot, entered, humbly bowing,
and carefully shut the door behind him.  Charles threw himself into
an easy-chair, and gazing fixedly at the man who stood before him,
his eyes on the ground and his arms crossed upon his breast in an
attitude of the deepest respect and blind obedience, he said slowly,
as though weighing each word--

"Master Nicholas of Melazzo, have you any remembrance left of the
services I once rendered you?"

The man to whom these words were addressed trembled in every limb, as
if he heard the voice of Satan come to claim his soul; then lifting a
look of terror to his questioner's face, he asked in a voice of
gloom--

"What have I done, my lord, to deserve this reproach?"

"It is not a reproach: I ask a simple question."

"Can my lord doubt for a moment of my eternal gratitude?  Can I
forget the favours your Excellency showed me?  Even if I could so
lose my reason and my memory, are not my wife and son ever here to
remind me that to you we owe all our life, our honour, and our
fortune?  I was guilty of an infamous act," said the notary, lowering
his voice, "a crime that would not only have brought upon my head the
penalty of death, but which meant the confiscation of my goods, the
ruin of my family, poverty and shame for my only son--that very son,
sire, for whom I, miserable wretch, had wished to ensure a brilliant
future by means of my frightful crime: you had in your hands the
proofs of this!

"I have them still."

"And you will not ruin me, my lord," resumed the notary, trembling;
"I am at, your feet, your Excellency; take my life and I will die in
torment without a murmur, but save my son since you have been so
merciful as to spare him till now; have pity on his mother; my lord,
have pity!"

"Be assured," said Charles, signing to him to rise; "it is nothing to
do with your life; that will come later, perhaps.  What I wish to ask
of you now is a much simpler, easier matter."

"My lord, I await your command."

"First," said the duke, in a voice of playful irony, "you must draw
up a formal contract of my marriage."

"At once, your Excellency."

"You are to write in the first article that my wife brings me as
dowry the county of Alba, the jurisdiction of Grati and Giordano,
with all castles, fiefs, and lands dependent thereto."

"But, my lord---" replied the poor notary, greatly embarrassed.

"Do you find any difficulty, Master Nicholas?"

"God forbid, your Excellency, but---"

"Well, what is it?"

"Because, if my lord will permit because there is only one person in
Naples who possesses that dowry your Excellency mentions."

"And so?"

"And she," stammered the notary, embarrassed more and more,--"she is
the queen's sister."

"And in the contract you will write the name of Marie of Anjou."

"But the young maiden," replied Nicholas timidly, "whom your
Excellency would marry is destined, I thought, under the will of our
late king of blessed memory, to become the wife of the King of
Hungary or else of the grandson of the King of France."

"Ah, I understand your surprise: you may learn from this that an
uncle's intentions are not always the same as his nephew's."

"In that case, sire, if I dared--if my lord would deign to give me
leave--if I had an opinion I might give, I would humbly entreat your
Excellency to reflect that this would mean the abduction of a minor."

"Since when did you learn to be scrupulous, Master Nicholas?"

These words were uttered with a glance so terrible that the poor
notary was crushed, and had hardly the strength to reply--

"In an hour the contract will be ready."

"Good: we agree as to the first point," continued Charles, resuming
his natural tone of voice.  "You now will hear my second charge.  You
have known the Duke of Calabria's valet for the last two years pretty
intimately?"

"Tommaso Pace; why, he is my best friend."

"Excellent.  Listen, and remember that on your discretion the safety
or ruin of your family depends.  A plot will soon be on foot gainst
the queen's husband; the conspirators no doubt will gain over Andre's
valet, the man you call your best friend; never leave him for an
instant, try to be his shadow; day by day and hour by hour come to me
and report the progress of the plot, the names of the plotters."

"Is this all your Excellency's command?"

"All."

The notary respectfully bowed, and withdrew to put the orders at once
into execution.  Charles spent the rest of that night writing to his
uncle the Cardinal de Perigord, one of the most influential prelates
at the court of Avignon.  He begged him before all things to use his
authority so as to prevent Pope Clement from signing the bull that
would sanction Andre's coronation, and he ended his letter by
earnestly entreating his uncle to win the pope's consent to his
marriage with the queen's sister.

"We shall see, fair cousin," he said as he sealed his letter, "which
of us is best at understanding where our interest lies.  You would
not have me as a friend, so you shall have me as an enemy.  Sleep on
in the arms of your lover: I will wake you when the time comes.  I
shall be Duke of Calabria perhaps some day, and that title, as you
well know, belongs to the heir to the throne."

The next day and on the following days a remarkable change took place
in the behaviour of Charles towards Andre: he showed him signs of
great friendliness, cleverly flattering his inclinations, and even
persuading Friar Robert that, far from feeling any hostility in the
matter of Andre's coronation, his most earnest desire was that his
uncle's wishes should be respected; and that, though he might have
given the impression of acting contrary to them, it had only been
done with a view to appeasing the populace, who in their first
excitement might have been stirred up to insurrection against the
Hungarians.  He declared with much warmth that he heartily detested
the people about the queen, whose counsels tended to lead her astray,
and he promised to join Friar Robert in the endeavour to get rid of
Joan's favourites by all such means as fortune might put at his
disposal.  Although the Dominican did not believe in the least in the
sincerity of his ally's protestations, he yet gladly welcomed the aid
which might prove so useful to the prince's cause, and attributed the
sudden change of front to some recent rupture between Charles and his
cousin, promising himself that he would make capital out of his
resentment.  Be that as it might, Charles wormed himself into Andre's
heart, and after a few days one of them could hardly be seen without
the other.  If Andre went out hunting, his greatest pleasure in life,
Charles was eager to put his pack or his falcons at his disposal; if
Andre' rode through the town, Charles was always ambling by his side.
He gave way to his whims, urged him to extravagances, and inflamed
his angry passions: in a word, he was the good angel--or the bad one
--who inspired his every thought and guided his every action.

Joan soon understood this business, and as a fact had expected it.
She could have ruined Charles with a single word; but she scorned so
base a revenge, and treated him with utter contempt.  Thus the court
was split into two factions: the Hungarians with Friar Robert at
their head and supported by Charles of Durazzo; on the other side all
the nobility of Naples, led by the Princes of Tarentum.  Joan,
influenced by the grand seneschal's widow and her two daughters, the
Countesses of Terlizzi and Morcone, and also by Dona Cancha and the
Empress of Constantinople, took the side of the Neapolitan party
against the pretensions of her husband.  The partisans of the queen
made it their first care to have her name inscribed upon all public
acts without adding Andre's; but Joan, led by an instinct of right
and justice amid all the corruption of her court, had only consented
to this last after she had taken counsel with Andre d'Isernia, a very
learned lawyer of the day, respected as much for his lofty character
as for his great learning.  The prince, annoyed at being shut out in
this way, began to act in a violent and despotic manner.  On his own
authority he released prisoners; he showered favours upon Hungarians,
and gave especial honours and rich gifts to Giovanni Pipino, Count of
Altanuera, the enemy of all others most dreaded and detested by the
Neapolitan barons.  Then the Counts of San Severino, Mileto, Terlizzi
and Balzo, Calanzaro and Sant' Angelo, and most of the grandees,
exasperated by the haughty insolence of Andre's favourite, which grew
every day more outrageous, decided that he must perish, and his
master with him, should he persist in attacking their privileges and
defying their anger.

Moreover, the women who were about Joan at the court egged her on,
each one urged by a private interest, in the pursuit of her fresh
passion.  Poor Joan,--neglected by her husband and betrayed by Robert
of Cabane; gave way beneath the burden of duties beyond her strength
to bear, and fled for refuge to the arms of Bertrand of Artois, whose
love she did not even attempt to resist; for every feeling for
religion and virtue had been destroyed in her own set purpose, and
her young inclinations had been early bent towards vice, just as the
bodies of wretched children are bent and their bones broken by.
jugglers when they train them.  Bertrand himself felt an adoration
for her surpassing ordinary human passion.  When he reached the
summit of a happiness to which in his wildest dreams he had never
dared to aspire, the young count nearly lost his reason.  In vain had
his father, Charles of Artois (who was Count of Aire, a direct
descendant of Philip the Bold, and one of the regents of the
kingdom), attempted by severe admonitions to stop him while yet on
the brink of the precipice: Bertrand would listen to nothing but his
love for Joan and his implacable hatred for all the queen's enemies.
Many a time, at the close of day, as the breeze from Posilippo or
Sorrento coming from far away was playing in his hair, might Bertrand
be seen leaning from one of the casements of Castel Nuovo, pale and
motionless, gazing fixedly from his side of the square to where the
Duke of Calabria and the Duke of Durazzo came galloping home from
their evening ride side by side in a cloud of dust.  Then the brows
of the young count were violently contracted, a savage, sinister look
shone in his blue eyes once so innocent, like lightning a thought of
death and vengeance flashed into his mind; he would all at once begin
to tremble, as a light hand was laid upon his shoulder; he would turn
softly, fearing lest the divine apparition should vanish to the
skies; but there beside him stood a young girl, with cheeks aflame
and heaving breast, with brilliant liquid eyes: she had come to tell
how her past day had been spent, and to offer her forehead for the
kiss that should reward her labours and unwilling absence.  This
woman, dictator of laws and administrator of justice among grave
magistrates and stern ministers, was but fifteen years old; this man;
who knew her griefs, and to avenge them was meditating regicide, was
not yet twenty: two children of earth, the playthings of an awful
destiny!

Two months and a few days after the old king's death, on the morning
of Friday the 28th of March of the same year, 1343, the widow of the
grand seneschal, Philippa, who, had already contrived to get forgiven
for the shameful trick she had used to secure all her son's wishes,
entered the queen's apartments, excited by a genuine fear, pale and
distracted, the bearer of news that spread terror and lamentation
throughout the court: Marie, the queen's younger sister, had
disappeared.

The gardens and outside courts had been searched for any trace of
her; every corner of the castle had been examined; the guards had
been threatened with torture, so as to drag the truth from them; no
one had seen anything of the princess, and nothing could be found
that suggested either flight or abduction.  Joan, struck down by this
new blow in the midst of other troubles, was for a time utterly
prostrated; then, when she had recovered from her first surprise, she
behaved as all people do if despair takes the place of reason: she
gave orders for what was already done to be done again, she asked the
same questions that could only bring the same answers, and poured
forth vain regrets and unjust reproaches.  The news spread through
the town, causing the greatest astonishment: there arose a great
commotion in the castle, and the members of the regency hastily
assembled, while couriers were sent out in every direction, charged
to promise 12,000 ducats to whomsoever should discover the place
where the princess was concealed.  Proceedings were at once taken
against the soldiers who were on guard at the fortress at the time of
the disappearance.

Bertrand of Artois drew the queen apart, telling her his suspicions,
which fell directly upon Charles of Durazzo; but Joan lost no time in
persuading him of the improbability of his hypothesis: first of all,
Charles had never once set his foot in Castel Nuovo since the day of
his stormy interview with the queen, but had made a point of always
leaving Andre by the bridge when he came to the town with him;
besides, it had never been noticed, even in the past, that the young
duke had spoken to Marie or exchanged looks with her: the result of
all attainable evidence was, that no stranger had entered the castle
the evening before except a notary named Master Nicholas of Melazzo,
an old person, half silly, half fanatical, for whom Tommaso Pace,
valet de chambre to the Duke of Calabria, was ready to answer with
his life.  Bertrand yielded to the queen's reasoning, and day by day
advanced new suggestions, each less probable than the last, to draw
his mistress on to feel a hope that he was far from feeling himself.

But a month later, and precisely on the morning of Monday the 30th of
April, a strange and unexpected scene took place, an exhibition of
boldness transcending all calculations.  The Neapolitan people were
stupefied in astonishment, and the grief of Joan and her friends was
changed to indignation. Just as the clock of San Giovanni struck
twelve, the gate of the magnificent palace of the Durazzo flung open
its folding doors, and there came forth to the sound of trumpets a
double file of cavaliers on richly caparisoned horses, with the
duke's arms on their shields.  They took up their station round the
house to prevent the people outside from disturbing a ceremony which
was to take place before the eyes of an immense crowd, assembled
suddenly, as by a miracle, upon the square.  At the back of the court
stood an altar, and upon the steps lay two crimson velvet cushions
embroidered with the fleur-de-lys of France and the ducal crown.
Charles came forward, clad in a dazzling dress, and holding by the
hand the queen's sister, the Princess Marie, at that time almost
thirteen years of age.  She knelt down timidly on one of the
cushions, and when Charles had done the same, the grand almoner of
the Duras house asked the young duke solemnly what was his intention
in appearing thus humbly before a minister of the Church.  At these
words Master Nicholas of Melazzo took his place on the left of the
altar, and read in a firm, clear voice, first, the contract of
marriage between Charles and Marie, and then the apostolic letters
from His Holiness the sovereign pontiff, Clement VI, who in his own
name removing all obstacles that might impede the union, such as the
age of the young bride and the degrees of affinity between the two
parties, authorised his dearly beloved son Charles, Duke of Durazzo
and Albania, to take in marriage the most illustrious Marie of Anjou,
sister of Joan, Queen of Naples and Jerusalem, and bestowed his
benediction on the pair.

The almoner then took the young girl's hand, and placing it in that
of Charles, pronounced the prayers of the Church.  Charles, turning
half round to the people, said in a loud voice--

"Before God and man, this woman is my wife."

"And this man is my husband," said Marie, trembling.

"Long live the Duke and Duchess of Durazzo!" cried the crowd,
clapping their hands.  And the young pair, at once mounting two
beautiful horses and followed by their cavaliers and pages, solemnly
paraded through the town, and re-entered their palace to the sound of
trumpets and cheering.

When this incredible news was brought to the queen, her first feeling
was joy at the recovery of her sister; and when Bertrand of Artois
was eager to head a band of barons and cavaliers and bent on falling
upon the cortege to punish the traitor, Joan put up her hand to stop
him with a very mournful look.

"Alas!" she said sadly, "it is too late.  They are legally married,
for the head of the Church--who is moreover by my grandfather's will
the head of our family--has granted his permission.  I only pity my
poor sister; I pity her for becoming so young the prey of a wretched
man who sacrifices her to his own ambition, hoping by this marriage
to establish a claim to the throne.  O God! what a strange fate
oppresses the royal house of Anjou!  My father's early death in the
midst of his triumphs; my mother's so quickly after; my sister and I,
the sole offspring of Charles I, both before we are women grown
fallen into the hands of cowardly men, who use us but as the
stepping-stones of their ambition!" Joan fell back exhausted on her
chair, a burning tear trembling on her eyelid.

"This is the second time," said Bertrand reproachfully, "that I have
drawn my sword to avenge an insult offered to you, the second time I
return it by your orders to the scabbard.  But remember, Joan, the
third time will not find me so docile, and then it will not be Robert
of Cabane or Charles of Durazzo that I shall strike, but him who is
the cause of all your misfortunes."

"Have mercy, Bertrand! do not you also speak these words; whenever
this horrible thought takes hold of me, let me come to you: this
threat of bloodshed that is drummed into my ears, this sinister
vision that haunts my sight; let me come to you, beloved, and weep
upon your bosom, beneath your breath cool my burning fancies, from
your eyes draw some little courage to revive my perishing soul.
Come, I am quite unhappy enough without needing to poison the future
by an endless remorse.  Tell me rather to forgive and to forget,
speak not of hatred and revenge; show me one ray of hope amid the
darkness that surrounds me; hold up my wavering feet, and push me not
into the abyss."

Such altercations as this were repeated as often as any fresh wrong
arose from the side of Andre or his party; and in proportion as the
attacks made by Bertrand and his friends gained in vehemence--and we
must add, in justice--so did Joan's objections weaken.  The Hungarian
rule, as it became, more and more arbitrary and unbearable, irritated
men's minds to such a point, that the people murmured in secret and
the nobles proclaimed aloud their discontent.  Andre's soldiers
indulged in a libertinage which would have been intolerable in a
conquered city: they were found everywhere brawling in the taverns or
rolling about disgustingly drunk in the gutters; and the prince, far
from rebuking such orgies, was accused of sharing them himself.  His
former tutor, who ought to have felt bound to drag him away from so
ignoble a mode of life, rather strove to immerse him in degrading
pleasures, so as to keep him out of business matters; without
suspecting it, he was hurrying on the denouement of the terrible
drama that was being acted behind the scenes at Castel Nuovo.
Robert's widow, Dona Sancha of Aragon, the good and sainted lady whom
our readers may possibly have forgotten, as her family had done,
seeing that God's anger was hanging over her house, and that no
counsels, no tears or prayers of hers could avail to arrest it, after
wearing mourning for her husband one whole year, according to her
promise, had taken the veil at the convent of Santa Maria delta
Croce, and deserted the court and its follies and passions, just as
the prophets of old, turning their back on some accursed city, would
shake the dust from off their sandals and depart.  Sandra's retreat
was a sad omen, and soon the family dissensions, long with difficulty
suppressed, sprang forth to open view; the storm that had been
threatening from afar broke suddenly over the town, and the
thunderbolt was shortly to follow.

On the last day of August 1344, Joan rendered homage to Americ,
Cardinal of Saint Martin and legate of Clement VI, who looked upon
the kingdom of Naples as being a fief of the Church ever since the
time when his predecessors had presented it to Charles of Anjou, and
overthrown and excommunicated the house of Suabia.  For this solemn
ceremony the church of Saint Clara was chosen, the burial-place of
Neapolitan kings, and but lately the tomb of the grandfather and
father of the young queen, who reposed to right and left of the high
altar.  Joan, clad in the royal robe, with the crown upon her head,
uttered her oath of fidelity between the hands of the apostolic
legate in the presence of her husband, who stood behind her simply as
a witness, just like the other princes of the blood.  Among the
prelates with their pontifical insignia who formed the brilliant
following of the envoy, there stood the Archbishops of Pisa, Bari,
Capua, and Brindisi, and the reverend fathers Ugolino, Bishop of
Castella, and Philip, Bishop of Cavaillon, chancellor to the queen.
All the nobility of Naples and Hungary were present at this ceremony,
which debarred Andre from the throne in a fashion at once formal and
striking.  Thus, when they left the church the excited feelings of
both parties made a crisis imminent, and such hostile glances, such
threatening words were exchanged, that the prince, finding himself
too weak to contend against his enemies, wrote the same evening to
his mother, telling her that he was about to leave a country where
from his infancy upwards he had experienced nothing but deceit and
disaster.

Those who know a mother's heart will easily guess that Elizabeth of
Poland was no sooner aware of the danger that threatened her son than
she travelled to Naples, arriving there before her coming was
suspected.  Rumour spread abroad that the Queen of Hungary had come
to take her son away with her, and the unexpected event gave rise to
strange comments: the fever of excitement now blazed up in another
direction.  The Empress of Constantinople, the Catanese, her two
daughters, and all the courtiers, whose calculations were upset by
Andre's departure, hurried to honour the arrival of the Queen of
Hungary by offering a very cordial and respectful reception, with a
view to showing her that, in the midst of a court so attentive and
devoted, any isolation or bitterness of feeling on the young prince's
part must spring from his pride, from an unwarrantable mistrust, and
his naturally savage and untrained character.  Joan received her
husband's mother with so much proper dignity in her behaviour that,
in spite of preconceived notions, Elizabeth could not help admiring
the noble seriousness and earnest feeling she saw in her daughter-in-
law.  To make the visit more pleasant to an honoured guest, fetes and
tournaments were given, the barons vying with one another in display
of wealth and luxury.  The Empress of Constantinople, the Catanese,
Charles of Duras and his young wife, all paid the utmost attention to
the mother of the prince.  Marie, who by reason of her extreme youth
and gentleness of character had no share in any intrigues, was guided
quite as much by her natural feeling as by her husband's orders when
she offered to the Queen of Hungary those marks of regard and
affection that she might have felt for her own mother.  In spite,
however, of these protestations of respect and love, Elizabeth of
Poland trembled for her son, and, obeying a maternal instinct, chose
to abide by her original intention, believing that she should never
feel safe until Andre was far away from a court in appearance so
friendly but in reality so treacherous.  The person who seemed most
disturbed by the departure, and tried to hinder it by every means in
his power, was Friar Robert.  Immersed in his political schemes,
bending over his mysterious plans with all the eagerness of a gambler
who is on the point of gaining, the Dominican, who thought himself on
the eve of a tremendous event, who by cunning, patience, and labour
hoped to scatter his enemies and to reign as absolute autocrat, now
falling suddenly from the edifice of his dream, stiffened himself by
a mighty effort to stand and resist the mother of his pupil.  But
fear cried too loud in the heart of Elizabeth for all the reasonings
of the monk to lull it to rest: to every argument he advanced she
simply said that while her son was not king and had not entire
unlimited power, it was imprudent to leave him exposed to his
enemies.  The monk, seeing that all was indeed lost and that he could
not contend against the fears of this woman, asked only the boon of
three days' grace, at the end of which time, should a reply he was
expecting have not arrived, he said he would not only give up his
opposition to Andre's departure, but would follow himself, renouncing
for ever a scheme to which he had sacrificed everything.

Towards the end of the third day, as Elizabeth was definitely making
her preparations for departure, the monk entered radiant.  Showing
her a letter which he had just hastily broken open, he cried
triumphantly--

"God be praised, madam!  I can at last give you incontestable proofs
of my active zeal and accurate foresight."

Andre's mother, after rapidly running through the document, turned
her eyes on the monk with yet some traces of mistrust in her manner,
not venturing to give way to her sudden joy.

"Yes, madam," said the monk, raising his head, his plain features
lighted up by his glance of intelligence--" yes, madam, you will
believe your eyes, perhaps, though you would never believe my words:
this is not the dream of an active imagination, the hallucination of
a credulous mind, the prejudice of a limited intellect; it is a plan
slowly conceived, painfully worked out, my daily thought and my whole
life's work.  I have never ignored the fact that at the court of
Avignon your son had powerful enemies; but I knew also that on the
very day I undertook a certain solemn engagement in the prince's
name, an engagement to withdraw those laws that had caused coldness
between the pope and Robert; who was in general so devoted to the
Church, I knew very well that my offer would never be rejected, and
this argument of mine I kept back for the last.  See, madam, my
calculations are correct; your enemies are put to shame and your son
is triumphant."

Then turning to Andre, who was just corning in and stood dumbfounded-
at the threshold on hearing the last words, he added--

"Come, my son, our prayers are at last fulfilled you are king."

"King!" repeated Andre, transfixed with joy, doubt, and amazement.

"King of Sicily and Jerusalem: yes, my lord; there is no need for you
to read this document that brings the joyful, unexpected news.  You
can see it in your mother's tears; she holds out her arms to press
you to her bosom; you can see it in the happiness of your old
teacher; he falls on his knees at your feet to salute you by this
title, which he would have paid for with his own blood had it been
denied to you much longer."

"And yet," said Elizabeth, after a moment's mournful reflection, "if
I obey my presentiments, your news will make no difference to our
plans for departure."

"Nay, mother," said Andre firmly, "you would not force me to quit the
country to the detriment of my honour.  If I have made you feel some
of the bitterness and sorrow that have spoiled my own young days
because of my cowardly--enemies, it is not from a poor spirit, but
because I was powerless, and knew it, to take any sort of striking
vengeance for their secret insults, their crafty injuries, their
underhand intrigues.  It was not because my arm wanted strength, but
because my head wanted a crown.  I might have put an end to some of
these wretched beings, the least dangerous maybe; but it would have
been striking in the dark; the ringleaders would have escaped, and I
should never have really got to the bottom of their infernal plots.
So I have silently eaten out my own heart in shame and indignation.
Now that my sacred rights are recognised by the Church, you will see,
my mother, how these terrible barons, the queen's counsellors, the
governors of the kingdom, will lower their heads in the dust: for
they are threatened with no sword and no struggle; no peer of their
own is he who speaks, but the king; it is by him they are accused, by
the law they shall be condemned, and shall suffer on the scaffold."

"O my beloved son," cried the queen in tears, "I never doubted your
noble feelings or the justice of your claims; but when your life is
in danger, to what voice can I listen but the voice of fear? what can
move my counsels but the promptings of love?"

"Mother, believe me, if the hands and hearts alike of these cowards
had not trembled, you would have lost your son long ago."

"It is not violence that I fear, my son, it is treachery."

"My life, like every man's, belongs to God, and the lowest of sbirri
may take it as I turn the corner of the street; but a king owes
something to his people."

The poor mother long tried to bend the resolution of Andre by reason
and entreaties; but when she had spoken her last word and shed her
last tear, she summoned Bertram de Baux, chief-justice of the
kingdom, and Marie, Duchess of Durazzo.  Trusting in the old man's
wisdom and the girl's innocence, she commended her son to them in the
tenderest and most affecting words; then drawing from her own hand a
ring richly wrought, and taking the prince aside, she slipped it upon
his finger, saying in a voice that trembled with emotion as she
pressed him to her heart--

"My son, as you refuse to come with me, here is a wonderful talisman,
which I would not use before the last extremity.  So long as you wear
this ring on your finger, neither sword nor poison will have power
against you."

"You see then, mother," said the prince, smiling, "with this
protection there is no reason at all to fear for my life."

There are other dangers than sword or poison," sighed the queen.

"Be calm, mother: the best of all talismans is your prayer to God for
me: it is the tender thought of you that will keep me for ever in the
path of duty and justice; your maternal love will watch over me from
afar, and cover me like the wings of a guardian angel."

Elizabeth sobbed as she embraced her son, and when she left him she
felt her heart was breaking.  At last she made up her mind to go, and
was escorted by the whole court, who had never changed towards her
for a moment in their chivalrous and respectful devotion.  The poor
mother, pale, trembling, and faint, leaned heavily upon Andre's arm,
lest she should fall.  On the ship that was to take her for ever from
her son, she cast her arms for the last time about his neck, and
there hung a long time, speechless, tearless, and motionless; when
the signal for departure was given, her women took her in their arms
half swooning.  Andre stood on the shore with the feeling of death at
his heart: his eyes were fixed upon the sail that carried ever
farther from him the only being he loved in the world.  Suddenly he
fancied he beheld something white moving a long way off: his mother
had recovered her senses by a great effort, and had dragged herself
up to the bridge to give a last signal of farewell: the unhappy lady
knew too well that she would never see her son again.

At almost the same moment that Andre's mother left the kingdom, the
former queen of Naples, Robert's widow, Dona Sancha, breathed her
last sigh.  She was buried in the convent of Santa Maria delta Croce,
under the name of Clara, which she had assumed on taking her vows as
a nun, as her epitaph tells us, as follows:

"Here lies, an example of great humility, the body of the sainted
sister Clara, of illustrious memory, otherwise Sancha, Queen of
Sicily and Jerusalem, widow of the most serene Robert, King of
Jerusalem and Sicily, who, after the death of the king her husband,
when she had completed a year of widowhood, exchanged goods temporary
for goods eternal.  Adopting for the love of God a voluntary poverty,
and distributing her goods to the poor, she took upon her the rule of
obedience in this celebrated convent of Santa Croce, the work of her
own hands, in the year 1344, on the gist of January of the twelfth
indiction, where, living a life of holiness under the rule of the
blessed Francis, father of the poor, she ended her days religiously
in the year of our Lord 1345, on the 28th of July of the thirteenth
indiction.  On the day following she was buried in this tomb."

The death of Dona Sancha served to hasten on the catastrophe which
was to stain the throne of Naples with blood: one might almost fancy
that God wished to spare this angel of love and resignation the sight
of so terrible a spectacle; that she offered-herself as a
propitiatory sacrifice to redeem the crimes of her family.




CHAPTER IV

Eight days after the funeral of the old queen, Bertrand of Artois
came to Joan, distraught, dishevelled, in a state of agitation and
confusion impossible to describe.

Joan went quickly up to her lover, asking him with a look of fear to
explain the cause of his distress.

"I told you, madam," cried the young baron excitedly, "you will end
by ruining us all, as you will never take any advice from me."

"For God's sake, Bertrand, speak plainly: what has happened?  What
advice have I neglected?"

"Madam, your noble husband, Andre of Hungary, has just been made King
of Jerusalem and Sicily, and acknowledged by the court of Avignon, so
henceforth you will be no better than his slave."

"Count of Artois, you are dreaming."

"No, madam, I am not dreaming: I have this fact to prove the truth of
my words, that the pope's ambassadors are arrived at Capua with the
bull for his coronation, and if they do not enter Castel Nuovo this
very evening, the delay is only to give the new king time to make his
preparations."

The queen bent her head as if a thunderbolt had fallen at her feet.

"When I told you before," said the count, with growing fury, "that we
ought to use force to make a stand against him, that we ought to
break the yoke of this infamous tyranny and get rid of the man before
he had the means of hurting you, you always drew back in childish
fear, with a woman's cowardly hesitation."

Joan turned a tearful look upon her lover.

"God, my God!" she cried, clasping her hands in desperation, "am I to
hear for ever this awful cry of death!  You too, Bertrand, you too
say the word, like Robert of Cabane, like Charles of Duras?  Wretched
man, why would you raise this bloody spectre between us, to check
with icy hand our adulterous kisses?  Enough of such crimes; if his
wretched ambition makes him long to reign, let him be king: what
matters his power to me, if he leaves me with your love?"

"It is not so sure that our love will last much longer."

"What is this, Bertrand?  You rejoice in this merciless torture."

"I tell you, madam, that the King of Naples has a black flag ready,
and on the day of his coronation it will be carried before him."

"And you believe," said Joan, pale as a corpse in its shroud,--"you
believe that this flag is a threat?"

"Ay, and the threat begins to be put in execution."

The queen staggered, and leaned against a table to save herself from
falling.

"Tell me all," she cried in a choking voice; "fear not to shock me;
see, I am not trembling.  O Bertrand, I entreat you!"

"The traitors have begun with the man you most esteemed, the wisest
counsellor of the crown, the best of magistrates, the noblest-
hearted, most rigidly virtuous-----"

"Andrea of Isernia!"

"Madam, he is no more."

Joan uttered a cry, as though the noble old man had been slain before
her eyes: she respected him as a father; then, sinking back, she
remained profoundly silent.

"How did they kill him?" she asked at last, fixing her great eyes in
terror on the count.

"Yesterday evening, as he left this castle, on the way to his own
home, a man suddenly sprang out upon him before the Porta Petruccia:
it was one of Andre's favourites, Conrad of Gottis chosen no doubt
because he had a grievance against the incorruptible magistrate on
account of some sentence passed against him, and the murder would
therefore be put down to motives of private revenge.  The cowardly
wretch gave a sign to two or three companions, who surrounded the
victim and robbed him of all means of escape.  The poor old man
looked fixedly,--at his assassin, and asked him what he wanted.
'I want you to lose your life at my hands, as I lost my case at
yours!' cried the murderer; and leaving him no time to answer, he ran
him through with his sword.  Then the rest fell upon the poor man,
who did not even try to call for help, and his body was riddled with
wounds and horribly mutilated, and then left bathed in its blood."

"Terrible!" murmured the queen, covering her face.

"It was only their first effort: the proscription lists are already
full: Andre must needs have blood to celebrate his accession to the
throne of Naples.  And do you know, Joan, whose name stands first in
the doomed list?"

"Whose?" cried the queen, shuddering from head to foot.

"Mine," said the count calmly.

"Yours!" cried Joan, drawing herself up to her full height; "are you
to be killed next!  Oh, be careful, Andre; you have pronounced your
own death-sentence.  Long have I turned aside the dagger pointing to
your breast, but you put an end to all my patience.  Woe to you,
Prince of Hungary! the blood which you have spilt shall fall on your
own head."

As she spoke she had lost her pallor: her lovely face was fired with
revenge, her eyes flashed lightning.  This child of sixteen was
terrible to behold: she pressed her lover's hand with convulsive
tenderness, and clung to him as if she would screen him with her own
body.

"Your anger is awakened too late," said he gently and sadly; for at
this moment Joan seemed so lovely that he could reproach her with
nothing.  "You 'do not know that his mother has left him a talisman
preserving him from sword and poison?"

"He will die," said Joan firmly: the smile that lighted up her face
was so unnatural that the count was dismayed, and dropped his eyes.

The next day the young Queen of Naples, lovelier, more smiling than
ever, sitting carelessly in a graceful attitude beside a window which
looked out on the magnificent view of the bay, was busy weaving a
cord of silk and gold.  The sun had run nearly two-thirds of his
fiery course, and was gradually sinking his rays in the clear blue
waters where Posilippo's head is reflected with its green and flowery
crown.  A warm, balmy breeze that had passed over the orange trees of
Sorrento and Amalfi felt deliciously refreshing to the inhabitants of
the capital, who had succumbed to torpor in the enervating softness
of the day.  The whole town was waking from a long siesta, breathing
freely after a sleepy interval: the Molo was covered with a crowd of
eager people dressed out in the brightest colours; the many cries of
a festival, joyous songs, love ditties sounded from all quarters of
the vast amphitheatre, which is one of the chief marvels of creation:
they came to the ears of Joan, and she listened as she bent over her
work, absorbed in deep thought.  Suddenly, when she seemed most
busily occupied, the indefinable feeling of someone near at hand, and
the touch of something on her shoulder, made her start: she turned as
though waked from a dream by contact with a serpent, and perceived
her husband, magnificently dressed, carelessly leaning against the
back of her chair.  For a long time past the prince had not come to
his wife in this familiar fashion, and to the queen the pretence of
affection and careless behaviour augured ill.  Andre did not appear
to notice the look of hatred and terror that had escaped Joan in
spite of herself, and assuming the best expression of gentleness as
that his straight hard features could contrive to put on in such
circumstances as these, he smilingly asked--

"Why are you making this pretty cord, dear dutiful wife?"

"To hang you with, my lord," replied the queen, with a smile.

Andre shrugged his shoulders, seeing in the threat so incredibly rash
nothing more than a pleasantry in rather bad taste.  But when he saw
that Joan resumed her work, he tried to renew the conversation.

"I admit," he said, in a perfectly calm voice, "that my question is
quite unnecessary: from your eagerness to finish this handsome piece
of work, I ought to suspect that it is destined for some fine knight
of yours whom you propose to send on a dangerous enterprise wearing
your colours.  If so, my fair queen, I claim to receive my orders
from your lips: appoint the time and place for the trial, and I am
sure beforehand of carrying off a prize that I shall dispute with all
your adorers."

"That is not so certain," said Joan, "if you are as valiant in war as
in love."  And she cast on her husband a look at once seductive and
scornful, beneath which the young man blushed up to his eyes.

"I hope," said Andre, repressing his feelings, "I hope soon to give
you such proofs of my affection that you will never doubt it again."

"And what makes you fancy that, my lord?"

"I would tell you, if you would listen seriously."

"I am listening."

"Well, it is a dream I had last night that gives me such confidence
in the future."

"A dream!  You surely ought to explain that."

"I dreamed that there was a grand fete in the town: an immense crowd
filled the streets like an overflowing torrent, and the heavens were
ringing with their shouts of joy; the gloomy granite facades were
hidden by hangings of silk and festoons of flowers, the churches were
decorated as though for some grand ceremony.  I was riding side by
side with you."  Joan made a haughty movement: "Forgive me, madam, it
was only a dream: I was on your right, riding a fine white horse,
magnificently caparisoned, and the chief-justice of the kingdom
carried before me a flag unfolded in sign of honour.  After riding in
triumph through the main thoroughfares of the city, we arrived, to
the sound of trumpets and clarions, at the royal church of Saint
Clara, where your grandfather and my uncle are buried, and there,
before the high altar, the pope's ambassador laid your hand in mine
and pronounced a long discourse, and then on our two heads in turn
placed the crown of Jerusalem and Sicily; after which the nobles and
the people shouted in one voice, 'Long live the King and Queen of
Naples!'  And I, wishing to perpetuate the memory of so glorious a
day, proceeded to create knights among the most zealous in our
court."

"And do you not remember the names of the chosen persons whom you
judged worthy of your royal favours?"

"Assuredly, madam: Bertrand, Count of Artois"

"Enough, my lord; I excuse you from naming the rest: I always
supposed you were loyal and generous, but you give me fresh proof of
it by showing favour to men whom I most honour and trust.  I cannot
tell if your wishes are likely soon to be realised, but in any case
feel sure of my perpetual gratitude."

Joan's voice did not betray the slightest emotion; her look had
became kind, and the sweetest smile was on her lips.  But in her
heart Andre's death was from that moment decided upon.  The prince,
too much preoccupied with his own projects of vengeance, and too
confident in his all-powerful talisman and his personal valour, had
no suspicion that his plans could be anticipated.  He conversed a
long time with his wife in a chatting, friendly way, trying to spy
out her secret, and exposing his own by his interrupted phrases and
mysterious reserves.  When he fancied that every cloud of former
resentment, even the lightest, had disappeared from Joan's brow, he
begged her to go with her suite on a magnificent hunting expedition
that he was organising for the 20th of August, adding that such a
kindness on her part would be for him a sure pledge of their
reconciliation and complete forgetfulness of the past.  Joan promised
with a charming grace, and the prince retired fully satisfied with
the interview, carrying with him the conviction that he had only to
threaten to strike a blow at the queen's favourite to ensure her
obedience, perhaps even her love.

But on the eve of the 20th of August a strange and terrible scene was
being enacted in the basement storey of one of the lateral towers of
Castel Nuovo.  Charles of Durazzo, who had never ceased to brood
secretly over his infernal plans, had been informed by the notary
whom he had charged to spy upon the conspirators, that on that
particular evening they were about to hold a decisive meeting, and
therefore, wrapped in a black cloak, he glided into the underground
corridor and hid himself behind a pillar, there to await the issue of
the conference.  After two dreadful hours of suspense, every second
marked out by the beating of his heart, Charles fancied he heard the
sound of a door very carefully opened; the feeble ray of a lantern in
the vault scarcely served to dispel the darkness, but a man coining
away from the wall approached him walking like a living statue.
Charles gave a slight cough, the sign agreed upon.  The man put out
hid light and hid away the dagger he had drawn in case of a surprise.

"Is it you, Master Nicholas?" asked the duke in a low voice.

"It is I, my lord."

"What is it?"

"They have just fixed the prince's death for tomorrow, on his way to
the hunt."

"Did you recognise every conspirator?"

"Every one, though their faces were masked; when they gave their vote
for death, I knew them by their voices."

"Could you point out to me who they are?"

"Yes, this very minute; they are going to pass along at the end of
this corridor.  And see, here is Tommaso Pace walking in front of
them to light their way."

Indeed, a tall spectral figure, black from head to foot, his face
carefully hidden under a velvet mask, walked at the end of the
corridor, lamp in hand, and stopped at the first step of a staircase
which led to the upper floors.  The conspirators advanced slowly, two
by two, like a procession of ghosts, appeared for one moment in the
circle of light made by the torch, and again disappeared into shadow.

"See, there are Charles and Bertrand of 'Artois," said the notary;
"there are the Counts of Terlizzi and Catanzaro; the grand admiral and
grand seneschal, Godfrey of Marsan, Count of Squillace, and Robert of
Cabane, Count of Eboli; the two women talking in a low voice with the
eager gesticulations are Catherine of Tarentum, Empress of
Constantinople, and Philippa the Catanese, the queen's governess and
chief lady; there is Dona Cancha, chamberwoman and confidante of
Joan; and there is the Countess of Morcone."

The notary stopped on beholding a shadow alone, its head bowed, with
arms hanging loosely, choking back her sobs beneath a hood of black.

"Who is the woman who seems to drag herself so painfully along in
their train?" asked the duke, pressing his companion's arm.

That woman," said the notary, "is the queen."  "Ah, now I see,"
thought Charles, breathing freely, with the same sort of satisfaction
that Satan no doubt feels when a long coveted soul falls at length
into his power.

"And now, my lord," continued Master Nicholas, when all had returned
once more into silence and darkness, "if you have bidden me spy on
these conspirators with a view to saving the young prince you are
protecting with love and vigilance, you must hurry forward, for to-
morrow maybe it will be too late."

"Follow me," cried the duke imperiously; "it is time you should know
my real intention, and then carry out my orders with scrupulous
exactness."

With these words he drew him aside to a place opposite to where the
conspirators had just disappeared.  The notary mechanically followed
through a labyrinth of dark corridors and secret staircases, quite at
a loss how to account for the sudden change that had come over his
master--crossing one of the ante-chambers in the castle, they came
upon Andre, who joyfully accosted them; grasping the hand of his
cousin Duras in his affectionate manner, he asked him in a pressing
way that would brook no refusal, "Will you be of our hunting party
to-morrow, duke?"

"Excuse me, my lord," said Charles, bowing down to the ground; "it
will be impossible for me to go to-morrow, for my wife is very
unwell; but I entreat you to accept the best falcon I have."

And here he cast upon the notary a petrifying glance.

The morning of the 20th of August was fine and calm--the irony of
nature contrasting cruelly with the fate of mankind.  From break of
day masters and valets, pages and knights, princes and courtiers, all
were on foot; cries of joy were heard on every side when the queen
arrived, on a snow-white horse, at the head of the young and
brilliant throng.  Joan was perhaps paler than usual, but that might
be because she had been obliged to rise very early.  Andre, mounted
on one of the most fiery of all the steeds he had tamed, galloped
beside his wife, noble and proud, happy in his own powers, his youth,
and the thousand gilded hopes that a brilliant future seemed to
offer.  Never had the court of Naples shown so brave an aspect: every
feeling of distrust and hatred seemed entirely forgotten; Friar
Robert himself, suspicious as he was by nature, when he saw the
joyous cavalcade go by under his window, looked out with pride, and
stroking his beard, laughed at his own seriousness.

Andre's intention was to spend several days hunting between Capua and
Aversa, and only to return to Naples when all was in readiness for
his coronation.  Thus the first day they hunted round about Melito,
and went through two or three villages in the land of Labore.
Towards evening the court stopped at Aversa, with a view to passing
the night there, and since at that period there was no castle in the
place worthy of entertaining the queen with her husband and numerous
court, the convent of St. Peter's at Majella was converted into a
royal residence: this convent had been built by Charles II in the
year of our Lord 1309.

While the grand seneschal was giving orders for supper and the
preparation of a room for Andre and his wife, the prince, who during
the whole day had abandoned himself entirely to his favourite
amusement, went up on the terrace to enjoy the evening air,
accompanied by the good Isolda, his beloved nurse, who loved him more
even than his mother, and would not leave his side for a moment.
Never had the prince appeared so animated and happy: he was in
ecstasies over the beauty of the country, the clear air, the scent of
the trees around; he besieged his nurse with a thousand queries,
never waiting for an answer; and they were indeed long in coming, for
poor Isolda was gazing upon him with that appearance of fascination
which makes a mother absent-minded when her child is talking: Andre
was eagerly telling her about a terrible boar he had chased that
morning across the woods, how it had lain foaming at his feet, and
Isolda interrupted him to say he had a grain of dust in his eye.
Then Andre was full of his plans for the future, and Isolda stroked
his fair hair, remarking that he must be feeling very tired.  Then,
heeding nothing but his own joy and excitement, the young prince
hurled defiance at destiny, calling by all his gods on dangers to
come forward, so that he might have the chance of quelling them, and
the poor nurse exclaimed, in a flood of tears, "My child, you love me
no longer."

Out of all patience with these constant interruptions, Andre scolded
her kindly enough, and mocked at her childish fears.  Then, paying no
attention to a sort of melancholy that was coming over him, he bade
her tell him old tales of his childhood, and had a long talk about
his brother Louis, his absent mother, and tears were in his eyes when
he recalled her last farewell.  Isolda listened joyfully, and
answered all he asked; but no fell presentiment shook her heart: the
poor woman loved Andre with all the strength of her soul; for him she
would have given up her life in this world and in the world to come;
yet she was not his mother.

When all was ready, Robert of Cabane came to tell the prince that the
queen awaited him; Andre cast one last look at the smiling fields
beneath the starry heavens, pressed his nurse's hand to his lips and
to his heart, and followed the grand seneschal slowly and, it seemed,
with some regret.  But soon the brilliant lights of the room, the
wine that circulated freely, the gay talk, the eager recitals of that
day's exploits, served to disperse the cloud of gloom that had for a
moment overspread the countenance of the prince.  The queen alone,
leaning on the table, with fixed eyes and lips that never moved, sat
at this strange feast pale and cold as a baleful ghost summoned from
the tomb to disturb the joy of the party.  Andre, whose brain began
to be affected by the draughts of wine from Capri and Syracuse, was
annoyed at his wife's look, and attributing it to contempt, filled a
goblet to the brim and presented it to the queen.  Joan visibly
trembled, her lips moved convulsively; but the conspirators drowned
in their noisy talk the involuntary groan that escaped her.  In the
midst of a general uproar, Robert of Cabane proposed that they should
serve generous supplies of the same wine drunk at the royal table to
the Hungarian guards who were keeping watch at the approaches to the
convent, and this liberality evoked frenzied applause.  The shouting
of the soldiers soon gave witness to their gratitude for the
unexpected gift, and mingled with the hilarious toasts of the
banqueters.  To put the finishing touch to Andre's excitement, there
were cries on every side of "Long live the Queen!  Long live His
Majesty the King of Naples!"

The orgy lasted far into the night: the pleasures of the next day
were discussed with enthusiasm, and Bertrand of Artois protested in a
loud voice that if they were so late now some would not rise early on
the morrow.  Andre declared that, for his part, an hour or two's rest
would be enough to get over his fatigue, and he eagerly protested
that it would be well for others to follow his example.  The Count of
Terlizzi seemed to express some doubt as to the prince's punctuality.
Andre insisted, and challenging all the barons present to see who
would be up first, he retired with the queen to the room that had
been reserved for them, where he very soon fell into a deep and heavy
sleep.  About two o'clock in the morning, Tommaso Pace, the prince's
valet and first usher of the royal apartments, knocked at his 2876
master's door to rouse him for the chase.  At the first knock, all
was silence; at the second, Joan, who had not closed her eyes all
night, moved as if to rouse her husband and warn him of the
threatened danger; but at the third knock the unfortunate young man
suddenly awoke, and hearing in the next room sounds of laughter and
whispering, fancied that they were making a joke of his laziness, and
jumped out of bed bareheaded, in nothing but his shirt, his shoes
half on and half off.  He opened the door; and at this point we
translate literally the account of Domenico Gravina, a historian of
much esteem.  As soon as the prince appeared, the conspirators all at
once fell upon him, to strangle him with their hands; believing he
could not die by poison or sword, because of the charmed ring given
him by his poor mother.  But Andre was so strong and active, that
when he perceived the infamous treason he defended himself with more
than human strength, and with dreadful cries got free from his
murderers, his face all bloody, his fair hair pulled out in handfuls.
The unhappy young man tried to gain his own bedroom, so as to get
some weapon and valiantly resist the assassins; but as he reached the
door, Nicholas of Melazzo, putting his dagger like a bolt into the
lock, stopped his entrance.  The prince, calling aloud the whole time
and imploring the protection of his friends, returned to the hall;
but all the doors were shut, and no one held out a helping hand; for
the queen was silent, showing no uneasiness about her husband's
death.

But the nurse Isolda, terrified by the shouting of her beloved son
and lord, leapt from her bed and went to the window, filling the
house with dreadful cries.  The traitors, alarmed by the mighty
uproar, although the place was lonely and so far from the centre of
the town that nobody could have come to see what the noise was, were
on the point of letting their victim go, when Bertrand of Artois, who
felt he was more guilty than the others, seized the prince with
hellish fury round the waist, and after a desperate struggle got him
down; then dragging him by the hair of his head to a balcony which
gave upon the garden, and pressing one knee upon his chest, cried out
to the others--

"Come here, barons: I have what we want to strangle him with."

And round his neck he passed a long cord of silk and gold, while the
wretched man struggled all he could.  Bertrand quickly drew up the
knot, and the others threw the body over the parapet of the balcony,
leaving it hanging between earth and sky until death ensued.  When
the Count of Terlizzi averted his eyes from the horrid spectacle,
Robert of Cabane cried out imperiously--

"What are you doing there?  The cord is long enough for us all to
hold: we want not witnesses, we want accomplices!"

As soon as the last convulsive movements of the dying man had ceased,
they let the corpse drop the whole height of the three storeys, and
opening the doors of the hall, departed as though nothing had
happened.

Isolda, when at last she contrived to get a light, rapidly ran to the
queen's chamber, and finding the door shut on the inside, began to
call loudly on her Andre.  There was no answer, though the queen was
in the room.  The poor nurse, distracted, trembling, desperate, ran
down all the corridors, knocked at all the cells and woke the monks
one by one, begging them to help her look for the prince.  The monks
said that they had indeed heard a noise, but thinking it was a
quarrel between soldiers drunken perhaps or mutinous, they had not
thought it their business to interfere.  Isolda eagerly, entreated:
the alarm spread through the convent; the monks followed the nurse,
who went on before with a torch.  She entered the garden, saw
something white upon the grass, advanced trembling, gave one piercing
cry, and fell backward.

The wretched Andre was lying in his blood, a cord round his neck as
though he were a thief, his head crushed in by the height from which
he fell.  Then two monks went upstairs to the queen's room, and
respectfully knocking at the door, asked in sepulchral tones--

"Madam, what would you have us do with your husband's corpse?"

And when the queen made no answer, they went down again slowly to the
garden, and kneeling one at the head, the other at the foot of the
dead man, they began to recite penitential psalms in a low voice.
When they had spent an hour in prayer, two other monks went up in the
same way to Joan's chamber, repeating the same question and getting
no answer, whereupon they relieved the first two, and began
themselves to pray.  Next a third couple went to the door of this
inexorable room, and coming away perturbed by their want of success,
perceived that there was a disturbance of people outside the convent,
while vengeful cries were heard amongst the indignant crowd.  The
groups became more and more thronged, threatening voices were raised,
a torrent of invaders threatened the royal dwelling, when the queen's
guard appeared, lance in readiness, and a litter closely shut,
surrounded by the principal barons of the court, passed through the
crowd, which stood stupidly gazing.  Joan, wrapped in a black veil,
went back to Castel Nuovo, amid her escort; and nobody, say the
historians, had the courage to say a word about this terrible deed.




CHAPTER V

The terrible part that Charles of Durazzo was to play began as soon
as this crime was accomplished.  The duke left the corpse two whole
days exposed to the wind and the rain, unburied and dishonoured, the
corpse of a man whom the pope had made King of Sicily and Jerusalem,
so that the indignation of the mob might be increased by the dreadful
sight.  On the third he ordered it to be conveyed with the utmost
pomp to the cathedral of Naples, and assembling all the Hungarians
around the catafalque, he thus addressed them, in a voice of
thunder:--

"Nobles and commoners, behold our king hanged like a dog by infamous
traitors.  God will soon make known to us the names of all the
guilty: let those who desire that justice may be done hold up their
hands and swear against murderers bloody persecution, implacable
hatred, everlasting vengeance."

It was this one man's cry that brought death and desolation to the
murderers' hearts, and the people dispersed about the town,
shrieking, "Vengeance, vengeance!"

Divine justice, which knows naught of privilege and respects no
crown, struck Joan first of all in her love.  When the two lovers
first met, both were seized alike with terror and disgust; they
recoiled trembling, the queen seeing in Bertrand her husband's
executioner, and he in her the cause of his crime, possibly of his
speedy punishment.  Bertrand's looks were disordered, his cheeks
hollow, his eyes encircled with black rings, his mouth horribly
distorted; his arm and forefinger extended towards his accomplice, he
seemed to behold a frightful vision rising before him.  The same cord
he had used when he strangled Andre, he now saw round the queen's
neck, so tight that it made its way into her flesh: an invisible
force, a Satanic impulse, urged him to strangle with his own hands
the woman he had loved so dearly, had at one time adored on his
knees.  The count rushed out of the room with gestures of
desperation, muttering incoherent words; and as he shewed plain signs
of mental aberration, his father, Charles of Artois, took him away,
and they went that same evening to their palace of St. Agatha, and
there prepared a defence in case they should be attacked.

But Joan's punishment, which was destined to be slow as well as
dreadful, to last thirty-seven years and--end in a ghastly death, was
now only beginning.  All the wretched beings who were stained with
Andre's death came in turn to her to demand the price of blood.  The
Catanese and her son, who held in their hands not only the queen's
honour but her life, now became doubly greedy and exacting.  Dona
Cancha no longer put any bridle on her licentiousness; and the
Empress of Constantinople ordered her niece to marry her eldest son,
Robert, Prince of Tarentum.  Joan, consumed by remorse, full of
indignation and shame at the arrogant conduct of her subjects, dared
scarcely lift her head, and stooped to entreaties, only stipulating
for a few days' delay before giving her answer: the empress
consented, on condition that her son should come to reside at Castel
Nuovo, with permission to see the queen once a day.  Joan bowed her
head in silence, and Robert of Tarentum was installed at the castle.

Charles of Durazzo, who by the death of Andre had practically become
the head of the family, and, would, by the terms of his grandfather's
will, inherit the kingdom by right of his wife Marie in the case of
Joan's dying without lawful issue, sent to the queen two commands:
first, that she should not dream of contracting a new marriage
without first consulting him in the choice of a husband; secondly,
that she should invest him at once with the title of Duke of
Calabria.  To compel his cousin to make these two concessions, he
added that if she should be so ill advised as to refuse either of
them, he should hand over to justice the proofs of the crime and the
names of the murderers.  Joan, bending beneath the weight of this new
difficulty, could think of no way to avoid it; but Catherine, who
alone was stout enough to fight this nephew of hers, insisted that
they must strike at the Duke of Durazzo in his ambition and hopes,
and tell him, to begin with--what was the fact--that the queen was
pregnant.  If, in spite of this news, he persisted in his plans, she
would find some means or other, she said, of causing trouble and
discord in her nephew's family, and wounding him in his most intimate
affections or closest interests, by publicly dishonouring him through
his wife or his mother.

Charles smiled coldly when his aunt came to tell him from the queen
that she was about to bring into the world an infant, Andre's
posthumous child.  What importance could a babe yet unborn possibly
have--as a fact, it lived only a few months--in the eyes of a man who
with such admirable coolness got rid of people who stood in his wary,
and that moreover by the hand of his own enemies?  He told the
empress that the happy news she had condescended to bring him in
person, far from diminishing his kindness towards his cousin,
inspired him rather with more interest and goodwill; that
consequently he reiterated his suggestion, and renewed his promise
not to seek vengeance for his dear Andre, since in a certain sense
the crime was not complete should a child be destined to survive; but
in case of a refusal he declared himself inexorable.  He cleverly
gave Catherine to understand that, as she had some interest herself
in the prince's death, she ought for her own sake to persuade the
queen to stop legal proceedings.

The empress seemed to be deeply impressed by her nephew's threatening
attitude, and promised to do her best to persuade the queen to grant
all he asked, on condition, however, that Charles should allow the
necessary time for carrying through so delicate a business.  But
Catherine profited by this delay to think out her own plan of
revenge, and ensure the means of certain success.  After starting
several projects eagerly and then regretfully abandoning them, she
fixed upon an infernal and unheard-of scheme, which the mind would
refuse to believe but for the unanimous testimony of historians.
Poor Agnes of Duras, Charles's mother, had for some few days been
suffering with an inexplicable weariness, a slow painful malady with
which her son's restlessness and violence may have had not a little
to do.  The empress resolved that the first effect of her hatred was
to fall upon this unhappy mother.  She summoned the Count of Terlizzi
and Dona Cancha, his mistress, who by the queen's orders had been
attending Agnes since her illness began.  Catherine suggested to the
young chamberwoman, who was at that time with child, that she should
deceive the doctor by representing that certain signs of her own
condition really belonged to the sick woman, so that he, deceived by
the false indications, should be compelled to admit to Charles of
Durazzo that his mother was guilty and dishonoured.  The Count of
Terlizzi, who ever since he had taken part in the regicide trembled
in fear of discovery, had nothing to oppose to the empress's desire,
and Dona Cancha, whose head was as light as her heart was corrupt,
seized with a foolish gaiety on any chance of taking her revenge on
the prudery of the only princess of the blood who led a pure life at
a court that was renowned for its depravity.  Once assured that her
accomplices would be prudent and obedient, Catherine began to spread
abroad certain vague and dubious but terribly serious rumours, only
needing proof, and soon after the cruel accusation was started it was
repeated again and again in confidence, until it reached the ears of
Charles.

At this amazing revelation the duke was seized with a fit of
trembling.  He sent instantly for the doctor, and asked imperiously
what was the cause of his mother's malady.  The doctor turned pale
and stammered; but when Charles grew threatening he admitted that he
had certain grounds for suspecting that the duchess was enceinte, but
as he might easily have been deceived the first time, he would make a
second investigation before pronouncing his opinion in so serious a
matter.  The next day, as the doctor came out of the bedroom, the
duke met him, and interrogating him with an agonised gesture, could
only judge by the silence that his fears were too well confirmed.
But the doctor, with excess of caution, declared that he would make a
third trial.  Condemned criminals can suffer no worse than Charles in
the long hours that passed before that fatal moment when he learned
that his mother was indeed guilty.  On the third day the doctor
stated on his soul and conscience that Agnes of Durazzo was pregnant.

"Very good," said Charles, dismissing the doctor with no sign of
emotion.

That evening the duchess took a medicine ordered by the doctor; and
when, half an hour later, she was assailed with violent pains, the
duke was warned that perhaps other physicians ought to be consulted,
as the prescription of the ordinary doctor, instead of bringing about
an improvement in her state, had only made her worse.

Charles slowly went up to the duchess's room, and sending away all
the people who were standing round her bed, on the pretext that they
were clumsy and made his mother worse, he shut the door, and they
were alone.  The poor Agnes, forgetting her internal agony when she
saw her son, pressed his hand tenderly and smiled through her tears.

Charles, pale beneath his bronzed complexion, his forehead moist with
a cold sweat, and his eyes horribly dilated, bent over the sick woman
and asked her gloomily--

"Are you a little better, mother?"

"Ah, I am in pain, in frightful pain, my poor Charles.  I feel as
though I have molten lead in my veins.  O my son, call your brothers,
so that I may give you all my blessing for the last time, for I
cannot hold out long against this pain.  I am burning.  Mercy!  Call
a doctor: I know I have been poisoned."

Charles did not stir from the bedside.

"Water!" cried the dying woman in a broken voice,--" water!  A
doctor, a confessor!  My children--I want my children!"

And as the duke paid no heed, but stood moodily silent, the poor
mother, prostrated by pain, fancied that grief had robbed her son of
all power of speech or movement, and so, by a desperate effort, sat
up, and seizing him by the arm, cried with all the strength she could
muster--

"Charles, my son, what is it?  My poor boy, courage; it is nothing, I
hope.  But quick, call for help, call a doctor.  Ah, you have no idea
of what I suffer."

"Your doctor," said Charles slowly and coldly, each word piercing his
mother's heart like a dagger,--"your doctor cannot come."

"Oh why?" asked Agnes, stupefied.

"Because no one ought to live who knows the secret of our shame."

"Unhappy man!" she cried, overwhelmed with, pain and terror, "you
have murdered him!  Perhaps you have poisoned your mother too!
Charles, Charles, have mercy on your own soul!"

"It is your doing," said Charles, without show of emotion: "you have
driven me into crime and despair; you have caused my dishonour in
this world and my damnation in the next."

"What are you saying?  My own Charles, have mercy!  Do not let me die
in this horrible uncertainty; what fatal delusion is blinding you?
Speak, my son, speak: I am not feeling the poison now.  What have I
done?  Of what have I been accused?"

She looked with haggard eyes at her son: her maternal love still
struggled against the awful thought of matricide; at last, seeing
that Charles remained speechless in spite of her entreaties, she
repeated, with a piercing cry--

"Speak, in God's name, speak before I die!"

"Mother, you are with child."

"What!" cried Agnes, with a loud cry, which broke her very heart.
"O God, forgive him!  Charles, your mother forgives and blesses you
in death."

Charles fell upon her neck, desperately crying for help: he would now
have gladly saved her at the cost of his life, but it was too late.
He uttered one cry that came from his heart, and was found stretched
out upon his mother's corpse.

Strange comments were made at the court on the death of the Duchess
of Durazzo and her doctor's disappearance; but there was no doubt at
all that grief and gloom were furrowing wrinkles on Charles's brow,
which was already sad enough.  Catherine alone knew the terrible
cause of her nephew's depression, for to her it was very plain that
the duke at one blow had killed his mother and her physician.  But
she had never expected a reaction so sudden and violent in a man who
shrank before no crime.  She had thought Charles capable of
everything except remorse.  His gloomy, self absorbed silence seemed
a bad augury for her plans.  She had desired to cause trouble for him
in his own family, so that he might have no time to oppose the
marriage of her son with the queen; but she had shot beyond her mark,
and Charles, started thus on the terrible path of crime, had now
broken through the bonds of his holiest affections, and gave himself
up to his bad passions with feverish ardour and a savage desire for
revenge.  Then Catherine had recourse to gentleness and submission.
She gave her son to understand that there was only one way of
obtaining the queen's hand, and that was by flattering the ambition
of Charles and in some sort submitting himself to his patronage.
Robert of Tarentum understood this, and ceased making court to Joan,
who received his devotion with cool kindness, and attached himself
closely to Charles, paying him much the same sort of respect and
deference that he himself had affected for Andre, when the thought
was first in his mind of causing his ruin.  But the Duke of Durazzo
was by no means deceived as to the devoted friendship shown towards
him by the heir of the house of Tarentum, and pretending to be deeply
touched by the unexpected change of feeling, he all the time kept a
strict guard on Robert's actions.

An event outside all human foresight occurred to upset the
calculations of the two cousins.  One day while they were out
together on horseback, as they often were since their pretended
reconciliation, Louis of Tarentum, Robert's youngest brother, who had
always felt for Joan a chivalrous, innocent love,--a love which a
young man of twenty is apt to lock up in his heart as a secret
treasure,--Louis, we say, who had held aloof from the infamous family
conspiracy and had not soiled his hands with Andre's blood, drawn on
by an irrepressible passion, all at once appeared at the gates of
Castel Nuovo; and while his brother was wasting precious hours in
asking for a promise of marriage, had the bridge raised and gave the
soldiers strict orders to admit no one.  Then, never troubling
himself about Charles's anger or Robert's jealousy, he hurried to the
queen's room, and there, says Domenico Gravina, without any preamble,
the union was consummated.

On returning from his ride, Robert, astonished that the bridge was
not at once lowered for him, at first loudly called upon the soldiers
on guard at the fortress, threatening severe punishment for their
unpardonable negligence; but as the gates did not open and the
soldiers made no sign of fear or regret, he fell into a violent fit
of rage, and swore he would hang the wretches like dogs for hindering
his return home.  But the Empress of Constantinople, terrified at the
bloody quarrel beginning between the two brothers, went alone and on
foot to her son, and making use of her maternal authority to beg him
to master his feelings, there in the presence of the crowd that had
come up hastily to witness the strange scene, she related in a low
voice all that had passed in his absence.

A roar as of a wounded tiger escaped from Robert's breast: all but
blind with rage, he nearly trampled his mother under the feet of his
horse, which seemed to feel his master's anger, and plunging
violently, breathed blood from his nostrils.  When the prince had
poured every possible execration on his brother's head, he turned and
galloped away from the accursed castle, flying to the Duke of
Durazzo, whom he had only just left, to tell him of this outrage and
stir him to revenge.  Charles was talking carelessly with his young
wife, who was but little used to such tranquil conversation and
expansiveness, when the Prince of Tarentum, exhausted, out of breath,
bathed in perspiration, came up with his incredible tale.  Charles
made him say it twice over, so impossible did Louis's audacious
enterprise appear to him.  Then quickly changing from doubt to fury,
he struck his brow with his iron glove, saying that as the queen
defied him he would make her tremble even in her castle and in her
lover's arms.  He threw one withering look on Marie, who interceded
tearfully for her sister, and pressing Robert's hand with warmth,
vowed that so long as he lived Louis should never be Joan's husband.

That same evening he shut himself up in his study, and wrote letters
whose effect soon appeared.  A bull, dated June 2, 1346, was
addressed to Bertram de Baux, chief-justice of the kingdom of Sicily
and Count of Monte Scaglioso, with orders to make the most strict
inquiries concerning Andre's murderers, whom the pope likewise laid
under his anathema, and to punish them with the utmost rigour of the
law.  But a secret note was appended to the bull which was quite at
variance with the designs of Charles: the sovereign pontiff expressly
bade the chief-justice not to implicate the queen in the proceedings
or the princes of the blood, so as to avoid worse disturbances,
reserving, as supreme head of the Church and lord of the kingdom, the
right of judging them later on, as his wisdom might dictate.

For this imposing trial Bertram de Baux made great preparations.
A platform was erected in the great hall of tribunal, and all the
officers of the crown and great state dignitaries, and all the chief
barons, had a place behind the enclosure where the magistrates sat.
Three days after Clement VI's bull had been published in the capital,
the chief-justice was ready for a public examination of two accused
persons.  The two culprits who had first fallen into the hands of
justice were, as one may easily suppose, those whose condition was
least exalted, whose lives were least valuable, Tommaso Pace and
Nicholas of Melazzo.  They were led before the tribunal to be first
of all tortured, as the custom was.  As they approached the judges,
the notary passing by Charles in the street had time to say in a low
voice--

"My lord, the time has come to give my life for you: I will do my
duty; I commend my wife and children to you."

Encouraged by a nod from his patron, he walked on firmly and
deliberately.  The chief-justice, after establishing the identity of
the accused, gave them over to the executioner and his men to be
tortured in the public square, so that their sufferings might serve
as a show and an example to the crowd.  But no sooner was Tommaso
Pace tied to the rope, when to the great disappointment of all he
declared that he would confess everything, and asked accordingly to
be taken back before his judges.  At these words, the Count of
Terlizzi, who was following every movement of the two men with mortal
anxiety, thought it was all over now with him and his accomplices;
and so, when Tommaso Pace was turning his steps towards the great
hall, led by two guards, his hands tied behind his back, and followed
by the notary, he contrived to take him into a secluded house, and
squeezing his throat with great force, made him thus put his tongue
out, whereupon he cut it off with a sharp razor.

The yells of the poor wretch so cruelly mutilated fell on the ears of
the Duke of Durazzo: he found his way into the room where the
barbarous act had been committed just as the Count of Terlizzi was
coming out, and approached the notary, who had been present at the
dreadful spectacle and had not given the least sign of fear or
emotion.  Master Nicholas, thinking the same fate was in store for
him, turned calmly to the duke, saying with a sad smile--

"My lord, the precaution is useless; there is no need for you to cut
out my tongue, as the noble count has done to my poor companion.  The
last scrap of my flesh may be torn off without one word being dragged
from my mouth.  I have promised, my lord, and you have the life of my
wife and the future of my children as guarantee for my word."

"I do not ask for silence," said the duke solemnly; "you can free me
from all my enemies at once, and I order you to denounce them at the
tribunal."

The notary bowed his head with mournful resignation; then raising it
in affright, made one step up to the duke and murmured in a choking
voice--

"And the queen?"

"No one would believe you if you ventured to denounce her; but when
the Catanese and her son, the Count of Terlizzi and his wife and her
most intimate friends, have been accused by you, when they fail to
endure the torture, and when they denounce her unanimously---"

"I see, my lord.  You do not only want my life; you would have my
soul too.  Very well; once more I commend to you my children."

With a deep sigh he walked up to the tribunal.  The chief-justice
asked Tommaso Pace the usual questions, and a shudder of horror
passed through the assembly when they saw the poor wretch in
desperation opening his mouth, which streamed with blood.  But
surprise and terror reached their height when Nicholas of Melazzo
slowly and firmly gave a list of Andre's murderers, all except the
queen and the princes of the blood, and went on to give all details
of the assassination.

Proceedings were at once taken for the arrest of the grand seneschal,
Robert of Cabane, and the Counts of Terlizzi and Morcone, who were
present and had not ventured to make any movement in self-defence.
An hour later, Philippa, her two daughters, and Dona Cancha joined
them in prison, after vainly imploring the queen's protection.
Charles and Bertrand of Artois, shut up in their fortress of Saint
Agatha, bade defiance to justice, and several others, among them the
Counts of Meleto and Catanzaro, escaped by flight.

As soon as Master Nicholas said he had nothing further to confess,
and that he had spoken the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the
chief-justice pronounced sentence amid a profound silence; and 1897
without delay Tommaso Pace and the notary were tied to the tails of
two horses, dragged through the chief streets of the town, and hanged
in the market place.

The other prisoners were thrown into a subterranean vault, to be
questioned and put to the torture on the following day.  In the
evening, finding themselves in the same dungeon, they reproached one
another, each pretending he had been dragged into the crime by
someone else.  Then Dona Cancha, whose strange character knew no
inconsistencies, even face to face with death and torture, drowned
with a great burst of laughter the lamentations of her companions,
and joyously exclaimed--

"Look here, friends, why these bitter recriminations--this ill--
mannered raving?  We have no excuses to make, and we are all equally
guilty.  I am the youngest of all, and not the ugliest, by your
leave, ladies, but if I am condemned, at least I will die cheerfully.
For I have never denied myself any pleasure I could get in this
world, and I can boast that much will be forgiven me, for I have
loved much: of that you, gentlemen, know something.  You, bad old
man," she continued to the Count of Terlizzi, "do you not remember
lying by my side in the queen's ante-chamber?  Come, no blushes
before your noble family; confess, my lord, that I am with child by
your Excellency; and you know how we managed to make up the story of
poor Agues of Durazzo and her pregnancy--God rest her soul!  For my
part, I never supposed the joke would take such a serious turn all at
once.  You know all this and much more; spare your lamentations, for,
by my word, they are getting very tiresome: let us prepare to die
joyously, as we have lived."

With these words she yawned slightly, and, lying down on the straw,
fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed as happy dreams as she had ever
dreamed in her life.

On the morrow from break of day there was an immense crowd on the sea
front.  During the night an enormous palisade had been put up to keep
the people away far enough for them to see the accused without
hearing anything.  Charles of Durazzo, at the head of a brilliant
cortege of knights and pages, mounted on a magnificent horse, all in
black, as a sign of mourning, waited near the enclosure.  Ferocious
joy shone in his eyes as the accused made their way through the
crowd, two by two, their wrists tied with ropes; for the duke every
minute expected to hear the queen's name spoken.  But the chief-
justice, a man of experience, had prevented indiscretion of any kind
by fixing a hook in the tongue of each one.  The poor creatures were
tortured on a ship, so that nobody should hear the terrible
confessions their sufferings dragged from them.

But Joan, in spite of the wrongs that most of the conspirators had
done her, felt a renewal of pity for the woman she had once respected
as a mother, for her childish companions and her friends, and
possibly also some remains of love for Robert of Cabane, and sent two
messengers to beg Bertram de Baux to show mercy to the culprits.  But
the chief-justice seized these men and had them tortured; and on
their confession that they also were implicated in Andre's murder, he
condemned them to the same punishment as the others.  Dona Cancha
alone, by reason of her situation, escaped the torture, and her
sentence was deferred till the day of her confinement.

As this beautiful girl was returning to prison, with many a smile for
all the handsomest cavaliers she could see in the crowd, she gave a
sign to Charles of Durazzo as she neared him to come forward, and
since her tongue had not been pierced (for the same reason) with an
iron instrument, she said some words to him a while in a low voice.

Charles turned fearfully pale, and putting his hand to his sword,
cried--

"Wretched woman!"

"You forget, my lord, I am under the protection of the law."

"My mother!--oh, my poor mother!  "murmured Charles in a choked
voice, and he fell backward.

The next morning the people were beforehand with the executioner,
loudly demanding their prey.  All the national troops and mercenaries
that the judicial authorities could command were echelonned in the
streets, opposing a sort of dam to the torrent of the raging crowd.
The sudden insatiable cruelty that too often degrades human nature
had awaked in the populace: all heads were turned with hatred and
frenzy; all imaginations inflamed with the passion for revenge;
groups of men and women, roaring like wild beasts, threatened to
knock down the walls of the prison, if the condemned were not handed
over to them to take to the place of punishment: a great murmur
arose, continuous, ever the same, like the growling of thunder: the
queen's heart was petrified with terror.

But, in spite of the desire of Bertram de Baux to satisfy the popular
wish, the preparations for the solemn execution were not completed
till midday, when the sun's rays fell scorchingly upon the town.
There went up a mighty cry from ten thousand palpitating breasts when
a report first ran through the crowd that the prisoners were about to
appear.  There was a moment of silence, and the prison doors rolled
slowly back on their hinges with a rusty, grating noise.  A triple
row of horsemen, with lowered visor and lance in rest, started the
procession, and amid yells and curses the condemned prisoners came
out one by one, each tied upon a cart, gagged and naked to the waist,
in charge of two executioners, whose orders were to torture them the
whole length of their way.  On the first cart was the former
laundress of Catana, afterwards wife of the grand seneschal and
governess to the queen, Philippa of Cabane: the two executioners at
right and left of her scourged her with such fury that the blood
spurting up from the wounds left a long track in all the streets
passed by the cortege.

Immediately following their mother on separate carts came the
Countesses of Terlizzi and Morcone, the elder no more than eighteen
years of age.  The two sisters were so marvellously beautiful that in
the crowd a murmur of surprise was heard, and greedy eyes were fixed
upon their naked trembling shoulders.  But the men charged to torture
them gazed with ferocious smiles upon their forms of seductive
beauty, and, armed with sharp knives, cut off pieces of their flesh
with a deliberate enjoyment and threw them out to the crowd, who
eagerly struggled to get them, signing to the executioners to show
which part of the victims' bodies they preferred.

Robert of Cabane, the grand seneschal, the Counts of Terlizzi and
Morcone, Raymond Pace, brother of the old valet who had been executed
the day before, and many more, were dragged on similar carts, and
both scourged with ropes and slashed with knives; their flesh was
torn out with red-hot pincers, and flung upon brazen chafing-dishes.
No cry of pain was heard from the grand seneschal, he never stirred
once in his frightful agony; yet the torturers put such fury into
their work that the poor wretch was dead before the goal was reached.

In the centre of the square of Saint Eligius an immense stake was set
up: there the prisoners were taken, and what was left of their
mutilated bodies was thrown into the flames.  The Count of Terlizzi
and the grand seneschal's widow were still alive, and two tears of
blood ran down the cheeks of the miserable mother as she saw her
son's corpse and the palpitating remains of her two daughters cast
upon the fire--they by their stifled cries showed that they had not
ceased to suffer.  But suddenly a fearful noise overpowered the
groans of the victims; the enclosure was broken and overturned by
the mob.  Like madmen, they rushed at the burning pile,--armed with
sabres, axes, and knives, and snatching the bodies dead or alive from
the flames, tore them to pieces, carrying off the bones to make
whistles or handles for their daggers as a souvenir of this horrible
day.




CHAPTER VI

The spectacle of this frightful punishment did not satisfy the
revenge of Charles of Durazzo.  Seconded by the chief-justice, he
daily brought about fresh executions, till Andre's death came to be
no more than a pretext for the legal murder of all who opposed his
projects.  But Louis of Tarentum, who had won Joan's heart, and was
eagerly trying to get the necessary dispensation for legalising the
marriage, from this time forward took as a personal insult every act
of the high court of justice which was performed against his will and
against the queen's prerogative: he armed all his adherents,
increasing their number by all the adventurers he could get together,
and so put on foot a strong enough force to support his own party and
resist his cousin.  Naples was thus split up into hostile camps,
ready to come to blows on the smallest pretext, whose daily
skirmishes, moreover, were always followed by some scene of pillage
or death.

But Louis had need of money both to pay his mercenaries and to hold
his own against the Duke of Durazzo and his own brother Robert, and
one day he discovered that the queen's coffers were empty.  Joan was
wretched and desperate, and her lover, though generous and brave and
anxious to reassure her so far as he could, did not very clearly see
how to extricate himself from such a difficult situation.  But his
mother Catherine, whose ambition was satisfied in seeing one of her
sons, no matter which, attain to the throne of Naples, came
unexpectedly to their aid, promising solemnly that it would only take
her a few days to be able to lay at her niece's feet a treasure
richer than anything she had ever dreamed of, queen as she was.

The empress then took half her son's troops, made for Saint Agatha,
and besieged the fortress where Charles and Bertrand of Artois had
taken refuge when they fled from justice.  The old count, astonished
at the sight of this woman, who had been the very soul of the
conspiracy, and not in the least understanding her arrival as an
enemy, sent out to ask the intention of this display of military
force.  To which Catherine replied in words which we translate
literally:

"My friends, tell Charles, our faithful friend, that we desire to
speak with him privately and alone concerning a matter equally
interesting to us both, and he is not to be alarmed at our arriving
in the guise of an enemy, for this we have done designedly, as we
shall explain in the course of our interview.  We know he is confined
to bed by the gout, and therefore feel no surprise at his not coming
out to meet us.  Have the goodness to salute him on our part and
reassure him, telling him that we desire to come in, if such is his
good pleasure, with our intimate counsellor, Nicholas Acciajuoli, and
ten soldiers only, to speak with him concerning an important matter
that cannot be entrusted to go-betweens."

Entirely reassured by these frank, friendly explanations, Charles of
Artois sent out his son Bertrand to the empress to receive her with
the respect due to her rank and high position at the court of Naples.
Catherine went promptly to the castle with many signs of joy, and
inquiring after the count's health and expressing her affection, as
soon as they were alone, she mysteriously lowered her voice and
explained that the object of her visit was to consult a man of tried
experience on the affairs of Naples, and to beg his active
cooperation in the queen's favour.  As, however, she was not pressed
for time, she could wait at Saint Agatha for the count's recovery to
hear his views and tell him of the march of events since he left the
court.  She succeeded so well in gaining the old man's confidence and
banishing his suspicions, that he begged her to honour them with her
presence as long as she was able, and little by little received all
her men within the walls.  This was what Catherine was waiting for:
on the very day when her army was installed at Saint Agatha, she
suddenly entered the count's room, followed by four soldiers, and
seizing the old man by the throat, exclaimed wrathfully--

"Miserable traitor, you will not escape from our hands before you
have received the punishment you deserve.  In the meanwhile, show me
where your treasure is hidden, if you would not have me throw your
body out to feed the crows that are swooping around these dungeons."

The count, half choking, the dagger at his breast, did not even
attempt to call for help; he fell on his knees, begging the empress
to save at least the life of his son, who was not yet well from the
terrible attack of melancholia that had shaken his reason ever since
the catastrophe.  Then he painfully dragged himself to the place
where he had hidden his treasure, and pointing with his finger,
cried--

"Take all; take my life; but spare my son."

Catherine could not contain herself for joy when she saw spread out
at her feet exquisite and incredibly valuable cups, caskets of
pearls, diamonds and rubies of marvellous value, coffers full of gold
ingots, and all the wonders of Asia that surpass the wildest
imagination.  But when the old man, trembling, begged for the liberty
of his son as the price of his fortune and his own life, the empress
resumed her cold, pitiless manner, and harshly replied--

"I have already given orders for your son to be brought here; but
prepare for an eternal farewell, for he is to be taken to the
fortress of Melfi, and you in all probability will end your days
beneath the castle of Saint Agatha."

The grief of the poor count at this violent separation was so great,
that a few days later he was found dead in his dungeon, his lips
covered with a bloody froth, his hands gnawed in despair.  Bertrand
did not long survive him.  He actually lost his reason when he heard
of his father's death, and hanged himself on the prison grating.
Thus did the murderers of Andre destroy one another, like venomous
animals shut up in the same cage.

Catherine of Tarentum, carrying off the treasure she had so gained,
arrived at the court of Naples, proud of her triumph and
contemplating vast schemes.  But new troubles had come about in her
absence.  Charles of Durazzo, for the last time desiring the queen to
give him the duchy of Calabria, a title which had always belonged to
the heir presumptive, and angered by her refusal, had written to
Louis of Hungary, inviting him to take possession of the kingdom, and
promising to help in the enterprise with all his own forces, and to
give up the principal authors of his brother's death, who till now
had escaped justice.

The King of Hungary eagerly accepted these offers, and got ready an
army to avenge Andre's death and proceed to the conquest of Naples.
The tears of his mother Elizabeth and the advice of Friar Robert, the
old minister, who had fled to Buda, confirmed him in his projects of
vengeance.  He had already lodged a bitter complaint at the court of
Avignon that, while the inferior assassins had been punished, she who
was above all others guilty had been shamefully let off scot free,
and though still stained with her husband's blood, continued to live
a life of debauchery and adultery.  The pope replied soothingly that,
so far as it depended upon him, he would not be found slow to give
satisfaction to a lawful grievance; but the accusation ought to be
properly formulated and supported by proof; that no doubt Joan's
conduct during and after her husband's death was blamable; but His
Majesty must consider that the Church of Rome, which before all
things seeks truth and justice, always proceeds with the utmost
circumspection, and in so grave a matter more especially must not
judge by appearances only.

Joan, frightened by the preparations for war, sent ambassadors to the
Florentine Republic, to assert her innocence of the crime imputed to
her by public opinion, and did not hesitate to send excuses even to
the Hungarian court; but Andre's brother replied in a letter laconic
and threatening:--

"Your former disorderly life, the arrogation to yourself of exclusive
power, your neglect to punish your husband's murderers, your marriage
to another husband, moreover your own excuses, are all sufficient
proofs that you were an accomplice in the murder."

Catherine would not be put out of heart by the King of Hungary's
threats, and looking at the position of the queen and her son with a
coolness that was never deceived, she was convinced that there was no
other means of safety except a reconciliation with Charles, their
mortal foe, which could only be brought about by giving him all he
wanted.  It was one of two things: either he would help them to
repulse the King of Hungary, and later on they would pay the cost
when the dangers were less pressing, or he would be beaten himself,
and thus they would at least have the pleasure of drawing him down
with them in their own destruction.

The agreement was made in the gardens of Castel Nuovo, whither
Charles had repaired on the invitation of the queen and her aunt.  To
her cousin of Durazzo Joan accorded the title so much desired of Duke
of Calabria, and Charles, feeling that he was hereby made heir to the
kingdom, marched at once on Aquila, which town already was flying the
Hungarian colours.  The wretched man did not foresee that he was
going straight to his destruction.

When the Empress of Constantinople saw this man, whom she hated above
all others, depart in joy, she looked contemptuously upon him,
divining by a woman's instinct that mischief would befall him; then,
having no further mischief to do, no further treachery on earth, no
further revenge to satisfy, she all at once succumbed to some unknown
malady, and died suddenly, without uttering a cry or exciting a
single regret.

But the King of Hungary, who had crossed Italy with a formidable
army, now entered the kingdom from the side of Aquila: on his way he
had everywhere received marks of interest and sympathy; and Alberto
and Mertino delta Scala, lords of Verona, had given him three hundred
horse to prove that all their goodwill was with him in his
enterprise.  The news of the arrival of the Hungarians threw the
court into a state of confusion impossible to describe.  They had
hoped that the king would be stopped by the pope's legate, who had
come to Foligno to forbid him, in the name of the Holy Father, and on
pain of excommunication to proceed any further without his consent;
but Louis of Hungary replied to the pope's legate that, once master
of Naples, he should consider himself a feudatory of the Church, but
till then he had no obligations except to God and his own conscience.
Thus the avenging army fell like a thunderbolt upon the heart of the
kingdom, before there was any thought of taking serious measures for
defence.  There was only one plan possible: the queen assembled the
barons who were most strongly attached to her, made them swear homage
and fidelity to Louis of Tarentum, whom she presented to them as her
husband, and then leaving with many tears her most faithful subjects,
she embarked secretly, in the middle of the night, on a ship of
Provence, and made for Marseilles.  Louis of Tarentum, following the
prompting of his adventure-loving character, left Naples at the head
of three thousand horse and a considerable number of foot, and took
up his post on the banks of the Voltorno, there to contest the
enemy's passage; but the King of Hungary foresaw the stratagem, and
while his adversary was waiting for him at Capua, he arrived at
Beneventum by the mountains of Alife and Morcone, and on the same day
received Neapolitan envoys: they in a magnificent display of
eloquence congratulated him on his entrance, offered the keys of the
town, and swore obedience to him as being the legitimate successor of
Charles of Anjou.  The news of the surrender of Naples soon reached
the queen's camp, and all the princes of the blood and the generals
left Louis of Tarentum and took refuge in the capital.  Resistance
was impossible.  Louis, accompanied by his counsellor, Nicholas
Acciajuoli, went to Naples on the same evening on which his relatives
quitted the town to get away from the enemy.  Every hope of safety
was vanishing as the hours passed by; his brothers and cousins begged
him to go at once, so as not to draw down upon the town the king's
vengeance, but unluckily there was no ship in the harbour that was
ready to set sail.  The terror of the princes was at its height; but
Louis, trusting in his luck, started with the brave Acciajuoli in an
unseaworthy boat, and ordering four sailors to row with all their
might, in a few minutes disappeared, leading his family in a great
state of anxiety till they learned that he had reached Pisa, whither
he had gone to join the queen in Provence.  Charles of Durazzo and
Robert of Tarentum, who were the eldest respectively of the two
branches of the royal family, after hastily consulting, decided to
soften the Hungarian monarch's wrath by a complete submission.
Leaving their young brothers at Naples, they accordingly set off for
Aversa, where the king was.  Louis received them with every mark of
friendship, and asked with much interest why their brothers were not
with them.  The princes replied that their young brothers had stayed
at Naples to prepare a worthy reception for His Majesty.  Louis
thanked them for their kind intentions, but begged them to invite the
young princes now, saying that it would be infinitely more pleasant
to enter Naples with all his family, and that be was most anxious to
see his cousins.  Charles and Robert, to please the king, sent
equerries to bid their brothers come to Aversa; but Louis of Durazzo,
the eldest of the boys, with many tears begged the others not to
obey, and sent a message that he was prevented by a violent headache
from leaving Naples.  So puerile an excuse could not fail to annoy
Charles, and the same day he compelled the unfortunate boys to appear
before the-king, sending a formal order which admitted of no delay.
Louis of Hungary embraced them warmly one after the other, asked them
several questions in an affectionate way, kept them to supper, and
only let them go quite late at night.

When the Duke of Durazzo reached his room, Lello of Aquila and the
Count of Fondi slipped mysteriously to the side of his bed, and
making sure that no one could hear, told him that the king in a
council held that morning had decided to kill him and to imprison the
other princes.  Charles heard them out, but incredulously: suspecting
treachery, he dryly replied that he had too much confidence in his
cousin's loyalty to believe such a black calumny.  Lello insisted,
begging him in the name of his dearest friends to listen; but the
duke was impatient, and harshly ordered him to depart.

The next day there was the same kindness on the king's part, the same
affection shown to the children; the same invitation to supper.  The
banquet was magnificent; the room was brilliantly lighted, and the
reflections were dazzling: vessels of gold shone on the table, the
intoxicating perfume of flowers filled the air; wine foamed in the
goblets and flowed from the flagons in ruby streams: conversation,
excited and discursive, was heard on every side: all faces beamed
with joy.

Charles of Durazzo sat opposite the king, at a separate table among
his brothers.  Little by little his look grew fixed, his brow
pensive.  He was fancying that Andre might have supped in this very
hall on the eve of his tragic end, and he thought how all concerned
in that death had either died in torment or were now languishing in
prison; the queen, an exile and a fugitive, was begging pity from
strangers: he alone was free.  The thought made him tremble; but
admiring his own cleverness in pursuing his infernal schemes; and
putting away his sad looks, he smiled again with an expression of
indefinable pride.  The madman at this moment was scoffing at the
justice of God.  But Lello of Aquila, who was waiting-at the table,
bent down, whispering gloomily--

"Unhappy duke, why did you refuse to believe me?  Fly, while there is
yet time."

Charles, angered by the man's obstinacy, threatened that if he were
such a fool as to say any more, he would repeat every word aloud.

"I have done my duty," murmured Lello, bowing his head; "now it must
happen as God wills."

As he left off speaking, the king rose, and as the duke went up to
take his leave, his face suddenly changed, and he cried in an awful
voice--

"Traitor!  At length you are in my hands, and you shall die as you
deserve; but before you are handed over to the executioner, confess
with your own lips your deeds of treachery towards our royal majesty:
so shall we need no other witness to condemn you to a punishment
proportioned to your crimes.  Between our two selves, Duke of Durazzo
tell me first why, by your infamous manoeuvring, you aided your
uncle, the Cardinal of Perigord, to hinder the coronation of my
brother, and so led him on, since he had no royal prerogative of his
own, to his miserable end?  Oh, make no attempt to deny it.  Here is
the letter sealed with your seal in secret you wrote it, but it
accuses you in public.  Then why, after bringing us hither to avenge
our brother's death, of which you beyond all doubt were the cause,--
why did you suddenly turn to the queen's party and march against our
town of Aquila, daring to raise an army against our faithful
subjects?  You hoped, traitor, to make use of us as a footstool to
mount the throne withal, as soon as you were free from every other
rival.  Then you would but have awaited our departure to kill the
viceroy we should have left in our place, and so seize the kingdom.
But this time your foresight has been at fault.  There is yet another
crime worse than all the rest, a crime of high treason, which I shall
remorselessly punish.  You carried off the bride that our ancestor
King Robert designed for me, as you knew, by his will.  Answer,
wretch what excuse can you make for the rape of the Princess Marie?"

Anger had so changed Louis's voice that the last words sounded like
the roar of a wild beast: his eyes glittered with a feverish light,
his lips were pale and trembling.  Charles and his brothers fell upon
their knees, frozen by mortal terror, and the unhappy duke twice
tried to speak, but his teeth were chattering so violently that he
could not articulate a single word.  At last, casting his eyes about
him and seeing his poor brothers, innocent and ruined by his fault,
he regained some sort of courage, and said--

"My lord, you look upon me with a terrible countenance that makes me
tremble.  But on my knees I entreat you, have mercy on me if I have
done wrong, for God is my witness that I did not call you to this
kingdom with any criminal intention: I have always desired, and still
desire, your supremacy in all the sincerity of my soul.  Some
treacherous counsellors, I am certain, have contrived to draw down
your hatred upon me.  If it is true, as you say, that I went with an
armed force to Aquila I was compelled by Queen Joan, and I could not
do otherwise; but as soon as I heard of your arrival at Fermo I took
my troops away again.  I hope for the love of Christ I may obtain
your mercy and pardon, by reason of my former services and constant
loyalty.  But as I see you are now angry with me, I say no more
waiting for your fury to pass over: Once again, my lord, have pity
upon us, since we are in the hands of your Majesty."

The king turned away his head, and retired slowly, confiding the
prisoners to the care of Stephen Vayvoda and the Count of Zornic, who
guarded them during the night in a room adjoining the king's chamber.
The next day Louis held another meeting of his council, and ordered
that Charles should have his throat cut on the very spot where poor
Andre had been hanged.  He then sent the other princes of the blood,
loaded with chains, to Hungary, where they were long kept prisoners.
Charles, quite thunderstruck by such an unexpected blow, overwhelmed
by the thought of his past crimes, trembled like a coward face to
face with death, and seemed completely crushed.  Bowed, upon his
knees, his face half hidden in his hands, from time to time
convulsive sobs escaped him, as he tried to fix the thoughts that
chased each other through his mind like the shapes of a monstrous
dream.  Night was in his soul, but every now and then light flashed
across the darkness, and over the gloomy background of his despair
passed gilded figures fleeing from him with smiles of mockery.  In
his ears buzzed voices from the other world; he saw a long procession
of ghosts, like the conspirators whom Nicholas of Melazzo had pointed
out in the vaults of Castel Nuovo.  But these phantoms each held his
head in his hand, and shaking it by the hair, bespattered him with
drops of blood.  Some brandished whips, some knives: each threatened
Charles with his instrument of torture.  Pursued by the nocturnal
train, the hapless man opened his mouth for one mighty cry, but his
breath was gone, and it died upon his lips.  Then he beheld his
mother stretching out her arms from afar, and he fancied that if he
could but reach her he would be safe But at each step the path grew
more and more narrow, pieces of his flesh were torn off by the
approaching walls; at last, breathless, naked and bleeding, he
reached his goal; but his mother glided farther away, and it was all
to begin over again.  The, phantoms pursued him, grinning and
screaming in his ears:--

"Cursed be he who slayeth his mother!"

Charles was roused from these horrors by the cries of his brothers,
who had come to embrace him for the last time before embarking.  The
duke in a low voice asked their pardon, and then fell back into his
state of despair.  The children were dragged away, begging to be
allowed to share their brother's fate, and crying for death as an
alleviation of their woes.  At length they were separated, but the
sound of their lamentation sounded long in the heart of the condemned
man.  After a few moments, two soldiers and two equerries came to
tell the duke that his hour had come.

Charles followed them, unresisting, to the fatal balcony where Andre
had been hanged.  He was there asked if he desired to confess, and
when he said yes, they brought a monk from the sane convent where the
terrible scene had been enacted: he listened to the confession of all
his sins, and granted him absolution.  The duke at once rose and
walked to the place where Andre had been thrown down for the cord to
be put round his neck, and there, kneeling again, he asked his
executioners--

"Friends, in pity tell me, is there any hope for my life?"

And when they answered no, Charles exclaimed:

"Then carry out your instructions."

At these words, one of the equerries plunged his sword into his
breast, and the other cut his head off with a knife, and his corpse
was thrown over the balcony into the garden where Andre's body had
lain for three days unburied.




CHAPTER VII

The King of Hungary, his black flag ever borne before him, started
for Naples, reusing all offered honours, and rejecting the canopy
beneath which he was to make his entry, not even stopping to give
audience to the chief citizens or to receive the acclamations of the
crowd.  Armed at all points, he made for Castel Nuovo, leaving behind
him dismay and fear.  His first act on entering the city was to order
Dona Cancha to be burnt, her punishment having been deferred by
reason of her pregnancy.  Like the others, she was drawn on a cart to
the square of St. Eligius, and there consigned to the flames.  The
young creature, whose suffering had not impaired her beauty, was
dressed as for a festival, and laughing like a mad thing up to the
last moment, mocked at her executioners and threw kisses to the
crowd.

A few days later, Godfrey of Marsana, Count of Squillace and grand
admiral of the kingdom, was arrested by the king's orders.  His life
was promised him on condition of his delivering up Conrad of
Catanzaro, one of his relatives, accused of conspiring against Andre.
The grand admiral committed, this act of shameless treachery, and did
not shrink from sending his own son to persuade Conrad to come to the
town.  The poor wretch was given over to the king, and tortured alive
on a wheel made with sharp knives.  The sight of these barbarities,
far from calming the king's rage; seemed to inflame it the more.
Every day there were new accusations and new sentences.  The prisons
were crowded: Louis's punishments were redoubled in severity.  A fear
arose that the town, and indeed the whole kingdom, were to be treated
as having taken part in Andre's death.  Murmurs arose against this
barbarous rule, and all men's thoughts turned towards their fugitive
queen.  The Neapolitan barons had taken the oath of fidelity with no
willing hearts; and when it came to the turn of the Counts of San
Severino, they feared a trick of some kind, and refused to appear all
together before the Hungarian, but took refuge in the town of
Salerno, and sent Archbishop Roger, their brother, to make sure of
the king's intentions beforehand.  Louis received him magnificently,
and appointed him privy councillor and grand proto notary.  Then, and
not till then, did Robert of San Severino and Roger, Count of
Chiaramonte, venture into the king's presence; after doing homage,
they retired to their homes.  The other barons followed their example
of caution, and hiding their discontent under a show of respect,
awaited a favourable moment for shaking off the foreign yoke.  But
the queen had encountered no obstacle in her flight, and arrived at
Nice five days later.  Her passage through Provence was like a
triumph.  Her beauty, youth, and misfortunes, even certain mysterious
reports as to her adventures, all contributed to arouse the interest
of the Provencal people.  Games and fetes were improvised to soften
the hardship of exile for the proscribed princess; but amid the
outbursts of joy from every town, castle, and city, Joan, always sad,
lived ever in her silent grief and glowing memories.

At the gates of Aix she found the clergy, the nobility, and the chief
magistrates, who received her respectfully but with no signs of
enthusiasm.  As the queen advanced, her astonishment increased as she
saw the coldness of the people and the solemn, constrained air of the
great men who escorted her.  Many anxious thoughts alarmed her, and
she even went so far as to fear some intrigue of the King of Hungary.
Scarcely had her cortege arrived at Castle Arnaud, when the nobles,
dividing into two ranks, let the queen pass with her counsellor
Spinelli and two women; then closing up, they cut her off from the
rest of her suite.  After this, each in turn took up his station as
guardian of the fortress.

There was no room for doubt: the queen was a prisoner; but the cause
of the manoeuvre it was impossible to guess.  She asked the high
dignitaries, and they, protesting respectful devotion, refused to
explain till they had news from Avignon.  Meanwhile all honours that
a queen could receive were lavished on Joan; but she was kept in
sight and forbidden to go out.  This new trouble increased her
depression: she did not know what had happened to Louis of Tarentum,
and her imagination, always apt at creating disasters, instantly
suggested that she would soon be weeping for his loss.

But Louis, always with his faithful Acciajuoli, had after many
fatiguing adventures been shipwrecked at the port of Pisa; thence he
had taken route for Florence, to beg men and money; but the
Florentines decided to keep an absolute neutrality, and refused to
receive him.  The prince, losing his last hope, was pondering gloomy
plans, when Nicholas Acciajuoli thus resolutely addressed him:

"My lord, it is not given to mankind to enjoy prosperity for ever:
there are misfortunes beyond all human foresight.  You were once rich
and powerful, and you are now a fugitive in disguise, begging the
help of others.  You must reserve your strength for better days.  I
still have a considerable fortune, and also have relations and
friends whose wealth is at my disposal: let us try to make our way to
the queen, and at once decide what we can do.  I myself shall always
defend you and obey you as my lord and master."

The prince received these generous offers with the utmost gratitude,
and told his counsellor that he placed his person in his hands and
all that remained of his future.  Acciajuoli, not content with
serving his master as a devoted servant, persuaded his brother
Angelo, Archbishop of Florence, who was in great favour at Clement
VI's court, to join with them in persuading the pope to interest
himself in the cause of Louis of Tarentum.  So, without further
delay, the prince, his counsellor, and the good prelate made their
way to the port of Marseilles, but learning that the queen was a
prisoner at Aix, they embarked at Acque-Morte, and went straight to
Avignon.  It soon appeared that the pope had a real affection and
esteem for the character of the Archbishop of Florence, for Louis was
received with paternal kindness at the court of Avignon; which was
far more than he had expected: When he kneeled before the sovereign
pontiff, His Holiness bent affectionately towards him and helped him
to rise, saluting him by the title of king.

Two days later, another prelate, the Archbishop of Aix, came into the
queen's presence,--

"Most gracious and dearly beloved sovereign, permit the most humble
and devoted of your servants to ask pardon, in the name of your
subjects, for the painful but necessary measure they have thought fit
to take concerning your Majesty.  When you arrived on our coast, your
loyal town of Aix had learned from a trustworthy source that the King
of France was proposing to give our country to one of his own sons,
making good this loss to you by the cession of another domain, also
that the Duke of Normandy had come to Avignon to request this
exchange in person.  We were quite decided, madam, and had made a vow
to God that we would give up everything rather than suffer the
hateful tyranny of the French.  But before spilling blood we thought
it best to secure your august person as a sacred hostage, a sacred
ark which no man dared touch but was smitten to the ground, which
indeed must keep away from our walls the scourge of war.  We have now
read the formal annulment of this hateful plan, in a brief sent by
the sovereign pontiff from Avignon; and in this brief he himself
guarantees your good faith.

"We give you your full and entire liberty, and henceforth we shall
only endeavour to keep you among us by prayers and protestations.  Go
then, madam, if that is your pleasure, but before you leave these
lands, which will be plunged into mourning by your withdrawal, leave
with us some hope that you forgive the apparent violence to which we
have subjected you, only in the fear that we might lose you; and
remember that on the day when you cease to be our queen you sign the
death-warrant of all your subjects."

Joan reassured the archbishop and the deputation from her good town
of Aix with a melancholy smile, and promised that she would always
cherish the memory of their affection.  For this time she could not
be deceived as to the real sentiments of the nobles and people; and a
fidelity so uncommon, revealed with sincere tears, touched her heart
and made her reflect bitterly upon her past.  But a league's distance
from Avignon a magnificent triumphal reception awaited her.  Louis of
Tarentum and all the cardinals present at the court had come out to
meet her.  Pages in dazzling dress carried above Joan's head a canopy
of scarlet velvet, ornamented with fleur-de-lys in gold and plumes.
Hand some youths and lovely girls, their heads crowned with flowers,
went before her singing her praise. The streets were bordered with a
living hedge of people, the houses were decked out, the bells rang a
triple peal, as at the great Church festivals. Clement VI first
received the queen at the castle of Avignon with all the pomp he knew
so well how to employ on solemn occasions, then she was lodged in the
palace of Cardinal Napoleon of the Orsini, who on his return from the
Conclave at Perugia had built this regal dwelling at Villeneuve,
inhabited later by the popes.

No words could give an idea of the strangely disturbed condition of
Avignon at this period.  Since Clement V had transported the seat of
the papacy to Provence, there had sprung up, in this rival to Rome,
squares, churches, cardinals' palaces, of unparalleled splendour.
All the business of nations and kings was transacted at the castle of
Avignon.  Ambassadors from every court, merchants of every nation,
adventurers of all kinds, Italians, Spaniards, Hungarians, Arabs,
Jews, soldiers, Bohemians, jesters, poets, monks, courtesans, swarmed
and clustered here, and hustled one another in the streets.  There
was confusion of tongues, customs, and costumes, an inextricable
mixture of splendour and rags, riches and misery, debasement and
grandeur.  The austere poets of the Middle Ages stigmatised the
accursed city in their writings under the name of the New Babylon.

There is one curious monument of Joan's sojourn at Avignon and the
exercise of her authority as sovereign.  She was indignant at the
effrontery of the women of the town, who elbowed everybody
shamelessly in the streets, and published a notable edict, the first
of its kind, which has since served as a model in like cases, to
compel all unfortunate women who trafficked in their honour to live
shut up together in a house, that was bound to be open every day in
the year except the last three days of Holy Week, the entrance to be
barred to Jews at all times.  An abbess, chosen once a year, had the
supreme control over this strange convent.  Rules were established
for the maintenance of order, and severe penalties inflicted for any
infringement of discipline.  The lawyers of the period gained a great
reputation by this salutary institution; the fair ladies of Avignon
were eager in their defence of the queen in spite of the calumnious
reports that strove to tarnish her reputation: with one voice the
wisdom of Andre's widow was extolled.  The concert of praises was
disturbed, however, by murmurs from the recluses themselves, who, in
their own brutal language, declared that Joan of Naples was impeding
their commerce so as to get a monopoly for herself.

Meanwhile Marie of Durazzo had joined her sister.  After her
husband's death she had found means to take refuge in the convent of
Santa Croce with her two little daughters; and while Louis of Hungary
was busy burning his victims, the unhappy Marie had contrived to make
her escape in the frock of an old monk, and as by a miracle to get on
board a ship that was setting sail for Provence.  She related to her
sister the frightful details of the king's cruelty.  And soon a new
proof of his implacable hatred confirmed the tales of the poor
princess.

Louis's ambassadors appeared at the court of Avignon to demand
formally the queen's condemnation.

It was a great day when Joan of Naples pleaded her own cause before
the pope, in the presence of all the cardinals then at Avignon, all
the ambassadors of foreign powers, and all the eminent persons come
from every quarter of Europe to be present at this trial, unique in
the annals of history.  We must imagine a vast enclosure, in whose
midst upon a raised throne, as president of the august tribunal, sat
God's vicar on earth, absolute and supreme judge, emblem of temporal
and spiritual power, of authority human and divine.  To right and
left of the sovereign pontiff, the cardinals in their red robes sat
in chairs set round in a circle, and behind these princes of the
Sacred College stretched rows of bishops extending to the end of the
hall, with vicars, canons, deacons, archdeacons, and the whole
immense hierarchy of the Church.  Facing the pontifical throne was a
platform reserved for the Queen of Naples and her suite.  At the
pope's feet stood the ambassadors from the King of Hungary, who
played the part of accusers without speaking a word, the
circumstances of the crime and all the proofs having been discussed
beforehand by a committee appointed for the purpose.  The rest of the
hall was filled by a brilliant crowd of high dignitaries, illustrious
captains, and noble envoys, all vying with one another in proud
display.  Everyone ceased to breathe, all eyes were fixed on the dais
whence Joan was to speak her own defence.  A movement of uneasy
curiosity made this compact mass of humanity surge towards the
centre, the cardinals above raised like proud peacocks over a golden
harvest-field shaken in the breeze.

The queen appeared, hand in hand with her uncle, the old Cardinal of
Perigord, and her aunt, the Countess Agnes.  Her gait was so modest
and proud, her countenance so melancholy and pure, her looks so open
and confident, that even before she spoke every heart was hers.  Joan
was now twenty years of age; her magnificent beauty was fully
developed, but an extreme pallor concealed the brilliance of her
transparent satin skin, and her hollow cheek told the tale of
expiation and suffering.  Among the spectators who looked on most
eagerly there was a certain young man with strongly marked features,
glowing eyes, and brown hair, whom we shall meet again later on in
our narrative; but we will not divert our readers' attention, but
only tell them that his name was James of Aragon, that he was Prince
of Majorca, and would have been ready to shed every drop of his blood
only to check one single tear that hung on Joan's eyelids.  The queen
spoke in an agitated, trembling voice, stopping from time to time to
dry her moist and shining eyes, or to breathe one of those deep sighs
that go straight to the heart.  She told the tale of her husband's
death painfully and vividly, painted truthfully the mad terror that
had seized upon her and struck her down at that frightful time,
raised her hands to her brow with the gesture of despair, as though
she would wrest the madness from her brain-and a shudder of pity and
awe passed through the assembled crowd.  It is a fact that at this
moment, if her words were false, her anguish was both sincere and
terrible.  An angel soiled by crime, she lied like Satan himself, but
like him too she suffered all the agony of remorse and pride.  Thus,
when at the end of her speech she burst into tears and implored help
and protection against the usurper of her kingdom, a cry of general
assent drowned her closing words, several hands flew to their sword-
hilts, and the Hungarian ambassadors retired covered with shame and
confusion.

That same evening the sentence, to the great joy of all, was
proclaimed, that Joan was innocent and acquitted of all concern in
the assassination of her husband.  But as her conduct after the event
and the indifference she had shown about pursuing the authors of the
crime admitted of no valid excuse, the pope declared that there were
plain traces of magic, and that the wrong-doing attributed to Joan
was the result of some baneful charm cast upon her, which she could
by no possible means resist.  At the same time, His Holiness
confirmed her marriage with Louis of Tarentum, and bestowed on him
the order of the Rose of Gold and the title of King of Sicily and
Jerusalem.  Joan, it is true, had on the eve of her acquittal sold
the town of Avignon to the pope for the sum of 80,000 florins.

While the queen was pleading her cause at the court of Clement VI, a
dreadful epidemic, called the Black Plague--the same that Boccaccio
has described so wonderfully--was ravaging the kingdom of Naples, and
indeed the whole of Italy.  According to the calculation of Matteo
Villani, Florence lost three-fifths of her population, Bologna two-
thirds, and nearly all Europe was reduced in some such frightful
proportion.  The Neapolitans were already weary of the cruelties and
greed of the Hungarians, they were only awaiting some opportunity to
revolt against the stranger's oppression, and to recall their lawful
sovereign, whom, for all her ill deeds, they had never ceased to
love.  The attraction of youth and beauty was deeply felt by this
pleasure-loving people.  Scarcely had the pestilence thrown confusion
into the army and town, when loud cursing arose against the tyrant
and his executioners.  Louis of Hungary, suddenly threatened by the,
wrath of Heaven and the people's vengeance, was terrified both by the
plague and by the riots, and disappeared in the middle of the night.
Leaving the government of Naples in the hands of Conrad Lupo, one of
his captains, he embarked hastily at Berletta, and left the kingdom
in very much the same way as Louis of Tarentum, fleeing from him, had
left it a few months before.

This news arrived at Avignon just when the pope was about to send the
queen his bull of absolution. It was at once decided to take away the
kingdom from Louis's viceroy.  Nicholas Aeciajuoli left for Naples
with the marvellous bull that was to prove to all men the innocence
of the queen, to banish all scruples and stir up a new enthusiasm.
The counsellor first went to the castle of Melzi, commanded by his
son Lorenzo: this was the only fortress that had always held out.
The father and son embraced with the honourable pride that near
relatives may justly feel when they meet after they have united in
the performance of a heroic duty. From the governor of Melzi Louis of
Tarentum's counsellor learned that all men were wearied of the
arrogance and vexatious conduct of the queen's enemies, and that a
conspiracy was in train, started in the University of Naples, but
with vast ramifications all over the kingdom, and moreover that there
was dissension in the enemy's army.  The indefatigable counsellor
went from Apulia to Naples, traversing towns and villages, collecting
men everywhere, proclaiming loudly the acquittal of the queen and her
marriage with Louis of Tarentum, also that the pope was offering
indulgences to such as would receive with joy their lawful
sovereigns.  Then seeing that the people shouted as he went by, "Long
live Joan!  Death to the Hungarians!" he returned and told his
sovereigns in what frame of mind he had left their subjects.

Joan borrowed money wherever she could, armed galleys, and left
Marseilles with her husband, her sister, and two faithful advisers,
Acciajuoli and Spinelli, on the 10th of September 1348.  The king and
queen not being able to enter at the harbour, which was in the
enemy's power, disembarked at Santa Maria del Carmine, near the river
Sebeto, amid the frenzied applause of an immense crowd, and
accompanied by all the Neapolitan nobles.  They made their way to the
palace of Messire Ajutorio, near Porta Capuana, the Hungarians having
fortified themselves in all the castles; but Acciatjuoli, at the head
of the queen's partisans, blockaded the fortresses so ably that half
of the enemy were obliged to surrender, and the other half took to
flight and were scattered about the interior of the kingdom.  We
shall now follow Louis of Tarentum in his arduous adventures in
Apulia, the Calabrias, and the Abruzzi, where he recovered one by one
the fortresses that the Hungarians had taken.  By dint of unexampled
valour and patience, he at last mastered nearly all the more
considerable places, when suddenly everything changed, and fortune
turned her back upon him for the second time.  A German captain
called Warner, who had deserted the Hungarian army to sell himself to
the queen, had again played the traitor and sold himself once more,
allowed himself to be surprised at Corneto by Conrad Lupo, the King
of Hungary's vicar-general, and openly joined him, taking along with
him a great party of the adventurers who fought under his orders.
This unexpected defection forced Louis of Tarentum to retire to
Naples.  The King of Hungary soon learning that the troops had
rallied round his banner, and only awaited his return to march upon
the capital, disembarked with a strong reinforcement of cavalry at
the port of Manfredonia, and taking Trani, Canosa, and Salerno, went
forward to lay siege to Aversa.

The news fell like a thunder-clap on Joan and her husband.  The
Hungarian army consisted of 10,000 horse and more than 7000 infantry,
and Aversa had only 500 soldiers under Giacomo Pignatelli.  In spite
of the immense disproportion of the numbers, the Neapolitan general
vigorously repelled the attack; and the King of Hungary, fighting in
the front, was wounded in his foot by an arrow.  Then Louis, seeing
that it would be difficult to take the place by storm, determined to
starve them out.  For three months the besieged performed prodigies
of valour, and further assistance was impossible.  Their capitulation
was expected at any moment, unless indeed they decided to perish
every man.  Renaud des Baux, who was to come from Marseilles with a
squadron of ten ships to defend the ports of the capital and secure
the queen's flight, should the Hungarian army get possession of
Naples, had been delayed by adverse winds and obliged to stop on the
way.  All things seemed to conspire in favour of the enemy.  Louis of
Tarentum, whose generous soul refused to shed the blood of his brave
men in an unequal and desperate struggle, nobly sacrificed himself,
and made an offer to the King of Hungary to settle their quarrel in
single combat.  We append the authentic letters that passed between
Joan's husband and Andre's brother.

"Illustrious King of Hungary, who has come to invade our kingdom, we,
by the grace of God King of Jerusalem and Sicily, invite you to
single combat.  We know that you are in no wise disturbed by the
death of your lancers or the other pagans in your suite, no more
indeed than if they were dogs; but we, fearing harm to our own
soldiers and men-at-arms, desire to fight with you personally, to put
an end to the present war and restore peace to our kingdom.  He who
survives shall be king.  And therefore, to ensure that this duel
shall take place, we definitely propose as a site either Paris, in
the presence of the King of France, or one of the towns of Perugia,
Avignon, or Naples.  Choose one of these four places, and send us
your reply."

The King of Hungary first consulted with his council, and then
replied:--

"Great King, we have read and considered your letter sent to us by the
bearer of these presents, and by your invitation to a duel we are
most supremely pleased; but we do not approve of any of the places
you propose, since they are all suspect, and for several reasons.
The King of France is your maternal grandfather, and although we are
also connected by blood with him, the relationship is not so near.
The town of Avignon, although nominally belonging to the sovereign
pontiff, is the capital of Provence, and has always been subject to
your rule.  Neither have we any more confidence in Perugia, for that
town is devoted to your cause.

"As to the city of Naples, there is no need to say that we refuse that
rendezvous, since it is in revolt against us and you are there as
king.  But if you wish to fight with us, let it be in the presence of
the Emperor of Germany, who is lord supreme, or the King of England,
who is our common friend, or the Patriarch of Aquilea, a good
Catholic.  If you do not approve of any of the places we propose, we
shall soon be near you with our army, and so remove all difficulties
and delays.  Then you can come forth, and our duel can take place in
the presence of both armies."

After the interchange of these two letters, Louis of Tarentum
proposed nothing further.  The garrison at Aversa had capitulated
after a heroic resistance, and it was known only too well that if the
King of Hungary could get so far as the walls of Naples, he would not
have to endanger his life in order to seize that city.  Happily the
Provencal galleys had reached port at last.  The king and the queen
had only just time to embark and take refuge at Gaeta.  The Hungarian
army arrived at Naples.  The town was on the point of yielding, and
had sent messengers to the king humbly demanding peace; but the
speeches of the Hungarians showed such insolence that the people,
irritated past endurance, took up arms, and resolved to defend their
household gods with all the energy of despair.




CHAPTER VIII

While the Neapolitans were holding out against their enemy at the
Porta Capuana, a strange scene was being enacted at the other side of
the town, a scene that shows us in lively colours the violence and
treachery of this barbarous age.  The widow of Charles of Durazzo was
shut up in, the castle of Ovo, and awaiting in feverish anxiety the
arrival of the ship that was to take her to the queen.  The poor
Princess Marie, pressing her weeping children to her heart, pale,
with dishevelled locks, fixed eyes, and drawn lips, was listening for
every sound, distracted between hope and fear.  Suddenly steps
resounded along the corridor, a friendly voice was heard, Marie fell
upon her knees with a cry of joy: her liberator had come.

Renaud des Baux, admiral of the Provencal squadron, respectfully
advanced, followed by his eldest son Robert and his chaplain.

"God, I thank Thee!" exclaimed Marie, rising to her feet; "we are
saved."

"One moment, madam," said Renaud, stopping her: "you are indeed
saved, but upon one condition."

"A condition?" murmured the princess in surprise.

"Listen, madam.  The King of Hungary, the avenger of Andre's
murderers, the slayer of your husband, is at the gates of Naples; the
people and soldiers will succumb, as soon as their last gallant
effort is spent--the army of the conqueror is about to spread
desolation and death throughout the city by fire and the sword.  This
time the Hungarian butcher will spare no victims: he will kill the
mother before her children's eyes, the children in their mother's
arms.  The drawbridge of this castle is up and there are none on
guard; every man who can wield a sword is now at the other end of the
town.  Woe to you, Marie of Durazzo, if the King of Hungary shall
remember that you preferred his rival to him!"

"But have you not come here to save me?" cried Marie in a voice of
anguish.  "Joan, my sister, did she not command you to take me to
her?"

"Your sister is no longer in the position to give orders," replied
Renaud, with a disdainful smile.  "She had nothing for me but thanks
because I saved her life, and her husband's too, when he fled like a
coward before the man whom he had dared to challenge to a duel."

Marie looked fixedly at the admiral to assure herself that it was
really he who thus arrogantly talked about his masters.  But she was
terrified at his imperturbable expression, and said gently--

"As I owe my life and my children's lives solely to your generosity,
I am grateful to you beyond all measure.  But we must hurry, my lord:
every moment I fancy I hear cries of vengeance, and you would not
leave, me now a prey to my brutal enemy?"

"God forbid, madam; I will save you at the risk of my life; but I
have said already, I impose a condition."

"What is it?" said Marie, with forced calm.

"That you marry my son on the instant, in the presence of our
reverend chaplain."

"Rash man!" cried Marie, recoiling, her face scarlet with indignation
and shame; "you dare to speak thus to the sister of your legitimate
sovereign?  Give thanks to God that I will pardon an insult offered,
as I know, in a moment of madness; try by your devotion to make me
forget what you have said."

The count, without one word, signed to his son and a priest to
follow, and prepared to depart.  As he crossed the threshold Marie
ran to him, and clasping her hands, prayed him in God's name never to
forsake her.  Renaud stopped.

"I might easily take my revenge," he said, "for your affront when you
refuse my son in your pride; but that business I leave to Louis of
Hungary, who will acquit himself, no doubt, with credit."

"Have mercy on my poor daughters!" cried the princess; "mercy at
least for my poor babes, if my own tears cannot move you."

"If you loved your children," said the admiral, frowning, "you would
have done your duty at once."

"But I do not love your son!" cried Marie, proud but trembling.
"O God, must a wretched woman's heart be thus trampled?  You, father,
a minister of truth and justice, tell this man that God must not be
called on to witness an oath dragged from the weak and helpless!"

She turned to the admiral's son; and added, sobbing--

"You are young, perhaps you have loved: one day no doubt you will
love.  I appeal to your loyalty as a young man, to your courtesy as a
knight, to all your noblest impulses; join me, and turn your father
away from his fatal project.  You have never seen me before: you do
not know but that in my secret heart I love another.  Your pride
should be revolted at the sight of an unhappy woman casting herself
at your feet and imploring your favour and protection.  One word from
you, Robert, and I shall bless you every moment of my life: the
memory of you will be graven in my heart like the memory of a
guardian angel, and my children shall name you nightly in their
prayers, asking God to grant your wishes.  Oh, say, will you not save
me?  Who knows, later on I may love you--with real love."

"I must obey my father," Robert replied, never lifting his eyes to
the lovely suppliant.

The priest was silent.  Two minutes passed, and these four persons,
each absorbed in his own thoughts, stood motionless as statues carved
at the four corners of a tomb.  Marie was thrice tempted to throw
herself into the sea.  But a confused distant sound suddenly struck
upon her ears: little by little it drew nearer, voices were more
distinctly heard; women in the street were uttering cries of
distress--

"Fly, fly!  God has forsaken us; the Hungarians are in the town!"

The tears of Marie's children were the answer to these cries; and
little Margaret, raising her hands to her mother, expressed her fear
in speech that was far beyond her years.  Renaud, without one look at
this touching picture, drew his son towards the door.

"Stay," said the princess, extending her hand with a solemn gesture:
"as God sends no other aid to my children, it is His will that the
sacrifice be accomplished."

She fell on her knees before the priest, bending her head like a
victim who offers her neck to the executioner.  Robert des Baux took
his place beside her, and the priest pronounced the formula that
united them for ever, consecrating the infamous deed by a
sacrilegious blessing.

"All is over!" murmured Marie of Durazzo, looking tearfully on her
little daughters.

"No, all is not yet over," said the admiral harshly, pushing her
towards another room; "before we leave, the marriage must be
consummated."

"O just God!" cried the princess, in a voice torn with anguish, and
she fell swooning to the floor.

Renaud des Baux directed his ships towards Marseilles, where he hoped
to get his son crowned Count of Provence, thanks to his strange
marriage with Marie of Durazzo.  But this cowardly act of treason was
not to go unpunished.  The wind rose with fury, and drove him towards
Gaeta, where the queen and her husband had just arrived.  Renaud bade
his sailors keep in the open, threatening to throw any man into the
sea who dared to disobey him.  The crew at first murmured; soon cries
of mutiny rose on every side.  The admiral, seeing he was lost,
passed from threats to prayers.  But the princess, who had recovered
her senses at the first thunder-clap, dragged herself up to the
bridge and screamed for help,

"Come to me, Louis!  Come, my barons!  Death to the cowardly wretches
who have outraged my honour!"

Louis of Tarentum jumped into a boat, followed by some ten of his
bravest men, and, rowing rapidly, reached the ship.  Then Marie told
him her story in a word, and he turned upon the admiral a lightning
glance, as though defying him to make any defence.

"Wretch!" cried the king, transfixing the traitor with his sword.

Then he had the son loaded with chains, and also the unworthy priest
who had served as accomplice to the admiral, who now expiated his
odious crime by death.  He took the princess and her children in his
boat, and re-entered the harbour.

The Hungarians, however, forcing one of the gates of Naples, marched
triumphant to Castel Nuovo.  But as they were crossing the Piazza
delle Correggie, the Neapolitans perceived that the horses were so
weak and the men so reduced by all they had undergone during the
siege of Aversa that a mere puff of wind would dispense this phantom-
like army.  Changing from a state of panic to real daring, the people
rushed upon their conquerors, and drove them outside the walls by
which they had just entered.  The sudden violent reaction broke the
pride of the King of Hungary, and made him more tractable when
Clement VI decided that he ought at last to interfere.  A truce was
concluded first from the month of February 1350 to the beginning of
April 1351, and the next year this was converted into a real peace,
Joan paying to the King of Hungary the sum of 300,000 florins for the
expenses of the war.

After the Hungarians had gone, the pope sent a legate to crown Joan
and Louis of Tarentum, and the 25th of May, the day of Pentecost, was
chosen for the ceremony.  All contemporary historians speak
enthusiastically of this magnificent fete.  Its details have been
immortalised by Giotto in the frescoes of the church which from this
day bore the name of L'Incoronata.  A general amnesty was declared
for all who had taken part in the late wars on either side, and the
king and queen were greeted with shouts of joy as they solemnly
paraded beneath the canopy, with all the barons of the kingdom in
their train.

But the day's joy was impaired by an accident which to a
superstitious people seemed of evil augury.  Louis of Tarentum,
riding a richly caparisoned horse, had just passed the Porta
Petruccia, when some ladies looking out from a high window threw such
a quantity of flowers at the king that his frightened steed reared
and broke his rein.  Louis could not hold him, so jumped lightly to
the ground; but the crown fell at his feet and was broken into three
pieces.  On that very day the only daughter of Joan and Louis died.

But the king not wishing to sadden the brilliant ceremony with show
of mourning, kept up the jousts and tournaments for three days, and
in memory of his coronation instituted the order of 'Chevaliers du
Noeud'.  But from that day begun with an omen so sad, his life was
nothing but a series of disillusions.  After sustaining wars in
Sicily and Apulia, and quelling the insurrection of Louis of Durazzo,
who ended his days in the castle of Ovo, Louis of Tarentum, worn out
by a life of pleasure, his health undermined by slow disease,
overwhelmed with domestic trouble, succumbed to an acute fever on the
5th of June 1362, at the age of forty-two.  His body had not been
laid in its royal tomb at Saint Domenico before several aspirants
appeared to the hand of the queen.

One was the Prince of Majorca, the handsome youth we have already
spoken of: he bore her off triumphant over all rivals, including the
son of the King of France.  James of Aragon had one of those faces of
melancholy sweetness which no woman can resist.  Great troubles nobly
borne had thrown as it were a funereal veil over his youthful days:
more than thirteen years he had spent shut in an iron cage; when by
the aid of a false key he had escaped from his dreadful prison, he
wandered from one court to another seeking aid; it is even said that
he was reduced to the lowest degree of poverty and forced to beg his
bread.  The young stranger's beauty and his adventures combined had
impressed both Joan and Marie at the court of Avignon.  Marie
especially had conceived a violent passion for him, all the more so
for the efforts she made to conceal it in her own bosom.  Ever since
James of Aragon came to Naples, the unhappy princess, married with a
dagger at her throat, had desired to purchase her liberty at the
expense of crime.  Followed by four armed men, she entered the prison
where Robert des Baux was still suffering for a fault more his
father's than his own.  Marie stood before the prisoner, her arms
crossed, her cheeks livid, her lips trembling.  It was a terrible
interview.  This time it was she who threatened, the man who
entreated pardon.  Marie was deaf to his prayers, and the head of the
luckless man fell bleeding at her feet, and her men threw the body
into the sea.  But God never allows a murder to go unpunished: James
preferred the queen to her sister, and the widow of Charles of
Durazzo gained nothing by her crime but the contempt of the man she
loved, and a bitter remorse which brought her while yet young to the
tomb.

Joan was married in turn to James of Aragon, son of the King of
Majorca, and to Otho of Brunswick, of the imperial family of Saxony.
We will pass rapidly over these years, and come to the denouement of
this history of crime and expiation.  James, parted from his wife,
continued his stormy career, after a long contest in Spain with Peter
the Cruel, who had usurped his kingdom: about the end of the year
1375 he died near Navarre.  Otho also could not escape the Divine
vengeance which hung over the court of Naples, but to the end he
valiantly shared the queen's fortunes.  Joan, since she had no lawful
heir, adopted her nephew, Charles de la Paix (so called after the
peace of Trevisa).  He was the son of Louis Duras, who after
rebelling against Louis of Tarentum, had died miserably in the castle
of Ovo.  The child would have shared his father's fate had not Joan
interceded to spare his life, loaded him with kindness, and married
him to Margaret, the daughter of her sister Marie and her cousin
Charles, who was put to, death by the King of Hungary.

Serious differences arose between the queen and one of her former
subjects, Bartolommeo Prigiani, who had become pope under the name of
Urban VI.  Annoyed by the queen's opposition, the pope one day
angrily said he would shut her up in a convent.  Joan, to avenge the
insult, openly favoured Clement VII, the anti-pope, and offered him a
home in her own castle, when, pursued by Pope Urban's army, he had
taken refuge at Fondi.  But the people rebelled against Clement, and
killed the Archbishop of Naples, who had helped to elect him: they
broke the cross that was carried in procession before the anti-pope,
and hardly allowed him time to make his escape on shipboard to
Provence.  Urban declared that Joan was now dethroned, and released
her subjects from their oath of fidelity to her, bestowing the crown
of Sicily and Jerusalem upon Charles de la Paix, who marched on
Naples with 8000 Hungarians.  Joan, who could not believe in such
base ingratitude, sent out his wife Margaret to meet her adopted son,
though she might have kept her as a hostage, and his two children,
Ladislaus and Joan, who became later the second queen of that name.
But the victorious army soon arrived at the gates of Naples, and
Charles blockaded the queen in her castle, forgetting in his
ingratitude that she had saved his life and loved him like a mother.

Joan during the siege endured all the worst fatigues of war that any
soldier has to bear.  She saw her faithful friends fall around her
wasted by hunger or decimated by sickness.  When all food was
exhausted, dead and decomposed bodies were thrown into the castle
that they might pollute the air she breathed.  Otho with his troops
was kept at Aversa; Louis of Anjou, the brother of the King of France
whom she had named as her successor when she disinherited her nephew,
never appeared to help her, and the Provenqal ships from Clement VII
were not due to arrive until all hope must be over.  Joan asked for a
truce of five days, promising that, if Otho had not come to relieve
her in that time, she would surrender the fortress.

On the fifth day Otho's army appeared on the side of Piedigrotta.
The fight was sharp on both sides, and Joan from the top of a tower
could follow with her eyes the cloud of dust raised by her husband's
horse in the thickest of the battle.  The victory was long uncertain:
at length the prince made so bold an onset upon the royal standard,
in his, eagerness to meet his enemy hand to hand, that he plunged
into the very middle of the army, and found himself pressed on every
side.  Covered with blood and sweat, his sword broken in his hand, he
was forced to surrender.  An hour later Charles was writing to his
uncle, the King of Hungary, that Joan had fallen into his power, and
he only awaited His Majesty's orders to decide her fate.

It was a fine May morning: the queen was under guard in the castle of
Aversa: Otho had obtained his liberty on condition of his quitting
Naples, and Louis of Anjou had at last got together an army of 50,000
men and was marching in hot haste to the conquest of the kingdom.
None of this news had reached the ears of Joan, who for some days had
lived in complete isolation.  The spring lavished all her glory on
these enchanted plains, which have earned the name of the blessed and
happy country, campagna felite.  The orange trees were covered with
sweet white blossoms, the cherries laden with ruby fruit, the olives
with young emerald leaves, the pomegranate feathery with red bells;
the wild mulberry, the evergreen laurel, all the strong budding
vegetation, needing no help from man to flourish in this spot
privileged by Nature, made one great garden, here and there
interrupted by little hidden runlets.  It was a forgotten Eden in
this corner of the world.  Joan at her window was breathing in the
perfumes of spring, and her eyes misty with tears rested on a bed of
flowery verdure a light breeze, keen and balmy, blew upon her burning
brow and offered a grateful coolness to her damp and fevered cheeks.
Distant melodious voices, refrains of well-known songs, were all that
disturbed the silence of the poor little room, the solitary nest
where a life was passing away in tears and repentance, a life the
most brilliant and eventful of a century of splendour and unrest.

The queen was slowly reviewing in her mind all her life since she
ceased to be a child--fifty years of disillusionment and suffering.
She thought first of her happy, peaceful childhood, her grandfather's
blind affection, the pure joys of her days of innocence, the exciting
games with her little sister and tall cousins.  Then she shuddered at
the earliest thought of marriage, the constraint, the loss of
liberty, the bitter regrets; she remembered with horror the deceitful
words murmured in her ear, designed to sow the seeds of corruption
and vice that were to poison her whole life.  Then came the burning
memories of her first love, the treachery and desertion of Robert of
Cabane, the moments of madness passed like a dream in the arms of
Bertrand of Artois--the whole drama up to its tragic denouement
showed as in letters of fire on the dark background of her sombre
thoughts.  Then arose cries of anguish in her soul, even as on that
terrible fatal night she heard the voice of Andre asking mercy from
his murderers.  A long deadly silence followed his awful struggle,
and the queen saw before her eyes the carts of infamy and the torture
of her accomplices.  All the rest of this vision was persecution,
flight, exile, remorse, punishments from God and curses from the
world.  Around her was a frightful solitude: husbands, lovers,
kindred, friends, all were dead; all she had loved or hated in the
world were now no more; her joy, pain, desire, and hope had vanished
for ever.  The poor queen, unable to free herself from these visions
of woe, violently tore herself away from the awful reverie, and
kneeling at a prie-dieu, prayed with fervour.  She was still
beautiful, in spite of her extreme pallor; the noble lines of her
face kept their pure oval; the fire of repentance in her great black
eyes lit them up with superhuman brilliance, and the hope of pardon
played in a heavenly smile upon her lips.

Suddenly the door of the room where Joan was so earnestly praying
opened with a dull sound: two Hungarian barons in armour entered and
signed to the queen to follow them.  Joan arose silently and obeyed;
but a cry of pain went up from her heart when she recognised the
place where both Andre and Charles of Durazzo had died a violent
death.  But she collected her forces, and asked calmly why she was
brought hither.  For all answer, one of the men showed her a cord of
silk and gold....

"May the will of a just God be done!" cried Joan, and fell upon her
knees.  Some minutes later she had ceased to suffer.

This was the third corpse that was thrown over the balcony at Aversa.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "JOAN OF NAPLES"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 6
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK [An Esssay]

By Alexandre Dumas



ETEXT EDITORS NOTE:

We place little credence in a "story"--perhaps, a bit more faith in
"his-story".  Dumas (Pere) has given us some of the world's finest
"stories", and as in this short monograph on "The Man in the Iron
Mask," some very well documented "history."  He concluded 150 years
ago that these events were a mystery and now 300 years from the era
of Louis XIV--they remain so.  Many historians from Voltaire down
through other famous authorities have given us the final answer to
this puzzle.  But history students should keep always in mind the
words of the revered historian Will Durant:

          "If you believe history--and you must not....."

D.W.


This is the essay entitled The Man in the Iron Mask, not the novel
[The Man in the Iron Mask [The Novel] Dumas #28[nmaskxxx.xxx]2759]






THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK


For nearly one hundred years this curious problem has exercised the
imagination of writers of fiction--and of drama, and the patience of
the learned in history.  No subject is more obscure and elusive, and
none more attractive to the general mind.  It is a legend to the
meaning of which none can find the key and yet in which everyone
believes.  Involuntarily we feel pity at the thought of that long
captivity surrounded by so many extraordinary precautions, and when
we dwell on the mystery which enveloped the captive, that pity is not
only deepened but a kind of terror takes possession of us.  It is
very likely that if the name of the hero of this gloomy tale had been
known at the time, he would now be forgotten.  To give him a name
would be to relegate him at once to the ranks of those commonplace
offenders who quickly exhaust our interest and our tears.  But this
being, cut off from the world without leaving any discoverable trace,
and whose disappearance apparently caused no void--this captive,
distinguished among captives by the unexampled nature of his
punishment, a prison within a prison, as if the walls of a mere cell
were not narrow enough, has come to typify for us the sum of all the
human misery and suffering ever inflicted by unjust tyranny.

Who was the Man in the Mask?  Was he rapt away into this silent
seclusion from the luxury of a court, from the intrigues of
diplomacy, from the scaffold of a traitor, from the clash of battle?
What did he leave behind?  Love, glory, or a throne?  What did he
regret when hope had fled?  Did he pour forth imprecations and curses
on his tortures and blaspheme against high Heaven, or did he with a
sigh possess his soul in patience?

The blows of fortune are differently received according to the
different characters of those on whom they fall; and each one of us
who in imagination threads the subterranean passages leading to the
cells of Pignerol and Exilles, and incarcerates himself in the Iles
Sainte-Marguerite and in the Bastille, the successive scenes of that
long-protracted agony will give the prisoner a form shaped by his own
fancy and a grief proportioned to his own power of suffering.  How we
long to pierce the thoughts and feel the heart-beats and watch the
trickling tears behind that machine-like exterior, that impassible
mask!  Our imagination is powerfully excited by the dumbness of that
fate borne by one whose words never reached the outward air, whose
thoughts could never be read on the hidden features; by the isolation
of forty years secured by two-fold barriers of stone and iron, and
she clothes the object of her contemplation in majestic splendour,
connects the mystery which enveloped his existence with mighty
interests, and persists in regarding the prisoner as sacrificed for
the preservation of some dynastic secret involving the peace of the
world and the stability of a throne.

And when we calmly reflect on the whole case, do we feel that our
first impulsively adopted opinion was wrong?  Do we regard our belief
as a poetical illusion?  I do not think so; on the contrary, it seems
to me that our good sense approves our fancy's flight.  For what can
be more natural than the conviction that the secret of the name, age,
and features of the captive, which was so perseveringly kept through
long years at the cost of so much care, was of vital importance to
the Government?  No ordinary human passion, such as anger, hate, or
vengeance, has so dogged and enduring a character; we feel that the
measures taken were not the expression of a love of cruelty, for even
supposing that Louis XIV were the most cruel of princes, would he not
have chosen one of the thousand methods of torture ready to his hand
before inventing a new and strange one?  Moreover, why did he
voluntarily burden himself with the obligation of surrounding a
prisoner with such numberless precautions and such sleepless
vigilance?  Must he not have feared that in spite of it all the walls
behind which he concealed the dread mystery would one day let in the
light?  Was it not through his entire reign a source of unceasing
anxiety?  And yet he respected the life of the captive whom it was so
difficult to hide, and the discovery of whose identity would have
been so dangerous.  It would have been so easy to bury the secret in
an obscure grave, and yet the order was never given.  Was this an
expression of hate, anger, or any other passion?  Certainly not; the
conclusion we must come to in regard to the conduct of the king is
that all the measures he took against the prisoner were dictated by
purely political motives; that his conscience, while allowing him to
do everything necessary to guard the secret, did not permit him to
take the further step of putting an end to the days of an unfortunate
man, who in all probability was guilty of no crime.

Courtiers are seldom obsequious to the enemies of their master, so
that we may regard the respect and consideration shown to the Man in
the Mask by the governor Saint-Mars, and the minister Louvois, as a
testimony, not only to his high rank, but also to his innocence.

For my part, I make no pretensions to the erudition of the bookworm,
and I cannot read the history of the Man in the Iron Mask without
feeling my blood boil at the abominable abuse of power--the heinous
crime of which he was the victim.

A few years ago, M. Fournier and I, thinking the subject suitable for
representation on the stage, undertook to read, before dramatising
it, all the different versions of the affair which had been published
up to that time.  Since our piece was successfully performed at the
Odeon two other versions have appeared: one was in the form of a
letter addressed to the Historical Institute by M. Billiard, who
upheld the conclusions arrived at by Soulavie, on whose narrative our
play was founded; the other was a work by the bibliophile Jacob, who
followed a new system of inquiry, and whose book displayed the
results of deep research and extensive reading.  It did not, however,
cause me to change my opinion.  Even had it been published before I
had written my drama, I should still have adhered to the idea as to
the most probable solution of the problem which I had arrived at in
1831, not only because it was incontestably the most dramatic, but
also because it is supported by those moral presumptions which have
such weight with us when considering a dark and doubtful question
like the one before us.  It will, be objected, perhaps, that dramatic
writers, in their love of the marvellous and the pathetic, neglect
logic and strain after effect, their aim being to obtain the applause
of the gallery rather than the approbation of the learned.  But to
this it may be replied that the learned on their part sacrifice a
great deal to their love of dates, more or less exact; to their
desire to elucidate some point which had hitherto been considered
obscure, and which their explanations do not always clear up; to the
temptation to display their proficiency in the ingenious art of
manipulating facts and figures culled from a dozen musty volumes into
one consistent whole.

Our interest in this strange case of imprisonment arises, not alone
from its completeness and duration, but also from our uncertainty as
to the motives from which it was inflicted.  Where erudition alone
cannot suffice; where bookworm after bookworm, disdaining the
conjectures of his predecessors, comes forward with a new theory
founded on some forgotten document he has hunted out, only to find
himself in his turn pushed into oblivion by some follower in his
track, we must turn for guidance to some other light than that of
scholarship; especially if, on strict investigation, we find that not
one learned solution rests on a sound basis of fact.

In the question before us, which, as we said before, is a double one,
asking not only who was the Man in the Iron Mask, but why he was
relentlessly subjected to this torture till the moment of his death,
what we need in order to restrain our fancy is mathematical
demonstration, and not philosophical induction.

While I do not go so far as to assert positively that Abbe Soulavie
has once for all lifted the veil which hid the truth, I am yet
persuaded that no other system of research is superior to his, and
that no other suggested solution has so many presumptions in its
favour.  I have not reached this firm conviction on account of the
great and prolonged success of our drama, but because of the ease
with which all the opinions adverse to those of the abbe may be
annihilated by pitting them one against the other.

The qualities that make for success being quite different in a novel
and in a drama, I could easily have founded a romance on the
fictitious loves of Buckingham and the queen, or on a supposed secret
marriage between her and Cardinal Mazarin, calling to my aid a work
by Saint-Mihiel which the bibliophile declares he has never read,
although it is assuredly neither rare nor difficult of access.  I
might also have merely expanded my drama, restoring to the personages
therein their true names and relative positions, both of which the
exigencies of the stage had sometimes obliged me to alter, and while
allowing them to fill the same parts, making them act more in
accordance with historical fact.  No fable however far-fetched, no
grouping of characters however improbable, can, however, destroy the
interest which the innumerable writings about the Iron Mask excite,
although no two agree in details, and although each author and each
witness declares himself in possession of complete knowledge.  No
work, however mediocre, however worthless even, which has appeared on
this subject has ever failed of success, not even, for example, the
strange jumble of Chevalier de Mouhy, a kind of literary braggart,
who was in the pay of Voltaire, and whose work was published
anonymously in 1746 by Pierre de Hondt of The Hague.  It is divided
into six short parts, and bears the title, 'Le Masque de Fer, ou les
Aventures admirables du Prre et du Fils'.  An absurd romance by
Regnault Warin, and one at least equally absurd by Madame Guenard,
met with a like favourable reception.  In writing for the theatre, an
author must choose one view of a dramatic situation to the exclusion
of all others, and in following out this central idea is obliged by
the inexorable laws of logic to push aside everything that interferes
with its development.  A book, on the contrary, is written to be
discussed; it brings under the notice of the reader all the evidence
produced at a trial which has as yet not reached a definite
conclusion, and which in the case before us will never reach it,
unless, which is most improbable, some lucky chance should lead to
some new discovery.

The first mention of the prisoner is to be found in the 'Memoires
secrets pour servir a l'Histoire de Perse' in one 12mo volume, by an
anonymous author, published by the 'Compagnie des Libraires Associes
d'Amsterdam' in 1745.


"Not having any other purpose," says the author (page 20, 2nd edit.),
"than to relate facts which are not known, or about which no one has
written, or about which it is impossible to be silent, we refer at
once to a fact which has hitherto almost escaped notice concerning
Prince Giafer (Louis de Bourbon, Comte de Vermandois, son of Louis
XIV and Mademoiselle de la Valliere), who was visited by Ali-Momajou
(the Duc d'Orleans, the regent) in the fortress of Ispahan (the
Bastille), in which he had been imprisoned for several years.  This
visit had probably no other motive than to make sure that this prince
was really alive, he having been reputed dead of the plague for over
thirty years, and his obsequies having been celebrated in presence of
an entire army.


"Cha-Abas (Louis XIV) had a legitimate son, Sephi-Mirza (Louis,
Dauphin of France), and a natural son, Giafer.  These two princes, as
dissimilar in character as in birth, were always rivals and always at
enmity with each other.  One day Giafer so far forgot himself as to
strike Sephi-Mirza.  Cha-Abas having heard of the insult offered to
the heir to the throne, assembled his most trusted councillors, and
laid the conduct of the culprit before them--conduct which, according
to the law of the country, was punishable with death, an opinion in
which they all agreed.  One of the councillors, however, sympathising
more than the others with the distress of Cha-Abas, suggested that
Giafer should be sent to the army, which was then on the frontiers of
Feidrun (Flanders), and that his death from plague should be given
out a few days after his arrival.  Then, while the whole army was
celebrating his obsequies, he should be carried off by night, in the
greatest secrecy, to the stronghold on the isle of Ormus (Sainte-
Marguerite), and there imprisoned for life.

"This course was adopted, and carried out by faithful and discreet
agents.  The prince, whose premature death was mourned by the army,
being carried by unfrequented roads to the isle of Ormus, was placed
in the custody of the commandant of the island, who, had received
orders beforehand not to allow any person whatever to see the
prisoner.  A single servant who was in possession of the secret was
killed by the escort on the journey, and his face so disfigured by
dagger thrusts that he could not be recognised.

"The commandant treated his prisoner with the most profound respect;
he waited on him at meals himself, taking the dishes from the cooks
at the door of the apartment, none of whom ever looked on the face of
Giafer.  One day it occurred to the prince to scratch, his name on
the back of a plate with his knife.  One of the servants into whose
hands the plate fell ran with it at once to the commandant, hoping he
would be pleased and reward the bearer; but the unfortunate man was
greatly mistaken, for he was at once made away with, that his
knowledge of such an important secret might be buried with himself.

"Giafer remained several years in the castle Ormus, and was then
transported to the fortress of Ispahan; the commandant of Ormus
having received the governorship of Ispahan as a reward for faithful
service.

"At Ispahan, as at Ormus, whenever it was necessary on account of
illness or any other cause to allow anyone to approach the prince, he
was always masked; and several trustworthy persons have asserted that
they had seen the masked prisoner often, and had noticed that he used
the familiar 'tu' when addressing the governor, while the latter
showed his charge the greatest respect.  "As Giafer survived Cha-Abas
and Sephi-Mirza by many years, it may be asked why he was never set
at liberty; but it must be remembered it would have been impossible
to restore a prince to his rank and dignities whose tomb actually
existed, and of whose burial there were not only living witnesses but
documentary proofs, the authenticity of which it would have been
useless to deny, so firm was the belief, which has lasted down to the
present day, that Giafer died of the plague in camp when with the
army on the frontiers of Flanders.  Ali-Homajou died shortly after
the visit he paid to Giafer."


This version of the story, which is the original source of all the
controversy on the subject, was at first generally received as true.
On a critical examination it fitted in very well with certain events
which took place in the reign of Louis XIV.

The Comte de Vermandois had in fact left the court for the camp very
soon after his reappearance there, for he had been banished by the
king from his presence some time before for having, in company with
several young nobles, indulged in the most reprehensible excesses.

"The king," says Mademoiselle de Montpensier ('Memoires de
Mademoiselle de Montpensier', vol.  xliii.  p. 474., of 'Memoires
Relatifs d'Histoire de France', Second Series, published by
Petitot), "had not been satisfied with his conduct and refused to see
him.  The young prince had caused his mother much sorrow, but had
been so well lectured that it was believed that he had at last turned
over a new leaf."  He only remained four days at court, reached the
camp before Courtrai early in November 1683, was taken ill on the
evening of the 12th, and died on the 19th of the same month of a
malignant fever.  Mademoiselle de Montpensier says that the Comte de
Vermandois "fell ill from drink."

There are, of course, objections of all kinds to this theory.

For if, during the four days the comte was at court, he had struck
the dauphin, everyone would have heard of the monstrous crime, and
yet it is nowhere spoken of, except in the 'Memoires de Perse'.  What
renders the story of the blow still more improbable is the difference
in age between the two princes.  The dauphin, who already had a son,
the Duc de Bourgogne, more than a year old, was born the 1st November
1661, and was therefore six years older than the Comte de Vermandois.
But the most complete answer to the tale is to be found in a letter
written by Barbezieux to Saint-Mars, dated the 13th August 1691:--


"When you have any information to send me relative to the prisoner
who has been in your charge for twenty years, I most earnestly enjoin
on you to take the same precautions as when you write to M. de
Louvois."


The Comte de Vermandois, the official registration of whose death
bears the date 1685, cannot have been twenty years a prisoner in
1691.

Six years after the Man in the Mask had been thus delivered over to
the curiosity of the public, the 'Siecle de Louis XIV' (2 vols.
octavo, Berlin, 1751) was published by Voltaire under the pseudonym
of M. de Francheville.  Everyone turned to this work, which had been
long expected, for details relating to the mysterious prisoner about
whom everyone was talking.

Voltaire ventured at length to speak more openly of the prisoner than
anyone had hitherto done, and to treat as a matter of history "an
event long ignored by all historians."  (vol. ii.  p. 11, 1st
edition, chap. xxv.).  He assigned an approximate date to the
beginning of this captivity, "some months after the death of Cardinal
Mazarin" (1661); he gave a description of the prisoner, who
according to him was "young and dark-complexioned; his figure was
above the middle height and well proportioned; his features were
exceedingly handsome, and his bearing was noble.  When he spoke his
voice inspired interest; he never complained of his lot, and gave no
hint as to his rank."  Nor was the mask forgotten: "The part which
covered the chin was furnished with steel springs, which allowed the
prisoner to eat without uncovering his face."  And, lastly, he fixed
the date of the death of the nameless captive; who "was buried," he
says, "in 1704., by night, in the parish church of Saint-Paul."

Voltaire's narrative coincided with the account given in the
'Memoires de Peyse', save for the omission of the incident which,
according to the 'Memoires', led in the first instance to the
imprisonment of Giafer.  "The prisoner," says Voltaire, "was sent to
the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, and afterwards to the Bastille, in charge
of a trusty official; he wore his mask on the journey, and his escort
had orders to shoot him if he took it off.  The Marquis de Louvois
visited him while he was on the islands, and when speaking to him
stood all the time in a respectful attitude.  The prisoner was
removed to the Bastille in 1690, where he was lodged as comfortably
as could be managed in that building; he was supplied with everything
he asked for, especially with the finest linen and the costliest
lace, in both of which his taste was perfect; he had a guitar to play
on, his table was excellent, and the governor rarely sat in his
presence."

Voltaire added a few further details which had been given him by M.
de Bernaville, the successor of M. de Saint-Mars, and by an old
physician of the Bastille who had attended the prisoner whenever his
health required a doctor, but who had never seen his face, although
he had "often seen his tongue and his body."  He also asserted that
M. de Chamillart was the last minister who was in the secret, and
that when his son-in-law, Marshal de la Feuillade, besought him on
his knees, de Chamillart being on his deathbed, to tell him the name
of the Man in the Iron Mask, the minister replied that he was under a
solemn oath never to reveal the secret, it being an affair of state.
To all these details, which the marshal acknowledges to be correct,
Voltaire adds a remarkable note: "What increases our wonder is, that
when the unknown captive was sent to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite no
personage of note disappeared from the European stage."

The story of the Comte de Vermandois and the blow was treated as an
absurd and romantic invention, which does not even attempt to keep
within the bounds of the possible, by Baron C. (according to P.
Marchand, Baron Crunyngen) in a letter inserted in the 'Bibliotheque
raisonnee des Ouvrages des Savants de d'Europe', June 1745.  The
discussion was revived somewhat later, however, and a few Dutch
scholars were supposed to be responsible for a new theory founded on
history; the foundations proving somewhat shaky, however,--a quality
which it shares, we must say, with all the other theories which have
ever been advanced.

According to this new theory, the masked prisoner was a young foreign
nobleman, groom of the chambers to Anne of Austria, and the real
father of Louis XIV.  This anecdote appears first in a duodecimo
volume printed by Pierre Marteau at Cologne in 1692, and which bears
the title, 'The Loves of Anne of Austria, Consort of Louis XIII, with
M. le C. D. R., the Real Father of Louis XIV, King of France; being a
Minute Account of the Measures taken to give an Heir to the Throne of
France, the Influences at Work to bring this to pass, and the
Denoument of the Comedy'.

This libel ran through five editions, bearing date successively,
1692, 1693, 1696, 1722, and 1738.  In the title of the edition of
1696 the words "Cardinal de Richelieu" are inserted in place of the
initials "C. D. R.," but that this is only a printer's error everyone
who reads the work will perceive.  Some have thought the three
letters stood for Comte de Riviere, others for Comte de Rochefort,
whose 'Memoires' compiled by Sandras de Courtilz supply these
initials.  The author of the book was an Orange writer in the pay of
William III, and its object was, he says, "to unveil the great
mystery of iniquity which hid the true origin of Louis XIV."  He goes
on to remark that "the knowledge of this fraud, although
comparatively rare outside France, was widely spread within her
borders.  The well-known coldness of Louis XIII; the extraordinary
birth of Louis-Dieudonne, so called because he was born in the
twenty-third year of a childless marriage, and several other
remarkable circumstances connected with the birth, all point clearly
to a father other than the prince, who with great effrontery is
passed off by his adherents as such.  The famous barricades of Paris,
and the organised revolt led by distinguished men against Louis XIV
on his accession to the throne, proclaimed aloud the king's
illegitimacy, so that it rang through the country; and as the
accusation had reason on its side, hardly anyone doubted its truth."

We give below a short abstract of the narrative, the plot of which is
rather skilfully constructed:--


"Cardinal Richelieu, looking with satisfied pride at the love of
Gaston, Duc d'Orleans, brother of the king, for his niece Parisiatis
(Madame de Combalet), formed the plan of uniting the young couple in
marriage.  Gaston taking the suggestion as an insult, struck the
cardinal.  Pere Joseph then tried to gain the cardinal's consent and
that of his niece to an attempt to deprive Gaston of the throne,
which the childless marriage of Louis XIII seemed to assure him.  A
young man, the C. D. R.  of the book, was introduced into Anne of
Austria's room, who though a wife in name had long been a widow in
reality.  She defended herself but feebly, and on seeing the cardinal
next day said to him, "Well, you have had your wicked will; but take
good care, sir cardinal, that I may find above the mercy and goodness
which you have tried by many pious sophistries to convince me is
awaiting me.  Watch over my soul, I charge you, for I have yielded!"
The queen having given herself up to love for some time, the joyful
news that she would soon become a mother began to spread over the
kingdom.  In this manner was born Louis XIV, the putative son of
Louis XIII.  If this instalment of the tale be favourably received,
says the pamphleteer, the sequel will soon follow, in which the sad
fate of C. D. R.  will be related, who was made to pay dearly for his
short-lived pleasure."


Although the first part was a great success, the promised sequel
never appeared.  It must be admitted that such a story, though it
never convinced a single person of the illegitimacy of Louis XIV, was
an excellent prologue to the tale of the unfortunate lot of the Man
in the Iron Mask, and increased the interest and curiosity with which
that singular historical mystery was regarded.  But the views of the
Dutch scholars thus set forth met with little credence, and were soon
forgotten in a new solution.

The third historian to write about the prisoner of the Iles Sainte-
Marguerite was Lagrange-Chancel.  He was just twenty-nine years of
age when, excited by Freron's hatred of Voltaire, he addressed a
letter from his country place, Antoniat, in Perigord, to the 'Annee
Litteraire' (vol. iii.  p.  188), demolishing the theory advanced in
the 'Siecle de Louis XIV', and giving facts which he had collected
whilst himself imprisoned in the same place as the unknown prisoner
twenty years later.


"My detention in the Iles-Saint-Marguerite," says Lagrange-Chancel,"
brought many things to my knowledge which a more painstaking
historian than M. de Voltaire would have taken the trouble to find
out; for at the time when I was taken to the islands the imprisonment
of the Man in the Iron Mask was no longer regarded as a state secret.
This extraordinary event, which  M. de Voltaire places in 1662, a few
months after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, did not take place till
1669, eight years after the death of His Eminence.  M. de La Motte-
Guerin, commandant of the islands in my time, assured me that the
prisoner was the Duc de Beaufort, who was reported killed at the
siege of Candia, but whose body had never been recovered, as all the
narratives of that event agree in stating.  He also told me that M.
de Saint-Mars, who succeeded Pignerol as governor of the islands,
showed great consideration for the prisoner, that he waited on him at
table, that the service was of silver, and that the clothes supplied
to the prisoner were as costly as he desired; that when he was ill
and in need of a physician or surgeon, he was obliged under pain of
death to wear his mask in their presence, but that when he was alone
he was permitted to pull out the hairs of his beard with steel
tweezers, which were kept bright and polished.  I saw a pair of these
which had been actually used for this purpose in the possession of M.
de Formanoir, nephew of Saint-Mars, and lieutenant of a Free Company
raised for the purpose of guarding the prisoners.  Several persons
told me that when Saint-Mars, who had been placed over the Bastille,
conducted his charge thither, the latter was heard to say behind his
iron mask, 'Has the king designs on my life?'  To which Saint-Mars
replied, 'No, my prince; your life is safe: you must only let
yourself be guided.'

"I also learned from a man called Dubuisson, cashier to the well-
known Samuel Bernard, who, having been imprisoned for some years in
the Bastile, was removed to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he was
confined along with some others in a room exactly over the one
occupied by the unknown prisoner.  He told me that they were able to
communicate with him by means of the flue of the chimney, but on
asking him why he persisted in not revealing his name and the cause
of his imprisonment, he replied that such an avowal would be fatal
not only to him but to those to whom he made it.

"Whether it were so or not, to-day the name and rank of this
political victim are secrets the preservation of which is no longer
necessary to the State; and I have thought that to tell the public
what I know would cut short the long chain of circumstances which
everyone was forging according to his fancy, instigated thereto by an
author whose gift of relating the most impossible events in such a
manner as to make them seem true has won for all his writings such
success--even for his Vie de Charles XII"


This theory, according to Jacob, is more probable than any of the
others.

"Beginning with the year 1664.," he says, "the Duc de Beaufort had by
his insubordination and levity endangered the success of several
maritime expeditions.  In October 1666 Louis XIV remonstrated with
him with much tact, begging him to try to make himself more and more
capable in the service of his king by cultivating the talents with
which he was endowed, and ridding himself of the faults which spoilt
his conduct.  'I do not doubt,' he concludes, 'that you will be all
the more grateful to me for this mark of my benevolence towards you,
when you reflect how few kings have ever shown their goodwill in a
similar manner.'" ( 'Oeuvres de Louis XIV', vol. v.  p. 388).
Several calamities in the royal navy are known to have been brought
about by the Duc de Beaufort.  M. Eugene Sue, in his 'Histoire de la
Marine', which is full of new and curious information, has drawn a
very good picture of the position of the "roi des halles," the "king
of the markets," in regard to Colbert and Louis XIV.  Colbert wished
to direct all the manoeuvres of the fleet from his study, while it
was commanded by the naval grandmaster in the capricious manner which
might be expected from his factious character and love of bluster
(Eugene Sue, vol. i., 'Pieces Justificatives').  In 1699 Louis XIV
sent the Duc de Beaufort to the relief of Candia, which the Turks
were besieging.  Seven hours after his arrival Beaufort was killed in
a sortie.  The Duc de Navailles, who shared with him the command of
the French squadron, simply reported his death as follows: "He met a
body of Turks who were pressing our troops hard: placing himself at
the head of the latter, he fought valiantly, but at length his
soldiers abandoned him, and we have not been able to learn his fate"
('Memoires du Duc de Navailles', book iv.  P. 243)

The report of his death spread rapidly through France and Italy;
magnificent funeral services were held in Paris, Rome, and Venice,
and funeral orations delivered.  Nevertheless, many believed that he
would one day reappear, as his body had never been recovered.

Guy Patin mentions this belief, which he did not share, in two of his
letters:--


"Several wagers have been laid that M. de Beaufort is not dead!
'O utinam'!" (Guy Patin, September 26, 1669).

"It is said that M. de Vivonne has been granted by commission the
post of vice-admiral of France for twenty years; but there are many
who believe that the Duc de Beaufort is not dead, but imprisoned in
some Turkish island.  Believe this who may, I don't; he is really
dead, and the last thing I should desire would be to be as dead as
he",(Ibid., January 14, 1670).


The following are the objections to this theory:

"In several narratives written by eye-witnesses of the siege of
Candia," says Jacob, "it is related that the Turks, according to
their custom, despoiled the body and cut off the head of the Duc de
Beaufort on the field of battle, and that the latter was afterwards
exhibited at Constantinople; and this may account for some of the
details given by Sandras de Courtilz in his 'Memoires du Marquis de
Montbrun' and his 'Memoires d'Artagnan', for one can easily imagine
that the naked, headless body might escape recognition.  M. Eugene
Sue, in his 'Histoire de la Marine' (vol. ii, chap. 6), had adopted
this view, which coincides with the accounts left by Philibert de
Jarry and the Marquis de Ville, the MSS. of whose letters and
'Memoires' are to be found in the Bibliotheque du Roi.

"In the first volume of the 'Histoire de la Detention des Philosophes
et des Gens de Lettres a la Bastille, etc.', we find the following
passage:--

"Without dwelling on the difficulty and danger of an abduction, which
an Ottoman scimitar might any day during this memorable siege render
unnecessary, we shall restrict ourselves to declaring positively that
the correspondence of Saint-Mars from 1669 to 1680 gives us no ground
for supposing that the governor of Pignerol had any great prisoner of
state in his charge during that period of time, except Fouquet and
Lauzun.'"

While we profess no blind faith in the conclusions arrived at by the
learned critic, we would yet add to the considerations on which he
relies another, viz. that it is most improbable that Louis XIV should
ever have considered it necessary to take such rigorous measures
against the Duc de Beaufort.  Truculent and self-confident as he was,
he never acted against the royal authority in such a manner as to
oblige the king to strike him down in secret; and it is difficult to
believe that Louis XIV, peaceably seated on his throne, with all the
enemies of his minority under his feet, should have revenged himself
on the duke as an old Frondeur.

The critic calls our attention to another fact also adverse to the
theory under consideration.  The Man in the Iron Mask loved fine
linen and rich lace, he was reserved in character and possessed of
extreme refinement, and none of this suits the portraits of the 'roi
des halles' which contemporary historians have drawn.

Regarding the anagram of the name Marchiali (the name under which the
death of the prisoner was registered), 'hic amiral', as a proof, we
cannot think that the gaolers of Pignerol amused themselves in
propounding conundrums to exercise the keen intellect of their
contemporaries; and moreover the same anagram would apply equally
well to the Count of Vermandois, who was made admiral when only
twenty-two months old.  Abbe Papon, in his roamings through Provence,
paid a visit to the prison in which the Iron Mask was confined, and
thus speaks:--

"It was to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite that the famous prisoner with
the iron mask whose name has never been discovered, was transported
at the end of the last century; very few of those attached to his
service were allowed to speak to him.  One day, as M. de Saint-Mars
was conversing with him, standing outside his door, in a kind of
corridor, so as to be able to see from a distance everyone who
approached, the son of one of the governor's friends, hearing the
voices, came up; Saint-Mars quickly closed the door of the room, and,
rushing to meet the young man, asked him with an air of great anxiety
if he had overheard anything that was said.  Having convinced himself
that he had heard nothing, the governor sent the young man away the
same day, and wrote to the father that the adventure was like to have
cost the son dear, and that he had sent him back to his home to
prevent any further imprudence.

"I was curious enough to visit the room in which the unfortunate man
was imprisoned, on the 2nd of February 1778.  It is lighted by one
window to the north, overlooking the sea, about fifteen feet above
the terrace where the sentries paced to and fro.  This window was
pierced through a very thick wall and the embrasure barricaded by
three iron bars, thus separating the prisoner from the sentries by a
distance of over two fathoms.  I found an officer of the Free Company
in the fortress who was nigh on fourscore years old; he told me that
his father, who had belonged to the same Company, had often related
to him how a friar had seen something white floating on the water
under the prisoner's window.  On being fished out and carried to
M. de Saint-Mars, it proved to be a shirt of very fine material,
loosely folded together, and covered with writing from end to end.
M. de Saint-Mars spread it out and read a few words, then turning to
the friar who had brought it he asked him in an embarrassed manner if
he had been led by curiosity to read any of the, writing.  The friar
protested repeatedly that he had not read a line, but nevertheless he
was found dead in bed two days later.  This incident was told so
often to my informant by his father and by the chaplain of the fort
of that time that he regarded it as incontestably true.  The
following fact also appears to me to be equally well established by
the testimony of many witnesses.  I collected all the evidence I
could on the spot, and also in the Lerins monastery, where the
tradition is preserved.

"A female attendant being wanted for the prisoner, a woman of the
village of Mongin offered herself for the place, being under the
impression that she would thus be able to make her children's
fortune; but on being told that she would not only never be allowed
to see her children again, but would be cut off from the rest of the
world as well, she refused to be shut up with a prisoner whom it cost
so much to serve.  I may mention here that at the two outer angles of
the wall of the fort which faced the sea two sentries were placed,
with orders to fire on any boat which approached within a certain
distance.

"The prisoner's personal attendant died in the Iles Sainte-
Marguerite.  The brother of the officer whom I mentioned above was
partly in the confidence of M. de Saint-Mars, and he often told how
he was summoned to the prison once at midnight and ordered to remove
a corpse, and that he carried it on his shoulders to the burial-
place, feeling certain it was the prisoner who was dead; but it was
only his servant, and it was then that an effort was made to supply
his place by a female attendant."

Abbe Papon gives some curious details, hitherto unknown to the
public, but as he mentions no names his narrative cannot be
considered as evidence.  Voltaire never replied to Lagrange-Chancel,
who died the same year in which his letter was published.  Freron
desiring to revenge himself for the scathing portrait which Voltaire
had drawn of him in the 'Ecossaise', called to his assistance a more
redoubtable adversary than Lagrange-Chancel.  Sainte-Foix had brought
to the front a brand new theory, founded on a passage by Hume in an
article in the 'Annee Litteraire (1768, vol.  iv.), in which he
maintained that the Man in the Iron Mask was the Duke of Monmouth, a
natural son of Charles II, who was found guilty of high treason and
beheaded in London on the 15th July 1685.

This is what the English historian says:


"It was commonly reported in London that the Duke of Monmouth's life
had been saved, one of his adherents who bore a striking resemblance
to the duke having consented to die in his stead, while the real
culprit was secretly carried off to France, there to undergo a
lifelong imprisonment."


The great affection which the English felt for the Duke of Monmouth,
and his own conviction that the people only needed a leader to induce
them to shake off the yoke of James II, led him to undertake an
enterprise which might possibly have succeeded had it been carried
out with prudence.  He landed at Lyme, in Dorset, with only one
hundred and twenty men; six thousand soon gathered round his
standard; a few towns declared in his favour; he caused himself to be
proclaimed king, affirming that he was born in wedlock, and that he
possessed the proofs of the secret marriage of Charles II and Lucy
Waiters, his mother.  He met the Royalists on the battlefield, and
victory seemed to be on his side, when just at the decisive moment
his ammunition ran short.  Lord Gray, who commanded the cavalry, beat
a cowardly retreat, the unfortunate Monmouth was taken prisoner,
brought to London, and beheaded.

The details published in the 'Siecle de Louis XIV' as to the personal
appearance of the masked prisoner might have been taken as a
description of Monmouth, who possessed great physical beauty.
Sainte-Foix had collected every scrap of evidence in favour of his
solution of the mystery, making use even of the following passage
from an anonymous romance called 'The Loves of Charles II and James
II, Kings of England':--

"The night of the pretended execution of the Duke of Monmouth, the
king, attended by three men, came to the Tower and summoned the duke
to his presence.  A kind of loose cowl was thrown over his head, and
he was put into a carriage, into which the king and his attendants
also got, and was driven away."


Sainte-Foix also referred to the alleged visit of Saunders, confessor
to James II, paid to the Duchess of Portsmouth after the death of
that monarch, when the duchess took occasion to say that she could
never forgive King James for consenting to Monmouth's execution, in
spite of the oath he had taken on the sacred elements at the deathbed
of Charles II that he would never take his natural brother's life,
even in case of rebellion.  To this the priest replied quickly, "The
king kept his oath."

Hume also records this solemn oath, but we cannot say that all the
historians agree on this point.  'The Universal History' by Guthrie
and Gray, and the 'Histoire d'Angleterre' by Rapin, Thoyras and de
Barrow, do not mention it.

"Further," wrote Sainte-Foix, "an English surgeon called Nelaton, who
frequented the Cafe Procope, much affected by men of letters, often
related that during the time he was senior apprentice to a surgeon
who lived near the Porte Saint-Antoine, he was once taken to the
Bastille to bleed a prisoner.  He was conducted to this prisoner's
room by the governor himself, and found the patient suffering from
violent headache.  He spoke with an English accent, wore a gold-
flowered dressing-gown of black and orange, and had his face covered
by a napkin knotted behind his head."

This story does not hold water: it would be difficult to form a mask
out of a napkin; the Bastille had a resident surgeon of its own as
well as a physician and apothecary; no one could gain access to a
prisoner without a written order from a minister, even the Viaticum
could only be introduced by the express permission of the lieutenant
of police.

This theory met at first with no objections, and seemed to be going
to oust all the others, thanks, perhaps, to the combative and restive
character of its promulgator, who bore criticism badly, and whom no
one cared to incense, his sword being even more redoubtable than his
pen.

It was known that when Saint-Mars journeyed with his prisoner to the
Bastille, they had put up on the way at Palteau, in Champagne, a
property belonging to the governor.  Freron therefore addressed
himself to a grand-nephew of Saint-Mars, who had inherited this
estate, asking if he could give him any information about this visit.
The following reply appeared in the 'Annee Litteraire (June 1768):--


"As it appears from the letter of M. de Sainte-Foix from which you
quote that the Man in the Iron Mask still exercises the fancy of your
journalists, I am willing to tell you all I know about the prisoner.
He was known in the islands of Sainte-Marguerite and at the Bastille
as 'La Tour.'  The governor and all the other officials showed him
great respect, and supplied him with everything he asked for that
could be granted to a prisoner.  He often took exercise in the yard
of the prison, but never without his mask on.  It was not till the
'Siecle' of M. de Voltaire appeared that I learned that the mask was
of iron and furnished with springs; it may be that the circumstance
was overlooked, but he never wore it except when taking the air, or
when he had to appear before a stranger.

"M. de Blainvilliers, an infantry officer who was acquainted with M.
de Saint-Mars both at Pignerol and Sainte-Marguerite, has often told
me that the lot of 'La Tour' greatly excited his curiosity, and that
he had once borrowed the clothes and arms of a soldier whose turn it
was to be sentry on the terrace under the prisoner's window at
Sainte-Marguerite, and undertaken the duty himself; that he had seen
the prisoner distinctly, without his mask; that his face was white,
that he was tall and well proportioned, except that his ankles were
too thick, and that his hair was white, although he appeared to be
still in the prime of life.  He passed the whole of the night in
question pacing to and fro in his room.  Blainvilliers added that he
was always dressed in brown, that he had plenty of fine linen and
books, that the governor and the other officers always stood
uncovered in his presence till he gave them leave to cover and sit
down, and that they often bore him company at table.

"In 1698 M. de Saint-Mars was promoted from the governorship of the
Iles Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastille.  In moving thither,
accompanied by his prisoner, he made his estate of Palteau a halting-
place.  The masked man arrived in a litter which preceded that of M.
de Saint-Mars, and several mounted men rode beside it.  The peasants
were assembled to greet their liege lord.  M. de Saint-Mars dined
with his prisoner, who sat with his back to the dining-room windows,
which looked out on the court.  None of the peasants whom I have
questioned were able to see whether the man kept his mask on while
eating, but they all noticed that M. de Saint-Mars, who sat opposite
to his charge, laid two pistols beside his plate; that only one
footman waited at table, who went into the antechamber to change the
plates and dishes, always carefully closing the dining-room door
behind him.  When the prisoner crossed the courtyard his face was
covered with a black mask, but the peasants could see his lips and
teeth, and remarked that he was tall, and had white hair.  M. de
Saint-Mars slept in a bed placed beside the prisoner's.  M. de
Blainvilliers told me also that 'as soon as he was dead, which
happened in 1704, he was buried at Saint-Paul's,' and that 'the
coffin was filled with substances which would rapidly consume the
body.'  He added, 'I never heard that the masked man spoke with an
English accent.'"

Sainte-Foix proved the story related by M. de Blainvilliers to be
little worthy of belief, showing by a circumstance mentioned in the
letter that the imprisoned man could not be the Duc de Beaufort;
witness the epigram of Madame de Choisy, "M. de Beaufort longs to
bite and can't," whereas the peasants had seen the prisoner's teeth
through his mask.  It appeared as if the theory of Sainte-Foix were
going to stand, when a Jesuit father, named Griffet, who was
confessor at the Bastille, devoted chapter xiii, of his 'Traite des
differentes Sortes de Preuves qui servent a etablir la Verite dans
l'Histoire' (12mo, Liege, 1769) to the consideration of the Iron
Mask.  He was the first to quote an authentic document which
certifies that the Man in the Iron Mask about whom there was so much
disputing really existed.  This was the written journal of M. du
Jonca, King's Lieutenant in the Bastille in 1698, from which Pere
Griffet took the following passage:--

"On Thursday, September the 8th, 1698, at three o'clock in the
afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, the new governor of the Bastille,
entered upon his duties.  He arrived from the islands of Sainte-
Marguerite, bringing with him in a litter a prisoner whose name is a
secret, and whom he had had under his charge there, and at Pignerol.
This prisoner, who was always masked, was at first placed in the
Bassiniere tower, where he remained until the evening.  At nine
o'clock p.m.  I took him to the third room of the Bertaudiere tower,
which I had had already furnished before his arrival with all needful
articles, having received orders to do so from M. de Saint-Mars.
While I was showing him the way to his room, I was accompanied by
M. Rosarges, who had also arrived along with M. de Saint-Mars, and
whose office it was to wait on the said prisoner, whose table is to
be supplied by the governor."

Du Jonca's diary records the death of the prisoner in the following
terms:--

"Monday, 19th November 1703.  The unknown prisoner, who always wore a
black velvet mask, and whom M. de Saint-Mars brought with him from
the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, and whom he had so long in charge, felt
slightly unwell yesterday on coming back from mass.  He died to-day
at 10 p.m. without having a serious illness, indeed it could not have
been slighter.  M. Guiraut, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday,
but as his death was quite unexpected he did not receive the last
sacraments, although the chaplain was able to exhort him up to the
moment of his death.  He was buried on Tuesday the 20th November at
4 P.M. in the burial-ground of St. Paul's, our parish church.  The
funeral expenses amounted to 40 livres."

His name and age were withheld from the priests of the parish.  The
entry made in the parish register, which Pere Griffet also gives, is
in the following words:--


"On the 19th November 1703, Marchiali, aged about forty-five, died in
the Bastille, whose body was buried in the graveyard of Saint-Paul's,
his parish, on the 20th instant, in the presence of M. Rosarges and
of M. Reilh, Surgeon-Major of the Bastille.

                                        "(Signed) ROSARGES.
                                                  "REILH."


As soon as he was dead everything belonging to him, without
exception, was burned; such as his linen, clothes, bed and bedding,
rugs, chairs, and even the doors of the room he occupied.  His
service of plate was melted down, the walls of his room were scoured
and whitewashed, the very floor was renewed, from fear of his having
hidden a note under it, or left some mark by which he could be
recognised.

Pere Griffet did not agree with the opinions of either Lagrange-
Chancel or Sainte-Foix, but seemed to incline towards the theory set
forth in the 'Memoires de Perse', against which no irrefutable
objections had been advanced.  He concluded by saying that before
arriving at any decision as to who the prisoner really was, it would
be necessary to ascertain the exact date of his arrival at Pignerol.

Sainte-Foix hastened to reply, upholding the soundness of the views
he had advanced.  He procured from Arras a copy of an entry in the
registers of the Cathedral Chapter, stating that Louis XIV had
written with his own hand to the said Chapter that they were to admit
to burial the body of the Comte de Vermandois, who had died in the
city of Courtrai; that he desired that the deceased should be
interred in the centre of the choir, in the vault in which lay the
remains of Elisabeth, Comtesse de Vermandois, wife of Philip of
Alsace, Comte de Flanders, who had died in 1182.  It is not to be
supposed that Louis XIV would have chosen a family vault in which to
bury a log of wood.

Sainte-Foix was, however, not acquainted with the letter of
Barbezieux, dated the 13th August 1691, to which we have already
referred, as a proof that the prisoner was not the Comte de
Vermandois; it is equally a proof that he was not the Duke of
Monmouth, as Sainte-Foix maintained; for sentence was passed on the
Duke of Monmouth in 1685, so that it could not be of him either that
Barbezieux wrote in 1691, "The prisoner whom you have had in charge
for twenty years."

In the very year in which Sainte-Foix began to flatter himself that
his theory was successfully established, Baron Heiss brought a new
one forward, in a letter dated "Phalsburg, 28th June 1770," and
addressed to the 'Journal Enclycopedique'.  It was accompanied by a
letter translated from the Italian which appeared in the 'Histoire
Abregee de l'Europe' by Jacques Bernard, published by Claude Jordan,
Leyden, 1685-87, in detached sheets.  This letter stated (August
1687, article 'Mantoue') that the Duke of Mantua being desirous to
sell his capital, Casale, to the King of France, had been dissuaded
therefrom by his secretary, and induced to join the other princes of
Italy in their endeavours to thwart the ambitious schemes of Louis
XVI.  The Marquis d'Arcy, French ambassador to the court of Savoy,
having been informed of the secretary's influence, distinguished him
by all kinds of civilities, asked him frequently to table, and at
last invited him to join a large hunting party two or three leagues
outside Turin.  They set out together, but at a short distance from
the city were surrounded by a dozen horsemen, who carried off the
secretary, 'disguised him, put a mask on him, and took him to
Pignerol.'  He was not kept long in this fortress, as it was 'too
near the Italian frontier, and although he was carefully guarded it
was feared that the walls would speak'; so he was transferred to the
Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he is at present in the custody of M.
de Saint-Mars.

This theory, of which much was heard later, did not at first excite
much attention.  What is certain is that the Duke of Mantua's
secretary, by name Matthioli, was arrested in 1679 through the agency
of Abbe d'Estrade and M. de Catinat, and taken with the utmost
secrecy to Pignerol, where he was imprisoned and placed in charge of
M. de Saint-Mars.  He must not, however, be confounded with the Man
in the Iron Mask.

Catinat says of Matthioli in a letter to Louvois "No one knows the
name of this knave."

Louvois writes to Saint-Mars: "I admire your patience in waiting for
an order to treat such a rogue as he deserves, when he treats you
with disrespect."

Saint-Mars replies to the minister: "I have charged Blainvilliers to
show him a cudgel and tell him that with its aid we can make the
froward meek."

Again Louvois writes: "The clothes of such people must be made to
last three or four years."

This cannot have been the nameless prisoner who was treated with such
consideration, before whom Louvois stood bare-headed, who was
supplied with fine linen and lace, and so on.

Altogether, we gather from the correspondence of Saint-Mars that the
unhappy man alluded to above was confined along with a mad Jacobin,
and at last became mad himself, and succumbed to his misery in 1686.

Voltaire, who was probably the first to supply such inexhaustible
food for controversy, kept silence and took no part in the
discussions.  But when all the theories had been presented to the
public, he set about refuting them.  He made himself very merry, in
the seventh edition of 'Questions sur l'Encyclopedie distibuees en
forme de Dictionnaire (Geneva, 1791), over the complaisance
attributed to Louis XIV in acting as police-sergeant and gaoler for
James II, William III, and Anne, with all of whom he was at war.
Persisting still in taking 1661 or 1662 as the date when the
incarceration of the masked prisoner began, he attacks the opinions
advanced by Lagrange-Chancel and Pere Griffet, which they had drawn
from the anonymous 'Memoires secrets pour servir a l'Histoire de
Perse'.  "Having thus dissipated all these illusions," he says, "let
us now consider who the masked prisoner was, and how old he was when
he died.  It is evident that if he was never allowed to walk in the
courtyard of the Bastille or to see a physician without his mask, it
must have been lest his too striking resemblance to someone should be
remarked; he could show his tongue but not his face.  As regards his
age, he himself told the apothecary at the Bastille, a few days
before his death, that he thought he was about sixty; this I have
often heard from a son-in-law to this apothecary, M. Marsoban,
surgeon to Marshal Richelieu, and afterwards to the regent, the Duc
d'Orleans.  The writer of this article knows perhaps more on this
subject than Pere Griffet.  But he has said his say."

This article in the 'Questions on the Encyclopaedia' was followed by
some remarks from the pen of the publisher, which are also, however,
attributed by the publishers of Kelh to Voltaire himself.  The
publisher, who sometimes calls himself the author, puts aside without
refutation all the theories advanced, including that of Baron Heiss,
and says he has come to the conclusion that the Iron Mask was,
without doubt, a brother and an elder brother of Louis XIV, by a
lover of the queen.  Anne of Austria had come to persuade herself
that hers alone was the fault which had deprived Louis XIII [the
publisher of this edition overlooked the obvious typographical error
of "XIV" here when he meant, and it only makes sense, that it was
XIII.  D.W.] of an heir, but the birth of the Iron Mask undeceived
her.  The cardinal, to whom she confided her secret, cleverly
arranged to bring the king and queen, who had long lived apart,
together again.  A second son was the result of this reconciliation;
and the first child being removed in secret, Louis XIV remained in
ignorance of the existence of his half-brother till after his
majority.  It was the policy of Louis XIV to affect a great respect
for the royal house, so he avoided much embarrassment to himself and
a scandal affecting the memory of Anne of Austria by adopting the
wise and just measure of burying alive the pledge of an adulterous
love.  He was thus enabled to avoid committing an act of cruelty,
which a sovereign less conscientious and less magnanimous would have
considered a necessity.

After this declaration Voltaire made no further reference to the Iron
Mask.  This last version of the story upset that of Sainte-Foix.
Voltaire having been initiated into the state secret by the Marquis
de Richelieu, we may be permitted to suspect that being naturally
indiscreet he published the truth from behind the shelter of a
pseudonym, or at least gave a version which approached the truth, but
later on realising the dangerous significance of his words, he
preserved for the future complete silence.

We now approach the question whether the prince who thus became the
Iron Mask was an illegitimate brother or a twin-brother of Louis XIV.
The first was maintained by M. Quentin-Crawfurd; the second by Abbe
Soulavie in his 'Memoires du Marechal Duc de Richelieu' (London,
1790).  In 1783 the Marquis de Luchet, in the 'Journal des Gens du
Monde' (vol. iv.  No. 23, p. 282, et seq.), awarded to Buckingham the
honour of the paternity in dispute.  In support of this, he quoted
the testimony of a lady of the house of Saint-Quentin who had been a
mistress of the minister Barbezieux, and who died at Chartres about
the middle of the eighteenth century.  She had declared publicly that
Louis XIV had consigned his elder brother to perpetual imprisonment,
and that the mask was necessitated by the close resemblance of the
two brothers to each other.

The Duke of Buckingham, who came to France in 1625, in order to
escort Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII, to England, where she
was to marry the Prince of Wales, made no secret of his ardent love
for the queen, and it is almost certain that she was not insensible
to his passion.  An anonymous pamphlet, 'La Conference du Cardinal
Mazarin avec le Gazetier' (Brussels, 1649), says that she was
infatuated about him, and allowed him to visit her in her room.  She
even permitted him to take off and keep one of her gloves, and his
vanity leading him to show his spoil, the king heard of it, and was
vastly offended.  An anecdote, the truth of which no one has ever
denied, relates that one day Buckingham spoke to the queen with such
passion in the presence of her lady-in-waiting, the Marquise de
Senecey, that the latter exclaimed, "Be silent, sir, you cannot speak
thus to the Queen of France!"  According to this version, the Man in
the Iron Mask must have been born at latest in 1637, but the mention
of any such date would destroy the possibility of Buckingham's
paternity; for he was assassinated at Portsmouth on September 2nd,
1628.

After the taking of the Bastille the masked prisoner became the
fashionable topic of discussion, and one heard of nothing else.  On
the 13th of August 1789 it was announced in an article in a journal
called 'Loisirs d'un Patriote francais', which was afterwards
published anonymously as a pamphlet, that the publisher had seen,
among other documents found in the Bastille, a card bearing the
unintelligible number "64389000," and the following note: "Fouquet,
arriving from Les Iles Sainte-Marguerite in an iron mask."  To this
there was, it was said, a double signature, viz. "XXX," superimposed
on the name "Kersadion."  The journalist was of opinion that Fouquet
had succeeded in making his escape, but had been retaken and
condemned to pass for dead, and to wear a mask henceforward, as a
punishment for his attempted evasion.  This tale made some
impression, for it was remembered that in the Supplement to the
'Siecle de Louis XIV' it was stated that Chamillart had said that
"the Iron Mask was a man who knew all the secrets of M. Fouquet."
But the existence of this card was never proved, and we cannot accept
the story on the unsupported word of an anonymous writer.

>From the time that restrictions on the press were removed, hardly a
day passed without the appearance of some new pamphlet on the Iron
Mask.  Louis Dutens, in 'Correspondence interceptee' (12mo, 1789),
revived the theory of Baron Heiss, supporting it by new and curious
facts.  He proved that Louis XIV had really ordered one of the Duke
of Mantua's ministers to be carried off and imprisoned in Pignerol.
Dutens gave the name of the victim as Girolamo Magni.  He also quoted
from a memorandum which by the wish of the Marquis de Castellane was
drawn up by a certain Souchon, probably the man whom Papon questioned
in 1778.  This Souchon was the son of a man who had belonged to the
Free Company maintained in the islands in the time of Saint-Mars, and
was seventy-nine years old.  This memorandum gives a detailed account
of the abduction of a minister in 1679, who is styled a "minister of
the Empire," and his arrival as a masked prisoner at the islands, and
states that he died there in captivity nine years after he was
carried off.

Dutens thus divests the episode of the element of the marvellous with
which Voltaire had surrounded it.  He called to his aid the testimony
of the Duc de Choiseul, who, having in vain attempted to worm the
secret of the Iron Mask out of Louis XV, begged Madame de Pompadour
to try her hand, and was told by her that the prisoner was the
minister of an Italian prince.  At the same time that Dutens wrote,
"There is no fact in history better established than the fact that
the Man in the Iron Mask was a minister of the Duke of Mantua who was
carried off from Turin," M. Quentin-Crawfurd was maintaining that the
prisoner was a son of Anne of Austria; while a few years earlier
Bouche, a lawyer, in his 'Essai sur l'Histoire de Provence' (2 vols.
4to, 1785), had regarded this story as a fable invented by Voltaire,
and had convinced himself that the prisoner was a woman.  As we see,
discussion threw no light on the subject, and instead of being
dissipated, the confusion became ever "worse confounded."

In 1790 the 'Memoires du Marechal de Richelieu' appeared.  He had
left his note-books, his library, and his correspondence to Soulavie.
The 'Memoires' are undoubtedly authentic, and have, if not certainty,
at least a strong moral presumption in their favour, and gained the
belief of men holding diverse opinions.  But before placing under the
eyes of our readers extracts from them relating to the Iron Mask, let
us refresh our memory by recalling two theories which had not stood
the test of thorough investigation.

According to some MS. notes left by M. de Bonac, French ambassador at
Constantinople in 1724, the Armenian Patriarch Arwedicks, a mortal
enemy of our Church and the instigator of the terrible persecutions
to which the Roman Catholics were subjected, was carried off into
exile at the request of the Jesuits by a French vessel, and confined
in a prison whence there was no escape.  This prison was the fortress
of Sainte-Marguerite, and from there he was taken to the Bastille,
where he died.  The Turkish Government continually clamoured for his
release till 1723, but the French Government persistently denied
having taken any part in the abduction.

Even if it were not a matter of history that Arwedicks went over to
the Roman Catholic Church and died a free man in Paris, as may be
seen by an inspection of the certificate of his death preserved among
the archives in the Foreign Office, one sentence from the note-book
of M. de Bonac would be sufficient to annihilate this theory.  M. de
Bonac says that the Patriarch was carried off, while M. de Feriol,
who succeeded M. de Chateauneuf in 1699, was ambassador at
Constantinople.  Now it was in 1698 that Saint-Mars arrived at the
Bastille with his masked prisoner.

Several English scholars have sided with Gibbon in thinking that the
Man in the Iron Mask might possibly have been Henry, the second son
of Oliver Cromwell, who was held as a hostage by Louis XIV.

By an odd coincidence the second son of the Lord Protector does
entirely disappear from the page of history in 1659; we know nothing
of where he afterwards lived nor when he died.  But why should he be
a prisoner of state in France, while his elder brother Richard was
permitted to live there quite openly?  In the absence of all proof,
we cannot attach the least importance to this explanation of the
mystery.

We now come to the promised extracts from the 'Memoires du Marechal
de Richelieu':



"Under the late king there was a time when every class of society was
asking who the famous personage really was who went by the name of
the Iron Mask, but I noticed that this curiosity abated somewhat
after his arrival at the Bastille with Saint-Mars, when it began to
be reported that orders had been given to kill him should he let his
name be known.  Saint-Mars also let it be understood that whoever
found out the secret would share the same fate.  This threat to
murder both the prisoner and those who showed too much curiosity
about him made such an impression, that during the lifetime of the
late king people only spoke of the mystery below their breath.  The
anonymous author of 'Les Memoires de Perse', which were published in
Holland fifteen years after the death of Louis XIV, was the first who
dared to speak publicly of the prisoner and relate some anecdotes
about him.

"Since the publication of that work, liberty of speech and the
freedom of the press have made great strides, and the shade of Louis
XIV having lost its terrors, the case of the Iron Mask is freely
discussed, and yet even now, at the end of my life and seventy years
after the death of the king, people are still asking who the Man in
the Iron Mask really was.

"This question was one I put to the adorable princess, beloved of the
regent, who inspired in return only aversion and respect, all her
love being given to me.  As everyone was persuaded that the regent
knew the name, the course of life, and the cause of the imprisonment
of the masked prisoner, I, being more venturesome in my curiosity
than others, tried through my princess to fathom the secret.  She had
hitherto constantly repulsed the advances of the Duc d' Orleans, but
as the ardour of his passion was thereby in no wise abated, the least
glimpse of hope would be sufficient to induce him to grant her
everything she asked; I persuaded her, therefore, to let him
understand that if he would allow her to read the 'Memoires du
Masque' which were in his possession his dearest desires would be
fulfilled.

"The Duc d'Orleans had never been known to reveal any secret of
state, being unspeakably circumspect, and having been trained to keep
every confidence inviolable by his preceptor Dubois, so I felt quite
certain that even the princess would fail in her efforts to get a
sight of the memoranda in his possession relative to the birth and
rank of the masked prisoner; but what cannot love, and such an ardent
love, induce a man to do?

"To reward her goodness the regent gave the documents into her hands,
and she forwarded them to me next day, enclosed in a note written in
cipher, which, according to the laws of historical writing, I
reproduce in its entirety, vouching for its authenticity; for the
princess always employed a cipher when she used the language of
gallantry, and this note told me what treaty she had had to sign in
order that she might obtain the documents, and the duke the desire of
his heart.  The details are not admissible in serious history, but,
borrowing the modest language of the patriarchal time, I may say that
if Jacob, before he obtained possession of the best beloved of
Laban's daughters, was obliged to pay the price twice over, the
regent drove a better bargain than the patriarch.  The note and the
memorandum were as follows:

"'2.  1.  17.  12.  9.  2.  20.  2.  1.  7.  14

20.  10.  3.  21.  1.  11.  14.  1.  15.  16.  12.

17.  14.  2.  1.  21.  11.  20.  17.  12.  9.  14.

9.  2.  8.  20.  5.  20.  2.  2.  17.  8.  1.  2.  20.

9.  21.  21.  1.  5.  12.  17.  15.  00.  14.  1.  15.

14. 12.  9.  21.  5.  12.  9.   21.  16.  20.  14.

8.  3.


"'NARRATIVE OF THE BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF THE UNFORTUNATE PRINCE WHO
WAS SEPARATED FROM THE WORLD BY CARDINALS RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN AND
IMPRISONED BY ORDER OF LOUIS XIV.

"'Drawn up by the Governor of this Prince on his deathbed.

"'The unfortunate prince whom I brought up and had in charge till
almost the end of my life was born on the 5th September 1638 at 8.30
o'clock in the evening, while the king was at supper.  His brother,
who is now on the throne, was born at noon while the king was at
dinner, but whereas his birth was splendid and public, that of his
brother was sad and secret; for the king being informed by the
midwife that the queen was about to give birth to a second child,
ordered the chancellor, the midwife, the chief almoner, the queen's
confessor, and myself to stay in her room to be witnesses of whatever
happened, and of his course of action should a second child be born.

"'For a long time already it had been foretold to the king that his
wife would give birth to two sons, and some days before, certain
shepherds had arrived in Paris, saying they were divinely inspired,
so that it was said in Paris that if two dauphins were born it would
be the greatest misfortune which could happen to the State.  The
Archbishop of Paris summoned these soothsayers before him, and
ordered them to be imprisoned in Saint-Lazare, because the populace
was becoming excited about them--a circumstance which filled the king
with care, as he foresaw much trouble to his kingdom.  What had been
predicted by the soothsayers happened, whether they had really been
warned by the constellations, or whether Providence by whom His
Majesty had been warned of the calamities which might happen to
France interposed.  The king had sent a messenger to the cardinal to
tell him of this prophecy, and the cardinal had replied that the
matter, must be considered, that the birth of two dauphins was not
impossible, and should such a case arrive, the second must be
carefully hidden away, lest in the future desiring to be king he
should fight against his brother in support of a new branch of the
royal house, and come at last to reign.

"'The king in his suspense felt very uncomfortable, and as the queen
began to utter cries we feared a second confinement.  We sent to
inform the king, who was almost overcome by the thought that he was
about to become the father of two dauphins.  He said to the Bishop of
Meaux, whom he had sent for to minister to the queen, "Do not quit
my wife till she is safe; I am in mortal terror."  Immediately after
he summoned us all, the Bishop of Meaux, the chancellor M. Honorat,
Dame Peronete the midwife, and myself, and said to us in presence of
the queen, so that she could hear, that we would answer to him with
our heads if we made known the birth of a second dauphin; that it was
his will that the fact should remain a state secret, to prevent the
misfortunes which would else happen, the Salic Law not having
declared to whom the inheritance of the kingdom should come in case
two eldest sons were born to any of the kings.

"'What had been foretold happened: the queen, while the king was at
supper, gave birth to a second dauphin, more dainty and more
beautiful than the first, but who wept and wailed unceasingly, as if
he regretted to take up that life in which he was afterwards to
endure such suffering.  The chancellor drew up the report of this
wonderful birth, without parallel in our history; but His Majesty not
being pleased with its form, burned it in our presence, and the
chancellor had to write and rewrite till His Majesty was satisfied.
The almoner remonstrated, saying it would be impossible to hide the
birth of a prince, but the king returned that he had reasons of state
for all he did.

"'Afterwards the king made us register our oath, the chancellor
signing it first, then the queen's confessor, and I last.  The oath
was also signed by the surgeon and midwife who attended on the.
queen, and the king attached this document to the report, taking both
away with him, and I never heard any more of either.  I remember that
His Majesty consulted with the chancellor as to the form of the oath,
and that he spoke for a long time in an undertone to the cardinal:
after which the last-born child was given into the charge of the
midwife, and as they were always afraid she would babble about his
birth, she has told me that they often threatened her with death
should she ever mention it: we were also forbidden to speak, even to
each other, of the child whose birth we had witnessed.

"'Not one of us has as yet violated his oath; for His Majesty dreaded
nothing so much as a civil war brought about by the two children born
together, and the cardinal, who afterwards got the care of the second
child into his hands, kept that fear alive.  The king also commanded
us to examine the unfortunate prince minutely; he had a wart above
the left elbow, a mole on the right side of his neck, and a tiny wart
on his right thigh; for His Majesty was determined, and rightly so,
that in case of the decease of the first-born, the royal infant whom
he was entrusting to our care should take his place; wherefore he
required our signmanual to the report of the birth, to which a small
royal seal was attached in our presence, and we all signed it after
His Majesty, according as he commanded.  As to the shepherds who had
foretold the double birth, never did I hear another word of them, but
neither did I inquire.  The cardinal who took the mysterious infant
in charge probably got them out of the country.

"'All through the infancy of the second prince Dame Peronete treated
him as if he were her own child, giving out that his father was a
great nobleman; for everyone saw by the care she lavished on him and
the expense she went to, that although unacknowledged he was the
cherished son of rich parents, and well cared for.

"'When the prince began to grow up, Cardinal Mazarin, who succeeded
Cardinal Richelieu in the charge of the prince's education, gave him
into my hands to bring up in a manner worthy of a king's son, but in
secret.  Dame Peronete continued in his service till her death, and
was very much attached to him, and he still more to her.  The prince
was instructed in my house in Burgundy, with all the care due to the
son and brother of a king.

"'I had several conversations with the queen mother during the
troubles in France, and Her Majesty always seemed to fear that if the
existence of the prince should be discovered during the lifetime of
his brother, the young king, malcontents would make it a pretext for
rebellion, because many medical men hold that the last-born of twins
is in reality the elder, and if so, he was king by right, while many
others have a different opinion.

"'In spite of this dread, the queen could never bring herself to
destroy the written evidence of his birth, because in case of the
death of the young king she intended to have his twin-brother
proclaimed.  She told me often that the written proofs were in her
strong box.

"'I gave the ill-starred prince such an education as I should have
liked to receive myself, and no acknowledged son of a king ever had a
better.  The only thing for which I have to reproach myself is that,
without intending it, I caused him great unhappiness; for when he was
nineteen years old he had a burning desire to know who he was, and as
he saw that I was determined to be silent, growing more firm the more
he tormented me with questions, he made up his mind henceforward to
disguise his curiosity and to make me think that he believed himself
a love-child of my own.  He began to call me 'father,' although when
we were alone I often assured him that he was mistaken; but at length
I gave up combating this belief, which he perhaps only feigned to
make me speak, and allowed him to think he was my son, contradicting
him no more; but while he continued to dwell on this subject he was
meantime making every effort to find out who he really was.  Two
years passed thus, when, through an unfortunate piece of
forgetfulness on my part, for which I greatly blame myself, he became
acquainted with the truth.  He knew that the king had lately sent me
several messengers, and once having carelessly forgotten to lock up a
casket containing letters from the queen and the cardinals, he read
part and divined the rest through his natural intelligence; and later
confessed to me that he had carried off the letter which told most
explicitly of his birth.

"'I can recall that from this time on, his manner to me showed no
longer that respect for me in which I had brought him up, but became
hectoring and rude, and that I could not imagine the reason of the
change, for I never found out that he had searched my papers, and he
never revealed to me how he got at the casket, whether he was aided
by some workmen whom he did not wish to betray, or had employed other
means,

"'One day, however, he unguardedly asked me to show him the portraits
of the late and the present king.  I answered that those that existed
were so poor that I was waiting till better ones were taken before
having them in my house.

"'This answer, which did not satisfy him, called forth the request to
be allowed to go to Dijon.  I found out afterwards that he wanted to
see a portrait of the king which was there, and to get to the court,
which was just then at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, because of the approaching
marriage with the infanta; so that he might compare himself with his
brother and see if there were any resemblance between them.  Having
knowledge of his plan, I never let him out of my sight.

"'The young prince was at this time as beautiful as Cupid, and
through the intervention of Cupid himself he succeeded in getting
hold of a portrait of his brother.  One of the upper servants of the
house, a young girl, had taken his fancy, and he lavished such
caresses on her and inspired her with so much love, that although the
whole household was strictly forbidden to give him anything without
my permission, she procured him a portrait of the king.  The unhappy
prince saw the likeness at once, indeed no one could help seeing it,
for the one portrait would serve equally well for either brother, and
the sight produced such a fit of fury that he came to me crying out,
"There is my brother, and this tells me who I am!"  holding out a
letter from Cardinal Mazarin which he had stolen from me, and making
a great commotion in my house.

"'The dread lest the prince should escape and succeed in appearing at
the marriage of his brother made me so uneasy, that I sent off a
messenger to the king to tell him that my casket had been opened, and
asking for instructions.  The king sent back word through the
cardinal that we were both to be shut up till further orders, and
that the prince was to be made to understand that the cause of our
common misfortune was his absurd claim.  I have since shared his
prison, but I believe that a decree of release has arrived from my
heavenly judge, and for my soul's health and for my ward's sake I
make this declaration, that he may know what measures to take in
order to put an end to his ignominious estate should the king die
without children.  Can any oath imposed under threats oblige one to
be silent about such incredible events, which it is nevertheless
necessary that posterity should know?'"


Such were the contents of the historical document given by the regent
to the princess, and it suggests a crowd of questions.  Who was the
prince's governor?  Was he a Burgundian?  Was he simply a landed
proprietor, with some property and a country house in Burgundy?  How
far was his estate from Dijon?  He must have been a man of note, for
he enjoyed the most intimate confidence at the court of Louis XIII,
either by virtue of his office or because he was a favourite of the
king, the queen, and Cardinal Richelieu.  Can we learn from the list
of the nobles of Burgundy what member of their body disappeared from
public life along with a young ward whom he had brought up in his own
house just after the marriage of Louis XIV?  Why did he not attach
his signature to the declaration, which appears to be a hundred years
old?  Did he dictate it when so near death that he had not strength
to sign it?  How did it find its way out of prison?  And so forth.

There is no answer to all these questions, and I, for my part, cannot
undertake to affirm that the document is genuine.  Abbe Soulavie
relates that he one day "pressed the marshal for an answer to some
questions on the matter, asking, amongst other things, if it were not
true that the prisoner was an elder brother of Louis XIV born without
the knowledge of Louis XIII.  The marshal appeared very much
embarrassed, and although he did not entirely refuse to answer, what
he said was not very explanatory.  He averred that this important
personage was neither the illegitimate brother of Louis XIV, nor the
Duke of Monmouth, nor the Comte de Vermandois, nor the Duc de
Beaufort, and so on, as so many writers had asserted."  He called all
their writings mere inventions, but added that almost every one of
them had got hold of some true incidents, as for instance the order
to kill the prisoner should he make himself known.  Finally he
acknowledged that he knew the state secret, and used the following
words: "All that I can tell you, abbe, is, that when the prisoner
died at the beginning of the century, at a very advanced age, he had
ceased to be of such importance as when, at the beginning of his
reign, Louis XIV shut him up for weighty reasons of state."

The above was written down under the eyes of the marshal, and when
Abbe Soulavie entreated him to say something further which, while not
actually revealing the secret, would yet satisfy his questioner's
curiosity, the marshal answered, "Read M. de Voltaire's latest
writings on the subject, especially his concluding words, and reflect
on them."

With the exception of Dulaure, all the critics have treated
Soulavie's narrative with the most profound contempt, and we must
confess that if it was an invention it was a monstrous one, and that
the concoction of the famous note in cipher was abominable.  "Such
was the great secret; in order to find it out, I had to allow myself
5, 12, 17, 15, 14, 1, three times by 8, 3."  But unfortunately for
those who would defend the morals of Mademoiselle de Valois, it would
be difficult to traduce the character of herself, her lover, and her
father, for what one knows of the trio justifies one in believing
that the more infamous the conduct imputed to them, the more likely
it is to be true.  We cannot see the force of the objection that
Louvois would not have written in the following terms to Saint-Mars
in 1687 about a bastard son of Anne of Austria: "I see no objection
to your removing Chevalier de Thezut from the prison in which he is
confined, and putting your prisoner there till the one you are
preparing for him is ready to receive him."  And we cannot understand
those who ask if Saint-Mars, following the example of the minister,
would have said of a prince "Until he is installed in the prison
which is being prepared for him here, which has a chapel adjoining"?
Why should he have expressed himself otherwise?  Does it evidence an
abatement of consideration to call a prisoner a prisoner, and his
prison a prison?

A certain M. de Saint-Mihiel published an 8vo volume in 1791, at
Strasbourg and Paris, entitled 'Le veritable homme, dit au MASQUE DE
FER, ouvrage dans lequel on fait connaitre, sur preuves
incontestables, a qui le celebre infortune dut le jour, quand et ou
il naquit'.  The wording of the title will give an idea of the
bizarre and barbarous jargon in which the whole book is written.  It
would be difficult to imagine the vanity and self-satisfaction which
inspire this new reader of riddles.  If he had found the
philosopher's stone, or made a discovery which would transform the
world, he could not exhibit more pride and pleasure.  All things
considered, the "incontestable proofs" of his theory do not decide
the question definitely, or place it above all attempts at
refutation, any more than does the evidence on which the other
theories which preceded and followed his rest.  But what he lacks
before all other things is the talent for arranging and using his
materials.  With the most ordinary skill he might have evolved a
theory which would have defied criticism at least as successfully, as
the others, and he might have supported it by proofs, which if not
incontestable (for no one has produced such), had at least moral
presumption in their favour, which has great weight in such a
mysterious and obscure affair, in trying to explain, which one can
never leave on one side, the respect shown by Louvois to the
prisoner, to whom he always spoke standing and with uncovered head.

According to M. de Saint-Mihiel, the 'Man in the Iron Mask was a
legitimate son of Anne of Austria and Mazarin'.

He avers that Mazarin was only a deacon, and not a priest, when he
became cardinal, having never taken priest's orders, according to the
testimony of the Princess Palatine, consort of Philip I, Duc
d'Orleans, and that it was therefore possible for him to marry, and
that he did marry, Anne of Austria in secret.

"Old Madame Beauvais, principal woman of the bed-chamber to the queen
mother, knew of this ridiculous marriage, and as the price of her
secrecy obliged the queen to comply with all her whims.  To this
circumstance the principal bed-chamber women owe the extensive
privileges accorded them ever since in this country" (Letter of the
Duchesse d'Orleans, 13th September 1713).

"The queen mother, consort of Louis XIII, had done worse than simply
to fall in love with Mazarin, she had married him, for he had never
been an ordained priest, he had only taken deacon's orders.  If he
had been a priest his marriage would have been impossible.  He grew
terribly tired of the good queen mother, and did not live happily
with her, which was only what he deserved for making such a marriage"
(Letter of the Duchesse d'Orleans, 2nd November 1717).

"She (the queen mother) was quite easy in her conscience about
Cardinal Mazarin; he was not in priest's orders, and so could marry.
The secret passage by which he reached the queen's rooms every
evening still exists in the Palais Royal" (Letter of the Duchesse
d'Orleans, 2nd July 1719)

"The queen's, manner of conducting affairs is influenced by the
passion which dominates her.  When she and the cardinal converse
together, their ardent love for each other is betrayed by their looks
and gestures; it is plain to see that when obliged to part for a time
they do it with great reluctance.  If what people say is true, that
they are properly married, and that their union has been blessed by
Pere Vincent the missioner, there is no harm in all that goes on
between them, either in public or in private" ('Requete civile contre
la Conclusion de la Paix, 1649).

The Man in the Iron Mask told the apothecary in the Bastille that he
thought he was about sixty years of age ('Questions sur
d'Encyclopedie').  Thus he must have been born in 1644, just at the
time when Anne of Austria was invested with the royal power, though
it was really exercised by Mazarin.

Can we find any incident recorded in history which lends support to
the supposition that Anne of Austria had a son whose birth was kept
as secret as her marriage to Mazarin?

"In 1644, Anne of Austria being dissatisfied with her apartments in
the Louvre, moved to the Palais Royal, which had been left to the
king by Richelieu.  Shortly after taking up residence there she was
very ill with a severe attack of jaundice, which was caused, in the
opinion of the doctors, by worry, anxiety, and overwork, and which
pulled her down greatly" ('Memoire de Madame de Motteville, 4 vols.
12mo, Vol i.  p. 194).

"This anxiety, caused by the pressure of public business, was most
probably only dwelt on as a pretext for a pretended attack of
illness.  Anne of Austria had no cause for worry and anxiety till
1649.  She did not begin to complain of the despotism of Mazarin till
towards the end of 1645" (Ibid., viol. i.  pp. 272, 273).

"She went frequently to the theatre during her first year of
widowhood, but took care to hide herself from view in her box."
(Ibid., vol. i.  p. 342).

Abbe Soulavie, in vol. vi. of the 'Memoires de Richelieu', published
in 1793, controverted the opinions of M. de Saint-Mihiel, and again
advanced those which he had published some time before, supporting
them by a new array of reasons.

The fruitlessness of research in the archives of the Bastille, and
the importance of the political events which were happening, diverted
the attention of the public for some years from this subject.  In the
year 1800, however, the 'Magazin encyclopedique' published (vol. vi.
p. 472) an article entitled 'Memoires sur les Problemes historiques,
et la methode de les resoudre appliquee a celui qui concerne l'Homme
au Masque de Fer', signed C. D. O., in which the author maintained
that the prisoner was the first minister of the Duke of Mantua, and
says his name was Girolamo Magni.

In the same year an octavo volume of 142 pages was produced by M.
Roux-Fazillac.  It bore the title 'Recherches historiques et
critiques sur l'Homme au Masque de Fer, d'ou resultent des Notions
certaines sur ce prisonnier'.  These researches brought to light a
secret correspondence relative to certain negotiations and intrigues,
and to the abduction of a secretary of the Duke of Mantua whose name
was Matthioli, and not Girolamo Magni.

In 1802 an octavo pamphlet containing 11 pages, of which the author
was perhaps Baron Lerviere, but which was signed Reth, was published.
It took the form of a letter to General Jourdan, and was dated from
Turin, and gave many details about Matthioli and his family.  It was
entitled 'Veritable Clef de l'Histoire de l'Homme au Masque de Fer'.
It proved that the secretary of the Duke of Mantua was carried off,
masked, and imprisoned, by order of Louis XIV in 1679, but it did not
succeed in establishing as an undoubted fact that the secretary and
the Man in the Iron Mask were one and the same person.

It may be remembered that M. Crawfurd writing in 1798 had said in his
'Histoire de la Bastille' (8vo, 474 pages), "I cannot doubt that the
Man in the Iron Mask was the son of Anne of Austria, but am unable to
decide whether he was a twin-brother of Louis XIV or was born while
the king and queen lived apart, or during her widowhood."  M.
Crawfurd, in his 'Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature tires dun
Portefeuille' (quarto 1809, octavo 1817), demolished the theory
advanced by Roux-Fazillac.

In 1825, M. Delort discovered in the archives several letters
relating to Matthioli, and published his Histoire de l'Homme au
Masque de Fer (8vo).  This work was translated into English by George
Agar-Ellis, and retranslated into French in 1830, under the title
'Histoire authentique du Prisonnier d'Etat, connu sons le Nom de
Masque de Fer'.  It is in this work that the suggestion is made that
the captive was the second son of Oliver Cromwell.

In 1826, M. de Taules wrote that, in his opinion, the masked prisoner
was none other than the Armenian Patriarch.  But six years later the
great success of my drama at the Odeon converted nearly everyone to
the version of which Soulavie was the chief exponent.  The
bibliophile Jacob is mistaken in asserting that I followed a
tradition preserved in the family of the Duc de Choiseul; M. le Duc
de Bassano sent me a copy made under his personal supervision of a
document drawn up for Napoleon, containing the results of some
researches made by his orders on the subject of the Man in the Iron
Mask.  The original MS., as well as that of the Memoires du Duc de
Richelieu, were, the duke told me, kept at the Foreign Office.  In
1834 the journal of the Institut historique published a letter from
M. Auguste Billiard, who stated that he had also made a copy of this
document for the late Comte de Montalivet, Home Secretary under the
Empire.

M. Dufey (de l'Yonne) gave his 'Histoire de la Bastille' to the world
in the same year, and was inclined to believe that the prisoner was a
son of Buckingham.

Besides the many important personages on whom the famous mask had
been placed, there was one whom everyone had forgotten, although his
name had been put forward by the minister Chamillart: this was the
celebrated Superintendent of Finance, Nicolas Fouquet.  In 1837,
Jacob, armed with documents and extracts, once more occupied himself
with this Chinese puzzle on which so much ingenuity had been
lavished, but of which no one had as yet got all the pieces into
their places.  Let us see if he succeeded better than his
forerunners.

The first feeling he awakes is one of surprise.  It seems odd that he
should again bring up the case of Fouquet, who was condemned to
imprisonment for life in 1664, confined in Pignerol under the care of
Saint-Mars, and whose death was announced (falsely according to
Jacob) on March 23rd, 1680.  The first thing to look for in trying to
get at the true history of the Mask is a sufficient reason of state
to account for the persistent concealment of the prisoner's features
till his death; and next, an explanation of the respect shown him by
Louvois, whose attitude towards him would have been extraordinary in
any age, but was doubly so during the reign of Louis XIV, whose
courtiers would have been the last persons in the world to render
homage to the misfortunes of a man in disgrace with their master.
Whatever the real motive of the king's anger against Fouquet may have
been, whether Louis thought he arrogated to himself too much power,
or aspired to rival his master in the hearts of some of the king's
mistresses, or even presumed to raise his eyes higher still, was not
the utter ruin, the lifelong captivity, of his enemy enough to
satiate the vengeance of the king?  What could he desire more?  Why
should his anger, which seemed slaked in 1664, burst forth into
hotter flames seventeen years later, and lead him to inflict a new
punishment?  According to the bibliophile, the king being wearied by
the continual petitions for pardon addressed to him by the
superintendent's family, ordered them to be told that he was dead, to
rid himself of their supplications.  Colbert's hatred, says he, was
the immediate cause of Fouquet's fall; but even if this hatred
hastened the catastrophe, are we to suppose that it pursued the
delinquent beyond the sentence, through the long years of captivity,
and, renewing its energy, infected the minds of the king and his
councillors?  If that were so, how shall we explain the respect shown
by Louvois?  Colbert would not have stood uncovered before Fouquet in
prison.  Why should Colbert's colleague have done so?

It must, however, be confessed that of all existing theories, this
one, thanks to the unlimited learning and research of the
bibliophile, has the greatest number of documents with the various
interpretations thereof, the greatest profusion of dates, on its
side.

For it is certain--

1st, that the precautions taken when Fouquet was sent to Pignerol
resembled in every respect those employed later by the custodians of
the Iron Mask, both at the Iles Sainte-Marguerite and at the
Bastille;

2nd, that the majority of the traditions relative to the masked
prisoner might apply to Fouquet;

3rd, that the Iron Mask was first heard of immediately after the
announcement of the death of Fouquet in 1680;

4th, that there exists no irrefragable proof that Fouquet's death
really occurred in the above year.


The decree of the Court of justice, dated 20th December 1664,
banished Fouquet from the kingdom for life.  "But the king was of the
opinion that it would be dangerous to let the said Fouquet leave the
country, in consideration of his intimate knowledge of the most
important matters of state.  Consequently the sentence of perpetual
banishment was commuted into that of perpetual imprisonment."
('Receuil des defenses de M. Fouquet').  The instructions signed by
the king and remitted to Saint-Mars forbid him to permit Fouquet to
hold any spoken or written communication with anyone whatsoever, or
to leave his apartments for any cause, not even for exercise.  The
great mistrust felt by Louvois pervades all his letters to Saint-
Mars.  The precautions which he ordered to be kept up were quite as
stringent as in the case of the Iron Mask.

The report of the discovery of a shirt covered with writing, by a
friar, which Abbe Papon mentions, may perhaps be traced to the
following extracts from two letters written by Louvois to Saint-Mars:
"Your letter has come to hand with the new handkerchief on which M.
Fouquet has written" (18th Dec. 1665 ); "You can tell him that if he
continues too employ his table-linen as note-paper he must not be
surprised if you refuse to supply him with any more" ( 21st Nov.
1667).

Pere Papon asserts that a valet who served the masked prisoner died
in his master's room.  Now the man who waited on Fouquet, and who
like him was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, died in February
1680 (see letter of Louvois to Saint-Mars, 12th March 1680).  Echoes
of incidents which took place at Pignerol might have reached the Iles
Sainte-Marguerite when Saint-Mars transferred his "former prisoner"
from one fortress to the other.  The fine clothes and linen, the
books, all those luxuries in fact that were lavished on the masked
prisoner, were not withheld from Fouquet.  The furniture of a second
room at Pignerol cost over 1200 livres (see letters of Louvois, 12th
Dec. 1665, and 22nd Feb, 1666).

It is also known that until the year 1680 Saint-Mars had only two
important prisoners at Pignerol, Fouquet and Lauzun.  However, his
"former prisoner of Pignerol," according to Du Junca's diary, must
have reached the latter fortress before the end of August 1681, when
Saint-Mars went to Exilles as governor.  So that it was in the
interval between the 23rd March 1680, the alleged date of Fouquet's
death, and the 1st September 1681, that the Iron Mask appeared at
Pignerol, and yet Saint-Mars took only two prisoners to Exilles.  One
of these was probably the Man in the Iron Mask; the other, who must
have been Matthioli, died before the year 1687, for when Saint-Mars
took over the governorship in the month of January of that year of
the Iles Sainte-Marguerite he brought only ONE prisoner thither with
him.  "I have taken such good measures to guard my prisoner that I
can answer to you for his safety" ('Lettres de Saint-Mars a Louvois',
20th January 1687).

In the correspondence of Louvois with Saint-Mars we find, it is true,
mention of the death of Fouquet on March 23rd, 1680, but in his later
correspondence Louvois never says "the late M. Fouquet," but speaks
of him, as usual, as "M. Fouquet" simply.  Most historians have given
as a fact that Fouquet was interred in the same vault as his father
in the chapel of Saint-Francois de Sales in the convent church
belonging to the Sisters of the Order of the Visitation-Sainte-Marie,
founded in the beginning of the seventeenth century by Madame de
Chantal.  But proof to the contrary exists; for the subterranean
portion of St. Francis's chapel was closed in 1786, the last person
interred there being Adelaide Felicite Brulard, with whom ended the
house of Sillery.  The convent was shut up in 1790, and the church
given over to the Protestants in 1802; who continued to respect the
tombs.  In 1836 the Cathedral chapter of Bourges claimed the remains
of one of their archbishops buried there in the time of the Sisters
of Sainte-Marie.  On this occasion all the coffins were examined and
all the inscriptions carefully copied, but the name of Nicolas
Fouquet is absent.

Voltaire says in his 'Dictionnaire philosophique', article "Ana,"
"It is most remarkable that no one knows where the celebrated Fouquet
was buried."

But in spite of all these coincidences, this carefully constructed
theory was wrecked on the same point on which the theory that the
prisoner was either the Duke of Monmouth or the Comte de Vermandois
came to grief, viz.  a letter from Barbezieux, dated 13th August
1691, in which occur the words, "THE PRISONER WHOM YOU HAVE HAD IN
CHARGE FOR TWENTY YEARS."  According to this testimony, which Jacob
had successfully used against his predecessors, the prisoner referred
to could not have been Fouquet, who completed his twenty-seventh year
of captivity in 1691, if still alive.

We have now impartially set before our readers all the opinions which
have been held in regard to the solution of this formidable enigma.
For ourselves, we hold the belief that the Man in the Iron Mask stood
on the steps of the throne.  Although the mystery cannot be said to
be definitely cleared up, one thing stands out firmly established
among the mass of conjecture we have collected together, and that is,
that wherever the prisoner appeared he was ordered to wear a mask on
pain of death.  His features, therefore, might during half a century
have brought about his recognition from one end of France to the
other; consequently, during the same space of time there existed in
France a face resembling the prisoner's known through all her
provinces, even to her most secluded isle.

Whose face could this be, if not that of Louis XVI, twin-brother of
the Man in the Iron Mask?

To nullify this simple and natural conclusion strong evidence will be
required.

Our task has been limited to that of an examining judge at a trial,
and we feel sure that our readers will not be sorry that we have left
them to choose amid all the conflicting explanations of the puzzle.
No consistent narrative that we might have concocted would, it seems
to us, have been half as interesting to them as to allow them to
follow the devious paths opened up by those who entered on the search
for the heart of the mystery.  Everything connected with the masked
prisoner arouses the most vivid curiosity.  And what end had we in
view?  Was it not to denounce a crime and to brand the perpetrator
thereof?  The facts as they stand are sufficient for our object, and
speak more eloquently than if used to adorn a tale or to prove an
ingenious theory.




End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Man in the Iron Mask [The Essay]
by Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 6 (of 8), Part 3



MARTIN GUERRE


We are sometimes astonished at the striking resemblance existing
between two persons who are absolute strangers to each other, but in
fact it is the opposite which ought to surprise us.  Indeed, why
should we not rather admire a Creative Power so infinite in its
variety that it never ceases to produce entirely different
combinations with precisely the same elements?  The more one
considers this prodigious versatility of form, the more overwhelming
it appears.

To begin with, each nation has its own distinct and characteristic
type, separating it from other races of men.  Thus there are the
English, Spanish, German, or Slavonic types; again, in each nation we
find families distinguished from each other by less general but still
well-pronounced features; and lastly, the individuals of each family,
differing again in more or less marked gradations.  What a multitude
of physiognomies!  What variety of impression from the innumerable
stamps of the human countenance!  What millions of models and no
copies!  Considering this ever changing spectacle, which ought to
inspire us with most astonishment--the perpetual difference of faces
or the accidental resemblance of a few individuals?  Is it impossible
that in the whole wide world there should be found by chance two
people whose features are cast in one and the same mould?  Certainly
not; therefore that which ought to surprise us is not that these
duplicates exist here and there upon the earth, but that they are to
be met with in the same place, and appear together before our eyes,
little accustomed to see such resemblances.  From Amphitryon down to
our own days, many fables have owed their origin to this fact, and
history also has provided a few examples, such as the false Demetrius
in Russia, the English Perkin Warbeck, and several other celebrated
impostors, whilst the story we now present to our readers is no less
curious and strange.

On the 10th of, August 1557, an inauspicious day in the history of
France, the roar of cannon was still heard at six in the evening in
the plains of St. Quentin; where the French army had just been
destroyed by the united troops of England and Spain, commanded by the
famous Captain Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy.  An utterly beaten
infantry, the Constable Montmorency and several generals taken
prisoner, the Duke d'Enghien mortally wounded, the flower of the
nobility cut down like grass,--such were the terrible results of a
battle which plunged France into mourning, and which would have been
a blot on the reign of Henry II, had not the Duke of Guise obtained a
brilliant revenge the following year.

In a little village less than a mile from the field of battle were to
be heard the groans of the wounded and dying, who had been carried
thither from the field of battle.  The inhabitants had given up their
houses to be used as hospitals, and two or three barber surgeons went
hither and thither, hastily ordering operations which they left to
their assistants, and driving out fugitives who had contrived to
accompany the wounded under pretence of assisting friends or near
relations.  They had already expelled a good number of these poor
fellows, when, opening the door of a small room, they found a soldier
soaked in blood lying on a rough mat, and another soldier apparently
attending on him with the utmost care.

"Who are you?" said one of the surgeons to the sufferer.  "I don't
think you belong to our French troops."

"Help!" cried the soldier, "only help me! and may God bless you for
it!"

"From the colour of that tunic," remarked the other surgeon, "I
should wager the rascal belongs to some Spanish gentleman.  By what
blunder was he brought here?"

"For pity's sake! murmured the poor fellow, "I am in such pain."

"Die, wretch!" responded the last speaker, pushing him with his foot.
"Die, like the dog you are!"

But this brutality, answered as it was by an agonised groan,
disgusted the other surgeon.

"After all, he is a man, and a wounded man who implores help.  Leave
him to me, Rene."

Rene went out grumbling, and the one who remained proceeded to
examine the wound.  A terrible arquebus-shot had passed through the
leg, shattering the bone: amputation was absolutely necessary.

Before proceeding to the operation, the surgeon turned to the other
soldier, who had retired into the darkest corner of the room.

"And you, who may you be?" he asked.

The man replied by coming forward into the light: no other answer was
needed.  He resembled his companion so closely that no one could
doubt they were brothers-twin brothers, probably.  Both were above
middle height; both had olive-brown complexions, black eyes, hooked
noses, pointed chins, a slightly projecting lower lip; both were
round-shouldered, though this defect did not amount to disfigurement:
the whole personality suggested strength, and was not destitute of
masculine beauty.  So strong a likeness is hardly ever seen; even
their ages appeared to agree, for one would not have supposed either
to be more than thirty-two; and the only difference noticeable,
besides the pale countenance of the wounded man, was that he was thin
as compared with the moderate fleshiness of the other, also that he
had a large scar over the right eyebrow.

"Look well after your brother's soul," said the surgeon to the
soldier, who remained standing; "if it is in no better case than his
body, it is much to be pitied."

"Is there no hope?" inquired the Sosia of the wounded man.

"The wound is too large and too deep," replied the man of science,
"to be cauterised with boiling oil, according to the ancient method.
'Delenda est causa mali,' the source of evil must be destroyed, as
says the learned Ambrose Pare; I ought therefore 'secareferro,'--that
is to say, take off the leg.  May God grant that he survive the
operation!"

While seeking his instruments, he looked the supposed brother full in
the face, and added--

"But how is it that you are carrying muskets in opposing armies, for
I see that you belong to us, while this poor fellow wears Spanish
uniform?"

"Oh, that would be a long story to tell," replied the soldier,
shaking his head.  "As for me, I followed the career which was open
to me, and took service of my own free will under the banner of our
lord king, Henry II.  This man, whom you rightly suppose to be my
brother, was born in Biscay, and became attached to the household of
the Cardinal of Burgos, and afterwards to the cardinal's brother,
whom he was obliged to follow to the war.  I recognised him on the
battle-field just as he fell; I dragged him out of a heap of dead,
and brought him here."

During his recital this individual's features betrayed considerable
agitation, but the surgeon did not heed it.  Not finding some
necessary instruments, "My colleague," he exclaimed, "must have
carried them off.  He constantly does this, out of jealousy of my
reputation; but I will be even with him yet!  Such splendid
instruments!  They will almost work of themselves, and are capable of
imparting some skill even to him, dunce as he is!...  I shall be back
in an hour or two; he must rest, sleep, have nothing to excite him,
nothing to inflame the wound; and when the operation is well over, we
shall see!  May the Lord be gracious to him!"

Then he went to the door, leaving the poor wretch to the care of his
supposed brother.

"My God!" he added, shaking his head, "if he survive, it will be by
the help of a miracle."

Scarcely had he left the room, when the unwounded soldier carefully
examined the features of the wounded one.

"Yes," he murmured between his teeth, "they were right in saying that
my exact double was to be found in the hostile army .  .  .  .  Truly
one would not know us apart!  .  .  .  I might be surveying myself in
a mirror.  I did well to look for him in the rear of the Spanish
army, and, thanks to the fellow who rolled him over so conveniently
with that arquebus-shot; I was able to escape the dangers of the
melee by carrying him out of it."

"But that's not all," he thought, still carefully studying the
tortured face of the unhappy sufferer; "it is not enough to have got
out of that.  I have absolutely nothing in the world, no home, no
resources.  Beggar by birth, adventurer by fortune, I have enlisted,
and have consumed my pay; I hoped for plunder, and here we are in
full flight!  What am I to do?  Go and drown myself?  No, certainly
a cannon-ball would be as good as that.  But can't I profit by this
chance, and obtain a decent position by turning to my own advantage
this curious resemblance, and making some use of this man whom Fate
has thrown in my way, and who has but a short time to live?"

Arguing thus, he bent over the prostrate man with a cynical laugh:
one might have thought he was Satan watching the departure of a soul
too utterly lost to escape him.

"Alas! alas!" cried the sufferer; "may God have mercy on me!  I feel
my end is near."

"Bah! comrade, drive away these dismal thoughts.  Your leg pains you
--well they will cut it off!  Think only of the other one, and trust
in Providence!"

"Water, a drop of water, for Heaven's sake!" The sufferer was in a
high fever.  The would-be nurse looked round and saw a jug of water,
towards which the dying man extended a trembling hand.  A truly
infernal idea entered his mind.  He poured some water into a gourd
which hung from his belt, held it to the lips of the wounded man, and
then withdrew it.

"Oh!  I thirst-that water!  .  .  .  For pity's sake, give me some!"

"Yes, but on one condition you must tell me your whole history."

"Yes .  .  .  but give me water!"

His tormentor allowed him to swallow a mouthful, then overwhelmed him
with questions as to his family, his friends and fortune, and
compelled him to answer by keeping before his eyes the water which
alone could relieve the fever which devoured him.  After this often
interrupted interrogation, the sufferer sank back exhausted, and
almost insensible.  But, not yet satisfied, his companion conceived
the idea of reviving him with a few drops of brandy, which quickly
brought back the fever, and excited his brain sufficiently to enable
him to answer fresh questions.  The doses of spirit were doubled
several times, at the risk of ending the unhappy man's days then and
there: Almost delirious, his head feeling as if on fire, his
sufferings gave way to a feverish excitement, which took him back to
other places and other times: he began to recall the days of his
youth and the country where he lived.  But his tongue was still
fettered by a kind of reserve: his secret thoughts, the private
details of his past life were not yet told, and it seemed as though
he might die at any moment.  Time was passing, night already coming
on, and it occurred to the merciless questioner to profit by the
gathering darkness.  By a few solemn words he aroused the religious
feelings of the sufferer, terrified him by speaking of the
punishments of another life and the flames of hell, until to the
delirious fancy of the sick man he took the form of a judge who could
either deliver him to eternal damnation or open the gates of heaven
to him.  At length, overwhelmed by a voice which resounded in his ear
like that of a minister of God, the dying man laid bare his inmost
soul before his tormentor, and made his last confession to him.

Yet a few moments, and the executioner--he deserves no other name--
hangs over his victim, opens his tunic, seizes some papers and a few
coins, half draws his dagger, but thinks better of it; then,
contemptuously spurning the victim, as the other surgeon had done--

"I might kill you," he says, "but it would be a useless murder; it
would only be hastening your last Sigh by an hour or two, and
advancing my claims to your inheritance by the same space of time."

And he adds mockingly:--

"Farewell, my brother!"

The wounded soldier utters a feeble groan; the adventurer leaves the
room.


Four months later, a woman sat at the door of a house at one end of
the village of Artigues, near Rieux, and played with a child about
nine or ten years of age.  Still young, she had the brown complexion
of Southern women, and her beautiful black hair fell in curls about
her face.  Her flashing eyes occasionally betrayed hidden passions,
concealed, however, beneath an apparent indifference and lassitude,
and her wasted form seemed to acknowledge the existence of some
secret grief.  An observer would have divined a shattered life, a
withered happiness, a soul grievously wounded.

Her dress was that of a wealthy peasant; and she wore one of the long
gowns with hanging sleeves which were in fashion in the sixteenth
century.  The house in front of which she sat belonged to her, so
also the immense field which adjoined the garden.  Her attention was
divided between the play of her son and the orders she was giving to
an old servant, when an exclamation from the child startled her.

"Mother!" he cried, "mother, there he is!"

She looked where the child pointed, and saw a young boy turning the
corner of the street.

"Yes," continued the child, "that is the lad who, when I was playing
with the other boys yesterday, called me all sorts of bad names."

"What sort of names, my child?"

"There was one I did not understand, but it must have been a very bad
one, for the other boys all pointed at me, and left me alone.  He
called me--and he said it was only what his mother had told him--he
called me a wicked bastard!"

His mother's face became purple with indignation.  "What!" she cried,
"they dared!  .  .  .  What an insult!"

"What does this bad word mean, mother?" asked the child, half
frightened by her anger.  "Is that what they call poor children who
have no father?"

His mother folded him in her arms.  "Oh!" she continued, "it is an
infamous slander!  These people never saw your father, they have only
been here six years, and this is the eighth since he went away, but
this is abominable!  We were married in that church, we came at once
to live in this house, which was my marriage portion, and my poor
Martin has relations and friends here who will not allow his wife to
be insulted--"

"Say rather, his widow," interrupted a solemn voice.

"Ah! uncle!" exclaimed the woman, turning towards an old man who had
just emerged from the house.

"Yes, Bertrande," continued the new-comer, "you must get reconciled
to the idea that my nephew has ceased to exist.  I am sure he was not
such a fool as to have remained all this time without letting us hear
from him.  He was not the fellow to go off at a tangent, on account
of a domestic quarrel which you have never vouchsafed to explain to
me, and to retain his anger during all these eight years!  Where did
he go?  What did he do?  We none of us know, neither you nor I, nor
anybody else.  He is assuredly dead, and lies in some graveyard far
enough from here.  May God have mercy on his soul!"

Bertrande, weeping, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head
upon her hands.

"Good-bye, Sanxi," said the uncle, tapping the child's,' cheek.
Sanxi turned sulkily away.

There was certainly nothing specially attractive about the uncle: he
belonged to a type which children instinctively dislike, false,
crafty, with squinting eyes which continually appeared to contradict
his honeyed tongue.

"Bertrande," he said, "your boy is like his father before him, and
only answers my kindness with rudeness."

"Forgive him," answered the mother; "he is very young, and does not
understand the respect due to his father's uncle.  I will teach him
better things; he will soon learn that he ought to be grateful for
the care you have taken of his little property."

"No doubt, no doubt," said the uncle, trying hard to smile.  "I will
give you a good account of it, for I shall only have to reckon with
you two in future.  Come, my dear, believe me, your husband is really
dead, and you have sorrowed quite enough for a good-for-nothing
fellow.  Think no more of him."

So saying, he departed, leaving the poor young woman a prey to the
saddest thoughts.

Bertrande de Rolls, naturally gifted with extreme sensibility, on
which a careful education had imposed due restraint, had barely
completed her twelfth year when she was married to Martin Guerre, a
boy of about the same age, such precocious unions being then not
uncommon, especially in the Southern provinces.  They were generally
settled by considerations of family interest, assisted by the
extremely early development habitual to the climate.  The young
couple lived for a long time as brother and sister, and Bertrande,
thus early familiar with the idea of domestic happiness, bestowed her
whole affection on the youth whom she had been taught to regard as
her life's companion.  He was the Alpha and Omega of her existence;
all her love, all her thoughts, were given to him, and when their
marriage was at length completed, the birth of a son seemed only
another link in the already long existing bond of union.  But, as
many wise men have remarked, a uniform happiness, which only attaches
women more and more, has often upon men a precisely contrary effect,
and so it was with Martin Guerre.  Of a lively and excitable
temperament, he wearied of a yoke which had been imposed so early,
and, anxious to see the world and enjoy some freedom, he one day took
advantage of a domestic difference, in which Bertrande owned herself
to have been wrong, and left his house and family.  He was sought and
awaited in vain.  Bertrande spent the first month in vainly expecting
his return, then she betook herself to prayer; but Heaven appeared
deaf to her supplications, the truant returned not.  She wished to go
in search of him, but the world is wide, and no single trace remained
to guide her.  What torture for a tender heart!  What suffering for a
soul thirsting for love!  What sleepless nights!  What restless
vigils!  Years passed thus; her son was growing up, yet not a word
reached her from the man she loved so much.  She spoke often of him
to the uncomprehending child, she sought to discover his features in
those of her boy, but though she endeavoured to concentrate her whole
affection on her son, she realised that there is suffering which
maternal love cannot console, and tears which it cannot dry.
Consumed by the strength of the sorrow which ever dwelt in her heart,
the poor woman was slowly wasting, worn out by the regrets of the
past, the vain desires of the present, and the dreary prospect of the
future.  And now she had been openly insulted, her feelings as a
mother wounded to the quirk; and her husband's uncle, instead of
defending and consoling her, could give only cold counsel and
unsympathetic words!

Pierre Guerre, indeed, was simply a thorough egotist.  In his youth
he had been charged with usury; no one knew by what means he had
become rich, for the little drapery trade which he called his
profession did not appear to be very profitable.

After his nephew's departure it seemed only natural that he should
pose as the family guardian, and he applied himself to the task of
increasing the little income, but without considering himself bound
to give any account to Bertrande.  So, once persuaded that Martin was
no more, he was apparently not unwilling to prolong a situation so
much to his own advantage.

Night was fast coming on; in the dim twilight distant objects became
confused and indistinct.  It was the end of autumn, that melancholy
season which suggests so many gloomy thoughts and recalls so many
blighted hopes.  The child had gone into the house.  Bertrande, still
sitting at the door, resting her forehead on her hand, thought sadly
of her uncle's words; recalling in imagination the past scenes which
they suggested, the time of their childhood, when, married so young,
they were as yet only playmates, prefacing the graver duties of life
by innocent pleasures; then of the love which grew with their
increasing age; then of how this love became altered, changing on her
side into passion, on his into indifference.  She tried to recollect
him as he had been on the eve of his departure, young and handsome,
carrying his head high, coming home from a fatiguing hunt and sitting
by his son's cradle; and then also she remembered bitterly the
jealous suspicions she had conceived, the anger with which she had
allowed them to escape her, the consequent quarrel, followed by the
disappearance of her offended husband, and the eight succeeding years
of solitude and mourning.  She wept over his desertion; over the
desolation of her life, seeing around her only indifferent or selfish
people, and caring only to live for her child's sake, who gave her at
least a shadowy reflection of the husband she had lost.  "Lost--yes,
lost for ever!" she said to herself, sighing, and looking again at
the fields whence she had so often seen him coming at this same
twilight hour, returning to his home for the evening meal.  She cast
a wandering eye on the distant hills, which showed a black outline
against a yet fiery western sky, then let it fall on a little grove
of olive trees planted on the farther side of the brook which skirted
her dwelling.  Everything was calm; approaching night brought silence
along with darkness: it was exactly what she saw every evening, but
to leave which required always an effort.

She rose to re-enter the house, when her attention was caught by a
movement amongst the trees.  For a moment she thought she was
mistaken, but the branches again rustled, then parted asunder, and
the form of a man appeared on the other side of the brook.
Terrified, Bertrande tried to scream, but not a sound escaped her
lips; her voice seemed paralyzed by terror, as in an evil dream.  And
she almost thought it was a dream, for notwithstanding the dark
shadows cast around this indistinct semblance, she seemed to
recognise features once dear to her.  Had her bitter reveries ended
by making her the victim of a hallucination?  She thought her brain
was giving way, and sank on her knees to pray for help.  But the
figure remained; it stood motionless, with folded arms, silently
gazing at her!  Then she thought of witchcraft, of evil demons, and
superstitious as every one was in those days, she kissed a crucifix
which hung from her neck, and fell fainting on the ground.  With one
spring the phantom crossed the brook and stood beside her.

"Bertrande!" it said in a voice of emotion.  She raised her head,
uttered a piercing cry, and was clasped in her husband's arms.

The whole village became aware of this event that same evening.  The
neighbours crowded round Bertrande's door, Martin's friends and
relations naturally wishing to see him after this miraculous
reappearance, while those who had never known him desired no less to
gratify their curiosity; so that the hero of the little drama,
instead of remaining quietly at home with his wife, was obliged to
exhibit himself publicly in a neighbouring barn.  His four sisters
burst through the crowd and fell on his neck weeping; his uncle
examined him doubtfully at first, then extended his arms.  Everybody
recognised him, beginning with the old servant Margherite, who had
been with the young couple ever since their wedding-day.  People
observed only that a riper age had strengthened his features, and
given more character to his countenance and more development to his
powerful figure; also that he had a scar over the right eyebrow, and
that he limped slightly.  These were the marks of wounds he had
received, he said; which now no longer troubled him.  He appeared
anxious to return to his wife and child, but the crowd insisted on
hearing the story of his adventures during his voluntary absence, and
he was obliged to satisfy them.  Eight years ago, he said, the desire
to see more of the world had gained an irresistible mastery over him;
he yielded to it, and departed secretly.  A natural longing took him
to his birthplace in Biscay, where he had seen his surviving
relatives.  There he met the Cardinal of Burgos, who took him into
his service, promising him profit, hard knocks to give and take, and
plenty of adventure.  Some time after, he left the cardinal's
household for that of his brother, who, much against his will,
compelled him to follow him to the war and bear arms against the
French.  Thus he found himself on the Spanish side on the day of St.
Quentin, and received a terrible gun-shot wound in the leg.  Being
carried into a house a an adjoining village, he fell into the hands
of a surgeon, who insisted that the leg must be amputated
immediately, but who left him for a moment, and never returned.  Then
he encountered a good old woman, who dressed his wound and nursed him
night and day.  So that in a few weeks he recovered, and was able to
set out for Artigues, too thankful to return to his house and land,
still more to his wife and child, and fully resolved never to leave
them again.

Having ended his story, he shook hands with his still wondering
neighbours, addressing by name some who had been very young when he
left, and who, hearing their names, came forward now as grown men,
hardly recognisable, but much pleased at being remembered.  He
returned his sisters' carresses, begged his uncle's forgiveness for
the trouble he had given in his boyhood, recalling with mirth the
various corrections received.  He mentioned also an Augustinian monk
who had taught him to read, and another reverend father, a Capuchin,
whose irregular conduct had caused much scandal in the neighbourhood.
In short, notwithstanding his prolonged absence, he seemed to have a
perfect recollection of places, persons, and things.  The good people
overwhelmed him with congratulations, vying with one another in
praising him for having the good sense to come home, and in
describing the grief and the perfect virtue of his Bertrande.
Emotion was excited, many wept, and several bottles from Martin
Guerre's cellar were emptied.  At length the assembly dispersed,
uttering many exclamations about the extraordinary chances of Fate,
and retired to their own homes, excited, astonished, and gratified,
with the one exception of old Pierre Guerre, who had been struck by
an unsatisfactory remark made by his nephew, and who dreamed all
night about the chances of pecuniary loss augured by the latter's
return.

It was midnight before the husband and wife were alone and able to
give vent to their feelings.  Bertrande still felt half stupefied;
she could not believe her own eyes and ears, nor realise that she saw
again in her marriage chamber her husband of eight years ago, him for
whom she had wept; whose death she had deplored only a few hours
previously.  In the sudden shock caused by so much joy succeeding so
much grief, she had not been able to express what she felt; her
confused ideas were difficult to explain, and she seemed deprived of
the powers of speech and reflection.  When she became calmer and more
capable of analysing her feelings, she was astonished not to feel
towards her husband the same affection which had moved her so
strongly a few hours before.  It was certainly himself, those were
the same features, that was the man to whom she had willingly given
her hand, her heart, herself, and yet now that she saw him again a
cold barrier of shyness, of modesty, seemed to have risen between
them.  His first kiss, even, had not made her happy: she blushed and
felt saddened--a curious result of the long absence!  She could not
define the changes wrought by years in his appearance: his
countenance seemed harsher, yet the lines of his face, his outer man,
his whole personality, did not seem altered, but his soul had changed
its nature, a different mind looked forth from those eyes.  Bertrande
knew him for her husband, and yet she hesitated.  Even so Penelope,
on the, return of Ulysses, required a certain proof to confirm the
evidence of her eyes, and her long absent husband had to remind her
of secrets known only to herself.

Martin, however, as if he understood Bertrande's feeling and divined
some secret mistrust, used the most tender and affectionate phrases,
and even the very pet names which close intimacy had formerly
endeared to them.

"My queen," he said, "my beautiful dove, can you not lay aside your
resentment?  Is it still so strong that no submission can soften it?
Cannot my repentance find grace in your eyes?  My Bertrande, my
Bertha, my Bertranilla, as I used to call you."

She tried to smile, but stopped short, puzzled; the names were the
very same, but the inflexion of voice quite different.

Martin took her hands in his.  "What pretty hands!  Do you still wear
my ring?  Yes, here it is, and with it the sapphire ring I gave you
the day Sanxi was born."

Bertrande did not answer, but she took the child and placed him in
his father's arms.

Martin showered caresses on his son, and spoke of the time when he
carried him as a baby in the garden, lifting him up to the fruit
trees, so that he could reach and try to bite the fruit.  He
recollected one day when the poor child got his leg terribly torn by
thorns, and convinced himself, not without emotion, that the scar
could still be seen.

Bertrande was touched by this display of affectionate recollections,
and felt vexed at her own coldness.  She came up to Martin and laid
her hand in his.  He said gently--

"My departure caused you great grief: I now repent what I did.  But I
was young, I was proud, and your reproaches were unjust."

"Ah," said she, "you have not forgotten the cause of our quarrel?"

"It was little Rose, our neighbour, whom you said I was making love
to, because you found us together at the spring in the little wood.
I explained that we met only by chance,--besides, she was only a
child,--but you would not listen, and in your anger--"

"Ah! forgive me, Martin, forgive me!" she interrupted, in confusion.

"In your blind anger you took up, I know not what, something which
lay handy, and flung it at me.  And here is the mark," he continued,
smiling, "this scar, which is still to be seen."

"Oh, Martin!  "Bertrande exclaimed, "can you ever forgive me?"

"As you see," Martin replied, kissing her tenderly.

Much moved, Bertrande swept aside his hair, and looked at the scar
visible on his forehead.

"But," she said, with surprise not free from alarm, "this scar seems
to me like a fresh one."

"Ah!" Martin explained, with a, little embarrassment; "it reopened
lately.  But I had thought no more about it.  Let us forget it,
Bertrande; I should not like a recollection which might make you
think yourself less dear to me than you once were."

And he drew her upon his knee.  She repelled him gently.

"Send the child to bed," said Martin.  "Tomorrow shall be for him;
to-night you have the first place, Bertrande, you only."

The boy kissed his father and went.

Bertrande came and knelt beside her husband, regarding him
attentively with an uneasy smile, which did not appear to please him
by any means.

"What is the matter?" said he.  "Why do you examine me thus?"

"I do not know--forgive me, oh!  forgive me!  .  .  .  But the
happiness of seeing you was so great and unexpected, it is all like a
dream.  I must try to become accustomed to it; give me some time to
collect myself; let me spend this night in prayer.  I ought to offer
my joy and my thanksgiving to Almighty God--"

"Not so," interrupted her husband, passing his arms round her neck
and stroking her beautiful hair.  "No; 'tis to me that your first
thoughts are due.  After so much weariness, my rest is in again
beholding you, and my happiness after so many trials will be found in
your love.  That hope has supported me throughout, and I long to be
assured that it is no illusion."  So saying, he endeavoured to raise
her.

"Oh," she murmured, "I pray you leave me."

"What!" he exclaimed angrily.  "Bertrande, is this your love?  Is it
thus you keep faith with me? You will make me doubt the evidence of
your friends; you will make me think that indifference, or even
another love----"

"You insult me," said Bertrande, rising to her feet.

He caught her in his arms.  "No, no; I think nothing which could
wound you, my queen, and I believe your fidelity, even as before, you
know, on that first journey, when you wrote me these loving letters
which I have treasured ever since.  Here they are."  And he drew
forth some papers, on which Bertrande recognised her own handwriting.
"Yes," he continued, "I have read and -re-read them....  See, you
spoke then of your love and the sorrows of absence.  But why all this
trouble and terror?  You tremble, just as you did when I first
received you from your father's hands....  It was here, in this very
room....  You begged me then to leave you, to let you spend the night
in prayer; but I insisted, do you remember? and pressed you to my
heart, as I do now."

"Oh," she murmured weakly, "have pity!"

But the words were intercepted by a kiss, and the remembrance of the
past, the happiness of the present, resumed their sway; the imaginary
terrors were forgotten, and the curtains closed around the marriage-
bed.

The next day was a festival in the village of Artigues.  Martin
returned the visits of all who had come to welcome him the previous
night, and there were endless recognitions and embracings.  The young
men remembered that he had played with them when they were little;
the old men, that they had been at his wedding when he was only
twelve.

The women remembered having envied Bertrande, especially the pretty
Rose, daughter of Marcel, the apothecary, she who had roused the
demon of jealousy in, the poor wife's heart.  And Rose knew quite
well that the jealousy was not without some cause; for Martin had
indeed shown her attention, and she was unable to see him again
without emotion.  She was now the wife of a rich peasant, ugly, old,
and jealous, and she compared, sighing, her unhappy lot with that of
her more fortunate neighbour.  Martin's sisters detained him amongst
them, and spoke of their childish games and of their parents, both
dead in Biscay.  Martin dried the tears which flowed at these
recollections of the past, and turned their thoughts to rejoicing.
Banquets were given and received.  Martin invited all his relations
and former friends; an easy gaiety prevailed.  It was remarked that
the hero of the feast refrained from wine; he was thereupon
reproached, but answered that on account of the wounds he had
received he was obliged to avoid excess.  The excuse was admitted,
the result of Martin's precautions being that he kept a clear head on
his shoulders, while all the rest had their tongues loosed by
drunkenness.

"Ah!" exclaimed one of the guests, who had studied a little medicine,
"Martin is quite right to be afraid of drink.  Wounds which have
thoroughly healed may be reopened and inflamed by intemperance, and
wine in the case of recent wounds is deadly poison.  Men have died on
the field of battle in an hour or two merely because they had
swallowed a little brandy."

Martin Guerre grew pale, and began a conversation with the pretty
Rose, his neighbour.  Bertrande observed this, but without
uneasiness; she had suffered too much from her former suspicions,
besides her husband showed her so much affection that she was now
quite happy.

When the first few days were over, Martin began to look into his
affairs.  His property had suffered by his long absence, and he was
obliged to go to Biscay to claim his little estate there, the law
having already laid hands upon it.  It was several months before, by
dint of making judicious sacrifices, he could regain possession of
the house and fields which had belonged to his father.  This at last
accomplished, he returned to Artigues, in order to resume the
management of his wife's property, and with this end in view, about
eleven months after his return, he paid a visit to his uncle Pierre.

Pierre was expecting him; he was extremely polite, desired Martin,
to sit down, overwhelmed him with compliments, knitting his brows as
he discovered that his nephew decidedly meant business.  Martin broke
silence.

"Uncle," he said, "I come to thank you for the care you have taken of
my wife's property; she could never have managed it alone.  You have
received the income in the family interest: as a good guardian, I
expected no less from your affection.  But now that I have returned,
and am free from other cares, we will go over the accounts, if you
please."

His uncle coughed and cleared his voice before replying, then said
slowly, as if counting his words--

"It is all accounted for, my dear nephew; Heaven be praised!  I don't
owe you anything."

"What!" exclaimed the astonished Martin, "but the whole income?"

"Was well and properly employed in the maintenance of your wife and
child."

"What!  a thousand livres for that?  And Bertrande lived alone, so
quietly and simply!  Nonsense! it is impossible."

"Any surplus," resumed the old man, quite unmoved,--" any surplus
went to pay the expenses of seed-time and harvest."

"What! at a time when labour costs next to nothing?"

"Here is the account," said Pierre.

"Then the account is a false one," returned his nephew.

Pierre thought it advisable to appear extremely offended and angry,
and Martin, exasperated at his evident dishonesty, took still higher
ground, and threatened to bring an action against him.  Pierre
ordered him to leave the house, and suiting actions to words, took
hold of his arm to enforce his departure.  Martin, furious, turned
and raised his fist to strike.

"What! strike your uncle, wretched boy!" exclaimed the old man.

Martin's hand dropped, but he left the house uttering reproaches and
insults, among which Pierre distinguished--

"Cheat that you are!"

"That is a word I shall remember," cried the angry old man, slamming
his door violently.

Martin brought an action before the judge at Rieux, and in course of
time obtained a decree, which, reviewing the accounts presented by
Pierre, disallowed them, and condemned the dishonest guardian to pay
his nephew four hundred livres for each year of his administration.
The day on which this sum had to be disbursed from his strong box the
old usurer vowed vengeance, but until he could gratify his hatred he
was forced to conceal it, and to receive attempts at reconciliation
with a friendly smile.  It was not until six months later, on the
occasion of a joyous festivity, that Martin again set foot in his
uncle's house.  The bells were ringing for the birth of a child,
there was great gaiety at Bertrande's house, where all the guests
were waiting on the threshold for the godfather in order to take the
infant to church, and when Martin appeared, escorting his uncle, who
was adorned with a huge bouquet for the occasion, and who now came
forward and took the hand of Rose, the pretty godmother, there were
cries of joy on all sides.  Bertrande was delighted at this
reconciliation, and dreamed only of happiness.  She was so happy now,
her long sorrow was atoned for, her regret was at an end, her prayers
seemed to have been heard, the long interval between the former
delights and the present seemed wiped out as if the bond of union had
never been broken, and if she remembered her grief at all, it was
only to intensify the new joys by comparison.  She loved her husband
more than ever; he was full of affection for her, and she was
grateful for his love.  The past had now no shadow, the future no
cloud, and the birth of a daughter, drawing still closer the links
which united them, seemed a new pledge of felicity.  Alas! the
horizon which appeared so bright and clear to the poor woman was
doomed soon again to be overcast.

The very evening of the christening party, a band of musicians and
jugglers happened to pass through the village, and the inhabitants
showed themselves liberal.  Pierre asked questions, and found that
the leader of the band was a Spaniard.  He invited the man to his own
house, and remained closeted with him for nearly an hour, dismissing
him at length with a refilled purse.  Two days later the old man
announced to the family that he was going to Picardy to see a former
partner on a matter of business, and he departed accordingly, saying
he should return before long.

The day on which Bertrande again saw her uncle was, indeed, a
terrible one.  She was sitting by the cradle of the lately-born
infant, watching for its awakening, when the door opened, and Pierre
Guerre strode in.  Bertrande drew back with an instinct of terror as
soon as she saw him, for his expression was at once wicked and
joyful--an expression of gratified hate, of mingled rage and triumph,
and his smile was terrible to behold.  She did not venture to speak,
but motioned him to a seat.  He came straight up to her, and raising
his head, said loudly--

"Kneel down at once, madame--kneel down, and ask pardon from Almighty
God!"

"Are you mad, Pierre?" she replied, gazing at him in astonishment.

"You, at least, ought to know that I am not."

"Pray for forgiveness--I--! and what for, in Heaven's name?"

"For the crime in which you are an accomplice."

"Please explain yourself."

"Oh!" said Pierre, with bitter irony, "a woman always thinks herself
innocent as long as her sin is hidden; she thinks the truth will
never be known, and her conscience goes quietly to sleep, forgetting
her faults.  Here is a woman who thought her sins nicely concealed;
chance favoured her: an absent husband, probably no more; another man
so exactly like him in height, face, and manner that everyone else is
deceived!  Is it strange that a weak, sensitive woman, wearied of
widowhood, should willingly allow herself to be imposed on?"

Bertrande listened without understanding; she tried to interrupt, but
Pierre went on--

"It was easy to accept this stranger without having to blush for it,
easy to give him the name and the rights of a husband!  She could
even appear faithful while really guilty; she could seem constant,
though really fickle; and she could, under a veil of mystery, at once
reconcile her honour, her duty--perhaps even her love."

"What on earth do you mean?" cried Bertrande, wringing her hands in
terror.

"That you are countenancing an impostor who is not your husband."

Feeling as if the ground were passing from beneath her, Bertrande
staggered, and caught at the nearest piece of furniture to save
herself from falling; then, collecting all her strength to meet this
extraordinary attack, she faced the old man.

"What! my husband, your nephew, an impostor!"

"Don't you know it?"

"I!!"

This cry, which came from her heart, convinced Pierre that she did
not know, and that she had sustained a terrible shock.  He continued
more quietly--

"What, Bertrande, is it possible you were really deceived?"

"Pierre, you are killing me; your words are torture.  No more
mystery, I entreat.  What do you know?  What do you suspect?  Tell me
plainly at once."

"Have you courage to hear it?"

"I must," said the trembling woman.

"God is my witness that I would willingly have kept it from you, but
you must know; if only for the safety of your soul entangled in so
deadly a snare,...  there is yet time, if you follow my advice.
Listen: the man with whom you are living, who dares to call himself
Martin Guerre, is a cheat, an impostor----"

"How dare you say so?"

"Because I have discovered it.  Yes, I had always a vague suspicion,
an uneasy feeling, and in spite of the marvellous resemblance I could
never feel as if he were really my sister's child.  The day he raised
his hand to strike me--yes, that day I condemned him utterly....
Chance has justified me!  A wandering Spaniard, an old soldier, who
spent a night in the village here, was also present at the battle of
St. Quentin, and saw Martin Guerre receive a terrible gunshot wound
in the leg.  After the battle, being wounded, he betook himself to
the neighbouring village, and distinctly heard a surgeon in the next
room say that a wounded man must have his leg amputated, and would
very likely not survive the operation.  The door opened, he saw the
sufferer, and knew him for Martin Guerre.  So much the Spaniard told
me.  Acting on this information, I went on pretence of business to
the village he named, I questioned the inhabitants, and this is what
I learned."

"Well?" said Bertrande, pale, and gasping with emotion.

"I learned that the wounded man had his leg taken off, and, as the
surgeon predicted, he must have died in a few hours, for he was never
seen again."

Bertrande remained a few moments as if annihilated by this appalling
revelation; then, endeavoring to repel the horrible thought--

"No," she cried, "no, it is impossible!  It is a lie intended to ruin
him-to ruin us all."

"What!  you do not believe me?"

"No, never, never!"

"Say rather you pretend to disbelieve me: the truth has pierced your
heart, but you wish to deny it.  Think, however, of the danger to
your immortal soul."

"Silence, wretched man!...  No, God would not send me so terrible a
trial.  What proof can you show of the truth of your words?"

"The witnesses I have mentioned."

"Nothing more?"

"No, not as yet."

"Fine proofs indeed!  The story of a vagabond who flattered your
hatred in hope of a reward, the gossip of a distant village, the
recollections of ten years back, and finally, your own word, the word
of a man who seeks only revenge, the word of a man who swore to make
Martin pay dearly for the results of his own avarice, a man of
furious passions such as yours!  No, Pierre, no, I do not believe
you, and I never will!"

"Other people may perhaps be less incredulous, and if I accuse him
publicly----"

"Then I shall contradict you publicly!  "And coming quickly forward,
her eyes shining with virtuous anger--

"Leave this house, go," she said; "it is you yourself who are the
impostor--go!"

"I shall yet know how to convince everyone, and will make you
acknowledge it," cried the furious old man.

He went out, and Bertrande sank exhausted into a chair.  All the
strength which had supported her against Pierre vanished as soon as
she was alone, and in spite of her resistance to suspicion, the
terrible light of doubt penetrated her heart, and extinguished the
pure torch of trustfulness which had guided her hitherto--a doubt,
alas!  which attacked at once her honour and her love, for she loved
with all a woman's tender affection.  Just as actual poison gradually
penetrates and circulates through the whole system, corrupting the
blood and affecting the very sources of life until it causes the
destruction of the whole body, so does that mental poison, suspicion,
extend its ravages in the soul which has received it.  Bertrande
remembered with terror her first feelings at the sight of the
returned Martin Guerre, her involuntary repugnance, her astonishment
at not feeling more in touch with the husband whom she had so
sincerely regretted.  She remembered also, as if she saw it for the
first time, that Martin, formerly quick, lively, and hasty tempered,
now seemed thoughtful, and fully master of himself.

This change of character she had supposed due to the natural
development of age, she now trembled at the idea of another possible
cause.  Some other little details began to occur to her mind--the
forgetfulness or abstraction of her husband as to a few insignificant
things; thus it sometimes happened that he did not answer to his name
of Martin, also that he mistook the road to a hermitage, formerly
well known to them both, and again that he could not answer when
addressed in Basque, although he him self had taught her the little
she knew of this language.  Besides, since his return, he would never
write in her presence, did he fear that she would notice some
difference?  She had paid little or no attention to these trifles;
now, pieced together, they assumed an alarming importance.  An
appalling terror seized Bertrande: was she to remain in this
uncertainty, or should she seek an explanation which might prove her
destruction?  And how discover the truth--by questioning the guilty
man, by noting his confusion, his change of colour, by forcing a
confession from him?  But she had lived with him for two years, he
was the father of her child, she could not ruin him without ruining
herself, and, an explanation once sought, she could neither punish
him and escape disgrace, nor pardon him without sharing his guilt.
To reproach him with his conduct and then keep silence would destroy
her peace for ever; to cause a scandal by denouncing him would bring
dishonour upon herself and her child.  Night found her involved in
these hideous perplexities, too weak to surmount them; an icy chill
came over her, she went to bed, and awoke in a high fever.  For
several days she hovered between life and death, and Martin Guerre
bestowed the most tender care upon her.  She was greatly moved
thereby, having one of those impressionable minds which recognise
kindness fully as much as injury.  When she was a little recovered
and her mental power began to return, she had only a vague
recollection of what had occurred, and thought she had had a
frightful dream.  She asked if Pierre Guerre had been to see her, and
found he had not been near the house.  This could only be explained
by the scene which had taken place, and she then recollected all the
accusation Pierre had made, her own observations which had confirmed
it, all her grief and trouble.  She inquired about the village news.
Pierre, evidently, had kept silence why?  Had he seen that his
suspicions were unjust, or was he only seeking further evidence?  She
sank back into her cruel uncertainty, and resolved to watch Martin
closely, before deciding as to his guilt or innocence.

How was she to suppose that God had created two faces so exactly
alike, two beings precisely similar, and then sent them together into
the world, and on the same track, merely to compass the ruin of an
unhappy woman!  A terrible idea took possession of her mind, an idea
not uncommon in an age of superstition, namely, that the Enemy
himself could assume human form, and could borrow the semblance of a
dead man in order to capture another soul for his infernal kingdom.
Acting on this idea, she hastened to the church, paid for masses to
be said, and prayed fervently.  She expected every day to see the
demon forsake the body he had animated, but her vows, offerings, and
prayers had no result.  But Heaven sent her an idea which she
wondered had not occurred to her sooner.  "If the Tempter,"  she said
to herself, "has taken the form of my beloved husband, his power
being supreme for evil, the resemblance would be exact, and no
difference, however slight, would exist.  If, however, it is only
another man who resembles him, God must have made them with some
slight distinguishing marks."

She then remembered, what she had not thought of before, having been
quite unsuspicious before her uncle's accusation, and nearly out of
her mind between mental and bodily suffering since.  She remembered
that on her husband's left shoulder, almost on the neck, there used
to be one of those small, almost imperceptible, but ineffaceable
birthmarks.  Martin wore his hair very long, it was difficult to see
if the mark were there or not.  One night, while he slept, Bertrande
cut away a lock of hair from the place where this sign ought to be--
it was not there!

Convinced at length of the deception, Bertrande suffered
inexpressible anguish.  This man whom she had loved and respected for
two whole years, whom she had taken to her heart as a husband
bitterly mourned for--this man was a cheat, an infamous impostor, and
she, all unknowing, was yet a guilty woman!  Her child was
illegitimate, and the curse of Heaven was due to this sacrilegious
union.  To complete the misfortune, she was already expecting another
infant.  She would have killed herself, but her religion and the love
of her children forbade it.  Kneeling before her child's cradle, she
entreated pardon from the father of the one for the father of the
other.  She would not bring herself to proclaim aloud their infamy.

"Oh!" she said, "thou whom I loved, thou who art no more, thou
knowest no guilty thought ever entered my mind!  When I saw this man,
I thought I beheld thee; when I was happy, I thought I owed it to
thee; it was thee whom I loved in him.  Surely thou dost not desire
that by a public avowal I should bring shame and disgrace on these
children and on myself."

She rose calm and strengthened: it seemed as if a heavenly
inspiration had marked out her duty.  To suffer in silence, such was
the course she adopted,--a life of sacrifice and self-denial which
she offered to God as an expiation for her involuntary sin.  But who
can understand the workings of the human heart?  This man whom she
ought to have loathed, this man who had made her an innocent partner
in his crime, this unmasked impostor whom she should have beheld only
with disgust, she-loved him!  The force of habit, the ascendancy he
had obtained over her, the love he had shown her, a thousand
sympathies felt in her inmost heart, all these had so much influence,
that, instead of accusing and cursing him, she sought to excuse him
on the plea of a passion to which, doubtless, he had yielded when
usurping the name and place of another.  She feared punishment for
him yet more than disgrace for herself, and though resolved to no
longer allow him the rights purchased by crime, she yet trembled at
the idea of losing his love.  It was this above all which decided her
to keep eternal silence about her discovery; one single word which
proved that his imposture was known would raise an insurmountable
barrier between them.

To conceal her trouble entirely was, however, beyond her power; her
eyes frequently showed traces of her secret tears.  Martin several
times asked the cause of her sorrow; she tried to smile and excuse
herself, only immediately sinking back into her gloomy thoughts.
Martin thought it mere caprice; he observed her loss of colour, her
hollow cheeks, and concluded that age was impairing her beauty, and
became less attentive to her.  His absences became longer and more
frequent, and he did not conceal his impatience and annoyance at
being watched; for her looks hung upon his, and she observed his
coldness and change with much grief.  Having sacrificed all in order
to retain his love, she now saw it slowly slipping away from her.

Another person also observed attentively.  Pierre Guerre since his
explanation with Bertrande had apparently discovered no more
evidence, and did not dare to bring an accusation without some
positive proofs.  Consequently he lost no chance of watching the
proceedings of his supposed nephew, silently hoping that chance might
put him on the track of a discovery.  He also concluded from
Bertrande's state of melancholy that she had convinced herself of the
fraud, but had resolved to conceal it.

Martin was then endeavoring to sell a part of his property, and this
necessitated frequent interviews with the lawyers of the neighbouring
town.  Twice in the week he went to Rieux, and to make the journey
easier, used to start horseback about seven in the evening, sleep at
Rieux, and return the following afternoon.  This arrangement did not
escape his enemy's notice, who was not long in convincing himself
that part of the time ostensibly spent on this journey was otherwise
employed.

Towards ten o'clock on the evening of a dark night, the door of a
small house lying about half a gunshot from the village opened gently
for the exit of a man wrapped in a large cloak, followed by a young
woman, who accompanied him some distance.  Arrived at the parting
point, they separated with a tender kiss and a few murmured words of
adieu; the lover took his horse, which was fastened to a tree,
mounted, and rode off towards Rieux.  When the sounds died away, the
woman turned slowly and sadly towards her home, but as she approached
the door a man suddenly turned the corner of the house and barred her
away.  Terrified, she was on the point of crying for help, when he
seized her arm and ordered her to be silent.

"Rose," he whispered, "I know everything: that man is your lover.  In
order to receive him safely, you send your old husband to sleep by
means of a drug stolen from your father's shop.  This intrigue has
been going on for a month; twice a week, at seven o'clock, your door
is opened to this man, who does not proceed on his way to the town
until ten.  I know your lover: he is my nephew."

Petrified with terror, Rose fell on her knees and implored mercy.

"Yes," replied Pierre, "you may well be frightened: I have your
secret.  I have only to publish it and you are ruined for ever:"

You will not do it!  "entreated the guilty woman, clasping her hands.

"I have only to tell your husband," continued Pierre, "that his wife
has dishonoured him, and to explain the reason of his unnaturally
heavy sleep."

"He will kill me!"

"No doubt: he is jealous, he is an Italian, he will know how to
avenge himself--even as I do."

"But I never did you any harm," Rose cried in despair.  "Oh! have
pity, have mercy, and spare me!"

"On one condition."

"What is it?"

"Come with me."

Terrified almost out of her mind, Rose allowed him to lead her away.

Bertrande had just finished her evening prayer, and was preparing for
bed, when she was startled by several knocks at her door.  Thinking
that perhaps some neighbour was in need of help, she opened it
immediately, and to her astonishment beheld a dishevelled woman whom
Pierre grasped by the arm.  He exclaimed vehemently--

"Here is thy judge!  Now, confess all to Bertrande!"

Bertrande did not at once recognise the woman, who fell at her feet,
overcome by Pierre's threats.

"Tell the truth here," he continued, "or I go and tell it to your
husband, at your own home!"--"Ah! madame, kill me," said the unhappy
creature, hiding her face; "let me rather die by your hand than his!"

Bertrande, bewildered, did not understand the position in the least,
but she recognised Rose--

"But what is the matter, madame?  Why are you here at this hour, pale
and weeping?  Why has my uncle dragged you hither?  I am to judge
you, does he say?  Of what crime are you guilty?"

"Martin might answer that, if he were here," remarked Pierre.

A lightning flash of jealousy shot through Bertrande's soul at these
words, all her former suspicions revived.

"What!" she said, "my husband!  What do you mean?"

"That he left this woman's house only a little while ago, that for a
month they have been meeting secretly.  You are betrayed: I have seen
them and she does not dare to deny it."

"Have mercy!" cried Rose, still kneeling.

The cry was a confession.  Bertrande became pate as death.  "O God!"
she murmured, "deceived, betrayed--and by him!"

"For a month past," repeated the old man.

"Oh! the wretch," she continued, with increasing passion; "then his
whole life is a lie!  He has abused my credulity, he now abuses my
love!  He does not know me!  He thinks he can trample on me--me, in
whose power are his fortune, his honour, his very life itself!"

Then, turning to Rose--

"And you, miserable woman! by what unworthy artifice did you gain his
love?  Was it by witchcraft? or some poisonous philtre learned from
your worthy father?"

"Alas! no, madame; my weakness is my only crime, and also my only
excuse.  I loved him, long ago, when I was only a young girl, and
these memories have been my ruin."

"Memories?  What! did you also think you were loving the same man?
Are you also his dupe?  Or are you only pretending, in order to find
a rag of excuse to cover your wickedness?"

It was now Rose who failed to understand; Bertrande continued, with
growing excitement--

"Yes, it was not enough to usurp the rights of a husband and father,
he thought to play his part still better by deceiving the mistress
also .  .  .  .  Ah! it is amusing, is it not?  You also, Rose, you
thought he was your old lover!  Well, I at least am excusable, I the
wife, who only thought she was faithful to her husband!"

"What does it all mean?" asked the terrified Rose.

"It means that this man is an impostor and that I will unmask him.
Revenge! revenge!"

Pierre came forward.  "Bertrande," he said, "so long as I thought you
were happy, when I feared to disturb your peace, I was silent, I
repressed my just indignation, and I spared the usurper of the name
and rights of my nephew.  Do you now give me leave to speak?"

"Yes," she replied in a hollow voice.

"You will not contradict me?"

By way of answer she sat down by the table and wrote a few hasty
lines with a trembling hand, then gave them to Pierre, whose eyes
sparkled with joy.

"Yes," he said, "vengeance for him, but for her pity.  Let this
humiliation be her only punishment.  I promised silence in return for
confession, will you grant it?"

Bertrande assented with a contemptuous gesture.

"Go, fear not," said the old man, and Rose went out.  Pierre also
left the house.

Left to herself, Bertrande felt utterly worn out by so much emotion;
indignation gave way to depression.  She began to realise what she
had done, and the scandal which would fall on her own head.  Just
then her baby awoke, and held out its arms, smiling, and calling for
its father.  Its father, was he not a criminal?  Yes! but was it for
her to ruin him, to invoke the law, to send him to death, after
having taken him to her heart, to deliver him to infamy which would
recoil on her own head and her child's and on the infant which was
yet unborn?  If he had sinned before God, was it not for God to
punish him?  If against herself, ought she not rather to overwhelm
him with contempt?  But to invoke the help, of strangers to expiate
this offence; to lay bare the troubles of her life, to unveil the
sanctuary of the nuptial couch--in short, to summon the whole world
to behold this fatal scandal, was not that what in her imprudent
anger she had really done?  She repented bitterly of her haste, she
sought to avert the consequences, and notwithstanding the night and
the bad weather, she hurried at once to Pierre's dwelling, hoping at
all costs to withdraw her denunciation.  He was not there: he had at
once taken a horse and started for Rieux.  Her accusation was already
on its way to the magistrates!

At break of day the house where Martin Guerre lodged when at Rieux
was surrounded by soldiers.  He came forward with confidence and
inquired what was wanted.  On hearing the accusation, he changed
colour slightly, then collected himself, and made no resistance.
When he came before the judge, Bertrande's petition was read to him,
declaring him to be "an impostor, who falsely, audaciously, and
treacherously had deceived her by taking the name and assuming the
person of Martin Guerre," and demanding that he should be required to
entreat pardon from God, the king, and herself.

The prisoner listened calmly to the charge, and met it courageously,
only evincing profound surprise at such a step being taken by a wife
who had lived with him for two years since his return, and who only
now thought of disputing the rights he had so long enjoyed.  As he
was ignorant both of Bertrande's suspicions and their confirmation,
and also of the jealousy which had inspired her accusation, his
astonishment was perfectly natural, and did not at all appear to be
assumed.  He attributed the whole charge to the machinations of his
uncle, Pierre Guerre; an old man, he said, who, being governed
entirely by avarice and the desire of revenge, now disputed his name
arid rights, in order the better to deprive him of his property,
which might be worth from sixteen to eighteen hundred livres.  In
order to attain his end, this wicked man had not hesitated to pervert
his wife's mind, and at the risk of her own dishonour had instigated
this calumnious charge--a horrible and unheard-of thing in the mouth
of a lawful wife.  "Ah! I do not blame her," he cried; "she must
suffer more than I do, if she really entertains doubts such as these;
but I deplore her readiness to listen to these extraordinary
calumnies originated by my enemy."

The judge was a good deal impressed by so much assurance.  The
accused was relegated to prison, whence he was brought two days later
to encounter a formal examination.

He began by explaining the cause of his long absence, originating, he
said, in a domestic quarrel, as his wife well remembered.  He there
related his life during these eight years.  At first he wandered over
the country, wherever his curiosity and the love of travel led him.
He then had crossed the frontier, revisited Biscay, where he was
born, and having entered the service of the Cardinal of Burgos, he
passed thence into the army of the King of Spain.  He was wounded at
the battle of St. Quentin, conveyed to a neighbouring village, where
he recovered, although threatened with amputation.  Anxious to again
behold his wife and child, his other relations and the land of his
adoption, he returned to Artigues, where he was immediately
recognised by everyone, including the identical Pierre Guerre, his
uncle, who now had the cruelty to disavow him.  In fact, the latter
had shown him special affection up to the day when Martin required an
account of his stewardship.  Had he only had the cowardice to
sacrifice his money and thereby defraud his children, he would not
to-day be charged as an impostor.  "But," continued Martin, "I
resisted, and a violent quarrel ensued, in which anger perhaps
carried me too far; Pierre Guerre, cunning and revengeful, has waited
in silence.  He has taken his time and his measures to organise this
plot, hoping thereby to obtain his ends, to bring justice to the help
of his avarice, and to acquire the spoils he coveted, and revenge for
his defeat, by means of a sentence obtained from the scruples of the
judges."  Besides these explanations, which did not appear wanting in
probability, Martin vehemently protested his innocence, demanding
that his wife should be confronted with him, and declaring that in
his presence she would not sustain the charge of personation brought
against him, and that her mind not being animated by the blind hatred
which dominated his persecutor, the truth would undoubtedly prevail.

He now, in his turn, demanded that the judge should acknowledge his
innocence, and prove it by condemning his calumniators to the
punishment invoked against himself; that his wife, Bertrande de
Rolls, should be secluded in some house where her mind could no
longer be perverted, and, finally, that his innocence should be
declared, and expenses and compensations awarded him.

After this speech, delivered with warmth, and with every token of
sincerity, he answered without difficulty all the interrogations of
the judge.  The following are some of the questions and answers, just
as they have come down to us:--

"In what part of Biscay were you born?"

"In the village of Aymes, province of Guipuscoa."

"What were the names of your parents?"

"Antonio Guerre and Marie Toreada."

"Are they still living?"

"My father died June 15th, 1530; my mother survived him three years
and twelve days."

"Have you any brothers and sisters?"

"I had one brother, who only lived three months.  My four sisters,
Inez, Dorothea, Marietta, and Pedrina, all came to live at Artigues
when I did; they are there still, and they all recognised me."

"What is the date of your marriage?"

"January 10, 1539."

"Who were present at the ceremony?"

"My father-in-law, my mother-in-law, my uncle, my two sisters, Maitre
Marcel and his daughter Rose; a neighbour called Claude Perrin, who
got drunk at the wedding feast; also Giraud, the poet, who composed
verses in our honour."

"Who was the priest who married you?"

"The old cure, Pascal Guerin, whom I did not find alive when I
returned."

"What special circumstances occurred on the wedding-day?"

"At midnight exactly, our neighbour, Catherine Boere, brought us the
repast which is known as 'medianoche.'  This woman has recognised me,
as also our old Marguerite, who has remained with us ever since the
wedding."

"What is the date of your son's birth?"

"February 10, 1548, nine years after our marriage.  I was only twelve
when the ceremony took place, and did not arrive at manhood till
several years later."

"Give the date of your leaving Artigues."

"It was in August 1549.  As I left the village, I met Claude Perrin
and the cure Pascal, and took leave of them.  I went towards
Beauvais, end I passed through Orleans, Bourges, Limoges, Bordeaux,
and Toulouse.  If you want the names of people whom I saw and to whom
I spoke, you can have them.  What more can I say?"

Never, indeed, was there a more apparently veracious statement!  All
the doings of Martin Guerre seemed to be most faithfully described,
and surely only himself could thus narrate his own actions.  As the
historian remarks, alluding to the story of Amphitryon, Mercury
himself could not better reproduce all Sosia's actions, gestures, and
words, than did the false Martin Guerre those of the real one.

In accordance with the demand of the accused, Bertrande de Rolls was
detained in seclusion, in order to remove her from the influence of
Pierre Guerre.  The latter, however, did not waste time, and during
the month spent in examining the witnesses cited by Martin, his
diligent enemy, guided by some vague traces, departed on a journey,
from which he did not return alone.

All the witnesses bore out the statement of the accused; the latter
heard this in prison, and rejoiced, hoping for a speedy release.
Before long he was again brought before the judge, who told him that
his deposition had been confirmed by all the witnesses examined.

"Do you know of no others?" continued the magistrate.  "Have you no
relatives except those you have mentioned?"

"I have no others," answered the prisoner.

"Then what do you say to this man?" said the judge, opening a door.

An old man issued forth, who fell on the prisoner's neck, exclaiming,
"My nephew!"

Martin trembled in every limb, but only for a moment.  Promptly
recovering himself, and gazing calmly at the newcomer, he asked
coolly--

"And who may you be?"

"What!" said the old man, "do you not know me?  Dare you deny me?--
me, your mother's brother, Carbon Barreau, the old soldier!  Me, who
dandled you on my knee in your infancy; me, who taught you later to
carry a musket; me, who met you during the war at an inn in Picardy,
when you fled secretly.  Since then I have sought you everywhere; I
have spoken of you, and described your face and person, until a
worthy inhabitant of this country offered to bring me hither, where
indeed I did not expect to find my sister's son imprisoned and
fettered as a malefactor.  What is his crime, may it please your
honour?"

"You shall hear," replied the magistrate.  "Then you identify the
prisoner as your nephew?  You affirm his name to be---?"

"Arnauld du Thill, also called 'Pansette,' after his father, Jacques
Pansa.  His mother was Therese Barreau, my sister, and he was born in
the village of Sagias."

"What have you to say?" demanded the judge, turning to the accused.

"Three things," replied the latter, unabashed, "this man is either
mad, or he has been suborned to tell lies, or he is simply mistaken."

The old man was struck dumb with astonishment. But his supposed
nephew's start of terror had not been lost upon the judge, also much
impressed by the straightforward frankness of Carbon Barreau.  He
caused fresh investigations to be made, and other inhabitants of
Sagias were summoned to Rieux, who one and all agreed in identifying
the accused as the same Arnauld du Thill who had been born and had
grown up under their very eyes.  Several deposed that as he grew up
he had taken to evil courses, and become an adept in theft and lying,
not fearing even to take the sacred name of God in vain, in order to
cover the untruth of his daring assertions.  From such testimony the
judge naturally concluded that Arnauld du Thill was quite capable of
carrying on, an imposture, and that the impudence which he displayed
was natural to his character.  Moreover, he noted that the prisoner,
who averred that he was born in Biscay, knew only a few words of the
Basque language, and used these quite wrongly.  He heard later
another witness who deposed that the original Martin Guerre was a
good wrestler and skilled in the art of fence, whereas the prisoner,
having wished to try what he could do, showed no skill whatever.
Finally, a shoemaker was interrogated, and his evidence was not the
least damning.  Martin Guerre, he declared, required twelve holes to
lace his boots, and his surprise had been great when he found those
of the prisoner had only nine.  Considering all these points, and the
cumulative evidence, the judge of Rieux set aside the favourable
testimony, which he concluded had been the outcome of general
credulity, imposed on by an extraordinary resemblance. He gave due
weight also to Bertrande's accusation, although she had never
confirmed it, and now maintained an obstinate silence; and he
pronounced a judgment by which Arnauld du Thill was declared
"attainted and convicted of imposture, and was therefore condemned to
be beheaded; after which his body should be divided into four
quarters, and exposed at the four corners of the town."

This sentence, as soon as it was known, caused much diversity of
opinion in the town.  The prisoner's enemies praised the wisdom of
the judge, and those less prejudiced condemned his decision; as such
conflicting testimony left room for doubt.  Besides, it was thought
that the possession of property and the future of the children
required much consideration, also that the most absolute certainty
was demanded before annulling a past of two whole years, untroubled
by any counter claim whatever.

The condemned man appealed from this sentence to the Parliament of
Toulouse.  This court decided that the case required more careful
consideration than had yet been given to it, and began by ordering
Arnauld du Thill to be confronted with Pierre Guerre and Bertrande de
Rolls.

Who can say what feelings animate a man who, already once condemned,
finds himself subjected to a second trial?  The torture scarcely
ended begins again, and Hope, though reduced to a shadow, regains her
sway over his imagination, which clings to her skirts, as it were,
with desperation.  The exhausting efforts must be recommenced; it is
the last struggle--a struggle which is more desperate in proportion
as there is less strength to maintain it.  In this case the defendant
was not one of those who are easily cast down; he collected all his
energy, all his courage, hoping to come victoriously out of the new
combat which lay before him.

The magistrates assembled in the great hall of the Parliament, and
the prisoner appeared before them.  He had first to deal with Pierre,
and confronted him calmly, letting him speak, without showing any
emotion.  He then replied with indignant reproaches, dwelling on
Pierre's greed and avarice, his vows of vengeance, the means employed
to work upon Bertrande, his secret manoeuvres in order to gain his
ends, and the unheard-of animosity displayed in hunting up accusers,
witnesses, and calumniators.  He defied Pierre to prove that he was
not Martin Guerre, his nephew, inasmuch as Pierre had publicly
acknowledged and embraced him, and his tardy suspicions only dated
from the time of their violent quarrel.  His language was so strong
and vehement, that Pierre became confused and was unable to answer,
and the encounter turned entirely in Arnauld's favour, who seemed to
overawe his adversary from a height of injured innocence, while the
latter appeared as a disconcerted slanderer.

The scene of his confrontation with Bertrande took a wholly different
character.  The poor woman, pale, cast down, worn by sorrow, came
staggering before the tribunal, in an almost fainting condition.  She
endeavoured to collect herself, but as soon as she saw the prisoner
she hung her head and covered her face with her hands.  He approached
her and besought her in the gentlest accents not to persist in an
accusation which might send him to the scaffold, not thus to avenge
any sins he might have committed against her, although he could not
reproach himself with any really serious fault.

Bertrande started, and murmured in a whisper, "And Rose?"

"Ah!" Arnauld exclaimed, astonished at this revelation.

His part was instantly taken.  Turning to the judges--

"Gentlemen," he said, "my wife is a jealous woman!  Ten years ago,
when I left her, she had formed these suspicions; they were the cause
of my voluntary exile.  To-day she again accuses me of, guilty
relations with the same person; I neither deny nor acknowledge them,
but I affirm that it is the blind passion of jealousy which, aided by
my uncle's suggestions, guided my wife's hand when she signed this
denunciation."

Bertrande remained silent.

"Do you dare," he continued, turning towards her,--" do you dare to
swear before God that jealousy did not inspire you with the wish to
ruin me?"

"And you," she replied, "dare you swear that I was deceived in my
suspicions?"

"You see, gentlemen," exclaimed the prisoner triumphantly, "her
jealousy breaks forth before your eyes.  Whether I am, or am not,
guilty of the sin she attributes to me, is not the question for you
to decide.  Can you conscientiously admit the testimony of a woman
who, after publicly acknowledging me, after receiving me in her
house, after living two years in perfect amity with me, has, in a fit
of angry vengeance, thought she could give the lie to all her wards
and actions?  Ah!  Bertrande," he continued, "if it only concerned my
life I think I could forgive a madness of which your love is both the
cause and the excuse, but you are a mother, think of that!  My
punishment will recoil on the head of my daughter, who is unhappy
enough to have been born since our reunion, and also on our unborn
child, which you condemn beforehand to curse the union which gave it
being.  Think of this, Bertrande, you will have to answer before God
for what you are now doing!"

The unhappy woman fell on her knees, weeping.

"I adjure you," he continued solemnly, "you, my wife, Bertrande de
Rolls, to swear now, here, on the crucifix, that I am an impostor and
a cheat."

A crucifix was placed before Bertrande; she made a sign as if to push
it away, endeavoured to speak, and feebly exclaimed, "No," then fell
to the ground, and was carried out insensible.

This scene considerably shook the opinion of the magistrates.  They
could not believe that an impostor, whatever he might be, would have
sufficient daring and presence of mind thus to turn into mockery all
that was most sacred.  They set a new inquiry on foot, which, instead
of producing enlightenment, only plunged them into still greater
obscurity.  Out of thirty witnesses heard, more than three-quarters
agreed in identifying as Martin Guerre the man who claimed his name.
Never was greater perplexity caused by more extraordinary
appearances.  The remarkable resemblance upset all reasoning: some
recognised him as Arnauld du Thill, and others asserted the exact
contrary.  He could hardly understand Basque, some said, though born
in Biscay, was that astonishing, seeing he was only three when he
left the country?  He could neither wrestle nor fence well, but
having no occasion to practise these exercises he might well have
forgotten them.  The shoemaker--who made his shoes afore-time,
thought he took another measure, but he might have made a mistake
before or be mistaken now.  The prisoner further defended himself by
recapitulating the circumstances of his first meeting with Bertrande,
on his return, the thousand and one little details he had mentioned
which he only could have known, also the letters in his possession,
all of which could only be explained by the assumption that he was
the veritable Martin Guerre.  Was it likely that he would be wounded
over the left eye and leg as the missing man was supposed to be?  Was
it likely that the old servant, that the four sisters, his uncle
Pierre, many persons to whom he had related facts known only to
himself, that all the community in short, would have recognised him?
And even the very intrigue suspected by Bertrande, which had aroused
her jealous anger, this very intrigue, if it really existed, was it
not another proof of the verity of his claim, since the person
concerned, as interested and as penetrating as the legitimate wife;
had also accepted him as her former lover?  Surely here was a mass of
evidence sufficient to cast light on the case.  Imagine an impostor
arriving for the first time in a place where all the inhabitants are
unknown to him, and attempting to personate a man who had dwelt
there, who would have connections of all kinds, who would have played
his part in a thousand different scenes, who would have confided his
secrets, his opinions, to relations, friends, acquaintances, to all
sorts of people; who had also a wife--that is to say, a person under
whose eyes nearly his whole life would be passed, a person would
study him perpetually, with whom he would be continually conversing
on every sort of subject.  Could such an impostor sustain his
impersonation for a single day, without his memory playing him false?
From the physical and moral impossibility of playing such a part, was
it not reasonable to conclude that the accused, who had maintained it
for more than two years, was the true Martin Guerre?

There seemed, in fact, to be nothing which could account for such an
attempt being successfully made unless recourse was had to an
accusation of sorcery.  The idea of handing him over to the
ecclesiastical authorities was briefly discussed, but proofs were
necessary, and the judges hesitated.  It is a principle of justice,
which has become a precept in law, that in cases of uncertainty the
accused has the benefit of the doubt; but at the period of which we
are writing, these truths were far from being acknowledged; guilt was
presumed rather than innocence; and torture, instituted to force
confession from those who could not otherwise be convicted, is only
explicable by supposing the judges convinced of the actual guilt of
the accused; for no one would have thought of subjecting a possibly
innocent person to this suffering.  However, notwithstanding this
prejudice, which has been handed down to us by some organs of the
public ministry always disposed to assume the guilt of a suspected
person,--notwithstanding this prejudice, the judges in this case
neither ventured to condemn Martin Guerre themselves as an impostor,
nor to demand the intervention of the Church.  In this conflict of
contrary testimony, which seemed to reveal the truth only to
immediately obscure it again, in this chaos of arguments and
conjectures which showed flashes of light only to extinguish them in
greater darkness, consideration for the family prevailed.  The
sincerity of Bertrande, the future of the children, seemed reasons
for proceeding with extreme caution, and this once admitted, could
only yield to conclusive evidence.  Consequently the Parliament
adjourned the case, matters remaining in 'statu quo', pending a more
exhaustive inquiry.  Meanwhile, the accused, for whom several
relations and friends gave surety, was allowed to be at liberty at
Artigues, though remaining under careful surveillance.

Bertrande therefore again saw him an inmate of the house, as if no
doubts had ever been cast on the legitimacy of their union.  What
thoughts passed through her mind during the long 'tete-a-tete'?  She
had accused this man of imposture, and now, notwithstanding her
secret conviction, she was obliged to appear as if she had no
suspicion, as if she had been mistaken, to humiliate herself before
the impostor, and ask forgiveness for the insanity of her conduct;
for, having publicly renounced her accusation by refusing to swear to
it, she had no alternative left.  In order to sustain her part and to
save the honour of her children, she must treat this man as her
husband and appear submissive and repentant; she must show him entire
confidence, as the only means of rehabilitating him and lulling the
vigilance of justice.  What the widow of Martin Guerre must have
suffered in this life of effort was a secret between God and herself,
but she looked at her little daughter, she thought of her fast
approaching confinement, and took courage.

One evening, towards nightfall, she was sitting near him in the most
private corner of the garden, with her little child on her knee,
whilst the adventurer, sunk in gloomy thoughts, absently stroked
Sanxi's fair head. Both were silent, for at the bottom of their
hearts each knew the other's thoughts, and, no longer able to talk
familiarly, nor daring to appear estranged, they spent, when alone
together, long hours of silent dreariness.

All at once a loud uproar broke the silence of their retreat; they
heard the exclamations of many persons, cries of surprise mixed with
angry tones, hasty footsteps, then the garden gate was flung
violently open, and old Marguerite appeared, pale, gasping, almost
breathless.  Bertrande hastened towards her in astonishment, followed
by her husband, but when near enough to speak she could only answer
with inarticulate sounds, pointing with terror to the courtyard of
the house.  They looked in this direction, and saw a man standing at
the threshold; they approached him.  He stepped forward, as if to
place himself between them.  He was tall, dark; his clothes were
torn; he had a wooden leg; his countenance was stern.  He surveyed
Bertrande with a gloomy look: she cried aloud, and fell back
insensible; . . . she recognised her real husband!

Arnauld du Thill stood petrified.  While Marguerite, distracted
herself, endeavoured to revive her mistress, the neighbours,
attracted by the noise, invaded the house, and stopped, gazing with
stupefaction at this astonishing resemblance.  The two men had the
same features, the same height, the same bearing, and suggested one
being in two persons.  They gazed at each other in terror, and in
that superstitious age the idea of sorcery and of infernal
intervention naturally occurred to those present.  All crossed
themselves, expecting every moment to see fire from heaven strike one
or other of the two men, or that the earth would engulf one of them.
Nothing happened, however, except that both were promptly arrested,
in order that the strange mystery might be cleared up.

The wearer of the wooden leg, interrogated by the judges, related
that he came from Spain, where first the healing of his wound, and
then the want of money, had detained him hitherto.  He had travelled
on foot, almost a beggar.  He gave exactly the same reasons for
leaving Artigues as had been given by the other Martin Guerre,
namely, a domestic quarrel caused by jealous suspicion, the desire of
seeing other countries, and an adventurous disposition.  He had gone
back to his birthplace, in Biscay; thence he entered the service of
the Cardinal of Burgos; then the cardinal's brother had taken him to
the war, and he had served with the Spanish troops; at the battle of
St. Quentiny--his leg had been shattered by an arquebus ball.  So far
his recital was the counterpart of the one already heard by the
judges from the other man.  Now, they began to differ.  Martin Guerre
stated that he had been conveyed to a house by a man whose features
he did not distinguish, that he thought he was dying, and that
several hours elapsed of which he could give no account, being
probably delirious; that he suffered later intolerable pain, and on
coming to himself, found that his leg had been amputated.  He
remained long between life and death, but he was cared for by
peasants who probably saved his life; his recovery was very slow.  He
discovered that in the interval between being struck down in the
battle and recovering his senses, his papers had disappeared, but it
was impossible to suspect the people who had nursed him with such
generous kindness of theft.  After his recovery, being absolutely
destitute, he sought to return to France and again see his wife and
child: he had endured all sorts of privations and fatigues, and at
length, exhausted, but rejoicing at being near the end of his
troubles, he arrived, suspecting nothing, at his own door.  Then the
terror of the old servant, a few broken words, made him guess at some
misfortune, and the appearance of his wife and of a man so exactly
like himself stupefied him.  Matters had now been explained, and he
only regretted that his wound had not at once ended his existence.

The whole story bore the impress of truth, but when the other
prisoner was asked what he had to say he adhered to his first
answers, maintaining their correctness, and again asserted that he
was the real Martin Guerre, and that the new claimant could only be
Arnauld du Thill, the clever impostor, who was said to resemble
himself so much that the inhabitants of Sagias had agreed in
mistaking him for the said Arnauld.

The two Martin Guerres were then confronted without changing the
situation in the least; the first showing the same assurance, the
same bold and confident bearing; while the second, calling on God and
men to bear witness to his sincerity, deplored his misfortune in the
most pathetic terms.

The judge's perplexity was great: the affair became more and more
complicated, the question remained as difficult, as uncertain as
ever.  All the appearances and evidences were at variance;
probability seemed to incline towards one, sympathy was more in
favour of the other, but actual proof was still wanting.

At length a member of the Parliament, M. de Coras, proposed as a last
chance before resorting to torture, that final means of examination
in a barbarous age, that Bertrande should be placed between the two
rivals, trusting, he said, that in such a case a woman's instinct
would divine the truth.  Consequently the two Martin Guerres were
brought before the Parliament, and a few moments after Bertrande was
led in, weak, pale, hardly able to stand, being worn out by suffering
and advanced pregnancy.  Her appearance excited compassion, and all
watched anxiously to see what she would do.  She looked at the two
men, who had been placed at different ends of the hall, and turning
from him who was nearest to her, went and knelt silently before the
man with the wooden leg; then, joining her hands as if praying for
mercy, she wept bitterly.  So simple and touching an action roused
the sympathy of all present; Arnauld du Thill grew pale, and everyone
expected that Martin Guerre, rejoiced at being vindicated by this
public acknowledgment, would raise his wife and embrace her.  But he
remained cold and stern, and in a contemptuous tone--

"Your tears, madame," he said; "they do not move me in the least,
neither can you seek to excuse your credulity by the examples of my
sisters and my uncle.  A wife knows her husband more intimately than
his other relations, as you prove by your present action, and if she
is deceived it is because she consents to the deception.  You are the
sole cause of the misfortunes of my house, and to you only shall I
ever impute them."

Thunderstruck by this reproach, the poor woman had no strength to
reply, and was taken home more dead than alive.

The dignified language of this injured husband made another point in
his favour.  Much pity was felt for Bertrande, as being the victim of
an audacious deception; but everybody agreed that thus it beseemed
the real Martin Guerre to have spoken.  After the ordeal gone through
by the wife had been also essayed by the sisters and other relatives,
who one and all followed Bertrande's example and accepted the new-
comer, the court, having fully deliberated, passed the following
sentence, which we transcribe literally:

"Having reviewed the trial of Arnauld du Thill or Pansette, calling
himself Martin Guerre, a prisoner in the Conciergerie, who appeals
from the decision of the judge of Rieux, etc.,

"We declare that this court negatives the appeal and defence of the
said Arnauld du Thill; and as punishment and amends for the
imposture, deception, assumption of name and of person, adultery,
rape, sacrilege, theft, larceny, and other deeds committed by the
aforesaid du Thill, and causing the above-mentioned trial; this court
has condemned and condemns him to do penance before the church of
Artigue, kneeling, clad in his shirt only, bareheaded and barefoot, a
halter on his neck, and a burning torch in his hand, and there he
shall ask pardon from God, from the King, and from justice, from the
said Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rolls, husband and wife: and this
done, the aforesaid du Thill shall be delivered into the hands of the
executioners of the King's justice, who shall lead him through the
customary streets and crossroads of the aforesaid place of Artigues,
and, the halter on his neck, shall bring him before the house of the
aforesaid Martin Guerre, where he shall be hung and strangled upon a
gibbet erected for this purpose, after which his body shall be burnt:
and for various reasons and considerations thereunto moving the
court, it has awarded and awards the goods of the aforesaid Arnauld
du Thill, apart from the expenses of justice, to the daughter born
unto him by the aforesaid Bertrande de Rolls, under pretence of
marriage falsely asserted by him, having thereto assumed the name and
person of the aforesaid Martin Guerre, by this mans deceiving the
aforesaid de Rolls; and moreover the court has exempted and exempts
from this trial the aforesaid Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rolls,
also the said Pierre Guerre, uncle of the aforesaid Martin, and has
remitted and remits the aforesaid Arnauld du Thill to the aforesaid
judge of Rieux, in order that the present sentence may be executed
according to its form and tenor.  Pronounced judicially this 12th day
of September 1560."

This sentence substituted the gallows for the decapitation decreed by
the first judge, inasmuch as the latter punishment was reserved for
criminals of noble birth, while hanging was inflicted on meaner
persons.

When once his fate was decided, Arnauld du Thill lost all his
audacity.  Sent back to Artigues, he was interrogated in prison by
the judge of Rieux, and confessed his imposture at great length.  He
said the idea first occurred to him when, having returned from the
camp in Picardy, he was addressed as Martin Guerre by several
intimate friends of the latter.  He then inquired as to the sort of
life, the habits and relations of, this man, and having contrived to
be near him, had watched him closely during the battle.  He saw him
fall, carried him away, and then, as the reader has already seen,
excited his delirium to the utmost in order to obtain possession of
his secrets.  Having thus explained his successful imposture by
natural causes, which excluded any idea of magic or sorcery, he
protested his penitence, implored the mercy of God, and prepared
himself for execution as became a Christian.

The next day, while the populace, collecting from the whole
neighbourhood, had assembled before the parish church of Artigues in
order to behold the penance of the criminal, who, barefoot, attired
in a shirt, and holding a lighted torch in his hand, knelt at the
entrance of the church, another scene, no less painful, took place in
the house of Martin Guerre.  Exhausted by her suffering, which had
caused a premature confinement, Bertrande lay on her couch of pain,
and besought pardon from him whom she had innocently wronged,
entreating him also to pray for her soul.  Martin Guerre, sitting at
her bedside, extended his hand and blessed her.  She took his hand
and held it to her lips; she could no longer speak.  All at once a
loud noise was heard outside: the guilty man had just been executed
in front of the house.  When finally attached to the gallows, he
uttered a terrible cry, which was answered by another from inside the
house.  The same evening, while the body of the malefactor was being
consumed by fire, the remains of a mother and child were laid to rest
in consecrated ground.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "MARTIN GUERRE"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 6
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 7 (of 8) Part 1
By Alexander Dumas, pere



ALI PACHA


CHAPTER I

The beginning of the nineteenth century was a time of audacious
enterprises and strange vicissitudes of fortune.  Whilst Western
Europe in turn submitted and struggled against a sub-lieutenant who
made himself an emperor, who at his pleasure made kings and destroyed
kingdoms, the ancient eastern part of the Continent; like mummies
which preserve but the semblance of life, was gradually tumbling to
pieces, and getting parcelled out amongst bold adventurers who
skirmished over its ruins.  Without mentioning local revolts which
produced only short-lived struggles and trifling changes, of
administration, such as that of Djezzar Pacha, who refused to pay
tribute because he thought himself impregnable in his citadel of
Saint-Jean-d'Acre, or that of Passevend-Oglou Pacha, who planted
himself on the walls of Widdin as defender of the Janissaries against
the institution of the regular militia decreed by Sultan Selim at
Stamboul, there were wider spread rebellions which attacked the
constitution of the Turkish Empire and diminished its extent; amongst
them that of Czerni-Georges, which raised Servia to the position of a
free state; of Mahomet Ali, who made his pachalik of Egypt into a
kingdom; and finally that of the man whose, history we are about to
narrate, Ali Tepeleni, Pacha of Janina, whose long resistance to the
suzerain power preceded and brought about the regeneration of Greece.

Ali's own will counted for nothing in this important movement.  He
foresaw it, but without ever seeking to aid it, and was powerless to
arrest it.  He was not one of those men who place their lives and
services at the disposal of any cause indiscriminately; and his sole
aim was to acquire and increase a power of which he was both the
guiding influence, and the end and object.  His nature contained the
seeds of every human passion, and he devoted all his long life to
their development and gratification.  This explains his whole
temperament; his actions were merely the natural outcome of his
character confronted with circumstances.  Few men have understood
themselves better or been on better terms with the orbit of their
existence, and as the personality of an individual is all the more
striking, in proportion as it reflects the manners and ideas of the
time and country in which he has lived, so the figure of Ali Pacha
stands out, if not one of the most brilliant, at least one of the
most singular in contemporary history.

From the middle of the eighteenth century Turkey had been a prey to
the political gangrene of which she is vainly trying to cure herself
to-day, and which, before long, will dismember her in the sight of
all Europe.  Anarchy and disorder reigned from one end of the empire
to the other.  The Osmanli race, bred on conquest alone, proved good
for nothing when conquest failed.  It naturally therefore came to
pass when Sobieski, who saved Christianity under the walls of Vienna,
as before his time Charles Martel had saved it on the plains of
Poitiers, had set bounds to the wave of Mussulman westward invasion,
and definitely fixed a limit which it should not pass, that the
Osmanli warlike instincts recoiled upon themselves.  The haughty
descendants of Ortogrul, who considered themselves born to command,
seeing victory forsake them, fell back upon tyranny.  Vainly did
reason expostulate that oppression could not long be exercised by
hands which had lost their strength, and that peace imposed new and
different labours on those who no longer triumphed in war; they would
listen to nothing; and, as fatalistic when condemned to a state of
peace as when they marched forth conquering and to conquer, they
cowered down in magnificent listlessness, leaving the whole burden of
their support on conquered peoples.  Like ignorant farmers, who
exhaust fertile fields by forcing crops; they rapidly ruined their
vast and rich empire by exorbitant exactions.  Inexorable conquerors
and insatiable masters, with one hand they flogged their slaves and
with the other plundered them.  Nothing was superior to their
insolence, nothing on a level with their greed.  They were never
glutted, and never relaxed their extortions.  But in proportion as
their needs increased on the one hand, so did their resources
diminish on the other.  Their oppressed subjects soon found that they
must escape at any cost from oppressors whom they could neither
appease nor satisfy.  Each population took the steps best suited to
its position and character; some chose inertia, others violence.  The
inhabitants of the plains, powerless and shelterless, bent like reeds
before the storm and evaded the shock against which they were unable
to stand.  The mountaineers planted themselves like rocks in a
torrent, and dammed its course with all their might.  On both sides
arose a determined resistance, different in method, similar in
result.  In the case of the peasants labour came to a stand-still; in
that of the hill folk open war broke out.  The grasping exactions of
the tyrant dominant body produced nothing from waste lands and armed
mountaineers; destitution and revolt were equally beyond their power
to cope with; and all that was left for tyranny to govern was a
desert enclosed by a wall.

But, all the same, the wants of a magnificent sultan, descendant of
the Prophet and distributor of crowns, must be supplied; and to do
this, the Sublime Porte needed money.  Unconsciously imitating the
Roman Senate, the Turkish Divan put up the empire for sale by public
auction.  All employments were sold to the highest bidder; pachas,
beys, cadis, ministers of every rank, and clerks of every class had
to buy their posts from their sovereign and get the money back out of
his subjects.  They spent their money in the capital, and recuperated
themselves in the provinces.  And as there was no other law than
their master's pleasure, so there, was no other guarantee than his
caprice.  They had therefore to set quickly to work; the post might
be lost before its cost had been recovered.  Thus all the science of
administration resolved itself into plundering as much and as quickly
as possible.  To this end, the delegate of imperial power delegated
in his turn, on similar conditions, other agents to seize for him and
for themselves all they could lay their hands on; so that the
inhabitants of the empire might be divided into three classes--those
who were striving to seize everything; those who were trying to save
a little; and those who, having nothing and hoping for nothing, took
no interest in affairs at all.

Albania was one of the most difficult provinces to manage.  Its
inhabitants were poor, brave, and, the nature of the country was
mountainous and inaccessible.  The pashas had great difficulty in
collecting tribute, because the people were given to fighting for
their bread.  Whether Mahomedans or Christians, the Albanians were
above all soldiers.  Descended on the one side from the unconquerable
Scythians, on the other from the ancient Macedonians, not long since
masters of the world; crossed with Norman adventurers brought
eastwards by the great movement of the Crusades; they felt the blood
of warriors flow in their veins, and that war was their element.
Sometimes at feud with one another, canton against canton, village
against village, often even house against house; sometimes rebelling
against the government their sanjaks; sometimes in league with these
against the sultan; they never rested from combat except in an armed
peace.  Each tribe had its military organisation, each family its
fortified stronghold, each man his gun on his shoulder.  When they
had nothing better to do, they tilled their fields, or mowed their
neighbours', carrying off, it should be noted, the crop; or pastured
their, flocks, watching the opportunity to trespass over pasture
limits.  This was the normal and regular life of the population of
Epirus, Thesprotia, Thessaly, and Upper Albania.  Lower Albania, less
strong, was also less active and bold; and there, as in many other
parts of Turkey, the dalesman was often the prey of the mountaineer.
It was in the mountain districts where were preserved the
recollections of Scander Beg, and where the manners of ancient
Laconia prevailed; the deeds of the brave soldier were sung on the
lyre, and the skilful robber quoted as an example to the children by
the father of the family.  Village feasts were held on the booty
taken from strangers; and the favourite dish was always a stolen
sheep.  Every man was esteemed in proportion to his skill and
courage, and a man's chances of making a good match were greatly
enhanced when he acquired the reputation of being an agile
mountaineer and a good bandit.

The Albanians proudly called this anarchy liberty, and religiously
guarded a state of disorder bequeathed by their ancestors, which
always assured the first place to the most valiant.

It was amidst men and manners such as these that Ali Tepeleni was
born.  He boasted that he belonged to the conquering race, and that
he descended from an ancient Anatolian family which had crossed into
Albania with the troops of Bajazet Ilderim.  But it is made certain
by the learned researches of M. de Pouqueville that he sprang from a
native stock, and not an Asiatic one, as he pretended.  His ancestors
were Christian Skipetars, who became Mussulmans after the Turkish
invasion, and his ancestry certainly cannot be traced farther back
than the end of the sixteenth century.

Mouktar Tepeleni, his grandfather, perished in the Turkish expedition
against Corfu, in 1716.  Marshal Schullemburg, who defended the
island, having repulsed the enemy with loss, took Mouktar prisoner on
Mount San Salvador, where he was in charge of a signalling party, and
with a barbarity worthy of his adversaries, hung him without trial.
It must be admitted that the memory of this murder must have had the
effect of rendering Ali badly disposed towards Christians.

Mouktar left three sons, two of whom, Salik and Mahomet, were born of
the same mother, a lawful wife, but the mother of the youngest, Veli,
was a slave.  His origin was no legal bar to his succeeding like his
brothers.  The family was one of the richest in the town of Tepelen,
whose name it bore, it enjoyed an income of six thousand piastres,
equal to twenty thousand francs.  This was a large fortune in a poor
country, where, all commodities were cheap.  But the Tepeleni family,
holding the rank of beys, had to maintain a state like that of the
great  financiers of feudal Europe.  They had to keep a large stud of
horses, with a great retinue of servants and men-at-arms, and
consequently to incur heavy expenses; thus they constantly found
their revenue inadequate.  The most natural means of raising it which
occurred to them was to diminish the number of those who shared it;
therefore the two elder brothers, sons of the wife, combined against
Veli, the son of the slave, and drove him out of the house.  The
latter, forced to leave home, bore his fate like a brave man, and
determined to levy exactions on others to compensate him for the
losses incurred through his brothers.  He became a freebooter,
patrolling highroads and lanes, with his gun on his shoulder and his
yataghan in his belt, attacking, holding for ransom, or plundering
all whom he encountered.

After some years of this profitable business, he found himself a
wealthy man and chief of a warlike band.  Judging that the moment for
vengeance had arrived, he marched for Tepelen, which he reached
unsuspected, crossed the river Vojutza, the ancient Aous, penetrated
the streets unresisted, and presented himself before the paternal
house, in which his brothers, forewarned, had barricaded themselves.
He at once besieged them, soon forced the gates, and pursued them to
a tent, in which they took a final refuge.  He surrounded this tent,
waited till they were inside it, and then set fire to the four
corners.  "See," said he to those around him, "they cannot accuse me
of vindictive reprisals; my brothers drove me out of doors, and I
retaliate by keeping them at home for ever."

In a few moments he was his father's sole heir and master of Tepelen.
Arrived at the summit of his ambition, he gave up free-booting, and
established himself in the town, of which he became chief ago.  He
had already a son by a slave, who soon presented him with another
son, and afterwards with a daughter, so that he had no reason to fear
dying without an heir.  But finding himself rich enough to maintain
more wives and bring up many children, he desired to increase his
credit by allying himself to some great family of the country.  He
therefore solicited and obtained the hand of Kamco, daughter of a bey
of Conitza.  This marriage attached him by the ties of relationship
to the principal families of the province, among others to Kourd
Pacha, Vizier of Serat, who was descended from the illustrious race
of Scander Beg.  After a few years, Veli had by his new wife a son
named Ali, the subject of this history, and a daughter named
Chainitza.

Ire spite of his intentions to reform, Veli could not entirely give
up his old habits.  Although his fortune placed him altogether above
small gains and losses, he continued to amuse himself by raiding from
time to time sheep, goats, and other perquisites, probably to keep
his hand in.  This innocent exercise of his taste was not to the
fancy of his neighbours, and brawls and fights recommenced in fine
style.  Fortune did not always favour him, and the old mountaineer
lost in the town part of what he had made on the hills.  Vexations
soured his temper and injured his health.  Notwithstanding the
injunctions of Mahomet, he sought consolation in wine, which soon
closed his career.  He died in 1754.




CHAPTER II

Ali thus at thirteen years of age was free to indulge in the
impetuosity of his character.  From his early youth he had manifested
a mettle and activity rare in young Turks, haughty by nature and
self-restrained by education.  Scarcely out of the nursery, he spent
his time in climbing mountains, wandering through forests, scaling
precipices, rolling in snow, inhaling the wind, defying the tempests,
breathing out his nervous energy through every pore.  Possibly he
learnt in the midst of every kind of danger to brave everything and
subdue everything; possibly in sympathy with the majesty of nature,
he felt aroused in him a need of personal grandeur which nothing
could satiate.  In vain his father sought to calm his savage temper;
and restrain his vagabond spirit; nothing was of, any use.  As
obstinate as intractable, he set at defiance all efforts and all
precautions.  If they shut him up, he broke the door or jumped out of
the window; if they threatened him, he pretended to comply, conquered
by fear, and promised everything that was required, but only to break
his word the first opportunity.  He had a tutor specially attached to
his person and charged to supervise all his actions.  He constantly
deluded him by fresh tricks, and when he thought himself free from
the consequences, he maltreated him with gross violence.  It was only
in his youth, after his father's death, that he became more
manageable; he even consented to learn to read, to please his mother,
whose idol he was, and to whom in return he gave all his affection.

If Kamco had so strong a liking for Ali, it was because she found in
him, not only her blood, but also her character.  During the lifetime
of her husband, whom she feared, she seemed only an ordinary woman;
but as soon as his eyes were closed, she gave free scope to the
violent passions which agitated her bosom.  Ambitious, bold,
vindictive; she assiduously cultivated the germs of ambition,
hardihood, and vengeance which already strongly showed themselves in
the young Ali.  "My son," she was never tired of telling him, "he who
cannot defend his patrimony richly deserves to lose it.  Remember
that the property of others is only theirs so long as they are strong
enough to keep it, and that when you find yourself strong enough to
take it from them, it is yours.  Success justifies everything, and
everything is permissible to him who has the power to do it."

Ali, when he reached the zenith of his greatness, used to declare
that his success was entirely his mother's work.  "I owe everything
to my mother," he said one day to the French Consul; "for my father,
when he died, left me nothing but a den of wild beasts and a few
fields.  My imagination, inflamed by the counsels of her who has
given me life twice over, since she has made me both a man and a
vizier, revealed to me the secret of my destiny.  Thenceforward I saw
nothing in Tepelen but the natal air from which I was to spring on
the prey which I devoured mentally.  I dreamt of nothing else but
power, treasures, palaces, in short what time has realised and still
promises; for the point I have now reached is not the limit of my
hopes."

Kamco did not confine herself to words; she employed every means to
increase the fortune of her beloved son and to make him a power.  Her
first care was to poison the children of Veli's favourite slave, who
had died before him.  Then, at ease about the interior of her family,
she directed her attention to the exterior.  Renouncing all the habit
of her sex, she abandoned the veil and the distaff, and took up arms,
under pretext of maintaining the rights of her children.  She
collected round her her husband's old partisans, whom she attached to
her, service, some by presents, others by various favours, and she
gradually enlisted all the lawless and adventurous men in Toscaria.
With their aid, she made herself all powerful in Tepelen, and
inflicted the most rigorous persecutions on such as remained hostile
to her.

But the inhabitants of the two adjacent villages of Kormovo and
Kardiki, fearing lest this terrible woman, aided by her son, now
grown into a man, should strike a blow against their independence;
made a secret alliance against her, with the object of putting her
out of the way the first convenient opportunity.  Learning one day
that Ali had started on a distant expedition with his best soldiers;
they surprised Tepelen under cover of night, and carried off Kamco
and her daughter Chainitza captives to Kardiki.  It was proposed to
put them to death; and sufficient evidence to justify their execution
was not wanting; but their beauty saved their lives; their captors
preferred to revenge themselves by licentiousness rather than by
murder.  Shut up all day in prison, they only emerged at night to
pass into the arms of the men who had won them by lot the previous
morning.  This state of things lasted for a month, at the end of
which a Greek of Argyro-Castron, named G. Malicovo, moved by
compassion for their horrible fate, ransomed them for twenty thousand
piastres, and took them back to Tepelen.

Ali had just returned.  He was accosted by his mother and sister,
pale with fatigue, shame, and rage.  They told him what had taken
place, with cries and tears, and Kamco added, fixing her distracted
eyes upon him, "My son! my son! my soul will enjoy no peace till
Kormovo and Kardikil destroyed by thy scimitar, will no longer exist
to bear witness to my dishonour."

Ali, in whom this sight and this story had aroused, sanguinary
passions, promised a vengeance proportioned to the outrage, and
worked with all his might to place himself in a position to keep his
word.  A worthy son of his father, he had commenced life in the
fashion of the heroes of ancient Greece, stealing sheep and goats,
and from the age of fourteen years he had acquired an equal
reputation to that earned by the son of Jupiter and Maia.  When he
grew to manhood, he extended his operations.  At the time of which we
are speaking, he had long practised open pillage.  His plundering
expeditions added to his mother's savings, who since her return from
Kardiki had altogether withdrawn from public life, and devoted
herself to household duties, enabled him to collect a considerable
force for am expedition against Kormovo, one of the two towns he had
sworn to destroy.  He marched against it at the head of his banditti,
but found himself vigorously opposed, lost part of his force, and was
obliged to save himself and the rest by flight.  He did not stop till
he reached Tepelen, where he had a warm reception from Kamco, whose
thirst for vengeance had been disappointed by his defeat.  "Go!" said
she, "go, coward! go spin with the women in the harem!  The distaff
is a better weapon for you than the scimitar!  "The young man
answered not a word, but, deeply wounded by these reproaches, retired
to hide his humiliation in the bosom of his old friend the mountain.
The popular legend, always thirsting for the marvellous in the
adventures of heroes, has it that he found in the ruins of a church a
treasure which enabled him to reconstitute his party.  But he himself
has contradicted this story, stating that it was by the ordinary
methods of rapine and plunder that he replenished his finances.  He
selected from his old band of brigands thirty palikars, and entered,
as their bouloubachi, or leader of the group, into the service of the
Pacha of Negropont.  But he soon tired of the methodical life he was
obliged to lead, and passed into Thessaly, where, following the
example of his father Veli, he employed his time in brigandage on the
highways.  Thence he raided the Pindus chain of mountains, plundered
a great number of villages, and returned to Tepelen, richer and
consequently more esteemed than ever.

He employed his fortune and influence in collecting a formidable
guerilla force, and resumed his plundering operations.  Kurd Pacha
soon found himself compelled, by the universal outcry of the
province, to take active measures against this young brigand.  He
sent against him a division of troops, which defeated him and brought
him prisoner with his men to Berat, the capital of Central Albania
and residence of the governor.  The country flattered itself that at
length it was freed from its scourge.  The whole body of bandits was
condemned to death; but Ali was not the man to surrender his life so
easily.  Whilst they were hanging his comrades, he threw himself at
the feet of the pacha and begged for mercy in the name of his
parents, excusing himself on account of his youth, and promising a
lasting reform.  The pacha, seeing at his feet a comely youth, with
fair hair and blue eyes, a persuasive voice, and eloquent tongue, and
in whose veins flowed the same blood as his own, was moved with pity
and pardoned him.  Ali got off with a mild captivity in the palace of
his powerful relative, who heaped benefits upon him, and did all he
could to lead him into the paths of probity. He appeared amenable to
these good influences, and bitterly to repent his past errors.  After
some years, believing in his reformation, and moved by the prayers of
Kamco, who incessantly implored the restitution of her dear son, the
generous pacha restored him his liberty, only giving him to under
stand that he had no more mercy to expect if he again disturbed the
public peace.  Ali taking the threat seriously; did not run the risk
of braving it, and, on the contrary, did all he could to conciliate
the man whose anger he dared not kindle.  Not only did he keep the
promise he had made to live quietly, but by his good conduct he
caused his, former escapades to be forgotten, putting under
obligation all his neighbours, and attaching to himself, through the
services he rendered them, a great number of friendly disposed
persons.  In this manner he soon assumed a distinguished and
honourable rank among the beys of the country, and being of
marriageable age, he sought and formed an alliance with the daughter
of Capelan Tigre, Pacha of Delvino, who resided at Argyro-Castron.
This union, happy on both sides, gave him, with one of the most
accomplished women in Epirus, a high position and great influence.

It seemed as if this marriage were destined to wean Ali forever from
his former turbulent habits and wild adventures.  But the family into
which he had married afforded violent contrasts and equal elements of
good and mischief.  If Emineh, his wife, was a model of virtue, his
father-in-law, Capelan, was a composition of every vice--selfish,
ambitious, turbulent, fierce.  Confident in his courage, and further
emboldened by his remoteness from the capital, the Pacha of Delvino
gloried in setting law and authority at defiance.

Ali's disposition was too much like that of his father-in-law to
prevent him from taking his measure very quickly.  He soon got on
good terms with him, and entered into his schemes, waiting for an
opportunity to denounce him and become his successor.  For this
opportunity he had not long to wait.

Capelan's object in giving his daughter to Tepeleni was to enlist him
among the beys of the province to gain independence, the ruling
passion of viziers.  The cunning young man pretended to enter into
the views of his father-in-law, and did all he could to urge him into
the path of rebellion.

An adventurer named Stephano Piccolo, an emissary of Russia, had just
raised in Albania the standard of the Cross and called to arms all
the Christians of the Acroceraunian Mountains.  The Divan sent orders
to all the pachas of Northern Turkey in Europe to instantly march
against the insurgents and quell the rising in blood.

Instead of obeying the orders of the Divan and joining Kurd Pacha,
who had summoned him, Capelan, at the instigation of his son-in-law,
did all he could to embarrass the movement of the imperial troops,
and without openly making common cause with the insurgents, he
rendered them substantial aid in their resistance.  They were,
notwithstanding, conquered and dispersed; and their chief, Stephano
Piccolo, had to take refuge in the unexplored caves of Montenegro.

When the struggle was over, Capelan, as Ali had foreseen, was
summoned to give an account of his conduct before the roumeli-valicy,
supreme judge over Turkey in Europe.  He was not only accused of the
gravest offences, but proofs of them were forwarded to the Divan by
the very man who had instigated them.  There could be no doubt as to
the result of the inquiry; therefore, the pacha, who had no
suspicions of his son-in-law's duplicity, determined not to leave his
pachalik.  That was not in accordance with the plans of Ali, who
wished to succeed to both the government and the wealth of his
father-in-law.  He accordingly made the most plausible remonstrances
against the inefficacy and danger of such a resistance.  To refuse to
plead was tantamount to a confession of guilt, and was certain to
bring on his head a storm against which he was powerless to cope,
whilst if he obeyed the orders of the roumeli-valicy he would find it
easy to excuse himself.  To give more effect to his perfidious
advice, Ali further employed the innocent Emineh, who was easily
alarmed on her father's account.  Overcome by the reasoning of his
son-in-law and the tears of his daughter, the unfortunate pacha
consented to go to Monastir, where he had been summoned to appear,
and where he was immediately arrested and beheaded.

Ali's schemes had succeeded, but both his ambition and his cupidity
were frustrated.  Ali, Bey of Argyro-Castron, who had throughout
shown himself devoted to the sultan, was nominated Pacha of Delvino
in place of Capelan.  He sequestered all the property of his
predecessor, as confiscated to the sultan, and thus deprived Ali
Tepeleni of all the fruits of his crime.

This disappointment kindled the wrath of the ambitious Ali.  He swore
vengeance for the spoliation of which he considered himself the
victim.  But the moment was not favourable for putting his projects
in train.  The murder of Capelan, which its perpetrator intended for
a mere crime, proved a huge blunder.  The numerous enemies of
Tepeleni, silent under the administration of the late pacha, whose
resentment they had cause to fear, soon made common cause under the
new one, for whose support they had hopes.  Ali saw the danger,
sought and found the means to obviate it.  He succeeded in making a
match between Ali of Argyro-Castron, who was unmarried, and
Chainitza, his own sister.  This alliance secured to him the
government of Tigre, which he held under Capelan.  But that was not
sufficient.  He must put himself in a state of security against the
dangers he had lately, experienced, and establish himself on a firm
footing' against possible accidents.  He soon formed a plan, which he
himself described to the French Consul in the following words:--

"Years were elapsing," said he, "and brought no important change in
my position.  I was an important partisan, it is true, and strongly
supported, but I held no title or Government employment of my own.
I recognised the necessity of establishing myself firmly in my
birthplace.  I had devoted friends, and formidable foes, bent on my
destruction, whom I must put out of the way, for my own safety.
I set about a plan for destroying them at one blow, and ended by
devising one with which I ought to have commenced my career.  Had I
done so, I should have saved much time and pains.

"I was in the habit of going every day, after hunting, for a siesta
in a neighbouring wood.  A confidential servant of mine suggested to
my enemies the idea of surprising me and assassinating one there.  I
myself supplied the plan of the conspiracy, which was adopted.  On
the day agreed upon, I preceded my adversaries to the place where I
was accustomed to repose, and caused a goat to be pinioned and
muzzled, and fastened under the tree, covered with my cape; I then
returned home by a roundabout path.  Soon after I had left, the
conspirators arrived, and fired a volley at the goat.

"They ran up to make certain of my death, but were interrupted by a
piquet of my men, who unexpectedly emerged from a copse where I had
posted them, and they were obliged to return to Tepelen, which they
entered, riotous with joy, crying 'Ali Bey is dead, now we are free!'
This news reached my harem, and I heard the cries of my mother and my
wife mingled with the shouts of my enemies.  I allowed the commotion
to run its course and reach its height, so as to indicate which were
my friends and which my foes.  But when the former were at the depth
of their distress and the latter at the height of their joy, and,
exulting in their supposed victory, had drowned their prudence and
their courage in floods of wine, then, strong in the justice of my
cause, I appeared upon the scene.  Now was the time for my friends to
triumph and for my foes to tremble.  I set to work at the head of my
partisans, and before sunrise had exterminated the last of my
enemies.  I distributed their lands, their houses, and their goods
amongst my followers, and from that moment I could call the town of
Tepelen my own."

A less ambitious man might perhaps have remained satisfied with such
a result.  But Ali did not look upon the suzerainty of a canton as a
final object, but only as a means to an end; and he had not made
himself master of Tepelen to limit himself to a petty state, but to
employ it as a base of operations.

He had allied himself to Ali of Argyro-Castron to get rid of his
enemies; once free from them, he began to plot against his
supplanter.  He forgot neither his vindictive projects nor his
ambitious schemes.  As prudent in execution as bold in design, he
took good care not to openly attack a man stronger than himself, and
gained by stratagem what he could not obtain by violence.  The honest
and straightforward character of his brother-in-law afforded an easy
success to his perfidy.  He began by endeavouring to suborn his
sister Chainitza, and several times proposed to her to poison her
husband; but she, who dearly loved the pacha, who was a kind husband
and to whom she had borne two children, repulsed his suggestions with
horror, and threatened, if he persisted, to denounce him.  Ali,
fearing the consequences if she carried out her threat, begged
forgiveness for his wicked plans, pretended deep repentance, and
spoke of his brother-in-law in terms of the warmest affection.  His
acting was so consummate that even Chainitza, who well knew her
brother's subtle character, was deceived by it.  When he saw that she
was his dupe, knowing that he had nothing more either to fear or to
hope for from that side, he directed his attention to another.

The pacha had a brother named Soliman, whose character nearly
resembled that of Tepeleni.  The latter, after having for some time
quietly studied him, thought he discerned in him the man he wanted;
he tempted him to kill the pacha, offering him, as the price of this
crime, his whole inheritance and the hand of Chainitza, only
reserving for himself the long coveted sanjak.  Soliman accepted the
proposals, and the fratricidal bargain was concluded.  The two
conspirators, sole masters of the secret, the horrible nature of
which guaranteed their mutual fidelity, and having free access to the
person of their victim; could not fail in their object.

One day, when they were both received by the pacha in private
audience, Soliman, taking advantage of a moment when he was
unobserved, drew a pistol from his belt and blew out his brother's
brains.  Chainitza ran at the sound, and saw her husband lying dead
between her brother and her brother-in-law.  Her cries for help were
stopped by threats of death if she moved or uttered a sound.  As she
lay, fainting with grief and terror, Ali made, a sign to Soliman, who
covered her with his cloak, and declared her his wife.  Ali
pronounced the marriage concluded, and retired for it to be
consummated.  Thus was celebrated this frightful wedding, in the
scene of an awful crime; beside the corpse of a man who a moment
before had been the husband of the bride and the brother of the
bridegroom.

The assassins published the death of the pacha, attributing it, as is
usual in Turkey, to a fit of cerebral apoplexy.  But the truth soon
leaked out from the lying shrouds in which it had been wrapped.
Reports even exceeded the truth, and public opinion implicated
Chainitza in a crime of which she had been but the witness.
Appearances certainly justified these suspicions.  The young wife had
soon consoled herself in the arms of her second husband for the loss
of the first, and her son by him presently died suddenly, thus
leaving Soliman in lawful and peaceful possession of all his
brother's wealth.  As for the little girl, as she had no rights and
could hurt no one, her life was spared; and she was eventually
married to a bey of Cleisoura, destined in the sequel to cut a tragic
figure in the history of the Tepeleni family.

But Ali was once more deprived of the fruit of his bloody schemes.
Notwithstanding all his intrigues, the sanjak of Delvino was
conferred, not upon him, but upon a bey of one of the first families
of Zapouria.  But, far from being discouraged, he recommenced with
new boldness and still greater confidence the work of his elevation,
so often begun and so often interrupted.  He took advantage of his
increasing influence to ingratiate himself with the new pasha, and
was so successful in insinuating himself into his confidence, that he
was received into the palace and treated like the pacha's son.  There
he acquired complete knowledge of the details of the pachalik and the
affairs of the pacha, preparing himself to govern the one when he had
got rid of the other.

The sanjak of Delvino was bounded from Venetian territory by the
district of Buthrotum.  Selim, a better neighbour and an abler
politician than his predecessors, sought to renew and preserve
friendly commercial relations with the purveyors of the Magnificent
Republic.  This wise conduct, equally advantageous for both the
bordering provinces, instead of gaining for the pacha the praise and
favours which he deserved, rendered him suspected at a court whose
sole political idea was hatred of the name of Christian, and whose
sole means of government was terror.  Ali immediately perceived the
pacha's error, and the advantage which he himself could derive from
it.  Selim, as one of his commercial transactions with the Venetians,
had sold them, for a number of years, the right of felling timber in
a forest near Lake Reloda.  Ali immediately took advantage of this to
denounce the pasha as guilty of having alienated the territory of the
Sublime Porte, and of a desire to deliver to the infidels all the
province of Delvino.  Masking his ambitious designs under the veil of
religion and patriotism, he lamented, in his denunciatory report, the
necessity under which he found himself, as a loyal subject and
faithful Mussulman, of accusing a man who had been his benefactor,
and thus at the same time gained the benefit of crime and the credit
of virtue.

Under the gloomy despotism of the Turks, a man in any position of
responsibility is condemned almost as soon as accused; and if he is
not strong enough to inspire terror, his ruin is certain.  Ali
received at Tepelen, where he had retired to more conveniently weave
his perfidious plots, an order to get rid of the pacha.  At the
receipt of the firman of execution he leaped with joy, and flew to
Delvino to seize the prey which was abandoned to him.

The noble Selim, little suspecting that his protege had become his
accuser and was preparing to become his executioner, received him
with more tenderness than ever, and lodged him, as heretofore, in his
palace.  Under the shadow of this hospitable roof, Ali skilfully
prepared the consummation of the crime which was for ever to draw him
out of obscurity.  He went every morning to pay his court to the
pacha, whose confidence he doubted; then, one day, feigning illness,
he sent excuses for inability to pay his respects to a man whom he
was accustomed to regard as his father, and begged him to come for a
moment into his apartment.  The invitation being accepted, he
concealed assassins in one of the cupboards without shelves, so
common in the East, which contain by day the mattresses spread by
night on the floor for the slaves to sleep upon.  At the hour fixed,
the old man arrived.  Ali rose from his sofa with a depressed air,
met him, kissed the hem of his robe, and, after seating him in his
place, himself offered him a pipe-and coffee, which were accepted.
But instead of putting the cup in the hand stretched to receive it,
he let it fall on the floor, where it broke into a thousand pieces.
This was the signal.  The assassins sprang from their retreat and
darted upon Selim, who fell, exclaiming, like Caesar, "And it is
thou, my son, who takest my life!"

At the sound of the tumult which followed the assassination, Selim's
bodyguard, running up, found Ali erect, covered with blood,
surrounded by assassins, holding in his hand the firman displayed,
and crying with a menacing voice, "I have killed the traitor Selim by
the order of our glorious sultan; here is his imperial command."  At
these words, and the sight of the fatal diploma, all prostrated
themselves terror-stricken.  Ali, after ordering the decapitation of
Selim, whose head he seized as a trophy, ordered the cadi, the beys,
and the Greek archons to meet at the palace, to prepare the official
account of the execution of the sentence.  They assembled, trembling;
the sacred hymn of the Fatahat was sung, and the murder declared
legal, in the name of the merciful and compassionate God, Lord of the
world.

When they had sealed up the effects of the victim, the murderer left
the palace, taking with him, as a hostage, Mustapha, son of Selim,
destined to be even more unfortunate than his father.

A few days afterwards, the Divan awarded to Ali Tepeleni, as a reward
for his zeal for the State and religion, the sanjak of Thessaly, with
the title of Dervendgi-pacha, or Provost Marshal of the roads.  This
latter dignity was conferred on the condition of his levying a body
of four thousand men to clear the valley of the Peneus of a multitude
of Christian chiefs who exercised more power than the officers of the
Grand Seigneur.  The new pacha took advantage of this to enlist a
numerous body of Albanians ready for any enterprise, and completely
devoted to him.  With two important commands, and with this strong
force at his back, he repaired to Trikala, the seat of his
government, where he speedily acquired great influence.

His first act of authority was to exterminate the bands of Armatolis,
or Christian militia, which infested the plain.  He laid violent
hands on all whom he caught, and drove the rest back into their
mountains, splitting them up into small bands whom he could deal with
at his pleasure.  At the same time he sent a few heads to
Constantinople, to amuse the sultan and the mob, and some money to
the ministers to gain their support.  "For," said he, "water sleeps,
but envy never does."  These steps were prudent, and whilst his
credit increased at court, order was reestablished from the defiles
of the Perrebia of Pindus to the vale of Tempe and to the pass of
Thermopylae.

These exploits of the provost-marshal, amplified by Oriental
exaggeration, justified the ideas which were entertained of the
capacity of Ali Pacha.  Impatient of celebrity, he took good care
himself to spread his fame, relating his prowess to all comers,
making presents to the sultan's officers who came into his
government, and showing travellers his palace courtyard festooned
with decapitated heads.  But what chiefly tended to consolidate his
power was the treasure which he ceaselessly amassed by every means.
He never struck for the mere pleasure of striking, and the numerous
victims of his proscriptions only perished to enrich him.  His death
sentences always fell on beys and wealthy persons whom he wished to
plunder.  In his eyes the axe was but an instrument of fortune, and
the executioner a tax-gatherer.




CHAPTER III

Having governed Thessaly in this manner during several years, Ali
found himself in a position to acquire the province of Janina, the
possession of which, by making him master of Epirus, would enable him
to crush all his enemies and to reign supreme over the three
divisions of Albania.

But before he could succeed in this, it was necessary to dispose of
the pacha already in possession.  Fortunately for Ali, the latter was
a weak and indolent man, quite incapable of struggling against so
formidable a rival; and his enemy speedily conceived and put into
execution a plan intended to bring about the fulfilment of his
desires.  He came to terms with the same Armatolians whom he had
formerly treated so harshly, and let them loose, provided with arms
and ammunition, on the country which he wished to obtain.  Soon the
whole region echoed with stories of devastation and pillage.  The
pacha, unable to repel the incursions of these mountaineers, employed
the few troops he had in oppressing the inhabitants of the plains,
who, groaning under both extortion and rapine, vainly filled the air
with their despairing cries.  Ali hoped that the Divan, which usually
judged only after the event, seeing that Epirus lay desolate, while
Thessaly flourished under his own administration, would, before long,
entrust himself with the government of both provinces, when a family
incident occurred, which for a time diverted the course of his
political manoeuvres.

For a long time his mother Kamco had suffered from an internal
cancer, the result of a life of depravity.  Feeling that her end drew
near, she despatched messenger after messenger, summoning her son to
her bedside.  He started, but arrived too late, and found only his
sister Chainitza mourning over the body of their mother, who had
expired in her arms an hour previously.  Breathing unutterable rage
and pronouncing horrible imprecations against Heaven, Kamco had
commanded her children, under pain of her dying curse, to carry out
her last wishes faithfully.  After having long given way to their
grief, Ali and Chainitza read together the document which contained
these commands.  It ordained some special assassinations, mentioned
sundry villages which, some day; were to be given to the flames, but
ordered them most especially, as soon as possible, to exterminate the
inhabitants of Kormovo and Kardiki, from whom she had endured the
last horrors of slavery.

Then, after advising her children to remain united, to enrich their
soldiers, and to count as nothing people who were useless to them,
Kamco ended by commanding them to send in her name a pilgrim to
Mecca, who should deposit an offering on the tomb of the Prophet for
the repose of her soul.  Having perused these last injunctions, Ali
and Chainitza joined hands, and over the inanimate remains of their
departed mother swore to accomplish her dying behests.

The pilgrimage came first under consideration.  Now a pilgrim can
only be sent as proxy to Mecca, or offerings be made at the tomb of
Medina, at the expense of legitimately acquired property duly sold
for the purpose.  The brother and sister made a careful examination
of the family estates, and after long hunting, thought they had found
the correct thing in a small property of about fifteen hundred francs
income, inherited from their great-grandfather, founder of the
Tepel-Enian dynasty.  But further investigations disclosed that even
this last resource had been forcibly taken from a Christian, and the
idea of a pious pilgrimage and a sacred offering had to be given up.
They then agreed to atone for the impossibility of expiation by the
grandeur of their vengeance, and swore to pursue without ceasing and
to destroy without mercy all enemies of their family.

The best mode of carrying out this terrible and self-given pledge was
that Ali should resume his plans of aggrandizement exactly where he
had left them.  He succeeded in acquiring the pachalik of Janina,
which was granted him by the Porte under the title of "arpalik," or
conquest.  It was an old custom, natural to the warlike habits of the
Turks, to bestow the Government provinces or towns affecting to
despise the authority of the Grand Seigneur on whomsoever succeeded
in controlling them, and Janina occupied this position.  It was
principally inhabited by Albanians, who had an enthusiastic
admiration for anarchy, dignified by them with the name of "Liberty,"
and who thought themselves independent in proportion to the
disturbance they succeeded in making.  Each lived retired as if in a
mountain castle, and only went out in order to participate in the
quarrels of his faction in the forum.  As for the pachas, they were
relegated to the old castle on the lake, and there was no difficulty
in obtaining their recall.

Consequently there was a general outcry at the news of Ali Pacha's
nomination, and it was unanimously agreed that a man whose character
and power were alike dreaded must not be admitted within the walls of
Janina.  Ali, not choosing to risk his forces in an open battle with
a warlike population, and preferring a slower and safer way to a
short and dangerous one, began by pillaging the villages and farms
belonging to his most powerful opponents.  His tactics succeeded, and
the very persons who had been foremost in vowing hatred to the son of
Kamco and who had sworn most loudly that they would die rather than
submit to the tyrant, seeing their property daily ravaged, and
impending ruin if hostilities continued, applied themselves to
procure peace.  Messengers were sent secretly to Ali, offering to
admit him into Janina if he would undertake to respect the lives and
property of his new allies.  Ali promised whatever they asked, and
entered the town by night.  His first proceeding was to appear before
the cadi, whom he compelled to register and proclaim his firmans of
investiture.

In the same year in which he arrived at this dignity, really the
desire and object of Ali's whole life, occurred also the death of the
Sultan Abdul Hamid, whose two sons, Mustapha and Mahmoud, were
confined in the Old Seraglio.  This change of rulers, however, made
no difference to Ali; the peaceful Selim, exchanging the prison to
which his nephews were now relegated, for the throne of their father,
confirmed the Pacha of Janina in the titles, offices, and privileges
which had been conferred on him.

Established in his position by this double investiture, Ali applied
himself to the definite settlement of his claims.  He was now fifty
years of age, and was at the height of his intellectual development:
experience had been his teacher, and the lesson of no single event
had been lost upon him.  An uncultivated but just and penetrating
mind enabled him to comprehend facts, analyse causes, and anticipate
results; and as his heart never interfered with the deductions of his
rough intelligence, he had by a sort of logical sequence formulated
an inflexible plan of action.  This man, wholly ignorant, not only of
the ideas of history but also of the great names of Europe, had
succeeded in divining, and as a natural consequence of his active and
practical character, in also realising Macchiavelli, as is amply
shown in the expansion of his greatness and the exercise of his
power.  Without faith in God, despising men, loving and thinking only
of himself, distrusting all around him, audacious in design,
immovable in resolution, inexorable in execution, merciless in
vengeance, by turns insolent, humble, violent, or supple according to
circumstances, always and entirely logical in his egotism, he is
Cesar Borgia reborn as a Mussulman; he is the incarnate ideal of
Florentine policy, the Italian prince converted into a satrap.

Age had as yet in no way impaired Ali's strength and activity, and
nothing prevented his profiting by the advantages of his position.
Already possessing great riches, which every day saw increasing under
his management, he maintained a large body of warlike and devoted
troops, he united the offices of Pacha of two tails of Janina, of
Toparch of Thessaly, and of Provost Marshal of the Highway.  As
influential aids both to his reputation for general ability and the
terror of his' arms, and his authority as ruler, there stood by his
side two sons, Mouktar and Veli, offspring of his wife Emineh, both
fully grown and carefully educated in the principles of their father.

Ali's first care, once master of Janina, was to annihilate the beys
forming the aristocracy of the place, whose hatred he was well aware
of, and whose plots he dreaded.  He ruined them all, banishing many
and putting others to death.  Knowing that he must make friends to
supply the vacancy caused by the destruction of his foes, he enriched
with the spoil the Albanian mountaineers in his pay, known by the
name of Skipetars, on whom he conferred most of the vacant
employments.  But much too prudent to allow all the power to fall
into the hands of a single caste, although a foreign one to the
capital, he, by a singular innovation, added to and mixed with them
an infusion of Orthodox Greeks, a skilful but despised race, whose
talents he could use without having to dread their influence.  While
thus endeavouring on one side to destroy the power of his enemies by
depriving them of both authority and wealth, and on the other to
consolidate his own by establishing a firm administration, he
neglected no means of acquiring popularity.  A fervent disciple of
Mahomet when among fanatic Mussulmans, a materialist with the
Bektagis who professed a rude pantheism, a Christian among the
Greeks, with whom he drank to the health of the Holy Virgin, he made
everywhere partisans by flattering the idea most in vogue.  But if he
constantly changed both opinions and language when dealing with
subordinates whom it was desirable to win over, Ali towards his
superiors had one only line of conduct which he never transgressed.
Obsequious towards the Sublime Porte, so long as it did not interfere
with his private authority, he not only paid with exactitude all dues
to the sultan, to whom he even often advanced money, but he also
pensioned the most influential ministers.  He was bent on having no
enemies who could really injure his power, and he knew that in an
absolute government no conviction can hold its own against the power
of gold.

Having thus annihilated the nobles, deceived the multitude with
plausible words and lulled to sleep the watchfulness of the Divan,
Ali resolved to turn his arms against Kormovo.  At the foot of its
rocks he had, in youth, experienced the disgrace of defeat, and
during thirty nights Kamco and Chainitza had endured all horrors of
outrage at the hands of its warriors.  Thus the implacable pacha had
a twofold wrong to punish, a double vengeance to exact.

This time, profiting by experience, he called in the aid of
treachery.  Arrived at the citadel, he negotiated, promised an
amnesty, forgiveness for all, actual rewards for some.  The
inhabitants, only too happy to make peace with so formidable an
adversary, demanded and obtained a truce to settle the conditions.
This was exactly what Ali expected, and Kormovo, sleeping on the
faith of the treaty, was suddenly attacked and taken.  All who did
not escape by flight perished by the sword in the darkness, or by the
hand of the executioner the next morning.  Those who had offered
violence aforetime to Ali's mother and sister were carefully sought
for, and whether convicted or merely accused, were impaled on spits,
torn with redhot pincers, and slowly roasted between two fires; the
women were shaved and publicly scourged, and then sold as slaves.

This vengeance, in which all the nobles of the province not yet
entirely ruined were compelled to assist, was worth a decisive
victory to Ali.  Towns, cantons, whole districts, overwhelmed with
terror, submitted without striking a blow, and his name, joined to
the recital of a massacre which ranked as a glorious exploit in the
eyes of this savage people, echoed like thunder from valley to valley
and mountain to mountain.  In order that all surrounding him might
participate in the joy of his success Ali gave his army a splendid
festival.  Of unrivalled activity, and, Mohammedan only in name, he
himself led the chorus in the Pyrrhic and Klephtic dances, the
ceremonials of warriors and of robbers.  There was no lack of wine,
of sheep, goats, and lambs roasted before enormous fires; made of the
debris of the ruined city; antique games of archery and wrestling
were celebrated, and the victors received their prizes from the hand
of their chief.  The plunder, slaves, and cattle were then shared,
and the Tapygae, considered as the lowest of the four tribes
composing the race of Skipetars, and ranking as the refuse of the
army, carried off into the mountains of Acroceraunia, doors, windows,
nails, and even the tiles of the houses, which were then all
surrendered to the flames.

However, Ibrahim, the successor and son-in-law of Kurd Pacha, could
not see with indifference part of his province invaded by his
ambitious neighbour.  He complained and negotiated, but obtaining no
satisfaction, called out an army composed of Skipetars of Toxid, all
Islamites, and gave the command to his brother Sepher, Bey of Avlone.
Ali, who had adopted the policy of opposing alternately the Cross to
the Crescent and the Crescent to the Cross, summoned to his aid the
Christian chiefs of the mountains, who descended into the plains at
the head of their unconquered troops.  As is generally the case in
Albania, where war is merely an excuse for brigandage, instead of
deciding matters by a pitched battle, both sides contented themselves
with burning villages, hanging peasants, and carrying off cattle.

Also, in accordance with the custom of the country, the women
interposed between the combatants, and the good and gentle Emineh
laid proposals of peace before Ibrahim Pacha, to whose apathetic
disposition a state of war was disagreeable, and who was only too
happy to conclude a fairly satisfactory negotiation.  A family
alliance was arranged, in virtue of which Ali retained his conquests,
which were considered as the marriage portion of Ibrahim's eldest
daughter, who became the wife of Ali's eldest son, Mouktar.

It was hoped that this peace might prove permanent, but the marriage
which sealed the treaty was barely concluded before a fresh quarrel
broke out between the pachas.  Ali, having wrung such important
concessions from the weakness of his neighbour, desired to obtain yet
more.  But closely allied to Ibrahim were two persons gifted with
great firmness of character and unusual ability, whose position gave
them great influence.  They were his wife Zaidee, and his brother
Sepher, who had been in command during the war just terminated.  As
both were inimical to Ali, who could not hope to corrupt them, the
latter resolved to get rid of them.

Having in the days of his youth been intimate with Kurd Pacha, Ali
had endeavoured to seduce his daughter, already the wife of Ibrahim.
Being discovered by the latter in the act of scaling the wall of his
harem, he had been obliged to fly the country.  Wishing now to ruin
the woman whom he had formerly tried to corrupt, Ali sought to turn
his former crime to the success of a new one.  Anonymous letters,
secretly sent to Ibrahim, warned him that his wife intended to poison
him, in order to be able later to marry Ali Pacha, whom she had
always loved.  In a country like Turkey, where to suspect a woman is
to accuse her, and accusation is synonymous with condemnation, such a
calumny might easily cause the death of the innocent Zaidee.  But if
Ibrahim was weak and indolent, he was also confiding and generous.
He took the letters; to his wife, who had no difficulty in clearing
herself, and who warned him against the writer, whose object and
plots she easily divined, so that this odious conspiracy turned only
to Ali's discredit.  But the latter was not likely either to concern
himself as to what others said or thought about him or to be
disconcerted by a failure.  He simply turned his machinations against
his other enemy, and arranged matters this time so as to avoid a
failure.

He sent to Zagori, a district noted for its doctors, for a quack who
undertook to poison Sepher Bey on condition of receiving forty
purses.  When all was settled, the miscreant set out for Berat, and
was immediately accused by Ali of evasion, and his wife and children
were arrested as accomplices and detained, apparently as hostages for
the good behaviour of their husband and father, but really as pledges
for his silence when the crime should have been accomplished.  Sepher
Bey, informed of this by letters which Ali wrote to the Pacha of
Berat demanding the fugitive, thought that a man persecuted by his
enemy would be faithful to himself, and took the supposed runaway
into his service.  The traitor made skilful use of the kindness of
his too credulous protector, insinuated himself into his confidence,
became his trusted physician and apothecary, and gave him poison
instead of medicine on the very first appearance of indisposition.
As soon as symptoms of death appeared, the poisoner fled, aided by
the emissaries of All, with whom the court of Berat was packed, and
presented himself at Janina to receive the reward of his crime.  Ali
thanked him for his zeal, commended his skill, and referred him to
the treasurer.  But the instant the wretch left the seraglio in order
to receive his recompense, he was seized by the executioners and
hurried to the gallows.  In thus punishing the assassin, Ali at one
blow discharged the debt he owed him, disposed of the single witness
to be dreaded, and displayed his own friendship for the victim!  Not
content with this, he endeavoured to again throw suspicion on the
wife of Ibrahim Pacha, whom he accused of being jealous of the
influence which Sepher Pacha had exercised in the family.  This he
mentioned regularly in conversation, writing in the same style to his
agents at Constantinople, and everywhere where there was any profit
in slandering a family whose ruin he desired for the sake of their
possessions.  Before long he made a pretext out of the scandal
started by himself, and prepared to take up arms in order, he said,
to avenge his friend Sepher Bey, when he was anticipated by Ibrahim
Pacha, who roused against him the allied Christians of Thesprotia,
foremost among whom ranked the Suliots famed through Albania for
their courage and their love of independence.

After several battles, in which his enemies had the a vantage, Ali
began negotiations with Ibrahim, and finally concluded a treaty
offensive and defensive.  This fresh alliance was, like the first, to
be cemented by a marriage.  The virtuous Emineh, seeing her son Veli
united to the second daughter of Ibrahim, trusted that the feud
between the two families was now quenched, and thought herself at the
summit of happiness.  But her joy was not of long duration; the
death-groan was again to be heard amidst the songs of the
marriage-feast.

The daughter of Chainitza, by her first husband, Ali, had married a
certain Murad, the Bey of Clerisoura.  This nobleman, attached to
Ibrahim Pacha by both blood and affection, since the death of Sepher
Bey, had, become the special object of Ali's hatred, caused by the
devotion of Murad to his patron, over whom he had great influence,
and from whom nothing could detach him.  Skilful in concealing truth
under special pretexts, Ali gave out that the cause of his known
dislike to this young man was that the latter, although his nephew by
marriage, had several times fought in hostile ranks against him.
Therefore the amiable Ibrahim made use of the marriage treaty to
arrange an honourable reconciliation between Murad Bey and his uncle,
and appointed the former "Ruler a the Marriage Feast," in which
capacity he was charged to conduct the bride to Janina and deliver
her to her husband, the young Veli Bey.  He had accomplished his
mission satisfactorily, and was received by Ali with all apparent
hospitality.  The festival began on his arrival towards the end of
November 1791, and had already continued several days, when suddenly
it was announced that a shot had been fired upon Ali, who had only
escaped by a miracle, and that the assassin was still at large.  This
news spread terror through the city and the palace, and everyone
dreaded being seized as the guilty person.  Spies were everywhere
employed, but they declared search was useless, and that there must
bean extensive conspiracy against Ali's life.  The latter complained
of being surrounded by enemies, and announced that henceforth he
would receive only one person at a time, who should lay down his arms
before entering the hall now set apart for public audience.  It was a
chamber built over a vault, and entered by a sort of trap-door, only
reached by a ladder.

After having for several days received his couriers in this sort of
dovecot, Ali summoned his nephew in order to entrust with him the
wedding gifts.  Murad took this as a sign of favour, and joyfully
acknowledged the congratulations of his friends.  He presented
himself at the time arranged, the guards at the foot of the ladder
demanded his arms, which he gave up readily, and ascended the ladder
full of hope.  Scarcely had the trap-door closed behind him when a
pistol ball, fired from a dark corner, broke his shoulder blade, and
he fell, but sprang up and attempted to fly.  Ali issued from his
hiding place and sprang upon him, but notwithstanding his wound the
young bey defended himself vigorously, uttering terrible cries.  The
pacha, eager to finish, and finding his hands insufficient, caught a
burning log from the hearth, struck his nephew in the face with it,
felled him to the ground, and completed his bloody task.  This
accomplished, Ali called for help with loud cries, and when his
guards entered he showed the bruises he had received and the blood
with which he was covered, declaring that he had killed in
self-defence a villain who endeavoured to assassinate him.  He
ordered the body to be searched, and a letter was found in a pocket
which Ali had himself just placed there, which purported to give the
details of the pretended conspiracy.

As Murad's brother was seriously compromised by this letter, he also
was immediately seized, and strangled without any pretence of trial.
The whole palace rejoiced, thanks were rendered to Heaven by one of
those sacrifices of animals still occasionally made in the East to
celebrate an escape from great danger, and Ali released some
prisoners in order to show his gratitude to Providence for having
protected him from so horrible a crime.  He received congratulatory
visits, and composed an apology attested by a judicial declaration by
the cadi, in which the memory of Murad and his brother was declared
accursed.  Finally, commissioners, escorted by a strong body of
soldiers, were sent to seize the property of the two brothers,
because, said the decree, it was just that the injured should inherit
the possessions of his would-be assassins.

Thus was exterminated the only family capable of opposing the Pacha
of Janina, or which could counterbalance his influence over the weak
Ibrahim of Berat.  The latter, abandoned by his brave defenders, and
finding himself at the mercy of his enemy, was compelled to submit to
what he could not prevent, and protested only by tears against these
crimes, which seemed to herald a terrible future for himself.

As for Emineh, it is said that from the date of this catastrophe she
separated herself almost entirely from her blood-stained husband, and
spent her life in the recesses of the harem, praying as a Christian
both for the murderer and his victims.  It is a relief, in the midst
of this atrocious saturnalia to encounter this noble and gentle
character, which like a desert oasis, affords a rest to eyes wearied
with the contemplation of so much wickedness and treachery.

Ali lost in her the guardian angel who alone could in any way
restrain his violent passions.  Grieved at first by the withdrawal of
the wife whom hitherto he had loved exclusively, he endeavoured in
vain to regain her affection; and then sought in new vices
compensation for the happiness he had lost, and gave himself up to
sensuality.  Ardent in everything, he carried debauchery to a
monstrous extent, and as if his palaces were not large enough for his
desires, he assumed various disguises; sometimes in order to traverse
the streets by night in search of the lowest pleasures; sometimes
penetrating by day into churches and private houses seeking for young
men and maidens remarkable for their beauty, who were then carried
off to his harem.

His sons, following in his footsteps, kept also scandalous
households, and seemed to dispute preeminence in evil with their
father, each in his own manner.  Drunkenness was the speciality of
the eldest, Mouktar, who was without rival among the hard drinkers of
Albania, and who was reputed to have emptied a whole wine-skin in one
evening after a plentiful meal.  Gifted with the hereditary violence
of his family, he had, in his drunken fury, slain several persons,
among others his sword-bearer, the companion of his childhood and
confidential friend of his whole life.  Veli chose a different
course.  Realising the Marquis de Sade as his father had realised
Macchiavelli, he delighted in mingling together debauchery and
cruelty, and his amusement consisted in biting the lips he had
kissed, and tearing with his nails the forms he had caressed.  The
people of Janina saw with horror more than one woman in their midst
whose nose and ears he had caused to be cut off, and had then turned
into the streets.

It was indeed a reign of terror; neither fortune, life, honour, nor
family were safe.  Mothers cursed their fruitfulness, and women their
beauty.  Fear soon engenders corruption, and subjects are speedily
tainted by the depravity of their masters.  Ali, considering a
demoralised race as easier to govern, looked on with satisfaction.

While he strengthened by every means his authority from within, he
missed no opportunity of extending his rule without.  In 1803 he
declared war against the Suliots, whose independence he had
frequently endeavoured either to purchase or to overthrow.  The army
sent against them, although ten thousand strong, was at first beaten
everywhere.  Ali then, as usual, brought treason to his aid, and
regained the advantage.  It became evident that, sooner or later, the
unhappy Suliots must succumb.

Foreseeing the horrors which their defeat would entail, Emineh,
touched with compassion, issued from her seclusion and cast herself
at Ali's feet.  He raised her, seated her beside him, and inquired as
to her wishes.  She spoke of, generosity, of mercy; he listened as if
touched and wavering, until she named the Suliots.  Then, filled with
fury, he seized a pistol and fired at her.  She was not hurt, but
fell to the ground overcome with terror, and her women hastily
intervened and carried her away.  For the first time in his life,
perhaps, Ali shuddered before the dread of a murder.

It was his wife, the mother of his children, whom he saw lying at his
feet, and the recollection afflicted and tormented him.  He rose in
the night and went to Emineh's apartment; he knocked and called, but
being refused admittance, in his anger he broke open the door.
Terrified by the noise; and at the sight of her infuriated husband,
Emineh fell into violent convulsions, and shortly expired.  Thus
perished the daughter of Capelan Pacha, wife of Ali Tepeleni, and
mother of Mouktar and Veli, who, doomed to live surrounded by evil,
yet remained virtuous and good.

Her death caused universal mourning throughout Albania, and produced
a not less deep impression on the mind of her murderer.  Emineh's
spectre pursued him in his pleasures, in the council chamber, in the
hours of night.  He saw her, he heard her, and would awake,
exclaiming, "my wife!  my wife!--It is my wife!--Her eyes are angry;
she threatens me!--Save me!  Mercy!"  For more than ten years Ali
never dared to sleep alone.




CHAPTER IV

In December, the Suliots, decimated by battle, worn by famine,
discouraged by treachery, were obliged to capitulate.  The treaty
gave them leave to go where they would, their own mountains excepted.
The unfortunate tribe divided into two parts, the one going towards
Parga, the other towards Prevesa.  Ali gave orders for the
destruction of both, notwithstanding the treaty.

The Parga division was attacked in its march, and charged by a
numerous body of Skipetars.  Its destruction seemed imminent, but
instinct suddenly revealed to the ignorant mountaineers the one
manoeuvre which might save them.  They formed a square, placing old
men, women, children, and cattle in the midst, and, protected by this
military formation, entered Parga in full view of the cut-throats
sent to pursue them.

Less fortunate was the Prevesa division, which, terrified by a sudden
and unexpected attack, fled in disorder to a Greek convent called
Zalongos.  But the gate was soon broken down, and the unhappy Suliots
massacred to the last man.

The women, whose tents had been pitched on the summit of a lofty
rock, beheld the terrible carnage which destroyed their defenders.
Henceforth their only prospect was that of becoming the slaves of
those who had just slaughtered their husbands and brothers.  An
heroic resolution spared them this infamy; they joined hands, and
chanting their national songs, moved in a solemn dance round the
rocky platform.  As the song ended, they uttered a prolonged and
piercing cry, and cast themselves and their children down into the
profound abyss beneath.

There were still some Suliots left in their country when Ali Pacha
took possession of it.  These were all taken and brought to Janina,
and their sufferings were the first adornments of the festival made
for the army.  Every soldier's imagination was racked for the
discovery of new tortures, and the most original among them had the
privilege of themselves carrying out their inventions.

There were some who, having had their noses and ears cut off, were
compelled to eat them raw, dressed as a salad.  One young man was
scalped until the skin fell back upon his shoulders, then beaten
round the court of the seraglio for the pacha's entertainment, until
at length a lance was run through his body and he was cast on the
funeral pile.  Many were boiled alive and their flesh then thrown to
the dogs.

From this time the Cross has disappeared from the Selleid mountains,
and the gentle prayer of Christ no longer wakes the echoes of Suli.

During the course of this war, and shortly after the death of Emineh,
another dismal drama was enacted in the pacha's family, whose active
wickedness nothing seemed to weary.  The scandalous libertinism of
both father and sons had corrupted all around as well as themselves.
This demoralisation brought bitter fruits for all alike: the subjects
endured a terrible tyranny; the masters sowed among themselves
distrust, discord, and hatred.  The father wounded his two sons by
turns in their tenderest affections, and the sons avenged themselves
by abandoning their father in the hour of danger.

There was in Janina a woman named Euphrosyne, a niece of the
archbishop, married to one of the richest Greek merchants, and noted
for wit and beauty.  She was already the mother of two children, when
Mouktar became enamoured of her, and ordered her to come to his
palace.  The unhappy Euphrosyne, at once guessing his object,
summoned a family council to decide what should be done.  All agreed
that there was no escape, and that her husband's life was in danger,
on account of the jealousy of his terrible rival.  He fled the city
that same night, and his wife surrendered herself to Mouktar, who,
softened by her charms, soon sincerely loved her, and overwhelmed her
with presents and favours.  Things were in this position when Mouktar
was obliged to depart on an important expedition.

Scarcely had he started before his wives complained to Ali that
Euphrosyne usurped their rights and caused their husband to neglect
them.  Ali, who complained greatly of his sons' extravagance, and
regretted the money they squandered, at once struck a blow which was
both to enrich himself and increase the terror of his name.

One night he appeared by torchlight, accompanied by his guards, at
Euphrosyne's house.  Knowing his cruelty and avarice, she sought to
disarm one by gratifying the other: she collected her money and
jewels and laid them at Ali's feet with a look of supplication.

"These things are only my own property, which you restore," said he,
taking possession of the rich offering.  "Can you give back the heart
of Mouktar, which you have stolen?"

Euphrosyne besought him by his paternal feelings, for the sake of his
son whose love had been her misfortune and was now her only crime, to
spare a mother whose conduct had been otherwise irreproachable.  But
her tears and pleadings produced no effect on Ali, who ordered her to
be taken, loaded with fetters and covered with a piece of sackcloth,
to the prison of the seraglio.

If it were certain that there was no hope for the unhappy Euphrosyne,
one trusted that she might at least be the only victim.  But Ali,
professing to follow the advice of some severe reformers who wished
to restore decent morality, arrested at the same time fifteen ladies
belonging to the best Christian families in Janina.  A Wallachian,
named Nicholas Janco, took the opportunity to denounce his own wife,
who was on the point of becoming a mother, as guilty of adultery, and
handed her also over to the pacha.  These unfortunate women were
brought before Ali to undergo a trial of which a sentence of death
was the foregone conclusion.  They were then confined in a dungeon,
where they spent two days of misery.  The third night, the
executioners appeared to conduct them to the lake where they were to
perish.  Euphrosyne, too exhausted to endure to the end, expired by
the way, and when she was flung with the rest into the dark waters,
her soul had already escaped from its earthly tenement.  Her body was
found the next day, and was buried in the cemetery of the monastery
of Saints-Anargyres, where her tomb, covered with white iris and
sheltered by a wild olive tree, is yet shown.

Mouktar was returning from his expedition when a courier from his
brother Veli brought him a letter informing him of these events.  He
opened it.  "Euphrosyne!" he cried, and, seizing one of his pistols,
fired it at the messenger, who fell dead at his feet,--"Euphrosyne,
behold thy first victim!"  Springing on his horse, he galloped
towards Janina.  His guards followed at a distance, and the
inhabitants of all the villages he passed fled at his approach.  He
paid no attention to them, but rode till his horse fell dead by the
lake which had engulfed Euphrosyne, and then, taking a boat, he went
to hide his grief and rage in his own palace.

Ali, caring little for passion which evaporated in tears and cries,
sent an order to Mouktar to appear before him at once.  "He will not
kill you," he remarked to his messenger, with a bitter smile.  And,
in fact, the man who a moment before was furiously raging and
storming against his father, as if overwhelmed by this imperious
message, calmed down, and obeyed.

"Come hither, Mouktar, "said the pacha, extending his murderous hand
to be kissed as soon as his son appeared.  "I shall take no notice of
your anger, but in future never forget that a man who braves public
opinion as I do fears nothing in the world.  You can go now; when
your troops have rested from their march, you can come and ask for
orders.  Go, remember what I have said."

Mouktar retired as submissively as if he had just received pardon for
some serious crime, and found no better consolation than to spend the
night with Veli in drinking and debauchery.  But a day was to come
when the brothers, alike outraged by their father, would plot and
carry out a terrible vengeance.

However, the Porte began to take umbrage at the continual
aggrandisement of the Pacha of Janina.  Not daring openly to attack
so formidable a vassal, the sultan sought by underhand means to
diminish his power, and under the pretext that Ali was becoming too
old for the labour of so many offices, the government of Thessaly was
withdrawn from him, but, to show that this was not done in enmity,
the province was entrusted to his nephew, Elmas Bey, son of Suleiman
and Chainitza.

Chainitza, fully as ambitious as her brother, could not contain her
delight at the idea of governing in the name of her son, who was weak
and gentle in character and accustomed to obey her implicitly.  She
asked her brother's permission to go to Trikala to be present at the
installation, and obtained it, to everybody's astonishment; for no
one could imagine that Ali would peacefully renounce so important a
government as that of Thessaly.  However, he dissembled so skilfully
that everyone was deceived by his apparent resignation, and applauded
his magnanimity, when he provided his sister with a brilliant escort
to conduct her to the capital of the province of which he had just
been deprived in favour of his nephew.  He sent letters of
congratulation to the latter as well as magnificent presents, among
them a splendid pelisse of black fox, which had cost more than a
hundred thousand francs of Western money.  He requested Elmas Bey to
honour him by wearing this robe on the day when the sultan's envoy
should present him with the firman of investiture, and Chainitza
herself was charged to deliver both gifts and messages.

Chainitza arrived safely at Trikala, and faithfully delivered the
messages with which she had been entrusted.  When the ceremony she so
ardently desired took place, she herself took charge of all the
arrangements.  Elmas, wearing the black fox pelisse, was proclaimed,
and acknowledged as Governor of Thessaly in her presence.  "My son is
pacha!" she cried in the delirium of joy.  "My son is pacha! and my
nephews will die of envy!  "But her triumph was not to be of long
duration.  A few days after his installation, Elmas began to feel
strangely languid.  Continual lethargy, convulsive sneezing, feverish
eyes, soon betokened a serious illness.  Ali's gift had accomplished
its purpose.  The pelisse, carefully impregnated with smallpox germs
taken from a young girl suffering from this malady, had conveyed the
dreaded disease to the new pacha, who, not having been inoculated,
died in a few days.

The grief of Chainitza at her son's death displayed itself in sobs,
threats, and curses, but, not knowing whom to blame for her
misfortune, she hastened to leave the scene of it, and returned to
Janina, to mingle her tears with those of her brother.  She found Ali
apparently in such depths of grief, that instead of suspecting, she
was actually tempted to pity him, and this seeming sympathy soothed
her distress, aided by the caresses of her second son, Aden Bey.
Ali, thoughtful of his own interests, took care to send one of his
own officers to Trikala, to administer justice in the place of his
deceased nephew, and the Porte, seeing that all attempts against him
only caused misfortune, consented to his resuming the government of
Thessaly.

This climax roused the suspicions of many persons.  But the public
voice, already discussing the causes of the death of Elinas, was
stifled by the thunder of the cannon, which, from the ramparts of
Janina, announced to Epirus the birth of another son to Ali, Salik
Bey, whose mother was a Georgian slave.

Fortune, seemingly always ready both to crown Ali's crimes with
success and to fulfil his wishes, had yet in reserve a more precious
gift than any of the others, that of a good and beautiful wife; who
should replace, and even efface the memory of the beloved Emineh.

The Porte, while sending to Ali the firman which restored to him the
government of Thessaly, ordered him to seek out and destroy a society
of coiners who dwelt within his jurisdiction.  Ali, delighted to,
prove his zeal by a service which cost nothing but bloodshed; at once
set his spies to work, and having discovered the abode of the gang,
set out for the place attended by a strong escort.  It was a village
called Plikivitza.

Having arrived in the evening, he spent the night in taking measures
to prevent escape, and at break of day attacked the village suddenly
with his whole force.  The coiners were seized in the act.  Ali
immediately ordered the chief to be hung at his own door and the
whole population to be massacred.  Suddenly a young girl of great
beauty made her way through the tumult and sought refuge at his feet.
Ali, astonished, asked who she was.  She answered with a look of
mingled innocence and terror, kissing his hands, which she bathed
with tears, and said:

"O my lord!  I implore thee to intercede with the terrible vizier Ali
for my mother and brothers.  My father is dead, behold where he hangs
at the door of our cottage!  But we have done nothing to rouse the
anger of our dreadful master.  My mother is a poor woman who never
offended anyone, and we are only weak children.  Save us from him!"

Touched in spite of himself, the pacha took the girl in his arms, and
answered her with a gentle smile.

"Thou hast come to the wrong man, child: I am this terrible vizier."

"Oh no, no!  you are good, you will be our good lord."

"Well, be comforted, my child, and show me thy mother and thy
brothers; they shall be spared.  Thou hast saved their lives."

And as she knelt at his feet, overcome with joy, he raised her and
asked her name.

"Basilessa," she replied.

"Basilessa, Queen!  it is a name of good augury.  Basilessa, thou
shalt dwell with me henceforth."

And he collected the members of her family, and gave orders for them
to be sent to Janina in company with the maiden, who repaid his mercy
with boundless love and devotion.

Let us mention one trait of gratitude shown by Ali at the end of this
expedition, and his record of good deeds is then closed.  Compelled
by a storm to take refuge in a miserable hamlet, he inquired its
name, and on hearing it appeared surprised and thoughtful, as if
trying to recall lost memories.  Suddenly he asked if a woman named
Nouza dwelt in the village, and was told there was an old infirm
woman of that name in great poverty.  He ordered her to be brought
before him.  She came and prostrated herself in terror.  Ali raised
her kindly.

"Dost thou not know me?" he asked.

"Have mercy, great Vizier," answered the poor woman, who, having
nothing to lose but her life, imagined that even that would be taken
from her.

"I see," said the pacha, "that if thou knowest me, thou dost not
really recognise me."

The woman looked at him wonderingly, not understanding his words in
the least.

"Dost thou remember," continued Ali, "that forty years ago a young
man asked for shelter from the foes who pursued him?  Without
inquiring his name or standing, thou didst hide him in thy humble
house, and dressed his wounds, and shared thy scanty food with him,
and when he was able to go forward thou didst stand on thy threshold
to wish him good luck and success.  Thy wishes were heard, for the
young man was Ali Tepeleni, and I who speak am he!"

The old woman stood overwhelmed with astonishment.  She departed
calling down blessings on the pasha, who assured her a pension of
fifteen hundred francs for the rest of her days.

But these two good actions are only flashes of light illuminating the
dark horizon of Ali's life for a brief moment.  Returned to Janina,
he resumed his tyranny, his intrigues, and cruelty.  Not content with
the vast territory which owned his sway, he again invaded that of his
neighbours on every pretext.  Phocis, Mtolia, Acarnania, were by
turns occupied by his troops, the country ravaged, and the
inhabitants decimated.  At the same time he compelled Ibrahim Pacha
to surrender his last remaining daughter, and give her in marriage to
his nephew, Aden Bey, the son of Chainitza.  This new alliance with a
family he had so often attacked and despoiled gave him fresh arms
against it, whether by being enabled better to watch the pasha's
sons, or to entice them into some snare with greater ease.

Whilst he thus married his nephew, he did not neglect the advancement
of his sons.  By the aid of the French Ambassador, whom he had
convinced of his devotion to the Emperor Napoleon, he succeeded in
getting the pachalik of Morea bestowed on Veli, and that of Lepanto
on Mouktar.  But as in placing his sons in these exalted positions
his only aim was to aggrandise and consolidate his own power, he
himself ordered their retinues, giving them officers of his own
choosing.  When they departed to their governments, he kept their
wives, their children, and even their furniture as pledges, saying
that they ought not to be encumbered with domestic establishments in
time of war, Turkey just then being at open war with England.  He
also made use of this opportunity to get rid of people who displeased
him, among others, of a certain Ismail Pacho Bey, who had been
alternately both tool and enemy, whom he made secretary to his son
Veli, professedly as a pledge of reconciliation and favour, but
really in order to despoil him more easily of the considerable
property which he possessed at Janina.  Pacho was not deceived, and
showed his resentment openly.  "The wretch banishes me," he cried,
pointing out Ali, who was sitting at a window in the palace, "he
sends me away in order to rob me; but I will avenge myself whatever
happens, and I shall die content if I can procure his destruction at
the price of my own."

Continually increasing his power, Ali endeavoured to consolidate it
permanently.  He had entered by degrees into secret negotiations with
all the great powers of Europe, hoping in the end to make himself
independent, and to obtain recognition as Prince of Greece.  A
mysterious and unforeseen incident betrayed this to the Porte, and
furnished actual proofs of his treason in letters confirmed by Ali's
own seal.  The Sultan Selim immediately, sent to Janina a "kapidgi-
bachi," or plenipotentiary, to examine into the case and try
the delinquent.

Arrived at Janina, this officer placed before Ali the proofs of his
understanding with the enemies of the State.  Ali was not strong
enough to throw off the mask, and yet could not deny such
overwhelming evidence.  He determined to obtain time.

"No wonder," said he, "that I appear guilty in the eyes of His
Highness.  This seal is, certainly mine, I cannot deny it; but the
writing is not that of my secretaries, and the seal must have been
obtained and used to sign these guilty letters in order to ruin me.
I pray you to grant me a few days in order to clear up this
iniquitous mystery, which compromises me in the eyes of my master the
sultan and of all good Mahommedans.  May Allah grant me the means of
proving my innocence, which is as pure as the rays of the sun,
although everything seems against me!"

After this conference, Ali, pretending to be engaged in a secret
inquiry, considered how he could legally escape from this
predicament.  He spent some days in making plans which were given up
as soon as formed, until his fertile genius at length suggested a
means of getting clear of one of the greatest difficulties in which
he had ever found himself.  Sending for a Greek whom he had often
employed, he addressed him thus:

"Thou knowest I have always shown thee favour, and the day is arrived
when thy fortune shall be made.  Henceforth thou shalt be as my son,
thy children shall be as mine, my house shall be thy home, and in
return for my benefits I require one small service.  This accursed
kapidgi-bachi has come hither bringing certain papers signed with my
seal, intending to use them to my discredit, and thus to extort money
from me.  Of money I have already given too much, and I intend this
time to escape without being plundered except for the sake of a good
servant like thee.  Therefore, my son, thou shalt go before the
tribunal when I tell thee, and declare before this kapidgi-bachi and
the cadi that thou hast written these letters attributed to me, and
that thou didst seal them with my seal, in order to give them due
weight and importance."

The unhappy Greek grew pale and strove to answer.

"What fearest thou, my son?" resumed Ali.  "Speak, am I not thy good
master?  Thou wilt be sure of my lasting favour, and who is there to
dread when I protect thee?  Is it the kapidgi-bachi? he has no
authority here.  I have thrown twenty as good as he into the lake!
If more is required to reassure thee, I swear by the Prophet, by my
own and my sons' heads, that no harm shall come to thee from him.  Be
ready, then, to do as I tell thee, and beware of mentioning this
matter to anyone, in order that all may be accomplished according to
our mutual wishes."

More terrified by dread of the pacha, from whose wrath in case of
refusal there was no chance of escape, than tempted by his promises,
the Greek undertook the false swearing required.  Ali, delighted,
dismissed him with a thousand assurances of protection, and then
requested the presence of the sultan's envoy, to whom he said, with
much emotion:

"I have at length unravelled the infernal plot laid against me; it is
the work of a man in the pay of the implacable enemies of the Sublime
Porte, and who is a Russian agent.  He is in my power, and I have
given him hopes of pardon on condition of full confession.  Will you
then summon the cadi, the judges and ecclesiastics of the town, in
order that they may hear the guilty man's deposition, and that the
light of truth may purify their minds?"

The tribunal was soon assembled, and the trembling Greek appeared in
the midst of a solemn silence.  "Knowest thou this writing?" demanded
the cadi.--"It is mine."--"And this seal?"--"It is that of my master,
Ali Pacha."--"How does it come to be placed at the foot of these
letters?"--"I did this by order of my chief, abusing the confidence
of my master, who occasionally allowed me to use it to sign his
orders."--"It is enough: thou canst withdraw."

Uneasy as to the success of his intrigue, Ali was approaching the
Hall of Justice.  As he entered the court, the Greek, who had just
finished his examination, threw himself at his feet, assuring him
that all had gone well.  "It is good," said Ali; "thou shalt have thy
reward."  Turning round, he made a sign to his guards, who had their
orders, and who instantly seized the unhappy Greek, and, drowning his
voice with their shouts, hung him in the courtyard.  This execution
finished, the pacha presented himself before the judges and inquired
the result of their investigation.  He was answered by a burst of
congratulation.  "Well," said he, "the guilty author of this plot
aimed at me is no more; I ordered him to be hung without waiting to
hear your decision.  May all enemies of our glorious sultan perish
even as he!"

A report of what had occurred was immediately drawn up, and, to
assist matters still further, Ali sent the kapidgi-bachi a gift of
fifty purses, which he accepted without difficulty, and also secured
the favour of the Divan by considerable presents.  The sultan,
yielding to the advice of his councillors, appeared to have again
received him into favour.

But Ali knew well that this appearance of sunshine was entirely
deceptive, and that Selim only professed to believe in his innocence
until the day should arrive when the sultan could safely punish his
treason.  He sought therefore to compass the latter's downfall, and
made common cause with his enemies, both internal and external.
A conspiracy, hatched between the discontented pachas and the English
agents, shortly broke out, and one day, when Ali was presiding at the
artillery practice of some French gunners sent to Albania by the
Governor of Illyria, a Tartar brought him news of the deposition of
Selim, who was succeeded by his nephew Mustapha.  Ali sprang up in
delight, and publicly thanked Allah for this great good fortune.  He
really did profit by this change of rulers, but he profited yet more
by a second revolution which caused the deaths both of Selim, whom
the promoters wished to reestablish on the throne, and of Mustapha
whose downfall they intended.  Mahmoud II, who was next invested with
the scimitar of Othman, came to the throne in troublous times, after
much bloodshed, in the midst of great political upheavals, and had
neither the will nor the power to attack one of his most powerful
vassals.  He received with evident satisfaction the million piastres
which, at, his installation, Ali hastened to send as a proof of his
devotion, assured the pacha of his favour, and confirmed both him and
his sons in their offices and dignities.  This fortunate change in
his position brought Ali's pride and audacity to a climax.  Free from
pressing anxiety, he determined to carry out a project which had been
the dream of his life.




CHAPTER V

After taking possession of Argyro-Castron, which he had long coveted,
Ali led his victorious army against the town of Kardiki, whose
inhabitants had formerly joined with those of Kormovo in the outrage
inflicted on his mother and sister.  The besieged, knowing they had
no mercy to hope for, defended themselves bravely, but were obliged
to yield to famine.  After a month's blockade, the common people,
having no food for themselves or their cattle, began to cry for mercy
in the open streets, and their chiefs, intimidated by the general
misery and unable to stand alone, consented to capitulate.  Ali,
whose intentions as to the fate of this unhappy town were irrevocably
decided, agreed to all that they asked.  A treaty was signed by both
parties, and solemnly sworn to on the Koran, in virtue of which
seventy-two beys, heads of the principal Albanian families, were to
go to Janina as free men, and fully armed.  They were to be received
with the honours due to their rank as free tenants of the sultan,
their lives and their families were to be spared, and also their
possessions.  The other inhabitants of Kardiki, being Mohammedans,
and therefore brothers of Ali, were to be treated as friends and
retain their lives and property.  On these conditions a quarter of
the town; was to be occupied by the victorious troops.

One of the principal chiefs, Saleh Bey, and his wife, foreseeing the
fate which awaited their friends, committed suicide at the moment
when, in pursuance of the treaty, Ali's soldiers took possession of
the quarter assigned to them.

Ali received the seventy-two beys with all marks of friendship when
they arrived at Janina.  He lodged them in a palace on the lake, and
treated them magnificently for some days.  But soon, having contrived
on some pretext to disarm them, he had them conveyed, loaded with
chains, to a Greek convent on an island in the lake, which was
converted into a prison.  The day of vengeance not having fully
arrived, he explained this breach of faith by declaring that the
hostages had attempted to escape.

The popular credulity was satisfied by this explanation, and no one
doubted the good faith of the pacha when he announced that he was
going to Kardiki to establish a police and fulfil the promises he had
made to the inhabitants.  Even the number of soldiers he took excited
no surprise, as Ali was accustomed to travel with a very numerous
suite.

After three days' journey, he stopped at Libokhovo, where his sister
had resided since the death of Aden Bey, her second son, cut off
recently by wickness.  What passed in the long interview they had no
one knew, but it was observed that Chainitza's tears, which till then
had flowed incessantly, stopped as if by magic, and her women, who
were wearing mourning, received an order to attire themselves as for
a festival.  Feasting and dancing, begun in Ali's honour, did not
cease after his departure.

He spent the night at Chenderia, a castle built on a rock, whence the
town of Kardiki was plainly visible.  Next day at daybreak Ali
despatched an usher to summon all the male inhabitants of Kardiki to
appear before Chenderia, in order to receive assurances of the
pacha's pardon and friendship.

The Kardikiotes at once divined that this injunction was the
precursor of a terrible vengeance: the whole town echoed with cries
and groans, the mosques were filled with people praying for
deliverance.  The appointed time arrived, they embraced each other as
if parting for ever, and then the men, unarmed, in number six hundred
and seventy, started for Chenderia.  At the gate of the town they
encountered a troop of Albanians, who followed as if to escort them,
and which increased in number as they proceeded.  Soon they arrived
in the dread presence of Ali Pacha.  Grouped in formidable masses
around him stood several thousand of his fierce soldiery.

The unhappy Kardikiotes realised their utter helplessness, and saw
that they, their wives an children, were completely at the mercy of
their implacable enemy.  They fell prostrate before the pacha, and
with all the fervour which the utmost terror could inspire, implored
him to grant them a generous pardon.

Ali for some time silently enjoyed the pleasure of seeing his ancient
enemies lying before him prostrate in the dust.  He then desired them
to rise, reassured them, called them brothers, sons, friends of his
heart.  Distinguishing some of his old acquaintances, he called them
to him, spoke familiarly of the days of their youth, of their games,
their early friendships, and pointing to the young men, said, with
tears in his eyes.

"The discord which has divided us for so many years has allowed
children not born at the time of our dissension to grow into men.  I
have lost the pleasure of watching the development of the off-spring
of my neighbours and the early friends of my youth, and of bestowing
benefits on them, but I hope shortly to repair the natural results of
our melancholy divisions."

He then made them splendid promises, and ordered them to assemble in
a neighbouring caravanserai, where he wished to give them a banquet
in proof of reconciliation.  Passing from the depths of despair to
transports of joy, the Kardikiotes repaired gaily to the
caravanserai, heaping blessings on the pacha, and blaming each other
for having ever doubted his good faith.

Ali was carried down from Chenderia in a litter, attended by his
courtiers, who celebrated his clemency in pompous speeches, to which
he replied with gracious smiles.  At the foot of the steep descent he
mounted his horse, and, followed by his troops, rode towards the
caravanserai.  Alone, and in silence, he rode twice round it, then,
returning to the gate, which had just been closed by his order, he
pulled up his horse, and, signing to his own bodyguard to attack the
building, "Slay them!" he cried in a voice of thunder.

The guards remained motionless in surprise and horror, then as the
pacha, with a roar, repeated his order, they indignantly flung down
their arms.  In vain he harangued, flattered, or threatened them;
some preserved a sullen silence, others ventured to demand mercy.
Then he ordered them away, and, calling on the Christian Mirdites who
served under his banner.

"To you, brave Latins," he cried, "I will now entrust the duty of
exterminating the foes of my race.  Avenge me, and I will reward you
magnificently."

A confused murmur rose from the ranks.  Ali imagined they were
consulting as to what recompense should be required as the price of
such deed.

"Speak," said he; "I am ready to listen to your demands and to
satisfy them."

Then the Mirdite leader came forward and threw back the hood of his
black cloak.

"O Pacha!" said he, looking Ali boldly in the face, "thy words are an
insult; the Mirdites do not slaughter unarmed prisoners in cold
blood.  Release the Kardikiotes, give them arms, and we will fight
them to the death; but we serve thee as soldiers and not as
executioners."

At these words; which the black-cloaked battalion received with
applause, Ali thought himself betrayed, and looked around with doubt
and mistrust.  Fear was nearly taking the place of mercy, words of
pardon were on his lips, when a certain Athanasius Vaya, a Greek
schismatic, and a favourite of the pacha's, whose illegitimate son he
was supposed to be, advanced at the head of the scum of the army, and
offered to carry out the death sentence.  Ali applauded his zeal,
gave him full authority to act, and spurred his horse to the top of a
neighbouring hill, the better to enjoy the spectacle.  The Christian
Mirdites and the Mohammedan guards knelt together to pray for the
miserable Kardikiotes, whose last hour had come.

The caravanserai where they were shut in was square enclosure, open
to the sky, and intended to shelter herds of buffaloes.  The
prisoners having heard nothing of what passed outside, were
astonished to behold Athanasius Vaya and his troop appearing on the
top of the wall.  They did not long remain in doubt.  Ali gave the
signal by a pistol-shot, and a general fusillade followed.  Terrible
cries echoed from the court; the prisoners, terrified, wounded,
crowded one upon another for shelter.  Some ran frantically hither
and thither in this enclosure with no shelter and no exit, until they
fell, struck down by bullets.  Some tried to climb the walls, in hope
of either escape or vengeance, only to be flung back by either
scimitars or muskets.  It was a terrible scene of despair and death.

After an hour of firing, a gloomy silence descended on the place, now
occupied solely by a heap of corpses.  Ali forbade any burial rites
on pain of death, and placed over the gate an inscription in letters
of gold, informing posterity that six hundred Kardikiotes had there
been sacrificed to the memory of his mother Kamco.

When the shrieks of death ceased in the enclosure, they began to be
heard in the town.  The assassins spread themselves through it, and
having violated the women and children, gathered them into a crowd to
be driven to Libokovo.  At every halt in this frightful journey fresh
marauders fell on the wretched victims, claiming their share in
cruelty and debauchery.  At length they arrived at their destination,
where the triumphant and implacable Chainitza awaited them.  As after
the taking of Kormovo, she compelled the women to cut off their hair
and to stuff with it a mattress on which she lay.  She then stripped
them, and joyfully narrated to them the massacre of their husbands,
fathers, brothers and sons, and when she had sufficiently enjoyed
their misery they were again handed over to the insults of the
soldiery.  Chainitza finally published an edict forbidding either
clothes, shelter, or food to be given to the women and children of
Kardiki, who were then driven forth into the woods either to die of
hunger or to be devoured by wild beasts.  As to the seventy-two
hostages, Ali put them all to death when he returned to Janina.  His
vengeance was indeed complete.

But as, filled with a horrible satisfaction, the pacha was enjoying
the repose of a satiated tiger, an indignant and threatening voice
reached him even in the recesses of his palace.  The Sheik Yussuf,
governor of the castle of Janina, venerated as a saint by the
Mohammedans on account of his piety, and universally beloved and
respected for his many virtues, entered Ali's sumptuous dwelling for
the first time.  The guards on beholding him remained stupefied and
motionless, then the most devout prostrated themselves, while others
went to inform the pacha; but no one dared hinder the venerable man,
who walked calmly and solemnly through the astonished attendants.
For him there existed no antechamber, no delay; disdaining the
ordinary forms of etiquette, he paced slowly through the various
apartments, until, with no usher to announce him, he reached that of
Ali.  The latter, whose impiety by no means saved him from
superstitious terrors, rose hastily from the divan and advanced to
meet the holy sheik, who was followed by a crowd of silent courtiers.
Ali addressed him with the utmost respect, and endeavoured even to
kiss his right hand.  Yussuf hastily withdrew it, covered it with his
mantle, and signed to the pacha to seat himself.  Ali mechanically
obeyed, and waited in solemn silence to hear the reason of this
unexpected visit.

Yussuf desired him to listen with all attention, and then reproached
him for his injustice and rapine, his treachery and cruelty, with
such vivid eloquence that his hearers dissolved in tears.  Ali,
though much dejected, alone preserved his equanimity, until at length
the sheik accused him of having caused the death of Emineh.  He then
grew pale, and rising, cried with terror:

"Alas! my father, whose name do you now pronounce?  Pray for me, or
at least do not sink me to Gehenna with your curses!"

"There is no need to curse thee," answered Yussuf.  "Thine own
crimes bear witness against thee.  Allah has heard their cry.  He
will summon thee, judge thee, and punish thee eternally.  Tremble,
for the time is at hand!  Thine hour is coming--is coming--is
coming!"

Casting a terrible glance at the pacha, the holy man turned his back
on him, and stalked out of the apartment without another word.

Ali, in terror, demanded a thousand pieces of gold, put them in a
white satin purse, and himself hastened with them to overtake the
sheik, imploring him to recall his threats.  But Yussuf deigned no
answer, and arrived at the threshold of the palace, shook off the
dust of his feet against it.

Ali returned to his apartment sad and downcast, and many days elapsed
before he could shake off the depression caused by this scene.  But
soon he felt more ashamed of his inaction than of the reproaches
which had caused it, and on the first opportunity resumed his usual
mode of life.

The occasion was the marriage of Moustai, Pacha of Scodra, with the
eldest daughter of Veli Pacha, called the Princess of Aulis, because
she had for dowry whole villages in that district.  Immediately after
the announcement of this marriage Ali set on foot a sort of
saturnalia, about the details of which there seemed to be as much
mystery as if he had been preparing an assassination.

All at once, as if by a sudden inundation, the very scum of the earth
appeared to spread over Janina.  The populace, as if trying to drown
their misery, plunged into a drunkenness which simulated pleasure.
Disorderly bands of mountebanks from the depths of Roumelia traversed
the streets, the bazaars and public places; flocks and herds, with
fleeces dyed scarlet, and gilded horns, were seen on all the roads
driven to the court by peasants under the guidance of their priests.
Bishops, abbots, ecclesiastics generally, were compelled to drink,
and to take part in ridiculous and indecent dances, Ali apparently
thinking to raise himself by degrading his more respectable subjects.
Day and night these spectacles succeeded each other with increasing
rapidity, the air resounded with firing, songs, cries, music, and the
roaring of wild beasts in shows.  Enormous spits, loaded with meat,
smoked before huge braziers, and wine ran in floods at tables
prepared in the palace courts.  Troops of brutal soldiers drove
workmen from their labour with whips, and compelled them to join in
the entertainments; dirty and impudent jugglers invaded private
houses, and pretending that they had orders from the pacha to display
their skill, carried boldly off whatever they could lay their hands
upon.  Ali saw the general demoralization with pleasure, especially
as it tended to the gratification of his avarice, Every guest was
expected to bring to the palace gate a gift in proportion to his
means, and foot officers watched to see that no one forgot this
obligation.  At length, on the nineteenth day, Ali resolved to crown
the feast by an orgy worthy of himself.  He caused the galleries and
halls of his castle by the lake to be decorated with unheard-of
splendour, and fifteen hundred guests assembled for a solemn banquet.
The pacha appeared in all his glory, surrounded by his noble
attendants and courtiers, and seating himself on a dais raised above
this base crowd which trembled at his glance, gave the signal to
begin.  At his voice, vice plunged into its most shameless
diversions, and the wine-steeped wings of debauchery outspread
themselves over the feast.  All tongues were at their freest, all
imaginations ran wild, all evil passions were at their height, when
suddenly the noise ceased, and the guests clung together in terror.
A man stood at the entrance of the hall, pale, disordered, and
wild-eyed, clothed in torn and blood-stained garments.  As everyone
made way at his approach, he easily reached the pacha, and
prostrating himself at his feet, presented a letter.  Ali opened and
rapidly perused it; his lips trembled, his eyebrows met in a terrible
frown, the muscles of his forehead contracted alarmingly.  He vainly
endeavoured to smile and to look as if nothing had happened, his
agitation betrayed him, and he was obliged to retire, after desiring
a herald to announce that he wished the banquet to continue.

Now for the subject of the message, and the cause of the dismay it
produced.




CHAPTER VI

Ali had long cherished a violent passion for Zobeide, the wife of his
son Veli Pacha: Having vainly attempted to gratify it after his son's
departure, and being indignantly repulsed, he had recourse to drugs,
and the unhappy Zobeide remained in ignorance of her misfortune until
she found she was pregnant.  Then, half-avowals from her women,
compelled to obey the pacha from fear of death, mixed with confused
memories of her own, revealed the whole terrible truth.  Not knowing
in her despair which way to turn, she wrote to Ali, entreating him to
visit the harem.  As head of the family, he had a right to enter,
being supposed responsible for the conduct of his sons' families, no-
law-giver having hitherto contemplated the possibility of so
disgraceful a crime.  When he appeared, Zobeide flung herself at his
feet, speechless with grief.  Ali acknowledged his guilt, pleaded the
violence of his passion, wept with his victim, and entreating her to
control herself and keep silence, promised that all should be made
right. Neither the prayers nor tears of Zobeide could induce him to
give up the intention of effacing the traces of his first crime by a
second even more horrible.

But the story was already whispered abroad, and Pacho Bey learnt all
its details from the spies he kept in Janina.  Delighted at the
prospect of avenging himself on the father, he hastened with his news
to the son.  Veli Pacha, furious, vowed vengeance, and demanded Pacho
Bey's help, which was readily promised.  But Ali had been warned, and
was not a man to be taken unawares.  Pacho Bey, whom Veli had just
promoted to the office of sword-bearer, was attacked in broad
daylight by six emissaries sent from Janina.  He obtained timely
help, however, and five of the assassins, taken red-handed, were at
once hung without ceremony in the market-place.  The sixth was the
messenger whose arrival with the news had caused such dismay at Ali's
banquet.

As Ali reflected how the storm he had raised could best be laid, he
was informed that the ruler of the marriage feast sent by Moustai,
Pacha of Scodra, to receive the young bride who should reign in his
harem, had just arrived in the plain of Janina.  He was Yussuf Bey of
the Delres, an old enemy of Ali's, and had encamped with his escort
of eight hundred warriors at the foot of Tomoros of Dodona.  Dreading
some treachery, he absolutely refused all entreaties to enter the
town, and Ali seeing that it was useless to insist, and that his
adversary for the present was safe, at once sent his grand-daughter,
the Princess of Aulis, out to him.

This matter disposed of, Ali was able to attend to his hideous family
tragedy.  He began by effecting the disappearance of the women whom
he had been compelled to make his accomplices; they were simply sewn
up in sacks by gipsies and thrown into the lake.  This done, he
himself led the executioners into a subterranean part of the castle,
where they were beheaded by black mutes as a reward for their
obedience.  He then sent a doctor to Zobeide; who succeeded in
causing a miscarriage, and who, his work done, was seized and
strangled by the black mutes who had just beheaded the gipsies.
Having thus got rid of all who could bear witness to his crime, he
wrote to Veli that he might now send for his wife and two of his
children, hitherto detained as hostages, and that the innocence of
Zobeide would confound a calumniator who had dared to assail him with
such injurious suspicions.

When this letter arrived, Pacho Bey, distrusting equally the
treachery of the father and the weakness of the son, and content with
having sown the seeds of dissension in his enemy's family, had
sufficient wisdom to seek safety in flight.  Ali, furious, vowed, on
hearing this, that his vengeance should overtake him even at the ends
of the earth.  Meanwhile he fell back on Yussuf Bey of the Debres,
whose escape when lately at Janina still rankled in his mind.  As
Yussuf was dangerous both from character and influence, Ali feared to
attack him openly, and sought to assassinate him.  This was not
precisely easy; for, exposed to a thousand dangers of this kind, the
nobles of that day were on their guard.  Steel and poison were used
up, and another way had to be sought.  Ali found it.

One of the many adventurers with whom Janina was filled penetrated to
the pacha's presence, and offered to sell the secret of a powder
whereof three grains would suffice to kill a man with a terrible
explosion--explosive powder, in short.  Ali heard with delight, but
replied that he must see it in action before purchasing.

In the dungeons of the castle by the lake, a poor monk of the order
of St. Basil was slowly dying, for having boldly refused a
sacrilegious simony proposed to him by Ali.  He was a fit subject for
the experiment, and was successfully blown to pieces, to the great
satisfaction of Ali, who concluded his bargain, and hastened to make
use of it.  He prepared a false firman, which, according to custom,
was enclosed and sealed in a cylindrical case, and sent to Yussuf Bey
by a Greek, wholly ignorant of the real object of his mission.
Opening it without suspicion, Yussuf had his arm blown off, and died
in consequence, but found time to despatch a message to Moustai Pacha
of Scodra, informing him of the catastrophe, and warning him to keep
good guard.

Yussuf's letter was received by Moustai just as a similar infernal
machine was placed in his hands under cover to his young wife.  The
packet was seized, and a careful examination disclosed its nature.
The mother of Moustai, a jealous and cruel woman, accused her
daughter-in-law of complicity, and the unfortunate Ayesha, though
shortly to become a mother, expired in agony from the effects of
poison, only guilty of being the innocent instrument of her
grandfather's treachery.

Fortune having frustrated Ali's schemes concerning Moustai Pacha,
offered him as consolation a chance of invading the territory of
Parga, the only place in Epirus which had hitherto escaped his rule,
and which he greedily coveted.  Agia, a small Christian town on the
coast, had rebelled against him and allied itself to Parga.  It
provided an excuse for hostilities, and Ali's troops, under his son
Mouktar, first seized Agia, where they only found a few old men to
massacre, and then marched on Parga, where the rebels had taken
refuge.  After a few skirmishes, Mouktar entered the town, and though
the Parganiotes fought bravely, they must inevitably have surrendered
had they been left to themselves.  But they had sought protection
from the French, who had garrisoned the citadel, and the French
grenadiers descending rapidly from the height, charged the Turks with
so much fury that they fled in all directions, leaving on the field
four "bimbashis," or captains of a thousand, and a considerable
number of killed and wounded.

The pacha's fleet succeeded no better than his army.  Issuing from
the Gulf of Ambracia, it was intended to attack Parga from the sea,
joining in the massacre, and cutting off all hope of escape from that
side, Ali meaning to spare neither the garrison nor any male
inhabitants over twelve years of age.  But a few shots fired from a
small fort dispersed the ships, and a barque manned by sailors from
Paxos pursued them, a shot from which killed Ali's admiral on his
quarter-deck.  He was a Greek of Galaxidi, Athanasius Macrys by name.

Filled with anxiety, Ali awaited news at Prevesa, where a courier,
sent off at the beginning of the action, had brought him oranges
gathered in the orchards of Parga.  Ali gave him a purse of gold, and
publicly proclaimed his success.  His joy was redoubled when a second
messenger presented two heads of French soldiers, and announced that
his troops were in possession of the lower part of Parga.  Without
further delay he ordered his attendants to mount, entered his
carriage, and started triumphantly on the Roman road to Nicopolis.
He sent messengers to his generals, ordering them to spare the women
and children of Parga, intended for his harem, and above all to take
strict charge of the plunder.  He was approaching the arena of
Nicopolis when a third Tartar messenger informed him of the defeat of
his army.  Ali changed countenance, and could scarcely articulate the
order to return to Prevesa.  Once in his palace, he gave way to such
fury that all around him trembled, demanding frequently if it could
be true that his troops were beaten.  "May your misfortune be upon
us!" his attendants answered, prostrating themselves.  All at once,
looking out on the calm blue sea which lay before his windows, he
perceived his fleet doubling Cape Pancrator and re-entering the
Ambracian Gulf under full sail; it anchored close by the palace, and
on hailing the leading ship a speaking trumpet announced to Ali the
death of his admiral, Athanasius Macrys.

"But Parga, Parga!" cried Ali.

"May Allah grant the pacha long life!  The Parganiotes have escaped
the sword of His Highness."

"It is the will of Allah!" murmured the pacha; whose head sank upon
his breast in dejection.

Arms having failed, Ali, as usual, took refuge in plots and
treachery, but this time, instead of corrupting his enemies with
gold, he sought to weaken them by division.




CHAPTER VII

The French commander Nicole, surnamed the "Pilgrim," on account of a
journey he had once made to Mecca, had spent six months at Janina
with a brigade of artillery which General Marmont, then commanding in
the Illyrian provinces, had for a time placed at Ali's disposal.  The
old officer had acquired the esteem and friendship of the pacha,
whose leisure he had often amused by stories of his campaigns and
various adventures, and although it was now long since they had met,
he still had the reputation of being Ali's friend.  Ali prepared his
plans accordingly.  He wrote a letter to Colonel Nicole, apparently
in continuation of a regular correspondence between them, in which he
thanked the colonel for his continued affection, and besought him by
various powerful motives to surrender Parga, of which he promised him
the governorship during the rest of his life.  He took good care to
complete his treason by allowing the letter to fall into the hands of
the chief ecclesiastics of Parga, who fell head-foremost into the
trap.  Seeing that the tone of the letter was in perfect accordance
with the former friendly relations between their French governor and
the pacha, they were convinced of the former's treachery.  But the
result was not as Ali had hoped: the Parganiotes resumed their former
negotiations with the English, preferring to place their freedom in
the hands of a Christian nation rather than to fall under the rule of
a Mohammedan satrap....  The English immediately sent a messenger to
Colonel Nicole, offering honourable conditions of capitulation.  The
colonel returned a decided refusal, and threatened to blow up the
place if the inhabitants, whose intentions he guessed, made the
slightest hostile movement.  However, a few days later, the citadel
was taken at night, owing to the treachery of a woman who admitted an
English detachment; and the next day, to the general astonishment,
the British standard floated over the Acropolis of Parga.

All Greece was then profoundly stirred by a faint gleam of the dawn
of liberty, and shaken by a suppressed agitation.  The Bourbons again
reigned in France, and the Greeks built a thousand hopes on an event
which changed the basis of the whole European policy.  Above all,
they reckoned on powerful assistance from Russia.  But England had
already begun to dread anything which could increase either the
possessions or the influence of this formidable power.  Above all,
she was determined that the Ottoman Empire should remain intact, and
that the Greek navy, beginning to be formidable, must be destroyed.
With these objects in view, negotiations with Ali Pacha were resumed.
The latter was still smarting under his recent disappointment, and to
all overtures answered only, "Parga!  I must have Parga."--And the
English were compelled to yield it!

Trusting to the word of General Campbell, who had formally promised,
on its surrender, that Parga should be classed along with the seven
Ionian Isles; its grateful inhabitants were enjoying a delicious rest
after the storm, when a letter from the Lord High Commissioner,
addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel de Bosset, undeceived them, and gave
warning of the evils which were to burst on the unhappy town.

On the 25th of March, 1817, notwithstanding the solemn promise made
to the Parganiotes, when they admitted the British troops, that they
should always be on the same footing as the Ionian Isles, a treaty
was signed at Constantinople by the British Plenipotentiary, which
stipulated the complete and stipulated cession of Parga and all its
territory to, the Ottoman Empire.  Soon there arrived at Janine Sir
John Cartwright, the English Consul at Patras, to arrange for the
sale of the lands of the Parganiotes and discuss the conditions of
their emigration.  Never before had any such compact disgraced
European diplomacy, accustomed hitherto to regard Turkish
encroachments as simple sacrilege.  But Ali Pacha fascinated the
English agents, overwhelming them with favours, honours, and feasts,
carefully watching them all the while.  Their correspondence was
intercepted, and he endeavoured by means of his agents to rouse the
Parganiotes against them.  The latter lamented bitterly, and appealed
to Christian Europe, which remained deaf to their cries.  In the name
of their ancestors, they demanded the rights which had been
guaranteed them.  "They will buy our lands," they said; "have we
asked to sell them?  And even if we received their value, can gold
give us a country and the tombs of our ancestors?"

Ali Pacha invited the Lord High Commissioner of Great Britain, Sir
Thomas Maitland, to a conference at Prevesa, and complained of the
exorbitant price of 1,500,000, at which the commissioners had
estimated Parga and its territory, including private property and
church furniture.  It had been hoped that Ali's avarice would
hesitate at this high price, but he was not so easily discouraged.
He give a banquet for the Lord High Commissioner, which degenerated
into a shameless orgy.  In the midst of this drunken hilarity the
Turk and the Englishman disposed of the territory of Parga; agreeing
that a fresh estimate should be made on the spot by experts chosen by
both English and Turks.  The result of this valuation was that the
indemnity granted to the Christians was reduced by the English to the
sum of 276,075 sterling, instead of the original 500,000.  And as
Ali's agents only arrived at the sum of 56,750, a final conference
was held at Buthrotum between Ali and the Lord High Commissioner.
The latter then informed the Parganiotes that the indemnity allowed
them was irrevocably fixed at 150,000!  The transaction is a disgrace
to the egotistical and venal nation which thus allowed the life and
liberty of a people to be trifled with, a lasting blot on the honour
of England!

The Parganiotes at first could believe neither in the infamy of their
protectors nor in their own misfortune; but both were soon confirmed
by a proclamation of the Lord High Commissioner, informing them that
the pacha's army was marching to take possession of the territory
which, by May 10th, must be abandoned for ever.

The fields were then in full bearing.  In the midst of plains
ripening for a rich harvest were 80,000 square feet of olive trees,
alone estimated at two hundred thousand guineas.  The sun shone in
cloudless azure, the air was balmy with the scent of orange trees, of
pomegranates and citrons.  But the lovely country might have been
inhabited by phantoms; only hands raised to heaven and brows bent to
the dust met one's eye.  Even the very dust belonged no more to the
wretched inhabitants; they were forbidden to take a fruit or a
flower, the priests might not remove either relics or sacred images.
Church, ornaments, torches, tapers, pyxes, had by this treaty all
become Mahommedan property.  The English had sold everything, even to
the Host!  Two days more, and all must be left.  Each was silently
marking the door of the dwelling destined so soon to shelter an
enemy, with a red cross, when suddenly a terrible cry echoed from
street to street, for the Turks had been perceived on the heights
overlooking the town.  Terrified and despairing, the whole population
hastened to fall prostrate before the Virgin of Parga, the ancient
guardian of their citadel.  A mysterious voice, proceeding from the
sanctuary, reminded them that the English had, in their iniquitous
treaty, forgotten to include the ashes of those whom a happier fate
had spared the sight of the ruin of Parga.  Instantly they rushed to
the graveyards, tore open the tombs, and collected the bones and
putrefying corpses.  The beautiful olive trees were felled, an
enormous funeral pyre arose, and in the general excitement the orders
of the English chief were defied.  With naked daggers in their hands,
standing in the crimson light of the flames which were consuming the
bones of their ancestors, the people of Parga vowed to slay their
wives and children, and to kill themselves to the last man, if the
infidels dared to set foot in the town before the appointed hour.
Xenocles, the last of the Greek poets, inspired by this sublime
manifestation of despair, even as Jeremiah by the fall of Jerusalem,
improvised a hymn which expresses all the grief of the exiles, and
which the exiles interrupted by their tears and sobs.

A messenger, crossing the sea in all haste, informed the Lord High
Commissioner of the terrible threat of the Parganiotes.  He started
at once, accompanied by General Sir Frederic Adams, and landed at
Parga by the light of the funeral pyre.  He was received with
ill-concealed indignation, and with assurances that the sacrifice
would be at once consummated unless Ali's troops were held back.  The
general endeavoured to console and to reassure the unhappy people,
and then proceeded to the outposts, traversing silent streets in
which armed men stood at each door only waiting a signal before
slaying their families, and then turning their weapons against the
English and themselves.  He implored them to have patience, and they
answered by pointing to the approaching Turkish army and bidding him
hasten.  He arrived at last and commenced negotiations, and the
Turkish officers, no less uneasy than the English garrison, promised
to wait till the appointed hour.  The next day passed in mournful
silence, quiet as death, At sunset on the following day, May 9, 1819,
the English standard on the castle of Parga was hauled down, and
after a night spent in prayer and weeping, the Christians demanded
the signal of departure.

They had left their dwellings at break of day, and scattering on the
shore, endeavoured to collect some relics of their country.  Some
filled little bags with ashes withdrawn from the funeral pile; others
took handfuls of earth, while the women and children picked up
pebbles which they hid in their clothing and pressed to their bosoms,
as if fearing to be deprived of them.  Meanwhile, the ships intended
to transport them arrived, and armed English soldiers superintended
the embarkation, which the Turks hailed from afar with, ferocious
cries.  The Parganiotes were landed in Corfu, where they suffered yet
more injustice.  Under various pretexts the money promised them was
reduced and withheld, until destitution compelled them to accept the
little that was offered.  Thus closed one of the most odious
transactions which modern history has been compelled to record.

The satrap of Janina had arrived at the fulfilment of his wishes.  In
the retirement of his fairy-like palace by the lake he could enjoy
voluptuous pleasures to the full.  But already seventy-eight years
had passed over his head, and old age had laid the burden of
infirmity upon him.  His dreams were dreams of blood, and vainly he
sought refuge in chambers glittering with gold, adorned with
arabesques, decorated with costly armour and covered with the richest
of Oriental carpets, remorse stood ever beside him.  Through the
magnificence which surrounded him there constantly passed the gale
spectre of Emineh, leading onwards a vast procession of mournful
phantoms, and the guilty pasha buried his face in his hands and
shrieked aloud for help.  Sometimes, ashamed of his weakness, he
endeavoured to defy both the reproaches of his conscience and the
opinion of the multitude, and sought to encounter criticism with
bravado.  If, by chance, he overheard some blind singer chanting in
the streets the satirical verses which, faithful to the poetical and
mocking genius of them ancestors, the Greeks frequently composed
about him, he would order the singer to be brought, would bid him
repeat his verses, and, applauding him, would relate some fresh
anecdote of cruelty, saying, "Go, add that to thy tale; let thy
hearers know what I can do; let them understand that I stop at
nothing in order to overcome my foes!  If I reproach myself with
anything, it is only with the deeds I have sometimes failed to carry
out."

Sometimes it was the terrors of the life after death which assailed
him.  The thought of eternity brought terrible visions in its train,
and Ali shuddered at the prospect of Al-Sirat, that awful bridge,
narrow as a spider's thread and hanging over the furnaces of Hell;
which a Mussulman must cross in order to arrive at the gate of
Paradise.  He ceased to joke about Eblis, the Prince of Evil, and
sank by degrees into profound superstition.  He was surrounded by
magicians and soothsayers; he consulted omens, and demanded talismans
and charms from the dervishes, which he had either sewn into his
garments, or suspended in the most secret parts of his palace, in
order to avert evil influences.  A Koran was hung about his neck as a
defence against the evil eye, and frequently he removed it and knelt
before it, as did Louis XI before the leaden figures of saints which
adorned his hat.  He ordered a complete chemical laboratory from
Venice, and engaged alchemists to distill the water of immortality,
by the help of which he hoped to ascend to the planets and discover
the Philosopher's Stone.  Not perceiving any practical result of
their labours, he ordered, the laboratory to be burnt and the
alchemists to be hung.

Ali hated his fellow-men.  He would have liked to leave no survivors,
and often regretted his inability to destroy all those who would have
cause to rejoice at his death, Consequently he sought to accomplish
as much harm as he could during the time which remained to him, and
for no possible reason but that of hatred, he caused the arrest of
both Ibrahim Pasha, who had already suffered so much at his hands,
and his son, and confined them both in a dungeon purposely
constructed under the grand staircase of the castle by the lake, in
order that he might have the pleasure of passing over their heads
each time he left his apartments or returned to them.

It was not enough for Ali merely to put to death those who displeased
him, the form of punishment must be constantly varied in order to
produce a fresh mode of suffering, therefore new tortures had to be
constantly invented.  Now it was a servant, guilty of absence without
leave, who was bound to a stake in the presence of his sister, and
destroyed by a cannon placed six paces off, but only loaded with
powder, in order to prolong the agony; now, a Christian accused of
having tried to blow up Janina by introducing mice with tinder
fastened to their tails into the powder magazine, who was shut up in
the cage of Ali's favourite tiger and devoured by it.

The pasha despised the human race as much as he hated it.  A European
having reproached him with the cruelty shown to his subjects, Ali
replied:--

"You do not understand the race with which I have to deal.  Were I to
hang a criminal on yonder tree, the sight would not deter even his
own brother from stealing in the crowd at its foot.  If I had an old
man burnt alive, his son would steal the ashes and sell them.  The
rabble can be governed by fear only, and I am the one man who does it
successfully."

His conduct perfectly corresponded to his ideas.  One great
feast-day, two gipsies devoted their lives in order to avert the evil
destiny of the pasha; and, solemnly convoking on their own heads all
misfortunes which might possibly befall him, cast themselves down
from the palace roof.  One arose with difficulty, stunned and
suffering, the other remained on the ground with a broken leg.  Ali
gave them each forty francs and an annuity of two pounds of maize
daily, and considering this sufficient, took no further trouble about
them.

Every year, at Ramadan, a large sum was distributed in alms among
poor women without distinction of sect.  But Ali contrived to change
this act of benevolence into a barbarous form of amusement.

As he possessed several palaces in Janina at a considerable distance
from each other, the one at which a distribution was to take place
was each day publicly announced, and when the women had waited there
for an hour or two, exposed to sun, rain or cold, as the case might
be, they were suddenly informed that they must go to some other
palace, at the opposite end of the town.  When they got there, they
usually had to wait for another hour, fortunate if they were not sent
off to a third place of meeting.  When the time at length arrived, an
eunuch appeared, followed by Albanian soldiers armed with staves,
carrying a bag of money, which he threw by handfuls right into the
midst of the assembly.  Then began a terrible uproar.  The women
rushed to catch it, upsetting each other, quarreling, fighting, and
uttering cries of terror and pain, while the Albanians, pretending to
enforce order, pushed into the crowd, striking right and left with
their batons.  The pacha meanwhile sat at a window enjoying the
spectacle, and impartially applauding all well delivered blows, no
matter whence they came.  During these distributions, which really
benefitted no one, many women were always severely hurt, and some
died from the blows they had received.

Ali maintained several carriages for himself and his family, but
allowed no one else to share in this prerogative.  To avoid being
jolted, he simply took up the pavement in Janina and the neighbouring
towns, with the result that in summer one was choked by dust, and in
winter could hardly get through the mud.  He rejoiced in the public
inconvenience, and one day having to go out in heavy rain, he
remarked to one of the officers of his escort, "How delightful to be
driven through this in a carriage, while you will have the pleasure
of following on horseback!  You will be wet and dirty, whilst I smoke
my pipe and laugh at your condition."

He could not understand why Western sovereigns should permit their
subjects to enjoy the same conveniences and amusements as themselves.
"If I had a theatre," he said, "I would allow no one to be present at
performances except my own children; but these idiotic Christians do
not know how to uphold their own dignity."

There was no end to the mystifications which it amused the pacha to
carry out with those who approached him.

One day he chose to speak Turkish to a Maltese merchant who came to
display some jewels.  He was informed that the merchant understood
only Greek and Italian.  He none the less continued his discourse
without allowing anyone to translate what he said into Greek.  The
Maltese at length lost patience, shut up his cases, and departed.
Ali watched him with the utmost calm, and as he went out told him,
still in Turkish, to come again the next day.

An unexpected occurrence seemed, like the warning finger of Destiny,
to indicate an evil omen for the pacha's future.  "Misfortunes arrive
in troops," says the forcible Turkish proverb, and a forerunner of
disasters came to Ali Dacha.

One morning he was suddenly roused by the Sheik Yussuf, who had
forced his way in, in spite of the guards.  "Behold!" said he,
handing Ali a letter, "Allah, who punishes the guilty, has permitted
thy seraglio of Tepelen to be burnt.  Thy splendid palace, thy
beautiful furniture, costly stuffs, cashmeers, furs, arms, all are
destroyed!  And it is thy youngest and best beloved son, Salik Bey
himself, whose hand kindled the flames!"  So saying; Yussuf turned
and departed, crying with a triumphant voice, "Fire! fire! fire!"

Ali instantly ordered his horse, and, followed by his guards, rode
without drawing rein to Tepelen.  As soon as he arrived at the place
where his palace had formerly insulted the public misery, he hastened
to examine the cellars where his treasures were deposited.  All was
intact, silver plate, jewels, and fifty millions of francs in gold,
enclosed in a well over which he had caused a tower to be built.
After this examination he ordered all the ashes to be carefully
sifted in hopes of recovering the gold in the tassels and fringes of
the sofas, and the silver from the plate and the armour.  He next
proclaimed through the length and breadth of the land, that, being by
the hand of Allah deprived of his house, and no longer possessing
anything in his native town, he requested all who loved him to prove
their affection by bringing help in proportion.  He fixed the day of
reception for each commune, and for almost each individual of any
rank, however small, according to their distance from Tepelen,
whither these evidences of loyalty were to be brought.

During five days Ali received these forced benevolences from all
parts.  He sat, covered with rags, on a shabby palm-leaf mat placed.
at the outer gate of his ruined palace, holding in his left hand a
villainous pipe of the kind used by the lowest people, and in his
right an old red cap, which he extended for the donations of the
passers-by.  Behind stood a Jew from Janina, charged with the office
of testing each piece of gold and valuing jewels which were offered
instead of money; for, in terror, each endeavoured to appear
generous.  No means of obtaining a rich harvest were neglected; for
instance, Ali distributed secretly large sums among poor and obscure
people, such as servants, mechanics, and soldiers, in order that by
returning them in public they might appear to be making great
sacrifices, so that richer and more distinguished persons could not,
without appearing ill-disposed towards the pacha, offer only the same
amount as did the poor, but were obliged to present gifts of enormous
value.

After this charity extorted from their fears, the pacha's subjects
hoped to be at peace.  But a new decree proclaimed throughout Albania
required them to rebuild and refurnish the formidable palace of
Tepelen entirely at the public expense.  Ali then returned to Janina,
followed by his treasure and a few women who had escaped from the
flames, and whom he disposed of amongst his friends, saying that he
was no longer sufficiently wealthy to maintain so many slaves.

Fate soon provided him with a second opportunity for amassing wealth.
Arta, a wealthy town with a Christian population, was ravaged by the
plague, and out of eight thousand inhabitants, seven thousand were
swept away.  Hearing this, Ali hastened to send commissioners to
prepare an account of furniture and lands which the pacha claimed as
being heir to his subjects.  A few livid and emaciated spectres were
yet to be found in the streets of Arta.  In order that the inventory
might be more complete, these unhappy beings were compelled to wash
in the Inachus blankets, sheets, and clothes steeped in bubonic
infection, while the collectors were hunting everywhere for imaginary
hidden treasure.  Hollow trees were sounded, walls pulled down, the
most unlikely corners examined, and a skeleton which was discovered
still girt with a belt containing Venetian sequins was gathered up
with the utmost care.  The archons of the town were arrested and
tortured in the hope of discovering buried treasure, the clue to
which had disappeared along with the owners.  One of these magistrates,
accused of having hidden some valuable objects, was plunged up to his
shoulders in a boiler full of melted lead and boiling oil.  Old men,
women, children, rich and poor alike, were interrogated, beaten, and
compelled to abandon the last remains of their property in order to
save their lives.

Having thus decimated the few inhabitants remaining to the town, it
became necessary to repeople it.  With this object in view, Ali's
emissaries overran the villages of Thessaly, driving before them all.
the people they met in flocks, and compelling them to settle in Arta.
These unfortunate colonists were also obliged to find money to pay
the pacha for the houses they were forced to occupy.

This business being settled, Ali turned to another which had long
been on his mind.  We have seen how Ismail Pacho Bey escaped the
assassins sent to murder him.  A ship, despatched secretly from
Prevesa, arrived at the place of his retreat.  The captain, posing as
a merchant, invited Ismail to come on board and inspect his goods.
But the latter, guessing a trap, fled promptly, and for some time all
trace of him was lost.  Ali, in revenge, turned his wife out of the
palace at Janina which she still occupied, and placed her in a
cottage, where she was obliged to earn a living by spinning.  But he
did not stop there, and learning after some time that Pacho Bey had
sought refuge with the Nazir of Drama, who had taken him into favour,
he resolved to strike a last blow, more sure and more terrible than
the others.  Again Ismail's lucky star saved him from the plots of
his enemy.  During a hunting party he encountered a kapidgi-bachi, or
messenger from the sultan, who asked him where he could find the
Nazir, to whom he was charged with an important communication.  As
kapidgi-bachis are frequently bearers of evil tidings, which it is
well to ascertain at once, and as the Nazir was at some distance,
Pacho Bey assumed the latter's part, and the sultan's confidential
messenger informed him that he was the bearer of a firman granted at
the request of Ali Pacha of Janina,

"Ali of Tepelenir.  He is my friend.  How can I serve him?"

"By executing the present order, sent you by the Divan, desiring you
to behead a traitor, named Pacho Bey, who crept into your service a
short time ago.

"Willingly I but he is not an easy man to seize being brave,
vigorous, clever, and cunning.  Craft will be necessary in this case.
He may appear at any moment, and it is advisable that he should not
see you.  Let no one suspect who you are, but go to Drama, which is
only two hours distant, and await me there.  I shall return this
evening, and you can consider your errand as accomplished."

The kapidgi-bachi made a sign of comprehension, and directed his
course towards Drama; while Ismail, fearing that the Nazir, who had
only known him a short time, would sacrifice him with the usual
Turkish indifference, fled in the opposite direction.  At the end of
an hour he encountered a Bulgarian monk, with whom he exchanged
clothes--a disguise which enabled him to traverse Upper Macedonia in
safety.  Arriving at the great Servian convent in the mountains
whence the Axius takes its rise, he obtained admission under an
assumed name.  But feeling sure of the discretion of the monks, after
a few days he explained his situation to them.

Ali, learning the ill-success of his latest stratagem, accused the
Nazir of conniving at Paeho Bey's escape.  But the latter easily
justified himself with the Divan by giving precise information of
what had really occurred.  This was what Ali wanted, who profited
thereby in having the fugitive's track followed up, and soon got wind
of his retreat.  As Pacho Bey's innocence had been proved in the
explanations given to the Porte, the death firman obtained against
him became useless, and Ali affected to abandon him to his fate, in
order the better to conceal the new plot he was conceiving against
him.

Athanasius Vaya, chief assassin of the Kardikiotes, to whom Ali
imparted his present plan for the destruction of Ismail, begged for
the honour of putting it into execution, swearing that this time
Ismail should not escape.  The master and the instrument disguised
their scheme under the appearance of a quarrel, which astonished the
whole town.  At the end of a terrible scene which took place in
public, Ali drove the confidant of his crimes from the palace,
overwhelming him with insults, and declaring that were Athanasius not
the son of his children's foster-mother, he would have sent him to
the gibbet.  He enforced his words by the application of a stick, and
Vaya, apparently overwhelmed by terror and affliction, went round to
all the nobles of the town, vainly entreating them to intercede for
him.  The only favour which Mouktar Pacha could obtain for him was a
sentence of exile allowing him to retreat to Macedonia.

Athanasius departed from Janina with all the demonstrations of utter
despair, and continued his route with the haste of one who fears
pursuit.  Arrived in Macedonia, he assumed the habit of a monk, and
undertook a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, saying that both the disguise
and the journey were necessary to his safety.  On the way he
encountered one of the itinerant friars of the great Servian convent,
to whom he described his disgrace in energetic terms, begging him to
obtain his admission among the lay brethren of his monastery.

Delighted at the prospect of bringing back to the fold of the Church
a man so notorious for his crimes, the friar hastened to inform his
superior, who in his turn lost no time in announcing to Pacho Bey
that his compatriot and companion in misfortune was to be received
among the lay brethren, and in relating the history of Athanasius as
he himself had heard it.  Pacho Bey, however, was not easily
deceived, and at once guessing that Vaya's real object was his own
assassination, told his doubts to the superior, who had already
received him as a friend.  The latter retarded the reception of Vaya
so as to give Pacho time to escape and take the road to Constantinople.
Once arrived there, he determined to brave the storm and encounter
Ali openly.

Endowed by nature with a noble presence and with masculine firmness,
Pacho Bey possessed also the valuable gift of speaking all the
various tongues of the Ottoman Empire.  He could not fail to
distinguish himself in the capital and to find an opening for his
great talents.  But his inclination drove him at first to seek his
fellow-exiles from Epirus, who were either his old companions in
arms, friends, of relations, for he was allied to all the principal
families, and was even, through his wife, nearly connected with his
enemy, Ali Pacha himself.

He had learnt what this unfortunate lady had already endured on his
account, and feared that she would suffer yet more if he took active
measures against the pacha.  While he yet hesitated between affection
and revenge, he heard that she had died of grief and misery.  Now
that despair had put an end to uncertainty, he set his hand to the
work.

At this precise moment Heaven sent him a friend to console and aid
him in his vengeance, a Christian from OEtolia, Paleopoulo by name.
This man was on the point of establishing himself in Russian
Bessarabia, when he met Pacho Bey and joined with him in the singular
coalition which was to change the fate of the Tepelenian dynasty.

Paleopoulo reminded his companion in misfortune of a memorial
presented to the Divan in 1812, which had brought upon Ali a disgrace
from which he only escaped in consequence of the overwhelming
political events which just then absorbed the attention of the
Ottoman Government.  The Grand Seigneur had sworn by the tombs of his
ancestors to attend to the matter as soon as he was able, and it was
only requisite to remind him of his vow.  Pacho Hey and his friend
drew up a new memorial, and knowing the sultan's avarice, took care
to dwell on the immense wealth possessed by Ali, on his scandalous
exactions, and on the enormous sums diverted from the Imperial
Treasury.  By overhauling the accounts of his administration,
millions might be recovered.  To these financial considerations Pacho
Bey added some practical ones.  Speaking as a man sure of his facts
and well acquainted with the ground, he pledged his head that with
twenty thousand men he would, in spite of Ali's troops and
strongholds, arrive before Janina without firing a musket.

However good these plans appeared, they were by no means to the taste
of the sultan's ministers, who were each and all in receipt of large
pensions from the man at whom they struck.  Besides, as in Turkey it
is customary for the great fortunes of Government officials to be
absorbed on their death by the Imperial Treasury, it of course
appeared easier to await the natural inheritance of Ali's treasures
than to attempt to seize them by a war which would certainly absorb
part of them.  Therefore, while Pacho Bey's zeal was commended, he
obtained only dilatory answers, followed at length by a formal
refusal.

Meanwhile, the old OEtolian, Paleopoulo, died, having prophesied the
approaching Greek insurrection among his friends, and pledged Pacho
Bey to persevere in his plans of vengeance, assuring him that before
long Ali would certainly fall a victim to them.  Thus left alone,
Pacho, before taking any active steps in his work of vengeance,
affected to give himself up to the strictest observances of the
Mohammedan religion.  Ali, who had established a most minute
surveillance over his actions, finding that his time was spent with
ulemas and dervishes, imagined that he had ceased to be dangerous,
and took no further trouble about him.




CHAPTER VIII

A career of successful crime had established Ali's rule over a
population equal to that of the two kingdoms of Sweden and Norway.
But his ambition was not yet satisfied.  The occupation of Parga did
not crown his desires, and the delight which it caused him was much
tempered by the escape of the Parganiotes, who found in exile a safe
refuge from his persecution.  Scarcely had he finished the conquest
of Middle Albania before he was exciting a faction against the young
Moustai Pacha in Scodra, a new object of greed.  He also kept an army
of spies in Wallachia, Moldavia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and, thanks
to them, he appeared to be everywhere present, and was mixed up in
every intrigue, private or political, throughout the empire.  He had
paid the English agents the price agreed on for Parga, but he repaid
himself five times over, by gifts extorted from his vassals, and by
the value of the Parga lands, now become his property.  His palace of
Tepelen had been rebuilt at the public expense, and was larger and
more magnificent than before; Janina was embellished with new
buildings; elegant pavilions rose on the shores of the lake; in
short, Ali's luxury was on a level with his vast riches.  His sons
and grandsons were provided for by important positions, and Ali
himself was sovereign prince in everything but the name.

There was no lack of flattery, even from literary persons.  At Vienna
a poem was pointed in his honour, and a French-Greek Grammar was
dedicated to him, and such titles as "Most Illustrious, "Most
Powerful," and "Most Clement," were showered upon him, as upon a man
whose lofty virtues and great exploits echoed through the world.
A native of Bergamo, learned in heraldry, provided him with a coat of
arms, representing, on a field gules, a lion, embracing three cubs,
emblematic of the Tepelenian dynasty.  Already he had a consul at
Leucadia accepted by the English, who, it is said, encouraged him to
declare himself hereditary Prince of Greece, under the nominal
suzerainty of the sultan; their real intention being to use him as a
tool in return for their protection, and to employ him as a political
counter-balance to the hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia, who for
the last twenty years had been simply Russian agents in disguise,
This was not all; many of the adventurers with whom the Levant
swarms, outlaws from every country, had found a refuge in Albania,
and helped not a little to excite Ali's ambition by their
suggestions.  Some of these men frequently saluted him as King, a
title which he affected to reject with indignation; and he disdained
to imitate other states by raising a private standard of his own,
preferring not to compromise his real power by puerile displays of
dignity; and he lamented the foolish ambition of his children, who
would ruin him, he said, by aiming, each, at becoming a vizier.
Therefore he did not place his hope or confidence in them, but in the
adventurers of every sort and kind, pirates, coiners, renegades,
assassins, whom he kept in his pay and regarded as his best support.
These he sought to attach to his person as men who might some day be
found useful, for he did not allow the many favours of fortune to
blind him to the real danger of his position.  A vizier," he was
answered, "resembles a man wrapped in costly furs, but he sits on a
barrel of powder, which only requires a spark to explode it."  The
Divan granted all the concessions which Ali demanded, affecting
ignorance of his projects of revolt and his intelligence with the
enemies of the State; but then apparent weakness was merely prudent
temporising. It was considered that Ali, already advanced in years,
could not live much longer, and it was hoped that, at his death,
Continental Greece, now in some measure detached from the Ottoman
rule, would again fall under the sultan's sway.

Meanwhile, Pacho Bey, bent on silently undermining Ali's influence;
had established himself as an intermediary for all those who came to
demand justice on account of the pacha's exactions, and he contrived
that both his own complaints and those of his clients, should
penetrate to the ears of the sultan; who, pitying his misfortunes,
made him a kapidgi-bachi, as a commencement of better things.  About
this time the sultan also admitted to the Council a certain Abdi
Effendi of Larissa, one of the richest nobles of Thessaly, who had
been compelled by the tyranny of Veli Pacha to fly from his country.
The two new dignitaries, having secured Khalid Effendi as a partisan,
resolved to profit by his influence to carry out their plans of
vengeance on the Tepelenian family.  The news of Pacho Bey's
promotion roused Ali from the security in which he was plunged, and
he fell a prey to the most lively anxiety.  Comprehending at once the
evil which this man,--trained in his own school, might cause him, he
exclaimed, "Ah! if Heaven would only restore me the strength of my
youth, I would plunge my sword into his heart even in the midst of
the Divan."

It was not long before Ali's enemies found an extremely suitable
opportunity for opening their attack.  Veli Pacha, who had for his
own profit increased the Thessalian taxation fivefold, had in doing
so caused so much oppression that many of the inhabitants preferred
the griefs and dangers of emigration rather than remain under so
tyrannical a rule.  A great number of Greeks sought refuge at Odessa,
and the great Turkish families assembled round Pacho Bey and Abdi
Effendi at Constantinople, who lost no opportunity of interceding in
their favour.  The sultan, who as yet did not dare to act openly
against the Tepelenian family, was at least able to relegate Veli to
the obscure post of Lepanto, and Veli, much disgusted, was obliged to
obey.  He quitted the new palace he had just built at Rapehani, and
betook himself to the place of exile, accompanied by actors, Bohemian
dancers, bear leaders, and a crowd of prostitutes.

Thus attacked in the person of his most powerful son, Ali thought to
terrify his enemies by a daring blow.  He sent three Albanians to
Constantinople to assassinate Pacho Bey.  They fell upon him as he
was proceeding to the Mosque of Saint-Sophia, on the day on which the
sultan also went in order to be present at the Friday ceremonial
prayer, and fired several shots at him.  He was wounded, but not
mortally.

The assassins, caught red-handed, were hung at the gate of the
Imperial Seraglio, but not before confessing that they were sent by
the Pacha of Janina.  The Divan, comprehending at last that so
dangerous a man must be dealt with at any cost, recapitulated all
Ali's crimes, and pronounced a sentence against him which was
confirmed by a decree of the Grand Mufti.  It set forth that Ali
Tepelen, having many times obtained pardon for his crimes, was now
guilty of high treason in the first degree, and that he would, as
recalcitrant, be placed under the ban of the Empire if he did not
within forty days appear at the Gilded Threshold of the Felicitous
Gate of the Monarch who dispenses crowns to the princes who reign in
this world, in order to justify himself.  As may be supposed,
submission to such an order was about the last thing Ali
contemplated.  As he failed to appear, the Divan caused the Grand
Mufti to launch the thunder of excommunication against him.

Ali had just arrived at Parga, which he now saw for the third time
since he had obtained it, when his secretaries informed him that only
the rod of Moses could save him from the anger of Pharaoh--a
figurative mode of warning him that he had nothing to hope for.  But
Ali, counting on his usual luck, persisted in imagining that he
could, once again, escape from his difficulty by the help of gold and
intrigue.  Without discontinuing the pleasures in which he was
immersed, he contented himself with sending presents and humble
petitions to Constantinople.  But both were alike useless, for no one
even ventured to transmit them to the sultan, who had sworn to cut
off the head of anyone who dared mention the name of Ali Tepelen in
his presence.

Receiving no answer to his overtures, Ali became a prey to terrible
anxiety.  As he one day opened the Koran to consult it as to his
future, his divining rod stopped at verse 82, chap. xix., which says,
"He doth flatter himself in vain.  He shall appear before our
tribunal naked and bare."  Ali closed the book and spat three times
into his bosom.  He was yielding to the most dire presentiments, when
a courier, arriving from the capital, informed him that all hope of
pardon was lost.

He ordered his galley to be immediately prepared, and left his
seraglio, casting a look of sadness on the beautiful gardens where
only yesterday he had received the homage of his prostrate slaves.
He bade farewell to his wives, saying that he hoped soon to return,
and descended to the shore, where the rowers received him with
acclamations.  The sail was set to a favourable breeze, and Ali,
leaving the shore he was never to see again, sailed towards Erevesa,
where he hoped to meet the Lord High Commissioner Maitland.  But the
time of prosperity had gone by, and the regard which had once been
shown him changed with his fortunes.  The interview he sought was not
granted.

The sultan now ordered a fleet to be equipped, which, after Ramadan,
was to disembark troops on the coast of Epirus, while all the
neighbouring pashas received orders to hold themselves in readiness
to march with all the troops of their respective Governments against
Ali, whose name was struck out of the list of viziers.  Pacho Bey was
named Pasha of Janina and Delvino on condition of subduing them, and
was placed in command of the whole expedition.

However, notwithstanding these orders, there was not at the beginning
of April, two months after the attempted assassination of Pacho Bey,
a single soldier ready to march on Albania.  Ramadan, that year, did
not close until the new moon of July.  Had Ali put himself boldly at
the head of the movement which was beginning to stir throughout
Greece, he might have baffled these vacillating projects, and
possibly dealt a fatal blow to the Ottoman Empire.  As far back as
1808, the Hydriotes had offered to recognise his son Veli, then
Vizier of the Morea, as their Prince, and to support him in every
way, if he would proclaim the independence of the Archipelago.  The
Moreans bore him no enmity until he refused to help them to freedom,
and would have returned to him had he consented.

On the other side, the sultan, though anxious for war, would not
spend a penny in order to wage it; and it was not easy to corrupt
some of the great vassals ordered to march at their own expense
against a man in whose downfall they had no special interest.  Nor
were the means of seduction wanting to Ali, whose wealth was
enormous; but he preferred to keep it in order to carry on the war
which he thought he could no longer escape.  He made, therefore, a
general appeal to all Albanian warriors, whatever their religion.
Mussulmans and Christians, alike attracted by the prospect of booty
and good pay, flocked to his standard in crowds.

He organised all these adventurers on the plan of the Armatous, by
companies, placing a captain of his own choice at the head of each,
and giving each company a special post to defend.  Of all possible
plans this was the best adapted to his country, where only a guerilla
warfare can be carried on, and where a large army could not subsist.

In repairing to the posts assigned to them, these troops committed
such terrible depredations that the provinces sent to Constantinople
demanding their suppression.  The Divan answered the petitioners that
it was their own business to suppress these disorders, and to induce
the Klephotes to turn their arms against Ali, who had nothing to hope
from the clemency of the Grand Seigneur.  At the same time circular
letters were addressed to the Epirotes, warning them to abandon the
cause of a rebel, and to consider the best means of freeing
themselves from a traitor, who, having long oppressed them, now
sought to draw down on their country all the terrors of war.  Ali,
who every where maintained numerous and active spies, now redoubled
his watchfulness, and not a single letter entered Epirus without
being opened and read by his agents.  As an extra precaution, the
guardians of the passes were enjoined to slay without mercy any
despatch-bearer not provided with an order signed by Ali himself; and
to send to Janina under escort any travellers wishing to enter
Epirus. These measures were specially aimed against Suleyman Pacha,
who had succeeded Veli in the government of Thessaly, and replaced
Ali himself in the office of Grand Provost of the Highways.
Suleyman's secretary was a Greek called Anagnorto, a native of
Macedonia, whose estates Ali had seized, and who had fled with his
family to escape further persecution.  He had become attached to the
court party, less for the sake of vengeance on Ali than to aid the
cause of the Greeks, for whose freedom he worked by underhand
methods.  He persuaded Suleyman Pacha that the Greeks would help him
to dethrone Ali, for whom they cherished the deepest hatred, and he
was determined that they should learn the sentence of deprivation and
excommunication fulminated against the rebel pacha.  He introduced
into the Greek translation which he was commissioned to make,
ambiguous phrases which were read by the Christians as a call to take
up arms in the cause of liberty.  In an instant, all Hellas was up in
arms.  The Mohammedans were alarmed, but the Greeks gave out that it
was in order to protect themselves and their property against the
bands of brigands which had appeared on all sides.  This was the
beginning of the Greek insurrection, and occurred in May 1820,
extending from Mount Pindus to Thermopylae.  However, the Greeks,
satisfied with having vindicated their right to bear arms in their
own defence, continued to pay their taxes, and abstained from all
hostility.

At the news of this great movement, Ali's friends advised him to turn
it to his own advantage.  "The Greeks in arms," said they, "want a
chief: offer yourself as their leader.  They hate you, it is true,
but this feeling may change.  It is only necessary to make them
believe, which is easily done, that if they will support your cause
you will embrace Christianity and give them freedom."

There was no time to lose, for matters became daily more serious.
Ali hastened to summon what he called a Grand Divan, composed of the
chiefs of both sects, Mussulmans and Christians.  There were
assembled men of widely different types, much astonished at finding
themselves in company: the venerable Gabriel, Archbishop of Janina,
and uncle of the unfortunate Euphrosyne, who had been dragged thither
by force; Abbas, the old head of the police, who had presided at the
execution of the Christian martyr; the holy bishop of Velas, still
bearing the marks of the chains with which Ali had loaded him; and
Porphyro, Archbishop of Arta, to whom the turban would have been more
becoming than the mitre.

Ashamed of the part he was obliged to play, Ali, after long
hesitation, decided on speaking, and, addressing the Christians,
"O Greeks!" he said, "examine my conduct with unprejudiced minds, and
you will see manifest proofs of the confidence and consideration
which I have ever shown you.  What pacha has ever treated you as I
have done?  Who would have treated your priests and the objects of
your worship with as much respect?  Who else would have conceded the
privileges which you enjoy? for you hold rank in my councils, and
both the police and the administration of my States are in your
hands.  I do not, however, seek to deny the evils with which I have
afflicted you; but, alas! these evils have been the result of my
enforced obedience to the cruel and perfidious orders of the Sublime
Porte.  It is to the Porte that these wrongs must be attributed, for
if my actions be attentively regarded it will be seen that I only did
harm when compelled thereto by the course of events.  Interrogate my
actions, they will speak more fully than a detailed apology.

"My position with regard to the Suliotes allowed no half-and-half
measures.  Having once broken with them, I was obliged either to
drive them from my country or to exterminate them.  I understood the
political hatred of the Ottoman Cabinet too well not to know that it
would declare war against me sooner or later, and I knew that
resistance would be impossible, if on one side I had to repel the
Ottoman aggression, and on the other to fight against the formidable
Suliotes.

"I might say the same of the Parganiotes.  You know that their town
was the haunt of my enemies, and each time that I appealed to them to
change their ways they answered only with insults and threats.  They
constantly aided the Suliotes with whom I was at war; and if at this
moment they still were occupying Parga, you would see them throw open
the gates of Epirus to the forces of the sultan.  But all this does
not prevent my being aware that my enemies blame me severely, and
indeed I also blame myself, and deplore the faults which the
difficulty of my position has entailed upon me.  Strong in my
repentance, I do not hesitate to address myself to those whom I have
most grievously wounded.  Thus I have long since recalled to my
service a great number of Suliotes, and those who have responded to
my invitation are occupying important posts near my person.  To
complete the reconciliation, I have written to those who are still in
exile, desiring them to return fearlessly to their country, and I
have certain information that this proposal has been everywhere
accepted with enthusiasm.  The Suliotes will soon return to their
ancestral houses, and, reunited under my standard, will join me in
combating the Osmanlis, our common enemies.

"As to the avarice of which I am accused, it seems easily justified
by the constant necessity I was under of satisfying the inordinate
cupidity of the Ottoman ministry, which incessantly made me pay
dearly for tranquillity.  This was a personal affair, I acknowledge,
and so also is the accumulation of treasure made in order to support
the war, which the Divan has at length declared."

Here Ali ceased, then having caused a barrel full of gold pieces to
be emptied on the floor, he continued:

"Behold a part of the treasure I have preserved with so much care,
and which has been specially obtained from the Turks, our common
enemies: it is yours.  I am now more than ever delighted at being the
friend of the Greeks.  Their bravery is a sure earnest of victory,
and we will shortly re-establish the Greek Empire, and drive the
Osmanlis across the Bosphorus.  O bishops and priests of Issa the
prophet! bless the arms of the Christians, your children.  O
primates!  I call upon you to defend your rights, and to rule justly
the brave nation associated with my interests."

This discourse produced very different impressions on the Christian
priests and archons.  Some replied only by raising looks of despair
to Heaven, others murmured their adhesion.  A great number remained
uncertain, not knowing what to decide.  The Mirdite chief, he who had
refused to slaughter the Kardikiotes, declared that neither he nor
any Skipetar of the Latin communion would bear arms against their
legitimate sovereign the sultan.  But his words were drowned by cries
of "Long live Ali Pasha!  Long live the restorer of liberty!" uttered
by some chiefs of adventurers and brigands.




CHAPTER IX

Yet next day, May 24th, 1820, Ali addressed a circular letter to his
brothers the Christians, announcing that in future he would consider
them as his most faithful subjects, and that henceforth he remitted
the taxes paid to his own family.  He wound up by asking for
soldiers, but the Greeks having learnt the instability of his
promises, remained deaf to his invitations.  At the same time he sent
messengers to the Montenegrins and the Servians, inciting them to
revolt, and organised insurrections in Wallachia and Moldavia to the
very environs of Constantinople.

Whilst the Ottoman vassals assembled only in small numbers and very
slowly under their respective standards, every day there collected
round the castle of Janina whole companies of Toxidae, of Tapazetae,
and of Chamidae; so that Ali, knowing that Ismail Pacho Bey had
boasted that he could arrive in sight of Janina without firing a gun,
said in his turn that he would not treat with the Porte until he and
his troops should be within eight leagues of Constantinople.

He had fortified and supplied with munitions of war Ochrida, Avlone,
Cannia, Berat, Cleisoura, Premiti, the port of Panormus,
Santi-Quaranta, Buthrotum, Delvino, Argyro-Castron, Tepelen, Parga,
Prevesa, Sderli, Paramythia, Arta, the post of the Five Wells, Janina
and its castles.  These places contained four hundred and twenty
cannons of all sizes, for the most part in bronze, mounted on
siege-carriages, and seventy mortars.  Besides these, there were in
the castle by the lake, independently of the guns in position, forty
field-pieces, sixty mountain guns, a number of Congreve rockets,
formerly given him by the English, and an enormous quantity of
munitions of war.  Finally, he endeavoured to establish a line of
semaphores between Janina and Prevesa, in order to have prompt news
of the Turkish fleet, which was expected to appear on this coast.

Ali, whose strength seemed to increase with age, saw to everything
and appeared everywhere; sometimes in a litter borne by his
Albanians, sometimes in a carriage raised into a kind of platform,
but it was more frequently on horseback that he appeared among his
labourers.  Often he sat on the bastions in the midst of the
batteries, and conversed familiarly with those who surrounded him.
He narrated the successes formerly obtained against the sultan by
Kara Bazaklia, Vizier of Scodra, who, like himself, had been attained
with the sentence of deprivation and excommunication; recounting how
the rebel pacha, shut up in his citadel with seventy-two warriors,
had seen collapse at his feet the united forces of four great
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, commanded by twenty-two pachas, who
were almost entirely annihilated in one day by the Guegues.  He
reminded them also, of the brilliant victory gained by Passevend
Oglon, Pacha of Widdin, of quite recent memory, which is celebrated
in the warlike songs of the Klephts of Roumelia.

Almost simultaneously, Ali's sons, Mouktar and Veli, arrived at
Janina.  Veli had been obliged, or thought himself obliged, to
evacuate Lepanto by superior forces, and brought only discouraging
news, especially as to the wavering fidelity of the Turks.  Mouktar,
on the contrary, who had just made a tour of inspection in the
Musache, had only noticed favourable dispositions, and deluded
himself with the idea that the Chaonians, who had taken up arms, had
done so in order to aid his father.  He was curiously mistaken, for
these tribes hated Ali with a hatred all the deeper for being
compelled to conceal it, and were only in arms in order to repel
aggression.

The advice given by the sons to their father as to the manner of
treating the Mohammedans differed widely in accordance with their
respective opinions.  Consequently a violent quarrel arose between
them, ostensibly on account of this dispute, but in reality on the
subject of their father's inheritance, which both equally coveted.
Ali had brought all his treasure to Janina, and thenceforth neither
son would leave the neighbourhood of so excellent a father.  They
overwhelmed him with marks of affection, and vowed that the one had
left Lepanto, and the other Berat, only in order to share his danger.
Ali was by no means duped by these protestations, of which he divined
the motive only too well, and though he had never loved his sons, he
suffered cruelly in discovering that he was not beloved by them.

Soon he had other troubles to endure.  One of his gunners
assassinated a servant of Vela's, and Ali ordered the murderer to be
punished, but when the sentence was to be carried out the whole corps
of artillery mutinied.  In order to save appearances, the pacha was
compelled to allow them to ask for the pardon of the criminal whom he
dared not punish.  This incident showed him that his authority was no
longer paramount, and he began to doubt the fidelity of his soldiers.
The arrival of the Ottoman fleet further enlightened him to his true
position.  Mussulman and Christian alike, all the inhabitants of
Northern Albania, who had hitherto concealed their disaffection under
an exaggerated semblance of devotion, now hastened to make their
submission to the sultan.  The Turks, continuing their success, laid
siege to Parga, which was held by Mehemet, Veli's eldest son.  He was
prepared to make a good defence, but was betrayed by his troops, who
opened the gates of the town, and he was compelled to surrender at
discretion.  He was handed over to the commander of the naval forces,
by whom he was well treated, being assigned the best cabin in the
admiral's ship and given a brilliant suite.  He was assured that the
sultan, whose only quarrel was with his grandfather, would show him
favour, and would even deal mercifully with Ali, who, with his
treasures, would merely be sent to an important province in Asia
Minor.  He was induced to write in this strain to his family and
friends in order to induce them to lay down their arms.

The fall of Parga made a great impression on the Epirotes, who valued
its possession far above its real importance.  Ali rent his garments
and cursed the days of his former good fortune, during which he had
neither known how to moderate his resentment nor to foresee the
possibility of any change of fortune.

The fall of Parga was succeeded by that of Arta of Mongliana, where
was situated Ali's country house, and of the post of the Five Wells.
Then came a yet more overwhelming piece of news Omar Brionis, whom
Ali, having formerly despoiled of its wealth, had none the less,
recently appointed general-in-chief, had gone over to the enemy with
all his troops!

Ali then decided on carrying out a project he had formed in case of
necessity, namely, on destroying the town of Janina, which would
afford shelter to the enemy and a point of attack against the
fortresses in which he was entrenched.  When this resolution was
known, the inhabitants thought only of saving themselves and their
property from the ruin from which nothing could save their country.
But most of them were only preparing to depart, when Ali gave leave
to the Albanian soldiers yet faithful to him to sack the town.

The place was immediately invaded by an unbridled soldiery.  The
Metropolitan church, where Greeks and Turks alike deposited their
gold, jewels, and merchandise, even as did the Greeks of old in the
temples of the gods, became the first object of pillage.  Nothing was
respected.  The cupboards containing sacred vestments were broken
open, so were the tombs of the archbishops, in which were interred
reliquaries adorned with precious stones; and the altar itself was
defiled with the blood of ruffians who fought for chalices and silver
crosses.

The town presented an equally terrible spectacle; neither Christians
nor Mussulmans were spared, and the women's apartments, forcibly
entered, were given up to violence.  Some of the more courageous
citizens endeavoured to defend their houses arid families against
these bandits, and the clash of arms mingled with cries and groans.
All at on e the roar of a terrible explosion rose above the other
sounds, and a hail of bombs, shells, grenade's, and rockets carried
devastation and fire into the different quarters of the town, which
soon presented the spectacle of an immense conflagration.  Ali,
seated on the great platform of the castle by the lake, which seemed
to vomit fire like a volcano, directed the bombardment, pointing out
the places which must be burnt.  Churches, mosques, libraries,
bazaars, houses, all were destroyed, and the only thing spared by the
flames was the gallows, which remained standing in the midst of the
ruins.

Of the thirty thousand persons who inhabited Janina a few hours
previously, perhaps one half had escaped.  But these had not fled
many leagues before they encountered the outposts of the Otto man
army, which, instead of helping or protecting them, fell upon them,
plundered them, and drove them towards the camp, where slavery
awaited them.  The unhappy fugitives, taken thus between fire and.
sword, death behind and slavery before, uttered a terrible cry, and
fled in all directions. Those who escaped the Turks were stopped in
the hill passes by the mountaineers rushing down to the>> rey; only
large numbers who held together could force a passage.

In some cases terror bestows extraordinary strength, there were
mothers who, with infants at the breast, covered on foot in one day
the fourteen leagues which separate Janina from Arta.  But others,
seized with the pangs of travail in the midst of their flight,
expired in the woods, after giving birth to babes, who, destitute of
succour, did not survive their mothers.  And young girls, having
disfigured themselves by gashes, hid themselves in caves, where they
died of terror and hunger.

The Albanians, intoxicated with plunder and debauchery, refused to
return to the castle, and only thought of regaining their country and
enjoying the fruit of their rapine.  But they were assailed on the
way by peasants covetous of their booty, and by those of Janina who
had sought refuge with them.  The roads and passes were strewn with
corpses, and the trees by the roadside converted into gibbets.  The
murderers did not long survive their victims.

The ruins of Janina were still smoking when, on the 19th August,
Pacho Bey made his entry. Having pitched his tent out of range of
Ali's cannon, he proclaimed aloud the firman which inaugurated him as
Pacha of Janina and Delvino, and then raised the tails, emblem of his
dignity.  Ali heard on the summit of his keep the acclamations of the
Turks who saluted Pacho Bey, his former servant with the titles of
Vali of Epirus, and Ghazi, of Victorius.  After this ceremony, the
cadi read the sentence, confirmed by the Mufti, which declared
Tepelen Veli-Zade to have forfeited his dignities and to be
excommunicated, adding an injunction to all the faithful that
henceforth his name was not to be pronounced except with the addition
of "Kara," or "black," which is bestowed on those cut off from the
congregation of Sunnites, or Orthodox Mohammedans.  A Marabout then
cast a stone towards the castle, and the anathema upon "Kara Ali" was
repeated by the whole Turkish army, ending with the cry of "Long live
the sultan!  So be it!"

But it was not by ecclesiastical thunders that three fortresses could
be reduced, which were defended by artillerymen drawn from different
European armies, who had established an excellent school for gunners
and bombardiers.  The besieged, having replied with hootings of
contempt to the acclamations of the besiegers, proceeded to enforce
their scorn with well-aimed cannon shots, while the rebel flotilla,
dressed as if for a fete-day, passed slowly before the Turks,
saluting them with cannon-shot if they ventured near the edge of the
lake.

This noisy rhodomontade did not prevent Ali from being consumed with
grief and anxiety.  The sight of his own troops, now in the camp of
Pacho Bey, the fear of being for ever separated from his sons, the
thought of his grandson in the enemy's hands, all threw him into the
deepest melancholy, and his sleepless eyes were constantly drowned in
tears.  He refused his food, and sat for seven days with untrimmed
beard, clad in mourning, on a mat at the door of his antechamber,
extending his hands to his soldiers, and imploring them to slay him
rather than abandon him.  His wives, seeing him in this state, and
concluding all was lost, filled the air with their lamentations.  All
began to think that grief would bring Ali to the grave; but his
soldiers, to whose protestations he at first refused any credit,
represented to him that their fate was indissolubly linked with his.
Pacho Bey having proclaimed that all taken in arms for Ali would be
shot as sharers in rebellion, it was therefore their interest to
support his resistance with all their power.  They also pointed out
that the campaign was already advanced, and that the Turkish army,
which had forgotten its siege artillery at Constantinople, could not
possibly procure any before the end of October, by which time the
rains would begin, and the enemy would probably be short of food.
Moreover, in any case, it being impossible to winter in a ruined
town, the foe would be driven to seek shelter at a distance.

These representations, made with warmth conviction, and supported by
evidence, began to soothe the restless fever which was wasting Ali,
and the gentle caresses and persuasions of Basillisa, the beautiful
Christian captive, who had now been his wife for some time, completed
the cure.

At the same time his sister Chainitza gave him an astonishing example
of courage.  She had persisted, in spite of all that could be said,
in residing in her castle of Libokovo.  The population, whom she had
cruelly oppressed, demanded her death, but no one dared attack her.
Superstition declared that the spirit of her mother, with whom she
kept up a mysterious communication even beyond the portals of the
grave, watched over her safety.  The menacing form of Kamco had, it
was said, appeared to several inhabitants of Tepelen, brandishing
bones of the wretched Kardikiotes, and demanding fresh victims with
loud cries.  The desire of vengeance had urged some to brave these
unknown dangers, and twice, a warrior, clothed in black, had warned
them back, forbidding them to lay hands on a sacrilegious woman;
whose punishment Heaven reserved to itself, and twice they had
returned upon their footsteps.

But soon, ashamed of their terror, they attempted another attack, and
came attired in the colour of the Prophet.  This time no mysterious
stranger speared to forbid their passage and with a cry they climbed
the mountain, listening for any supernatural warning.  Nothing
disturbed the silence and solitude save the bleating of flocks and
the cries of birds of prey.  Arrived on the platform of Libokovo,
they prepared in silence to surprise the guards, believing the castle
full of them.  They approached crawling, like hunters who stalk a
deer, already they had reached the gate of the enclosure, and
prepared to burst it open, when lo! it opened of itself, and they
beheld Chainitza standing before them, a carabine in her hand,
pistols in her belt, and, for all guard, two large dogs.

"Halt! ye daring ones," she cried; "neither my life nor my treasure
will ever be at your mercy.  Let one of you move a step without my
permission, and this place and the ground beneath your feet' will
engulf you.  Ten thousand pounds of powder are in these cellars.  I
will, however, grant your pardon, unworthy though you are.  I will
even allow you to take these sacks filled with gold; they may
recompense you for the losses which my brother's enemies have
recently inflicted on you.  But depart this instant without a word,
and dare not to trouble me again; I have other means of destruction
at command besides gunpowder.  Life is nothing to me, remember that;
but your mountains may yet at my command become the tomb of your
wives and children.  Go!"

She ceased, and her would-be murderers fled terror.

Shortly after the plague broke out in these mountains, Chainitza had
distributed infected garments among gipsies, who scattered contagion
wherever they went.

"We are indeed of the same blood!" cried Ali with pride, when he
heard of his sister's conduct; and from that hour he appeared to
regain all the fire and audacity of his youth.  When, a few days
later, he was informed that Mouktar and Veli, seduced by the
brilliant promises of Dacha Bey, had surrendered Prevesa and
Argyro-Castron, "It does not surprise me," he observed coldly.  "I
have long known them to be unworthy of being my sons, and henceforth
my only children and heirs are those who defend my cause."  And on
hearing a report that both had been beheaded by Dacha Bey's order, he
contented himself with saying, "They betrayed their father, and have
only received their deserts; speak no more of them."  And to show how
little it discouraged him, he redoubled his fire upon the Turks.

But the latter, who had at length obtained some artillery, answered
his fire with vigour, and began to rally to discrown the old pacha's
fortress.  Feeling that the danger was pressing, Ali redoubled both
his prudence and activity.  His immense treasures were the real
reason of the war waged against him, and these might induce his own
soldiers to rebel, in order to become masters of them.  He resolved
to protect them from either surprise or conquest.  The sum necessary
for present use was deposited in the powder magazine, so that, if
driven to extremity, it might be destroyed in a moment; the remainder
was enclosed in strong-boxes, and sunk in different parts of the
lake.  This labour lasted a fortnight, when, finally, Ali put to
death the gipsies who had been employed about it, in order that the
secret might remain with himself.

While he thus set his own affairs in order, he applied himself to the
troubling those of his adversary.  A great number of Suliots had
joined the Ottoman army in order to assist in the destruction of him
who formerly had ruined their country. Their camp, which for a long
time had enjoyed immunity from the guns of Janina, was one day
overwhelmed with bombs.  The Suliots were terrified, until they
remarked that the bombs did not burst.  They then, much astonished,
proceeded to pick up and examine these projectiles.  Instead of a
match, they found rolls of paper enclosed in a wooden cylinder, on
which was engraved these words, "Open carefully."  The paper
contained a truly Macchiavellian letter from Ali, which began by
saying that they were quite justified in having taken up arms against
him, and added that he now sent them a part of the pay of which the
traitorous Ismail was defrauding them, and that the bombs thrown into
their cantonment contained six thousand sequins in gold.  He begged
them to amuse Ismail by complaints and recriminations, while his
gondola should by night fetch one of them, to whom he would
communicate what more he had to say.  If they accepted his
proposition, they were to light three fires as a signal.

The signal was not long in appearing. Ali despatched his barge, which
took on board a monk, the spiritual chief of the Suliots.  He was
clothed in sackcloth, and repeated the prayers for the dying, as one
going to execution.  Ali, however, received him with the utmost
cordiality: He assured the priest of his repentance, his good
intentions, his esteem for the Greek captains, and then gave him a
paper which startled him considerably.  It was a despatch,
intercepted by Ali, from Khalid Effendi to the Seraskier Ismail,
ordering the latter to exterminate all Christians capable of bearing
arms.  All male children were to be circumcised, and brought up to
form a legion drilled in European fashion; and the letter went on to
explain how the Suliots, the Armatolis, the Greek races of the
mainland and those of the Archipelago should be disposed of.  Seeing
the effect produced on the monk by the perusal of this paper, Ali
hastened to make him the most advantageous offers, declaring that his
own wish was to give Greece a political existence, and only requiring
that the Suliot captains should send him a certain number of their
children as hostages.  He then had cloaks and arms brought which he
presented to the monk, dismissing him in haste, in order that
darkness might favour his return.

The next day Ali was resting, with his head on Basilissa's lap, when
he was informed that the enemy was advancing upon the intrenchments
which had been raised in the midst of the ruins of Janina.  Already
the outposts had been forced, and the fury of the assailants
threatened to triumph over all obstacles.  Ali immediately ordered a
sortie of all his troops, announcing that he himself would conduct
it.  His master of the horse brought him the famous Arab charger
called the Dervish, his chief huntsman presented him with his guns,
weapons still famous in Epirus, where they figure in the ballads of
the Skipetars.  The first was an enormous gun, of Versailles
manufacture, formerly presented by the conqueror of the Pyramids to
Djezzar, the Pacha of St. Jean-d'Arc, who amused himself by enclosing
living victims in the walls of his palace, in order that he might
hear their groans in the midst of his festivities.  Next came a
carabine given to the Pacha of Janina in the name of Napoleon in
1806; then the battle musket of Charles XII of Sweden, and finally--
the much revered sabre of Krim-Guerai.  The signal was given; the
draw bridge crossed; the Guegues and other adventurers uttered a
terrific shout; to which the cries of the assailants replied.  Ali
placed himself on a height, whence his eagle eye sought to discern
the hostile chiefs; but he called and defied Pacho Bey in vain.
Perceiving Hassan-Stamboul, colonel of the Imperial bombardiers
outside his battery, Ali demanded the gun of Djezzar, and laid him
dead on the spot.  He then took the carabine of Napoleon, and shot
with it Kekriman, Bey of Sponga, whom he had formerly appointed Pacha
of Lepanto. The enemy now became aware of his presence, and sent a
lively fusillade in his direction; but the balls seemed to diverge
from his person.  As soon as the smoke cleared, he perceived Capelan,
Pacha of Croie, who had been his guest, and wounded him mortally in
the chest.  Capelan uttered a sharp cry, and his terrified horse
caused disorder in the ranks. Ali picked off a large number of
officers, one after another; every shot was mortal, and his enemies
began to regard him in, the light of a destroying angel.  Disorder
spread through the forces of the Seraskier, who retreated hastily to
his intrenchments.

The Suliots meanwhile sent a deputation to Ismail offering their
submission, and seeking to regain their country in a peaceful manner;
but, being received by him with the most humiliating contempt, they
resolved to make common cause with Ali.  They hesitated over the
demand for hostages, and at length required Ali's grandson, Hussien
Pacha, in exchange.  After many difficulties, Ali at length
consented, and the agreement was concluded.  The Suliots received
five hundred thousand piastres and a hundred and fifty charges of
ammunition, Hussien Pacha was given up to them, and they left the
Ottoman camp at dead of night.  Morco Botzaris remained with three
hundred and twenty men, threw down the palisades, and then ascending
Mount Paktoras with his troops, waited for dawn in order to announce
his defection to the Turkish army.  As soon as the sun appeared he
ordered a general salvo of artillery and shouted his war-cry.  A few
Turks in charge of an outpost were slain, the rest fled.  A cry of
"To arms" was raised, and the standard of the Cross floated before
the camp of the infidels.

Signs and omens of a coming general insurrection appeared on all
sides; there was no lack of prodigies, visions, or popular rumours,
and the Mohammedans became possessed with the idea that the last hour
of their rule in Greece had struck.  Ali Pacha favoured the general
demoralisation; and his agents, scattered throughout the land, fanned
the flame of revolt.  Ismail Pacha was deprived of his title of
Seraskier, and superseded by Kursheed Pacha.  As soon as Ali heard
this, he sent a messenger to Kursheed, hoping to influence him in his
favour.  Ismail, distrusting the Skipetars, who formed part of his
troops, demanded hostages from them.  The Skipetars were indignant,
and Ali hearing of their discontent, wrote inviting them to return to
him, and endeavouring to dazzle them by the most brilliant promises.
These overtures were received by the offended troops with enthusiasm,
and Alexis Noutza, Ali's former general, who had forsaken him for
Ismail, but who had secretly returned to his allegiance and acted as
a spy on the Imperial army, was deputed to treat with him.  As soon
as he arrived, Ali began to enact a comedy in the intention of
rebutting the accusation of incest with his daughter-in-law Zobeide;
for this charge, which, since Veli himself had revealed the secret of
their common shame, could only be met by vague denials, had never
ceased to produce a mast unfavourable impression on Noutza's mind.
Scarcely had he entered the castle by the lake, when Ali rushed to
meet him, and flung himself into his arms.  In presence of his
officers and the garrison, he loaded him with the most tender names,
calling him his son, his beloved Alexis, his own legitimate child,
even as Salik Pacha.  He burst into tears, and, with terrible oaths,
called Heaven to witness that Mouktar and Veli, whom he disavowed on
account of their cowardice, were the adulterous offspring of Emineh's
amours.  Then, raising his hand against the tomb of her whom he had
loved so much, he drew the stupefied Noutza into the recess of a
casemate, and sending for Basilissa, presented him to her as a
beloved son, whom only political considerations had compelled him to
keep at a distance, because, being born of a Christian mother, he had
been brought up in the faith of Jesus.

Having thus softened the suspicions of his soldiers, Ali resumed his
underground intrigues.  The Suliots had informed him that the sultan
had made them extremely advantageous offers if they would return to
his service, and they demanded pressingly that Ali should give up to
them the citadel of Kiapha, which was still in his possession, and
which commanded Suli.  He replied with the information that he
intended, January 26, to attack the camp of Pacho Bey early in the
morning, and requested their assistance.  In order to cause a
diversion, they were to descend into the valley of Janina at night,
and occupy a position which he pointed out to them, and he gave their
the word "flouri" as password for the night.  If successful, he
undertook to grant their request.

Ali's letter was intercepted, and fell into Ismail's hands, who
immediately conceived a plan for snaring his enemy in his own toils.
When the night fixed by Ali arrived, the Seraskier marched out a
strong division under the command of Omar Brionis, who had been
recently appointed Pacha, and who was instructed to proceed along the
western slope of Mount Paktoras as far as the village of Besdoune,
where he was to place an outpost, and then to retire along the other
side of the mountain, so that, being visible in the starlight, the
sentinels placed to watch on the hostile towers might take his men
for the Suliots and report to Ali that the position of Saint-Nicolas,
assigned to them, had been occupied as arranged.  All preparations
for battle were made, and the two mortal enemies, Ismail and Ali,
retired to rest, each cherishing the darling hope of shortly
annihilating his rival.

At break of day a lively cannonade, proceeding from the castle of the
lake and from Lithoritza, announced that the besieged intended a
sortie.  Soon Ali's Skipetars, preceded by a detachment of French,
Italians, and Swiss, rushed through the Ottoman fire and carried the
first redoubt, held by Ibrahim-Aga-Stamboul.  They found six pieces
of cannon, which the Turks, notwithstanding their terror, had had
time to spike.  This misadventure, for they had hoped to turn the
artillery against the intrenched camp, decided Ali's men on attacking
the second redoubt, commanded by the chief bombardier.  The Asiatic
troops of Baltadgi Pacha rushed to its defence.  At their head
appeared the chief Imaun of the army, mounted on a richly caparisoned
mule and repeating the curse fulminated by the mufti against Ali, his
adherents, his castles, and even his cannons, which it was supposed
might be rendered harmless by these adjurations.  Ali's Mohammedan
Skipetars averted their eyes, and spat into their bosoms, hoping thus
to escape the evil influence.  A superstitious terror was beginning
to spread among them, when a French adventurer took aim at the Imaun
and brought him down, amid the acclamations of the soldiers;
whereupon the Asiatics, imagining that Eblis himself fought against
them, retired within the intrenchments, whither the Skipetars, no
longer fearing the curse, pursued them vigorously.

At the same time, however, a very different action was proceeding at
the northern end of the besiegers' intrenchments.  Ali left his
castle of the lake, preceded by twelve torch-bearers carrying
braziers filled with lighted pitch-wood, and advanced towards the
shore of Saint-Nicolas, expecting to unite with the Suliots.  He
stopped in the middle of the ruins to wait for sunrise, and while
there heard that his troops had carried the battery of
Ibrahim-Aga-Stamboul.  Overjoyed, he ordered them to press on to the
second intrenchment, promising that in an hour, when he should have
been joined by the Suliots, he would support them, and he then pushed
forward, preceded by two field-pieces with their waggons, and
followed by fifteen hundred men, as far as a large plateau on which
he perceived at a little distance an encampment which he supposed to
be that of the Suliots.  He then ordered the Mirdite prince, Kyr
Lekos, to advance with an escort of twenty-five men, and when within
hearing distance to wave a blue flag and call out the password.  An
Imperial officer replied with the countersign "flouri," and Lekos
immediately sent back word to Ali to advance.  His orderly hastened
back, and the prince entered the camp, where he and his escort were
immediately surrounded and slain.

On receiving the message, Ali began to advance, but cautiously, being
uneasy at seeing no signs of the Mirdite troop.  Suddenly, furious
cries, and a lively fusillade, proceeding from the vineyards and
thickets, announced that he had fallen into a trap, and at the same
moment Omar Pacha fell upon his advance guard, which broke, crying
"Treason!".

Ali sabred the fugitives mercilessly, but fear carried them away,
and, forced to follow the crowd, he perceived the Kersales and
Baltadgi Pacha descending the side of Mount Paktoras, intending to
cut off his retreat.  He attempted another route, hastening towards
the road to Dgeleva, but found it held by the Tapagetae under the
Bimbashi Aslon of Argyro-Castron.  He was surrounded, all seemed
lost, and feeling that his last hour had come, he thought only of
selling his life as dearly as possible.  Collecting his bravest
soldiers round him, he prepared for a last rush on Omar Pacha; when,
suddenly, with an inspiration born of despair, he ordered his
ammunition waggons to be blown up.  The Kersales, who were about to
seize them, vanished in the explosion, which scattered a hail of
stones and debris far and wide.  Under cover of the smoke and general
confusion, Ali succeeded in withdrawing his men to the shelter of the
guns of his castle of Litharitza, where he continued the fight in
order to give time to the fugitives to rally, and to give the support
he had promised to those fighting on the other slope; who, in the
meantime, had carried the second battery and were attacking the
fortified camp.  Here the Seraskier Ismail met them with a resistance
so well managed, that he was able to conceal the attack he was
preparing to make on their rear.  Ali, guessing that the object of
Ismail's manoeuvres was to crush those whom he had promised to help,
and unable, on account of the distance, either to support or to warn
them, endeavoured to impede Omar Pasha, hoping still that his
Skipetars might either see or hear him.  He encouraged the fugitives,
who recognised him from afar by his scarlet dolman, by the dazzling
whiteness of his horse, and by the terrible cries which he uttered;
for, in the heat of battle, this extraordinary man appeared to have
regained the vigour and audacity, of his youth.  Twenty times he led
his soldiers to the charge, and as often was forced to recoil towards
his castles.  He brought up his reserves, but in vain.  Fate had
declared against him.  His troops which were attacking the intrenched
camp found themselves taken between two fires, and he could not help
them.  Foaming with passion, he threatened to rush singly into the
midst of his enemies.  His officers besought him to calm himself,
and, receiving only refusals, at last threatened to lay hands upon
him if he persisted in exposing himself like a private soldier.
Subdued by this unaccustomed opposition, Ali allowed himself to be
forced back into the castle by the lake, while his soldiers dispersed
in various directions.

But even this defeat did not discourage the fierce pasha.  Reduced to
extremity, he yet entertained the hope of shaking the Ottoman Empire,
and from the recesses of his fortress he agitated the whole of
Greece.  The insurrection which he had stirred up, without foreseeing
what the results might be, was spreading with the rapidity of a
lighted train of powder, and the Mohammedans were beginning to
tremble, when at length Kursheed Pasha, having crossed the Pindus at
the head of an army of eighty thousand men, arrived before Janina.

His tent had hardly been pitched, when Ali caused a salute of
twenty-one guns to be fired in his honour, and sent a messenger,
bearing a letter of congratulation on his safe arrival.  This letter,
artful and insinuating, was calculated to make a deep impression on
Kursheed.  Ali wrote that, being driven by the infamous lies of a
former servant, called Pacho Bey, into resisting, not indeed the
authority of the sultan, before whom he humbly bent his head weighed
down with years and grief, but the perfidious plots of His Highness's
advisers, he considered himself happy in his misfortunes to have
dealings with a vizier noted for his lofty qualities.  He then added
that these rare merits had doubtless been very far from being
estimated at their proper value by a Divan in which men were only
classed in accordance with the sums they laid out in gratifying the
rapacity of the ministers.  Otherwise, how came it about that
Kursheed Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt--after the departure of the French,
the conqueror of the Mamelukes, was only rewarded for these services
by being recalled without a reason?  Having been twice Romili-Valicy,
why, when he should have enjoyed the reward of his labours, was he
relegated to the obscure post of Salonica?  And, when appointed Grand
Vizier and sent to pacify Servia, instead of being entrusted with the
government of this kingdom which he had reconquered for the sultan,
why was he hastily despatched to Aleppo to repress a trifling
sedition of emirs and janissaries?  Now, scarcely arrived in the
Morea, his powerful arm was to be employed against an aged man.

Ali then plunged into details, related the pillaging, avarice, and
imperious dealing of Pacho Bey, as well as of the pachas subordinate
to him; how they had alienated the public mind, how they had
succeeded in offending the Armatolis, and especially the Suliots, who
might be brought back to their duty with less trouble than these
imprudent chiefs had taken to estrange them.  He gave a mass of
special information on this subject, and explained that in advising
the Suliots to retire to their mountains he had really only put them
in a false position as long as he retained possession of the fort of
Kiapha, which is the key of the Selleide.

The Seraskier replied in a friendly manner, ordered the military
salute to be returned in Ali's honour, shot for shot, and forbade
that henceforth a person of the valour and intrepidity of the Lion of
Tepelen should be described by the epithet of "excommunicated."  He
also spoke of him by his title of "vizier," which he declared he had
never forfeited the right to use; and he also stated that he had only
entered Epirus as a peace-maker.  Kursheed's emissaries had just
seized some letters sent by Prince Alexander Ypsilanti to the Greek
captains at Epirus.  Without going into details of the events which
led to the Greek insurrection, the prince advised the Polemarchs,
chiefs of the Selleid, to aid Ali Pacha in his revolt against the
Porte, but to so arrange matters that they could easily detach
themselves again, their only aim being to seize his treasures, which
might be used to procure the freedom of Greece.

These letters a messenger from Kursheed delivered to Ali.  They
produced such an impression upon his mind that he secretly resolved
only to make use of the Greeks, and to sacrifice them to his own
designs, if he could not inflict a terrible vengeance on their
perfidy.  He heard from the messenger at the same time of the
agitation in European Turkey, the hopes of the Christians, and the
apprehension of a rupture between the Porte and Russia.  It was
necessary to lay aside vain resentment and to unite against these
threatening dangers.  Kursheed Pacha was, said his messenger, ready
to consider favourably any propositions likely to lead to a prompt
pacification, and would value such a result far more highly than the
glory of subduing by means of the imposing force at his command, a
valiant prince whom he had always regarded as one of the strongest
bulwarks of the Ottoman Empire.  This information produced a
different effect upon Ali to that intended by the Seraskier.  Passing
suddenly from the depth of despondency to the height of pride, he
imagined that these overtures of reconciliation were only a proof of
the inability of his foes to subdue him, and he sent the following
propositions to Kursheed Pacha:

"If the first duty of a prince is to do justice, that of his subjects
is to remain faithful, and obey him in all things.  From this
principle we derive that of rewards and punishments, and although my
services might sufficiently justify my conduct to all time, I
nevertheless acknowledge that I have deserved the wrath of the
sultan, since he has raised the arm of his anger against the head of
his slave.  Having humbly implored his pardon, I fear not to invoke
his severity towards those who have abused his confidence.  With this
object I offer--First, to pay the expenses of the war and the tribute
in arrears due from my Government without delay.  Secondly, as it is
important for the sake of example that the treason of an inferior
towards his superior should receive fitting chastisement, I demand
that Pacho Bey, formerly in my service, should be beheaded, he being
the real rebel, and the cause of the public calamities which are
afflicting the faithful of Islam.  Thirdly, I require that for the
rest of my life I shall retain, without annual re-investiture, my
pachalik of Janina, the coast of Epirus, Acarnania and its
dependencies, subject to the rights, charges and tribute due now and
hereafter to the sultan.  Fourthly, I demand amnesty and oblivion of
the past for all those who have served me until now.  And if these
conditions are not accepted without modifications, I am prepared to
defend myself to the last.

"Given at the castle of Janina, March 7, 1821."




CHAPTER X

This mixture of arrogance and submission only merited indignation,
but it suited Kursheed to dissemble.  He replied that, assenting to
such propositions being beyond his powers, he would transmit them to
Constantinople, and that hostilities might be suspended, if Ali
wished, until the courier, could return.

Being quite as cunning as Ali himself, Kursheed profited by the truce
to carry on intrigues against him.  He corrupted one of the chiefs of
the garrison, Metzo-Abbas by name, who obtained pardon for himself
and fifty followers, with permission to return to their homes.  But
this clemency appeared to have seduced also four hundred Skipetars
who made use of the amnesty and the money with which Ali provided
them, to raise Toxis and the Tapygetae in the latter's favour.  Thus
the Seraskier's scheme turned against himself, and he perceived he
had been deceived by Ali's seeming apathy, which certainly did not
mean dread of defection.  In fact, no man worth anything could have
abandoned him, supported as he seemed to be by almost supernatural
courage.  Suffering from a violent attack of gout, a malady he had
never before experienced, the pacha, at the age of eighty-one, was
daily carried to the most exposed place on the ramparts of his
castle.  There, facing the hostile batteries, he gave audience to
whoever wished to see him.  On this exposed platform he held his
councils, despatched orders, and indicated to what points his guns
should be directed.  Illumined by the flashes of fire, his figure
assumed fantastic and weird shapes.  The balls sung in the air, the
bullets hailed around him, the noise drew blood from the ears of
those with him.  Calm and immovable, he gave signals to the soldiers
who were still occupying part of the ruins of Janina, and encouraged
them by voice and gesture.  Observing the enemy's movements by the
help of a telescope, he improvised means of counteracting them.
Sometimes he amused himself by, greeting curious persons and
new-comers after a fashion of his own.  Thus the chancellor of the
French Consul at Prevesa, sent as an envoy to Kursheed Pacha, had
scarcely entered the lodging assigned to him, when he was visited by
a bomb which caused him to leave it again with all haste.  This
greeting was due to Ali's chief engineer, Caretto, who next day sent
a whole shower of balls and shells into the midst of a group of
Frenchmen, whose curiosity had brought them to Tika, where Kursheed
was forming a battery.  "It is time," said Ali, "that these
contemptible gossip-mongers should find listening at doors may become
uncomfortable.  I have furnished matter enough for them to talk
about.  Frangistan (Christendom) shall henceforth hear only of my
triumph or my fall, which will leave it considerable trouble to
pacify."  Then, after a moment's silence, he ordered the public
criers to inform his soldiers of the insurrections in Wallachia and
the Morea, which news, proclaimed from the ramparts, and spreading
immediately in the Imperial camp, caused there much dejection.

The Greeks were now everywhere proclaiming their independence, and
Kursheed found himself unexpectedly surrounded by enemies.  His
position threatened to become worse if the siege of Janina dragged on
much longer.  He seized the island in the middle of the lake, and
threw up redoubts upon it, whence he kept up an incessant fire on the
southern front of the castle of Litharitza, and a practicable trench
of nearly forty feet having been made, an assault was decided on.
The troops marched out boldly, and performed prodigies of valour; but
at the end of an hour, Ali, carried on a litter because of his gout,
having led a sortie, the besiegers were compelled to give way and
retire to their intrenchments, leaving three hundred dead at the foot
of the rampart.  "The Pindian bear is yet alive," said Ali in a
message to Kursheed; "thou mayest take thy dead and bury them; I give
them up without ransom, and as I shall always do when thou attackest
me as a brave man ought."  Then, having entered his fortress amid the
acclamations of his soldiers, he remarked on hearing of the general
rising of Greece and the Archipelago, "It is enough! two men have
ruined Turkey!  "He then remained silent, and vouchsafed no
explanation of this prophetic sentence.

Ali did not on this occasion manifest his usual delight on having
gained a success.  As soon as he was alone with Basilissa, he
informed her with tears of the death of Chainitza.  A sudden apoplexy
had stricken this beloved sister, the life of his councils, in her
palace of Libokovo, where she remained undisturbed until her death.
She owed this special favour to her riches and to the intercession of
her nephew, Djiladin Pacha of Ochcrida, who was reserved by fate to
perform the funeral obsequies of the guilty race of Tepelen.

A few months afterwards, Ibrahim Pacha of Berat died of poison, being
the last victim whom Chainitza had demanded from her brother.

Ali's position was becoming daily more difficult, when the time of
Ramadan arrived, during which the Turks relax hostilities, and a
species of truce ensued.  Ali himself appeared to respect the old
popular customs, and allowed his Mohammedan soldiers to visit the
enemy's outposts and confer on the subject of various religious
ceremonies.  Discipline was relaxed in Kursheed's camp, and Ali
profited thereby to ascertain the smallest details of all that
passed.

He learned from his spies that the general's staff, counting on the
"Truce of God," a tacit suspension of all hostilities during the
feast of Bairam, the Mohammedan Easter, intended to repair to the
chief mosque, in the quarter of Loutcha.  This building, spared by
the bombs, had until now been respected by both sides.  Ali,
according to reports spread by himself, was supposed to be ill,
weakened by fasting, and terrified into a renewal of devotion, and
not likely to give trouble on so sacred a day.  Nevertheless he
ordered Caretto to turn thirty guns against the mosque, cannon,
mortars and howitzers, intending, he said, to solemnise Bairam by
discharges of artillery.  As soon as he was sure that the whole of
the staff had entered the mosque, he gave the signal.

Instantly, from the assembled thirty pieces, there issued a storm of
shells, grenades and cannon-balls.  With a terrific noise, the mosque
crumbled together, amid the cries of pain and rage of the crowd
inside crushed in the ruins.  At the end of a quarter of an hour the
wind dispersed the smoke, and disclosed a burning crater, with the
large cypresses which surrounded the building blazing as if they had
been torches lighted for the funeral ceremonies of sixty captains and
two hundred soldiers.

"Ali Pacha is yet alive! "cried the old Homeric hero of Janina,
leaping with joy; and his words, passing from mouth to mouth, spread
yet more terror amid Kursheed's soldiers, already overwhelmed by the
horrible spectacle passing before their eyes.

Almost on the same day, Ali from the height of his keep beheld the
standard of the Cross waving in the distance.  The rebellious Greeks
were bent on attacking Kursheed.  The insurrection promoted by the
Vizier of Janina had passed far beyond the point he intended, and the
rising had become a revolution.  The delight which Ali first evinced
cooled rapidly before this consideration, and was extinguished in
grief when he found that a conflagration, caused by the besiegers'
fire, had consumed part of his store in the castle by the lake.
Kursheed, thinking that this event must have shaken the old lion's
resolution, recommenced negotiations, choosing the Kiaia of Moustai
Pacha: as an envoy, who gave Ali a remarkable warning.  "Reflect,"
said he, "that these rebels bear the sign of the Cross on their
standards.  You are now only an instrument in their hands.  Beware
lest you become the victim of their policy."  Ali understood the
danger, and had the sultan been better advised, he would have
pardoned Ali on condition of again bringing Hellos under his iron
yoke.  It is possible that the Greeks might not have prevailed
against an enemy so formidable and a brain so fertile in intrigue.
But so simple an idea was far beyond the united intellect of the
Divan, which never rose above idle display.  As soon as these
negotiations, had commenced, Kursheed filled the roads with his
couriers, sending often two in a day to Constantinople, from whence
as many were sent to him.  This state of things lasted mare than
three weeks, when it became known that Ali, who had made good use of
his time in replacing the stores lost in the conflagration, buying
actually from the Kiaia himself a part of the provisions brought by
him for the Imperial camp, refused to accept the Ottoman ultimatum.
Troubles which broke, out at the moment of the rupture of the
negotiations proved that he foresaw the probable result.

Kursheed was recompensed for the deception by which he had been duped
by the reduction of the fortress of Litharitza.  The Guegue
Skipetars, who composed the garrison, badly paid, wearied out by the
long siege, and won by the Seraskier's bribes, took advantage of the
fact that the time of their engagement with Ali had elapsed same
months previously, and delivering up the fortress they defended,
passed over to the enemy.  Henceforth Ali's force consisted of only
six hundred men.

It was to be feared that this handful of men might also become a prey
to discouragement, and might surrender their chief to an enemy who
had received all fugitives with kindness.  The Greek insurgents
dreaded such an event, which would have turned all Kursheed's army,
hitherto detained before the castle, of Janina, loose upon
themselves.  Therefore they hastened to send to their former enemy,
now their ally, assistance which he declined to accept.  Ali saw
himself surrounded by enemies thirsting for his wealth, and his
avarice increasing with the danger, he had for some months past
refused to pay his defenders.  He contented himself with informing
his captains of the insurgents' offer, and telling them that he was
confident that bravery such as theirs required no reinforcement.  And
when some of them besought him to at least receive two or three
hundred Palikars into the castle, "No," said he; "old serpents always
remain old serpents: I distrust the Suliots and their friendship."

Ignorant of Ali's decision, the Greeks of the Selleid were advancing,
as well as the Toxidae, towards Janina, when they received the
following letter from Ali Pacha:

"My well-beloved children, I have just learned that you are preparing
to despatch a party of your Palikars against our common enemy,
Kursheed.  I desire to inform you that this my fortress is
impregnable, and that I can hold out against him for several years.
The only, service I require of your courage is, that you should
reduce Arta, and take alive Ismail Pacho Bey, my former servant, the
mortal enemy of my family, and the author of the evils and frightful
calamities which have so long oppressed our unhappy country, which he
has laid waste before our eyes.  Use your best efforts to accomplish
this, it will strike at the root of the evil, and my treasures shall
reward your Palikars, whose courage every day gains a higher value in
my eyes."

Furious at this mystification, the Suliots retired to their
mountains, and Kursheed profited by the discontent Ali's conduct had
caused, to win over the Toxide Skipetars, with their commanders Tahir
Abbas and Hagi Bessiaris, who only made two conditions: one, that
Ismail Pacho Bey, their personal enemy, should be deposed; the other,
that the life of their old vizier should be respected.

The first condition was faithfully adhered to by Kursheed, actuated
by private motives different from those which he gave publicly, and
Ismail Pacho Bey was solemnly deposed.  The tails, emblems of
his authority, were removed; he resigned the plumes of office; his
soldiers forsook him, his servants followed suit.  Fallen to the
lowest rank, he was soon thrown into prison, where he only blamed
Fate for his misfortunes.  All the Skipetar Agas hastened to place
themselves under Kursheeds' standard, and enormous forces now
threatened Janina.  All Epirus awaited the denoument with anxiety.

Had he been less avaricious, Ali might have enlisted all the
adventurers with whom the East was swarming, and made the sultan
tremble in his capital.  But the aged pacha clung passionately to his
treasures.  He feared also, perhaps not unreasonably, that those by
whose aid he might triumph would some day become his master.  He long
deceived himself with the idea that the English, who had sold Parga
to him, would never allow a Turkish fleet to enter the Ionian Sea.
Mistaken on this point, his foresight was equally at fault with
regard to the cowardice of his sons.  The defection of his troops was
not less fatal, and he only understood the bearing of the Greek
insurrection which he himself had provoked, so far as to see that in
this struggle he was merely an instrument in procuring the freedom of
a country which he had too cruelly oppressed to be able to hold even
an inferior rank in it.  His last letter to the Suliots opened the
eyes of his followers, but under the influence of a sort of polite
modesty these were at least anxious to stipulate for the life of
their vizier.  Kursheed was obliged to produce firmans from the
Porte, declaring that if Ali Tepelen submitted, the royal promise
given to his sons should be kept, and that he should, with them, be
transferred to Asia Minor, as also his harem, his servants; and his
treasures, and allowed to finish his days in peace.  Letters from
Ali's sons were shown to the Agas, testifying to the good treatment
they had experienced in their exile; and whether the latter believed
all this, or whether they merely sought to satisfy their own
consciences, they henceforth thought only of inducing their
rebellious chief to submit.  Finally, eight months' pay, given them
in advance, proved decisive, and they frankly embraced the cause of
the sultan.

The garrison of the castle on the lake, whom Ali seemed anxious to
offend as much as possible, by refusing their pay, he thinking them
so compromised that they would not venture even to accept an amnesty
guaranteed by the mufti, began to desert as soon as they knew the
Toxidae had arrived at the Imperial camp.  Every night these
Skipetars who could cross the moat betook themselves to Kursheed's
quarters.  One single man yet baffled all the efforts of the
besiegers.  The chief engineer, Caretto, like another Archimedes,
still carried terror into the midst of their camp.

Although reduced to the direst misery, Caretto could not forget that
he owed his life to the master who now only repaid his services with
the most sordid ingratitude.  When he had first come to Epirus, Ali,
recognising his ability, became anxious to retain him, but without
incurring any expense.  He ascertained that the Neapolitan was
passionately in love with a Mohammedan girl named Nekibi, who
returned his affection.  Acting under Ali's orders, Tahir Abbas
accused the woman before the cadi of sacrilegious intercourse with an
infidel.  She could only escape death by the apostasy of her lover;
if he refused to deny his God, he shared her fate, and both would
perish at the stake.  Caretto refused to renounce his religion, but
only Nekibi suffered death.  Caretto was withdrawn from execution,
and Ali kept him concealed in a place of safety, whence he produced
him in the time of need.  No one had served him with greater zeal; it
is even possible that a man of this type would have died at his post,
had his cup not been filled with mortification and insult.

Eluding the vigilance of Athanasius Vaya, whose charge it was to keep
guard over him, Caretto let himself down by a cord fastened to the
end of a cannon: He fell at the foot of the rampart, and thence
dragged himself, with a broken arm, to the opposite camp.  He had
become nearly blind through the explosion of a cartridge which had
burnt his face.  He was received as well as a Christian from whom
there was now nothing to fear, could expect.  He received the bread
of charity, and as a refugee is only valued in proportion to the use
which can be made of him, he was despised and forgotten.

The desertion of Caretto was soon followed by a defection which
annihilated Ali's last hopes.  The garrison which had given him so
many proofs of devotion, discouraged by his avarice, suffering from a
disastrous epidemic, and no longer equal to the necessary labour in
defence of the place, opened all, the gates simultaneously to the
enemy.  But the besiegers, fearing a trap, advanced very slowly; so
that Ali, who had long prepared against very sort of surprise, had
time to gain a place which he called his "refuge."

It was a sort of fortified enclosure, of solid masonry, bristling
with cannon, which surrounded the private apartments of his seraglio,
called the "Women's Tower."  He had taken care to demolish everything
which could be set on fire, reserving only a mosque and the tomb of
his wife Emineh, whose phantom, after announcing an eternal repose,
had ceased to haunt him.  Beneath was an immense natural cave, in
which he had stored ammunition, precious articles, provisions, and
the treasures which had not been sunk in the lake.  In this cave an
apartment had been made for Basilissa and his harem, also a shelter
in which he retired to sleep when exhausted with fatigue.  This place
was his last resort, a kind of mausoleum; and he did not seem
distressed at beholding the castle in the hands of his enemies.  He
calmly allowed them to occupy the entrance, deliver their hostages,
overrun the ramparts, count the cannon which were on the platforms,
crumbling from the hostile shells; but when they came within hearing,
he demanded by one of his servants that Kursheed should send him an
envoy of distinction; meanwhile he forbade anyone to pass beyond a
certain place which he pointed out.

Kursheed, imagining that, being in the last extremity, he would
capitulate, sent out Tahir Abbas and Hagi Bessiaris.  Ali listened
without reproaching them for their treachery, but simply observed
that be wished to meet some of the chief officers.

The Seraskier then deputed his keeper of the wardrobe, accompanied by
his keeper of the seals and other persons of quality.  Ali received
them with all ceremony, and, after the usual compliments had been
exchanged, invited them to descend with him into the cavern.  There
he showed them more than two thousand barrels of powder carefully
arranged beneath his treasures, his remaining provisions, and a
number of valuable objects which adorned this slumbering volcano.  He
showed them also his bedroom, a sort of cell richly furnished, and
close to the powder.  It could be reached only by means of three
doors, the secret of which was known to no one but himself.
Alongside of this was the harem, and in the neighbouring mosque was
quartered his garrison, consisting of fifty men, all ready to bury
themselves under the ruins of this fortification, the only spot
remaining to him of all Greece, which had formerly bent beneath his
authority.

After this exhibition, Ali presented one of his most devoted
followers to the envoys.  Selim, who watched over the fire, was a
youth in appearance as gentle as his heart was intrepid, and his
special duty was to be in readiness to blow up the whole place at any
moment.  The pacha gave him his hand to kiss, inquiring if he were
ready to die, to which he only responded by pressing his master's
hand fervently to his lips.  He never took his eyes off Ali, and the
lantern, near which a match was constantly smoking, was entrusted
only to him and to Ali, who took turns with him in watching it.  Ali
drew a pistol from his belt, making as if to turn it towards the
powder magazine, and the envoys fell at his feet, uttering
involuntary cries of terror.  He smiled at their fears, and assured
them that, being wearied of the weight of his weapons, he had only
intended to relieve himself of some of them.  He then begged them to
seat themselves, and added that he should like even a more terrible
funeral than that which they had just ascribed to him.  "I do not
wish to drag down with me," he exclaimed, "those who have come to
visit me as friends; it is Kursheed, whom I have long regarded as my
brother, his chiefs, those who have betrayed me, his whole army in
short, whom I desire to follow me to the tomb--a sacrifice which will
be worthy of my renown, and of the brilliant end to which I aspire."

The envoys gazed at him with stupefaction, which did not diminish
when Ali further informed them that they were not only sitting over
the arch of a casemate filled with two hundred thousand pounds of
powder, but that the whole castle, which they had so rashly occupied,
was undermined.  "The rest you have seen," he said, "but of this you
could not be aware.  My riches are the sole cause of the war which
has been made against me, and in one moment I can destroy them.  Life
is nothing to me, I might have ended it among the Greeks, but could
I, a powerless old man, resolve to live on terms of equality among
those whose absolute master I have been?  Thus, whichever way I look,
my career is ended.  However, I am attached to those who still
surround me, so hear my last resolve.  Let a pardon, sealed by the
sultan's hands, be given me, and I will submit.  I will go to
Constantinople, to Asia Minor, or wherever I am sent.  The things I
should see here would no longer be fitting for me to behold."

To this Kursheed's envoys made answer that without doubt these terms
would be conceded.  Ali then touched his breast and forehead, and,
drawing forth his watch, presented it to the keeper of the wardrobe.
"I mean what I say, my friend," he observed; "my word will be kept.
If within an hour thy soldiers are not withdrawn from this castle
which has been treacherously yielded to them, I will blow it up.
Return to the Seraskier, warn him that if he allows one minute more
to elapse than the time specified, his army, his garrison, I myself
and my family, will all perish together: two hundred thousand pounds
of powder can destroy all that surrounds us.  Take this watch, I give
it thee, and forget not that I am a man of my word."  Then,
dismissing the messengers, he saluted them graciously, observing that
he did not expect an answer until the soldiers should have evacuated
the castle.

The envoys had barely returned to the camp when Kursheed sent orders
to abandon the fortress.  As the reason far this step could not be
concealed, everyone, exaggerating the danger, imagined deadly mines
ready to be fired everywhere, and the whole army clamoured to break
up the camp.  Thus Ali and his fifty followers cast terror into the
hearts of nearly thirty thousand men, crowded together on the slopes
of Janina.  Every sound, every whiff of smoke, ascending from near
the castle, became a subject of alarm for the besiegers.  And as the
besieged had provisions for a long time, Kursheed saw little chance
of successfully ending his enterprise; when Ali's demand for pardon
occurred to him.  Without stating his real plans, he proposed to his
Council to unite in signing a petition to the Divan for Ali's pardon.

This deed, formally executed, and bearing more than sixty signatures,
was then shown to Ali, who was greatly delighted.  He was described
in it as Vizier, as Aulic Councillor, and also as the most
distinguished veteran among His Highness the Sultan's slaves.  He
sent rich presents to Kursheed and the principal officers, whom he
hoped to corrupt, and breathed as though the storm had passed away.
The following night, however, he heard the voice of Emineh, calling
him several times, and concluded that his end drew nigh.

During the two next nights he again thought he heard Emineh's voice,
and sleep forsook his pillow, his countenance altered, and his
endurance appeared to be giving way.  Leaning on a long Malacca cane,
he repaired at early dawn to Emineh's tomb, on which he offered a
sacrifice of two spotted lambs, sent him by Tahir Abbas, whom in
return he consented to pardon, and the letters he received appeared
to mitigate his trouble.  Some days later, he saw the keeper of the
wardrobe, who encouraged him, saying that before long there would be
good news from Constantinople.  Ali learned from him the disgrace of
Pacho Bey, and of Ismail Pliaga, whom he detested equally, and this
exercise of authority, which was made to appear as a beginning of
satisfaction offered him, completely reassured him, and he made fresh
presents to this officer, who had succeeded in inspiring him with
confidence.

Whilst awaiting the arrival of the firman of pardon which Ali was
reassured must arrive from Constantinople without fail, the keeper of
the wardrobe advised him to seek an interview with Kursheed.  It was
clear that such a meeting could not take place in the undermined
castle, and Ali was therefore invited to repair to the island in the
lake.  The magnificent pavilion, which he had constructed there in
happier days, had been entirely refurnished, and it was proposed that
the conference should take place in this kiosk.

Ali appeared to hesitate at this proposal, and the keeper of the
wardrobe, wishing to anticipate his objections, added that the object
of this arrangement was, to prove to the army, already aware of it,
that there was no longer any quarrel between himself and the
commander-in-chief.  He added that Kursheed would go to the
conference attended only by members of his Divan, but that as it was
natural an outlawed man should be on his guard, Ali might, if he
liked, send to examine the place, might take with him such guards as
he thought necessary, and might even arrange things on the same
footing as in his citadel, even to his guardian with the lighted
match, as the surest guarantee which could be given him.

The proposition was accepted, and when Ali, having crossed over with
a score of soldiers, found himself more at large than he did in his
casemate, he congratulated himself on having come.  He had Basilissa
brought over, also his diamonds; and several chests of money.  Two
days passed without his thinking of anything but procuring various
necessaries, and he then began to inquire what caused the Seraskier
to delay his visit.  The latter excused himself on the plea of
illness, and offered meanwhile to send anyone Ali might wish to see,
to visit him: The pacha immediately mentioned several of his former
followers, now employed in the Imperial army, and as no difficulty
was made in allowing them to go, he profited by the permission to
interview a large number of his old acquaintances, who united in
reassuring him and in giving him great hopes of success.

Nevertheless, time passed on, and neither the Seraskier nor the
firman appeared.  Ali, at first uneasy, ended by rarely mentioning
either the one or the other, and never was deceiver more completely
deceived.  His security was so great that he loudly congratulated
himself on having come to the island.  He had begun to form a net of
intrigue to cause himself to be intercepted on the road when he
should be sent to Constantinople, and he did not despair of soon
finding numerous partisans in the Imperial army.




CHAPTER XI

For a whole week all seemed going well, when, on the morning of
February 5th, Kursheed sent Hassan Pacha to convey his compliments to
Ali, and announce that the sultan's firman, so long desired, had at
length arrived.  Their mutual wishes had been heard, but it was
desirable, for the dignity of their sovereign, that Ali, in order to
show his gratitude and submission, should order Selim to extinguish
the fatal match and to leave the cave, and that the rest of the
garrison should first display the Imperial standard and then evacuate
the enclosure.  Only on this condition could Kursheed deliver into
Ali's hands the sultan's decree of clemency.

Ali was alarmed, and his eyes were at length opened.  He replied
hesitatingly, that on leaving the citadel he had charged Selim to
obey only his own verbal order, that no written command, even though
signed and sealed by himself, would produce any effect, and therefore
he desired to repair himself to the castle, in order to fulfil what
was required.

Thereupon a long argument ensued, in which Ali's sagacity, skill, and
artifice struggled vainly against a decided line of action.  New
protestations were made to deceive him, oaths were even taken on the
Koran that no evil designs, no mental reservations, were entertained.
At length, yielding to the prayers of those who surrounded him,
perhaps concluding that all his skill could no longer fight against
Destiny, he finally gave way.

Drawing a secret token from his bozom, he handed it to Kursheed's
envoy, saying, "Go, show this to Selim, and you will convert a dragon
into a lamb."  And in fact, at sight of the talisman, Selim
prostrated himself, extinguished the match, and fell, stabbed to the
heart.  At the same time the garrison withdrew, the Imperial standard
displayed its blazonry, and the lake castle was occupied by the
troops of the Seraskier, who rent the air with their acclamations.

It was then noon.  Ali, in the island, had lost all illusions.  His
pulse beat violently, but his countenance did not betray his mental
trouble.  It was noticed that he appeared at intervals to be lost in
profound thought, that he yawned frequently, and continually drew his
fingers through his beard.  He drank coffee and iced water several
times, incessantly looked at his watch, and taking his field-glass,
surveyed by turns the camp, the castles of Janina, the Pindus range,
and the peaceful waters of the lake.  Occasionally he glanced at his
weapons, and then his eyes sparkled with the fire of youth and of
courage.  Stationed beside him, his guards prepared their cartridges,
their eyes fixed on the landing-place.

The kiosk which he occupied was connected with a wooden structure
raised upon pillars, like the open-air theatres constructed for a
public festival, and the women occupied the most remote apartments.
Everything seemed sad and silent.  The vizier, according to custom,
sat facing the doorway, so as to be the first to perceive any who
might wish to enter.  At five o'clock boats were seen approaching the
island, and soon Hassan Pacha, Omar Brionis, Kursheed's sword-bearer,
Mehemet, the keeper of the wardrobe, and several officers of the
army, attended by a numerous suite, drew near with gloomy
countenances.

Seeing them approach, Ali sprang up impetuously, his hand upon the
pistols in his belt.  "Stand! .  .  .  what is it you bring me?" he
cried to Hassan in a voice of thunder.  "I bring the commands of His
Highness the Sultan,--knowest thou not these august characters?"  And
Hassan exhibited the brilliantly gilded frontispiece which decorated
the firman.  "I know them and revere them."  "Then bow before thy
destiny; make thy ablutions; address thy prayer to Allah and to His
Prophet; for thy, head is demanded.  .  . . "  Ali did not allow him
to finish.  "My head," he cried with fury, "will not be surrendered
like the head of a slave."

These rapidly pronounced words were instantly followed by a
pistol-shot which wounded Hassan in the thigh.  Swift as lightning, a
second killed the keeper of the wardrobe, and the guards, firing at
the same time, brought down several officers.  Terrified, the
Osmanlis forsook the pavilion.  Ali, perceiving blood flowing from a
wound in his chest, roared like a bull with rage.  No one dared to
face his wrath, but shots were fired at the kiosk from all sides, and
four of his guards fell dead beside him.  He no longer knew which way
to turn, hearing the noise made by the assailants under the platform,
who were firing through the boards on which he stood.  A ball wounded
him in the side, another from below lodged in his spine; he
staggered, clung to a window, then fell on the sofa.  "Hasten," he
cried to one of his officers, "run, my friend, and strangle my poor
Basilissa; let her not fall a prey to these infamous wretches."

The door opened, all resistance ceased, the guards hastened to escape
by the windows.  Kursheed's sword-bearer entered, followed by the
executioners.  "Let the justice of Allah be accomplished!" said a
cadi.  At these words the executioners seized Ali, who was still
alive, by the beard, and dragged him out into the porch, where,
placing his head on one of the steps, they separated it from the body
with many blows of a jagged cutlass.  Thus ended the career of the
dreaded Ali Pacha.

His head still preserved so terrible and imposing an aspect that
those present beheld it with a sort of stupor.  Kursheed, to whom it
was presented on a large dish of silver plate, rose to receive it,
bowed three times before it, and respectfully kissed the beard,
expressing aloud his wish that he himself might deserve a similar
end.  To such an extent did the admiration with which Ali's bravery
inspired these barbarians efface the memory of his crimes.  Kursheed
ordered the head to be perfumed with the most costly essences, and
despatched to Constantinople, and he allowed the Skipetars to render
the last honours to their former master.

Never was seen greater mourning than that of the warlike Epirotes.
During the whole night, the various Albanian tribes watched by turns
around the corpse, improvising the most eloquent funeral songs in its
honour.  At daybreak, the body, washed and prepared according to the
Mohammedan ritual, was deposited in a coffin draped with a splendid
Indian Cashmere shawl, on which was placed a magnificent turban,
adorned with the plumes Ali had worn in battle.  The mane of his
charger was cut off, and the animal covered with purple housings,
while Ali's shield, his sword, his numerous weapons, and various
insignia, were borne on the saddles of several led horses.  The
cortege proceeded towards the castle, accompanied by hearty
imprecations uttered by the soldiers against the "Son of a Slave,"
the epithet bestowed on their sultan by the Turks in seasons of
popular excitement.

The Selaon-Aga, an officer appointed to render the proper salutes,
acted as chief mourner, surrounded by weeping mourners, who made the
ruins of Janina echo with their lamentations. The guns were fired at
long intervals.  The portcullis was raised to admit the procession,
and the whole garrison, drawn up to receive it, rendered a military
salute.  The body, covered with matting, was laid in a grave beside
that of Amina.  When the grave had been filled in, a priest
approached to listen to the supposed conflict between the good and
bad angels, who dispute the possession of the soul of the deceased.
When he at length announced that Ali Tepelen Zadi would repose in
peace amid celestial houris, the Skipetars, murmuring like the waves
of the sea after a tempest, dispersed to their quarters:

Kursheed, profiting by the night spent by the Epirotes in mourning,
caused Ali's head to be en closed in a silver casket, and despatched
it secretly to Constantinople.  His sword-bearer Mehemet, who, having
presided at the execution, was entrusted with the further duty of
presenting it to the sultan, was escorted by three hundred Turkish
soldiers.  He was warned to be expeditious, and before dawn was well
out of reach of the Arnaouts, from whom a surprise might have been
feared.

The Seraskier then ordered the unfortunate Basilissa, whose life had
been spared, to be brought before him. She threw herself at his feet,
imploring him to spare, not her life, but her honour; and he consoled
her, and assured her of the sultan's protection.  She burst into
tears when she beheld Ali's secretaries, treasurers, and steward
loaded with irons.  Only sixty thousand purses (about twenty-five
million piastres) of Ali's treasure could be found, and already his
officers had been tortured, in order to compel them to disclose where
the rest might be concealed.  Fearing a similar fate, Basilissa fell
insensible into the arms of her attendants, and she was removed to
the farm of Bouila, until the Supreme Porte should decide on her
fate.

The couriers sent in all directions to announce the death of Ali,
having preceded the sword-bearer Mehemet's triumphal procession, the
latter, on arriving at Greveno, found the whole population of that
town and the neighbouring hamlets assembled to meet him, eager to
behold the head of the terrible Ali Pacha.  Unable to comprehend how
he could possibly have succumbed, they could hardly believe their
eyes when the head was withdrawn from its casket and displayed before
them.  It remained exposed to view in the house of the Mussulman Veli
Aga whilst the escort partook of refreshment and changed horses, and
as the public curiosity continued to increase throughout the journey,
a fixed charge was at length made for its gratification, and the head
of the renowned vizier was degraded into becoming an article of
traffic exhibited at every post-house, until it arrived at
Constantinople.

The sight of this dreaded relic, exposed on the 23rd of February at
the gate of the seraglio, and the birth of an heir-presumptive to the
sword of Othman--which news was announced simultaneously with that of
the death of Ali, by the firing of the guns of the seraglio--roused
the enthusiasm of the military inhabitants of Constantinople to a
state of frenzy, and triumphant shouts greeted the appearance of a
document affixed to the head which narrated Ali's crimes and the
circumstances of his death, ending with these words: "This is the
Head of the above-named Ali Pacha, a Traitor to the Faith of Islam."

Having sent magnificent presents to Kursheed, and a hyperbolical
despatch to his army, Mahmoud II turned his attention to Asia Minor;
where Ali's sons would probably have been forgotten in their
banishment, had it not been supposed that their riches were great.
A sultan does not condescend to mince matters with his slaves, when
he can despoil them with impunity; His Supreme Highness simply sent
them his commands to die.  Veli Pacha, a greater coward than a
woman-slave born in the harem, heard his sentence kneeling.  The
wretch who had, in his palace at Arta, danced to the strains of a
lively orchestra, while innocent victims were being tortured around
him, received the due reward of his crimes.  He vainly embraced the
knees of his executioners, imploring at least the favour of dying in
privacy; and he must have endured the full bitterness of death in
seeing his sons strangled before his eyes, Mehemet the elder,
remarkable, for his beauty, and the gentle Selim, whose merits might
have procured the pardon of his family had not Fate ordained
otherwise.  After next beholding the execution of his brother, Salik
Pacha, Ali's best loved son, whom a Georgian slave had borne to him
in his old age, Veli, weeping, yielded his guilty head to the
executioners.

His women were then seized, and the unhappy Zobeide, whose scandalous
story had even reached Constantinople, sewn up in a leather sack, was
flung into the Pursak--a river whose waters mingle with those of the
Sagaris.  Katherin, Veli's other wife, and his daughters by various
mothers, were dragged to the bazaar and sold ignominiously to
Turcoman shepherds, after which the executioners at once proceeded to
make an inventory of the spoils of their victims.

But the inheritance of Mouktar Pacha was not quite such an easy prey.
The kapidgi-bachi who dared to present him with the bowstring was
instantly laid dead at his feet by a pistol-shot.  "Wretch!" cried
Mouktar, roaring like a bull escaped from the butcher, "dost thou
think an Arnaout dies like an eunuch?  I also am a Tepelenian!  To
arms, comrades!  they would slay us!"  As he spoke, he rushed, sword
in hand, upon the Turks, and driving them back, succeeded in
barricading himself in his apartments.

Presently a troop of janissaries from Koutaieh, ordered to be in
readiness, advanced, hauling up cannon, and a stubborn combat began.
Mouktar's frail defences were soon in splinters.  The venerable
Metche-Bono, father of Elmas Bey, faithful to the end, was killed by
a bullet; and Mouktar, having slain a host of enemies with his own
hand and seen all his friends perish, himself riddled with wounds,
set fire to the powder magazine, and died, leaving as inheritance for
the sultan only a heap of smoking ruins.  An enviable fate, if
compared with that of his father and brothers, who died by the hand
of the executioner.

The heads of Ali's children, sent to Constantinople and exposed at
the gate of the seraglio, astonished the gaping multitude.  The
sultan himself, struck with the beauty of Mehemet and Selim, whose
long eyelashes and closed eyelids gave them the appearance of
beautiful youths sunk in peaceful slumber, experienced a feeling of
emotion.  "I had imagined them," he said stupidly, "to be quite as
old as their father;" and he expressed sorrow for the fate to which
he had condemned them.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "ALI PACHA," CELEBRATED CRIMES, v7
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 7, Part 2

By Alexander Dumas, Pere




THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN



About the end of the year 1639, a troop of horsemen arrived, towards
midday, in a little village at the northern extremity of the province
of Auvergne, from the direction of Paris.  The country folk assembled
at the noise, and found it to proceed from the provost of the mounted
police and his men.  The heat was excessive, the horses were bathed
in sweat, the horsemen covered with dust, and the party seemed on its
return from an important expedition.  A man left the escort, and
asked an old woman who was spinning at her door if there was not an
inn in the place.  The woman and her children showed him a bush
hanging over a door at the end of the only street in the village, and
the escort recommenced its march at a walk.  There was noticed, among
the mounted men, a young man of distinguished appearance and richly
dressed, who appeared to be a prisoner.  This discovery redoubled the
curiosity of the villagers, who followed the cavalcade as far as the
door of the wine-shop.  The host came out, cap in hand, and the
provost enquired of him with a swaggering air if his pothouse was
large enough to accommodate his troop, men and horses.  The host
replied that he had the best wine in the country to give to the
king's servants, and that it would be easy to collect in the
neighbourhood litter and forage enough for their horses.  The provost
listened contemptuously to these fine promises, gave the necessary
orders as to what was to be done, and slid off his horse, uttering an
oath proceeding from heat and fatigue.  The horsemen clustered round
the young man: one held his stirrup, and the provost deferentially
gave way to him to enter the inn first.  No, more doubt could be
entertained that he was a prisoner of importance, and all kinds of
conjectures were made.  The men maintained that he must be charged
with a great crime, otherwise a young nobleman of his rank would
never have been arrested; the women argued, on the contrary, that it
was impossible for such a pretty youth not to be innocent.

Inside the inn all was bustle: the serving-lads ran from cellar to
garret; the host swore and despatched his servant-girls to the
neighbours, and the hostess scolded her daughter, flattening her nose
against the panes of a downstairs window to admire the handsome
youth.

There were two tables in the principal eating-room.  The provost took
possession of one, leaving the other to the soldiers, who went in
turn to tether their horses under a shed in the back yard; then he
pointed to a stool for the prisoner, and seated himself opposite to
him, rapping the table with his thick cane.

"Ouf!" he cried, with a fresh groan of weariness, "I heartily beg
your pardon, marquis, for the bad wine I am giving you!"

The young man smiled gaily.

"The wine is all very well, monsieur provost," said he, "but I cannot
conceal from you that however agreeable your company is to me, this
halt is very inconvenient; I am in a hurry to get through my
ridiculous situation, and I should have liked to arrive in time to
stop this affair at once."

The girl of the house was standing before the table with a pewter pot
which she had just brought, and at these words she raised her eyes on
the prisoner, with a reassured look which seemed to say, "I was sure
that he was innocent."

"But," continued the marquis, carrying the glass to his lips, "this
wine is not so bad as you say, monsieur provost."

Then turning to the girl, who was eyeing his gloves and his ruff--

"To your health, pretty child."

"Then," said the provost, amazed at this free and easy air, "perhaps
I shall have to beg you to excuse your sleeping quarters."

"What!" exclaimed the marquis, "do we sleep here?"

"My lord;" said the provost, "we have sixteen long leagues to make,
our horses are done up, and so far as I am concerned I declare that I
am no better than my horse."

The marquis knocked on the table, and gave every indication of being
greatly annoyed.  The provost meanwhile puffed and blowed, stretched
out his big boots, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.  He
was a portly man, with a puffy face, whom fatigue rendered singularly
uncomfortable.

"Marquis," said he, "although your company, which affords me the
opportunity of showing you some attention, is very precious to me,
you cannot doubt that I had much rather enjoy it on another footing.
If it be within your power, as you say, to release yourself from the
hands of justice, the sooner you do so the better I shall be pleased.
But I beg you to consider the state we are in.  For my part, I am
unfit to keep the saddle another hour, and are you not yourself
knocked up by this forced march in the great heat?"

"True, so I am," said the marquis, letting his arms fall by his side.

"Well, then, let us rest here, sup here, if we can, and we will start
quite fit in the cool of the morning."

"Agreed," replied the marquis; "but then let us pass the time in a
becoming manner.  I have two pistoles left, let them be given to
these good fellows to drink.  It is only fair that I should treat
them, seeing that I am the cause of giving them so much trouble."

He threw two pieces of money on the table of the soldiers, who cried
in chorus, "Long live M. the marquis!"  The provost rose, went to
post sentinels, and then repaired to the kitchen, where he ordered
the best supper that could be got.  The men pulled out dice and began
to drink and play.  The marquis hummed an air in the middle of the
room, twirled his moustache, turning on his heel and looking
cautiously around; then he gently drew a purse from his trousers
pocket, and as the daughter of the house was coming and going, he
threw his arms round her neck as if to kiss her, and whispered,
slipping ten Louis into her hand--

"The key of the front door in my room, and a quart of liquor to the
sentinels, and you save my life."

The girl went backwards nearly to the door, and returning with an
expressive look, made an affirmative sign with her hand.  The provost
returned, and two hours later supper was served.  He ate and drank
like a man more at home at table than in the saddle.  The marquis
plied him with bumpers, and sleepiness, added to the fumes of a very
heady wine, caused him to repeat over and over again--

"Confound it all, marquis, I can't believe you are such a blackguard
as they say you are; you seem to me a jolly good sort."

The marquis thought he was ready to fall under the table, and was
beginning to open negotiations with the daughter of the house, when,
to his great disappointment, bedtime having come, the provoking
provost called his sergeant, gave him instructions in an undertone,
and announced that he should have the honour of conducting M. the
marquis to bed, and that he should not go to bed himself before
performing this duty.  In fact, he posted three of his men, with
torches, escorted the prisoner to his room, and left him with many
profound bows.

The marquis threw himself on his bed without pulling off his boots,
listening to a clock which struck nine.  He heard the men come and go
in the stables and in the yard.

An hour later, everybody being tired, all was perfectly still.  The
prisoner then rose softly, and felt about on tiptoe on the
chimneypiece, on the furniture, and even in his clothes, for the key
which he hoped to find.  He could not find it.  He could not be
mistaken, nevertheless, in the tender interest of the young girl, and
he could not believe that she was deceiving him.  The marquis's room
had a window which opened upon the street, and a door which gave
access to a shabby gallery which did duty for a balcony, whence a
staircase ascended to the principal rooms of the house.  This gallery
hung over the courtyard, being as high above it as the window was
from the street.  The marquis had only to jump over one side or the
other: he hesitated for some time, and just as he was deciding to
leap into the street, at the risk of breaking his neck, two taps were
struck on the door.  He jumped for joy, saying to himself as he
opened, "I am saved!"  A kind of shadow glided into the room; the
young girl trembled from head to foot, and could not say a word.  The
marquis reassured her with all sorts of caresses.

"Ah, sir," said she, "I am dead if we are surprised."

"Yes," said the marquis, "but your fortune is made if you get me out
of here."

"God is my witness that I would with all my soul, but I have such a
bad piece of news----"

She stopped, suffocated with varying emotions.  The poor girl had
come barefooted, for fear of making a noise, and appeared to be
shivering.

"What is the matter?" impatiently asked the marquis.

"Before going to bed," she continued, "M. the provost has required
from my father all the keys of the house, and has made him take a
great oath that there are no more.  My father has given him all:
besides, there is a sentinel at every door; but they are very tired;
I have heard them muttering and grumbling, and I have given them more
wine than you told me."

"They will sleep," said the marquis, nowise discouraged, "and they
have already shown great respect to my rank in not nailing me up in
this room."

"There is a small kitchen garden," continued the girl, "on the side
of the fields, fenced in only by a loose hurdle, but----"

"Where is my horse?"

"No doubt in the shed with the rest."

"I will jump into the yard."

"You will be killed."

"So much the better!"

"Ah monsieur marquis, what have, you done?" said the young girl with
grief.

"Some foolish things! nothing worth mentioning; but my head and my
honour are at stake.  Let us lose no time; I have made up my mind."

"Stay," replied the girl, grasping his arm; "at the left-hand corner
of the yard there is a large heap of straw, the gallery hangs just
over it--"

"Bravo!  I shall make less noise, and do myself less mischief."  He
made a step towards the door; tie girl, hardly knowing what she was
doing, tried to detain him; but he got loose from her and opened it.
The moon was shining brightly into the yard; he heard no sound.  He
proceeded to the end of the wooden rail, and perceived the dungheap,
which rose to a good height: the girl made the sign of the cross.
The marquis listened once again, heard nothing, and mounted the rail.
He was about to jump down, when by wonderful luck he heard murmurings
from a deep voice.  This proceeded from one of two horsemen, who were
recommencing their conversation and passing between them a pint of
wine.  The marquis crept back to his door, holding his breath: the
girl was awaiting him on the threshold.

"I told you it was not yet time," said she.

"Have you never a knife," said the marquis, "to cut those rascals'
throats with?"

"Wait, I entreat you, one hour, one hour only," murmured the young
girl; "in an hour they will all be asleep."

The girl's voice was so sweet, the arms which she stretched towards
him were full of such gentle entreaty, that the marquis waited, and
at the end of an hour it was the young girl's turn to tell him to
start.

The marquis for the last time pressed with his mouth those lips but
lately so innocent, then he half opened the door, and heard nothing
this time but dogs barking far away in an otherwise silent country.
He leaned over the balustrade, and saw: very plainly a soldier lying
prone on the straw.

"If they were to awake?" murmured the young girl in accents of
anguish.

"They will not take me alive, be assured," said the marquis.

"Adieu, then," replied she, sobbing; "may Heaven preserve you!"

He bestrode the balustrade, spread himself out upon it, and fell
heavily on the dungheap.  The young girl saw him run to the shed,
hastily detach a horse, pass behind the stable wall, spur his horse
in both flanks, tear across the kitchen garden, drive his horse
against the hurdle, knock it down, clear it, and reach the highroad
across the fields.

The poor girl remained at the end of the gallery, fixing her eyes on
the sleeping sentry, and ready to disappear at the slightest
movement.  The noise made by spurs on the pavement and by the horse
at the end of the courtyard had half awakened him.  He rose, and
suspecting some surprise, ran to the shed.  His horse was no longer
there; the marquis, in his haste to escape, had taken the first which
came to hand, and this was the soldier's.  Then the soldier gave the
alarm; his comrades woke up.  They ran to the prisoner's room, and
found it empty.  The provost came from his bed in a dazed condition.
The prisoner had escaped.

Then the young girl, pretending to have been roused by the noise,
hindered the preparations by mislaying the saddlery, impeding the
horsemen instead of helping them; nevertheless, after a quarter of an
hour, all the party were galloping along the road.  The provost swore
like a pagan.  The best horses led the way, and the sentinel, who
rode the marquis's, and who had a greater interest in catching the
prisoner, far outstripped his companions; he was followed by the
sergeant, equally well mounted, and as the broken fence showed the
line he had taken, after some minutes they were in view of him, but
at a great distance.  However, the marquis was losing ground; the
horse he had taken was the worst in the troop, and he had pressed it
as hard as it could go.  Turning in the saddle, he saw the soldiers
half a musket-shot off; he urged his horse more and more, tearing his
sides with his spurs; but shortly the beast, completely winded.
foundered; the marquis rolled with it in the dust, but when rolling
over he caught hold of the holsters, which he found to contain
pistols; he lay flat by the side of the horse, as if he had fainted,
with a pistol at full cock in his hand.  The sentinel, mounted on a
valuable horse, and more than two hundred yards ahead of his
serafile, came up to him.  In a moment the marquis, jumping up before
he had tune to resist him, shot him through the head; the horseman
fell, the marquis jumped up in his place without even setting foot in
the stirrup, started off at a gallop, and went away like the wind,
leaving fifty yards behind him the non-commissioned officer,
dumbfounded with what had just passed before his eyes.

The main body of the escort galloped up, thinking that he was taken;
and the provost shouted till he was hoarse, "Do not kill him!" But
they found only the sergeant, trying to restore life to his man,
whose skull was shattered, and who lay dead on the spot.

As for the marquis, he was out of sight; for, fearing a fresh
pursuit, he had plunged into the cross roads, along which he rode a
good hour longer at full gallop.  When he felt pretty sure of having
shaken the police off his track, and that their bad horses could not
overtake him, he determined to slacken to recruit his horse; he was
walking him along a hollow lane, when he saw a peasant approaching;
he asked him the road to the Bourbonnais, and flung him a crown.  The
man took the crown and pointed out the road, but he seemed hardly to
know what he was saying, and stared at the marquis in a strange
manner.  The marquis shouted to him to get out of the way; but the
peasant remained planted on the roadside without stirring an inch.
The marquis advanced with threatening looks, and asked how he dared
to stare at him like that.

"The reason is," said the peasant, "that you have----", and he
pointed to his shoulder and his ruff.

The marquis glanced at his dress, and saw that his coat was dabbled
in blood, which, added to the disorder of his clothes and the dust
with which he was covered, gave him a most suspicious aspect.

"I know," said he.  "I and my servant have been separated in a
scuffle with some drunken Germans; it's only a tipsy spree, and
whether I have got scratched, or whether in collaring one of these
fellows I have drawn some of his blood, it all arises from the row.
I don't think I am hurt a bit."  So saying, he pretended to feel all
over his body.

"All the same," he continued, "I should not be sorry to have a wash;
besides, I am dying with thirst and heat, and my horse is in no
better case.  Do you know where I can rest and refresh myself?"

The peasant offered to guide him to his own house, only a few yards
off.  His wife and children, who were working, respectfully stood
aside, and went to collect what was wanted--wine, water, fruit, and a
large piece of black bread.  The marquis sponged his coat, drank a
glass of wine, and called the people of the house, whom he questioned
in an indifferent manner.  He once more informed himself of the
different roads leading into the Bourbonnais province, where he was
going to visit a relative; of the villages, cross roads, distances;
and finally he spoke of the country, the harvest, and asked what news
there was.

The peasant replied, with regard to this, that it was surprising to
hear of disturbances on the highway at this moment, when it was
patrolled by detachments of mounted police, who had just made an
important capture.

"Who is that?--" asked the marquis.

"Oh," said the peasant, "a nobleman who has done a lot of mischief in
the country."

"What! a nobleman in the hands of justice?"

"Just so; and he stands a good chance of losing his head."

"Do they say what he has done?"

"Shocking things; horrid things; everything he shouldn't do.  All the
province is exasperated with him."

"Do you know him?"

"No, but we all have his description."

As this news was not encouraging, the marquis, after a few more
questions, saw to his horse, patted him, threw some more money to the
peasant, and disappeared in the direction pointed out.

The provost proceeded half a league farther along the road; but
coming to the conclusion that pursuit was useless, he sent one of his
men to headquarters, to warn all the points of exit from the
province, and himself returned with his troop to the place whence he
had started in the morning.  The marquis had relatives in the
neighbourhood, and it was quite possible that he might seek shelter
with some of them.  All the village ran to meet the horsemen, who
were obliged to confess that they had been duped by the handsome
prisoner.  Different views were expressed on the event, which gave
rise to much talking.  The provost entered the inn, banging his fist
on the furniture, and blaming everybody for the misfortune which had
happened to him.  The daughter of the house, at first a prey to the
most grievous anxiety, had great difficulty in concealing her joy.

The provost spread his papers over the table, as if to nurse his
ill-temper.

"The biggest rascal in the world!" he cried; "I ought to have
suspected him."

"What a handsome man he was!" said the hostess.

"A consummate rascal!  Do you know who he is?  He is the Marquis de
Saint-Maixent!"

"The Marquis de Saint-Maixent!" all cried with horror.

"Yes, the very man," replied the provost; "the Marquis de
Saint-Maixent, accused, and indeed convicted, of coining and magic."

"Ah!"

"Convicted of incest."

"O my God!"

"Convicted of having strangled his wife to marry another, whose
husband he had first stabbed."

"Heaven help us!" All crossed themselves.

"Yes, good people," continued the furious provost, "this is the nice
boy who has just escaped the king's justice!"

The host's daughter left the room, for she felt she was going to
faint.

"But," said the host, "is there no hope of catching him again?"

"Not the slightest, if he has taken the road to the Bourbonnais; for
I believe there are in that province noblemen belonging to his family
who will not allow him to be rearrested."

The fugitive was, indeed, no other than the Marquis de Saint-Maixent,
accused of all the enormous crimes detailed by the provost, who by
his audacious flight opened for himself an active part in the strange
story which it remains to relate.

It came to pass, a fortnight after these events, that a mounted
gentleman rang at the wicket gate of the chateau de Saint-Geran, at
the gates of Moulins.  It was late, and the servants were in no hurry
to open.  The stranger again pulled the bell in a masterful manner,
and at length perceived a man running from the bottom of the avenue.
The servant peered through the wicket, and making out in the twilight
a very ill-appointed traveller, with a crushed hat, dusty clothes,
and no sword, asked him what he wanted, receiving a blunt reply that
the stranger wished to see the Count de Saint-Geran without any
further loss of time.  The servant replied that this was impossible;
the other got into a passion.

"Who are you?" asked the man in livery.

"You are a very ceremonious fellow!" cried the horseman. "Go and tell
M. de Saint-Geran that his relative, the Marquis de Saint-Maixent,
wishes to see him at once."

The servant made humble apologies, and opened the wicket gate.  He
then walked before the marquis, called other servants, who came to
help him to dismount, and ran to give his name in the count's
apartments.  The latter was about to sit down to supper when his
relative was announced; he immediately went to receive the marquis,
embraced him again and again, and gave him the most friendly and
gracious reception possible. He wished then to take him into the
dining-room to present him to all the family; but the marquis called
his attention to the disorder of his dress, and begged for a few
minutes' conversation.  The count took him into his dressing-room,
and had him dressed from head to foot in his own clothes, whilst they
talked.  The marquis then narrated a made-up story to M. de
Saint-Geran relative to the accusation brought against him.  This
greatly impressed his relative, and gave him a secure footing in the
chateau.  When he had finished dressing, he followed the count, who
presented him to the countess and the rest of the family.

It will now be in place to state who the inmates of the chateau were,
and to relate some previous occurrences to explain subsequent ones.

The Marshal de Saint-Geran, of the illustrious house of Guiche, and
governor of the Bourbonnais, had married, for his first wife, Anne de
Tournon, by whom he had one son, Claude de la Guiche, and one
daughter, who married the Marquis de Bouille.  His wife dying, he
married again with Suzanne des Epaules, who had also been previously
married, being the widow of the Count de Longaunay, by whom she had
Suzanne de Longaunay.

The marshal and his wife, Suzanne des Epauies, for the mutual benefit
of their children by first nuptials, determined to marry them, thus
sealing their own union with a double tie.  Claude de Guiche, the
marshal's son, married Suzanne de Longaunay.

This alliance was much to the distaste of the Marchioness de Bouille,
the marshal's daughter, who found herself separated from her
stepmother, and married to a man who, it was said, gave her great
cause for complaint, the greatest being his threescore years and ten.

The contract of marriage between Claude de la Guiche and Suzanne de
Longaunay was executed at Rouen on the 17th of February 1619; but the
tender age of the bridegroom, who was then but eighteen, was the
cause of his taking a tour in Italy, whence he returned after two
years.  The marriage was a very happy one but for one
circumstance--it produced no issue.  The countess could not endure a
barrenness which threatened the end of a great name, the extinction
of a noble race.  She made vows, pilgrimages; she consulted doctors
and quacks; but to no purpose.

The Marshal de Saint-Geran died on the Loth of December 1632, having
the mortification of having seen no descending issue from the
marriage of his son.  The latter, now Count de Saint-Geran, succeeded
his father in the government of the Bourbonnais, and was named
Chevalier of the King's Orders.

Meanwhile the Marchioness de Bouille quarrelled with her old husband
the marquis, separated from him after a scandalous divorce, and came
to live at the chateau of Saint-Geran, quite at ease as to her
brother's marriage, seeing that in default of heirs all his property
would revert to her.

Such was the state of affairs when the Marquis de Saint-Maixent
arrived at the chateau.  He was young, handsome, very cunning, and
very successful with women; he even made a conquest of the dowager
Countess de Saint-Geran, who lived there with her children.  He soon
plainly saw that he might easily enter into the most intimate
relations with the Marchioness de Bouille.

The Marquis de Saint-Maixent's own fortune was much impaired by his
extravagance and by the exactions of the law, or rather, in plain
words, he had lost it all.  The marchioness was heiress presumptive
to the count: he calculated that she would soon lose her own husband;
in any case, the life of a septuagenarian did not much trouble a man
like the marquis; he could then prevail upon the marchioness to marry
him, thus giving him the command of the finest fortune in the
province.

He set to work to pay his court to her, especially avoiding anything
that could excite the slightest suspicion.  It was, however,
difficult to get on good terms with the marchioness without showing
outsiders what was going on.  But the marchioness, already
prepossessed by the agreeable exterior of M. de Saint-Maixent, soon
fell into his toils, and the unhappiness of her marriage, with the
annoyances incidental to a scandalous case in the courts, left her
powerless to resist his schemes.  Nevertheless, they had but few
opportunities of seeing one' another alone: the countess innocently
took a part in all their conversations; the count often came to take
the marquis out hunting; the days passed in family pursuits.  M. de
Saint-Maixent had not so far had an opportunity of saying what a
discreet woman ought to pretend not to hear; this intrigue,
notwithstanding the marquis's impatience, dragged terribly.

The countess, as has been stated, had for twenty years never ceased
to hope that her prayers would procure for her the grace of bearing a
son to her husband.  Out of sheer weariness she had given herself up
to all kinds of charlatans, who at that period were well received by
people of rank.  On one occasion she brought from Italy a sort of
astrologer, who as nearly as possible poisoned her with a horrible
nostrum, and was sent back to his own country in a hurry, thanking
his stars for having escaped so cheaply.  This procured Madame de
Saint-Geran a severe reprimand from her confessor; and, as time went
on, she gradually accustomed herself to the painful conclusion that
she would die childless, and cast herself into the arms of religion.
The count, whose tenderness for her never failed, yet clung to the
hope of an heir, and made his Will with this in view.  The
marchioness's hopes had become certainties, and M. de Saint-Maixent,
perfectly tranquil on this head, thought only of forwarding his suit
with Madame-de Bouille, when, at the end of the month of November
1640, the Count de Saint-Geran was obliged to repair to Paris in
great haste on pressing duty.

The countess, who could not bear to be separated from her husband,
took the family advice as to accompanying him.  The marquis,
delighted at an opportunity which left him almost alone in the
chateau with Madame de Bouille, painted the journey to Paris in the
most attractive colours, and said all he could to decide her to go.
The marchioness, for her part, worked very quietly to the same end;
it was more than was needed.  It was settled that the countess should
go with M. de Saint-Geran.  She soon made her preparations, and a few
days later they set off on the journey together.

The marquis had no fears about declaring his passion; the conquest of
Madame de Bouille gave him no trouble; he affected the most violent
love, and she responded in the same terms.  All their time was spent
in excursions and walks from, which the servants were excluded; the
lovers, always together, passed whole days in some retired part of
the park, or shut up in their apartments.  It was impossible for
these circumstances not to cause gossip among an army of servants,
against whom they had to keep incessantly on their guard; and this
naturally happened.

The marchioness soon found herself obliged to make confidantes of the
sisters Quinet, her maids; she had no difficulty in gaining their
support, for the girls were greatly attached to her.  This was the
first step of shame for Madame de Bouille, and the first step of
corruption for herself and her paramour, who soon found themselves
entangled in the blackest of plots.  Moreover, there was at the
chateau de Saint-Geran a tall, spare, yellow, stupid man, just
intelligent enough to perform, if not to conceive, a bad action, who
was placed in authority over the domestics; he was a common peasant
whom the old marshal had deigned to notice, and whom the count had by
degrees promoted to the service of major-domo on account of his long
service in the house, and because he had seen him there since he
himself was a child; he would not take him away as body servant,
fearing that his notions of service would not do for Paris, and left
him to the superintendence of the household.  The marquis had a quiet
talk with this man, took his measure, warped his mind as he wished,
gave him some money, and acquired him body and soul.  These different
agents undertook to stop the chatter of the servants' hall, and
thenceforward the lovers could enjoy free intercourse.

One evening, as the Marquis de Saint-Maixent was at supper in company
with the marchioness, a loud knocking was heard at the gate of the
chateau, to which they paid no great attention.  This was followed by
the appearance of a courier who had come post haste from Paris; he
entered the courtyard with a letter from the Count de Saint-Geran for
M. the marquis; he was announced and introduced, followed by nearly
all the household.  The marquis asked the meaning of all this, and
dismissed all the following with a wave of the hand; but the courier
explained that M. the count desired that the letter in his hands
should be read before everyone.  The marquis opened it without
replying, glanced over it, and read it out loud without the slightest
alteration: the count announced to his good relations and to all his
household that the countess had indicated positive symptoms of
pregnancy; that hardly had she arrived in Paris when she suffered
from fainting fits, nausea, retching, that she bore with joy these
premonitory indications, which were no longer a matter of doubt to
the physicians, nor to anyone; that for his part he was overwhelmed
with joy at this event, which was the crowning stroke to all his
wishes; that he desired the chateau to share his satisfaction by
indulging in all kinds of gaieties; and that so far as other matters
were concerned they could remain as they were till the return of
himself and the countess, which the letter would precede only a few
days, as he was going to transport her in a litter for greater
safety.  Then followed the specification of certain sums of money to
be distributed among the servants.

The servants uttered cries of joy; the marquis and marchioness
exchanged a look, but a very troublous one; they, however, restrained
themselves so far as to simulate a great satisfaction, and the
marquis brought himself to congratulate the servants on their
attachment to their master and mistress.  After this they were left
alone, looking very serious, while crackers exploded and violins
resounded under the windows.  For some time they preserved silence,
the first thought which occurred to both being that the count and
countess had allowed themselves to be deceived by trifling symptoms,
that people had wished to flatter their hopes, that it was impossible
for a constitution to change so suddenly after twenty years, and that
it was a case of simulative pregnancy.  This opinion gaining strength
in their minds made them somewhat calmer.

The next day they took a walk side by side in a solitary path in the
park and discussed the chances of their situation.  M. de
Saint-Maixent brought before the marchioness the enormous injury
which this event would bring them.  He then said that even supposing
the news to be true, there were many rocks ahead to be weathered
before the succession could be pronounced secure.

"The child may die," he said at last.

And he uttered some sinister expressions on the slight damage caused
by the loss of a puny creature without mind, interest, or
consequence; nothing, he said, but a bit of ill-organised matter,
which only came into the world to ruin so considerable a person as
the marchioness.

"But what is the use of tormenting ourselves?" he went on
impatiently; "the countess is not pregnant, nor can she be."

A gardener working near them overheard this part of the conversation,
but as they walked away from him he could not hear any more.

A few days later, some outriders, sent before him by the count,
entered the chateau, saying that their master and mistress were close
at hand.  In fact, they were promptly followed by brakes and
travelling-carriages, and at length the countess's litter was
descried, which M. de Saint-Geran, on horse back, had never lost
sight of during the journey.  It was a triumphal reception: all the
peasants had left their work, and filled the air with shouts of
welcome; the servants ran to meet their mistress; the ancient
retainers wept for joy at seeing the count so happy and in the hope
that his noble qualities might be perpetuated in his heir.  The
marquis and Madame de Bouille did their best to tune up to the pitch
of this hilarity.

The dowager countess, who had arrived at the chateau the same day,
unable to convince herself as to this news, had the pleasure of
satisfying her self respecting it.  The count and countess were much
beloved in the Bourbonnais province; this event caused therein a
general satisfaction, particularly in the numerous houses attached to
them by consanguinity.  Within a few days of their return, more than
twenty ladies of quality flocked to visit them in great haste, to
show the great interest they took in this pregnancy.  All these
ladies, on one occasion or another, convinced themselves as to its
genuineness, and many of them, carrying the subject still further, in
a joking manner which pleased the countess, dubbed themselves
prophetesses, and predicted the birth of a boy.  The usual symptoms
incidental to the situation left no room for doubt: the country
physicians were all agreed. The count kept one of these physicians in
the chateau for two months, and spoke to the Marquis of Saint-
Maixent of his intention of procuring a good mid-wife, on the same
terms.  Finally, the dowager countess, who was to be sponsor, ordered
at a great expense a magnificent store of baby linen, which she
desired to present at the birth.

The marchioness devoured her rage, and among the persons who went
beside themselves with joy not one remarked the disappointment which
overspread her soul.  Every day she saw the marquis, who did all he
could to increase her regret, and incessantly stirred up her
ill-humour by repeating that the count and countess were triumphing
over her misfortune, and insinuating that they were importing a
supposititious child to disinherit her.  As usual both in private and
political affairs, he began by corrupting the marchioness's religious
views, to pervert her into crime.  The marquis was one of those
libertines so rare at that time, a period less unhappy than is
generally believed, who made science dependent upon, atheism.  It is
remarkable that great criminals of this epoch, Sainte-Croix for
instance, and Exili, the gloomy poisoner, were the first unbelievers,
and that they preceded the learned of the following age both, in
philosophy and in the exclusive study of physical science, in which
they included that of poisons.  Passion, interest, hatred fought the
marquis's battles in the heart of Madame de Bouille; she readily lent
herself to everything that M. de Saint-Maixent wished.

The Marquis de Saint-Maixent had a confidential servant, cunning,
insolent, resourceful, whom he had brought from his estates, a
servant well suited to such a master, whom he sent on errands
frequently into the neighbourhood of Saint-Geran.

One evening, as the marquis was about to go to bed, this man,
returning from one of his expeditions, entered his room, where he
remained for a long time, telling him that he had at length found
what he wanted, and giving him a small piece of paper which contained
several names of places and persons.

Next morning, at daybreak, the marquis caused two of his horses to be
saddled, pretended that he was summoned home on pressing business,
foresaw that he should be absent for three or four days, made his
excuses to the count, and set off at full gallop, followed by his
servant.

They slept that night at an inn on the road to Auvergne, to put off
the scent any persons who might recognise them; then, following
cross-country roads, they arrived after two days at a large hamlet,
which they had seemed to have passed far to their left.

In this hamlet was a woman who practised the avocation of midwife,
and was known as such in the neighbourhood, but who had, it was said,
mysterious and infamous secrets for those who paid her well.
Further, she drew a good income from the influence which her art gave
her over credulous people.  It was all in her line to cure the king's
evil, compound philtres and love potions; she was useful in a variety
of ways to girls who could afford to pay her; she was a lovers'
go-between, and even practised sorcery for country folk.  She played
her cards so well, that the only persons privy to her misdeeds were
unfortunate creatures who had as strong an interest as herself in
keeping them profoundly secret; and as her terms were very high, she
lived comfortably enough in a house her own property, and entirely
alone, for greater security.  In a general way, she was considered
skilful in her ostensible profession, and was held in estimation by
many persons of rank.  This woman's name was Louise Goillard.

Alone one evening after curfew, she heard a loud knocking at the door
of her house.  Accustomed to receive visits at all hours, she took
her lamp without hesitation, and opened the door.  An armed man,
apparently much agitated, entered the room.  Louise Goillard, in a
great fright, fell into a chair; this man was the Marquis de
Saint-Maixent.

"Calm yourself, good woman," said the stranger, panting and
stammering; "be calm, I beg; for it is I, not you, who have any cause
for emotion.  I am not a brigand, and far from your having anything
to fear, it is I, on the contrary, who am come to beg for your
assistance."

He threw his cloak into a corner, unbuckled his waistbelt, and laid
aside his sword.  Then falling into a chair, he said--

"First of all, let me rest a little."

The marquis wore a travelling-dress; but although he had not stated
his name, Louise Goillard saw at a glance that he was a very
different person from what she had thought, and that, on the
contrary, he was some fine gentleman who had come on his love
affairs.

"I beg you to excuse," said she, "a fear which is insulting to you.
You came in so hurriedly that I had not time to see whom I was
talking to.  My house is rather lonely; I am alone; ill-disposed
people might easily take advantage of these circumstances to plunder
a poor woman who has little enough to lose.  The times are so bad!
You seem tired.  Will you inhale some essence?"

"Give me only a glass of water."

Louise Goillard went into the adjoining room, and returned with an
ewer.  The marquis affected to rinse his lips, and said--

"I come from a great distance on a most important matter.  Be assured
that I shall be properly grateful for your services."

He felt in his pocket, and pulled out a purse, which he rolled
between his fingers.

"In the first place; you must swear to the greatest secrecy."

"There is no need of that with us," said Louise Goillard; "that is
the first condition of our craft."

"I must have more express guarantees, and your oath that you will
reveal to no one in the world what I am going to confide to you."

"I give you my word, then, since you demand it; but I repeat that
this is superfluous; you do not know me."

"Consider that this is a most serious matter, that I am as it were
placing my head in your hands, and that I would lose my life a
thousand times rather than see this mystery unravelled."

"Consider also," bluntly replied the midwife, "that we ourselves are
primarily interested in all the secrets entrusted to us; that an
indiscretion would destroy all confidence in us, and that there are
even cases----You may speak."

When the marquis had reassured her as to himself by this preface, he
continued: "I know that you are a very able woman."

"I could indeed wish to be one, to serve you.".

"That you have pushed the study of your art to its utmost limits."

"I fear they have been flattering your humble servant."

"And that your studies have enabled you to predict the future."

"That is all nonsense."

"It is true; I have been told so."

"You have been imposed upon."

"What is the use of denying it and refusing to do me a service?"

Louise Goillard defended herself long: she could not understand a man
of this quality believing in fortune-telling, which she practised
only with low-class people and rich farmers; but the marquis appeared
so earnest that she knew not what to think.

"Listen," said he, "it is no use dissembling with me, I know all.  Be
easy; we are playing a game in which you are laying one against a
thousand; moreover, here is something on account to compensate you
for the trouble I am giving."

He laid a pile of gold on the table.  The matron weakly owned that
she had sometimes attempted astrological combinations which were not
always fortunate, and that she had been only induced to do so by the
fascination of the phenomena of science.  The secret of her guilty
practices was drawn from her at the very outset of her defence.

"That being so," replied the marquis, "you must be already aware of
the situation in which I find myself; you must know that, hurried
away by a blind and ardent passion, I have betrayed the confidence of
an old lady and violated the laws of hospitality by seducing her
daughter in her own house; that matters have come to a crisis, and
that this noble damsel, whom I Love to distraction, being pregnant,
is on the point of losing her life and honour by the discovery of her
fault, which is mine."

The matron replied that nothing could be ascertained about a person
except from private questions; and to further impose upon the
marquis, she fetched a kind of box marked with figures and strange
emblems.  Opening this, and putting together certain figures which it
contained, she declared that what the marquis had told her was true,
and that his situation was a most melancholy one.  She added, in
order to frighten him, that he was threatened by still more serious
misfortunes than those which had already overtaken him, but that it
was easy to anticipate and obviate these mischances by new
consultations.

"Madame," replied the marquis, "I fear only one thing in the world,
the dishonour of the woman I love.  Is there no method of remedying
the usual embarrassment of a birth?"

"I know of none," said the matron.

"The young lady has succeeded in concealing her condition; it would
be easy for her confinement to take place privately."

"She has already risked her life; and I cannot consent to be mixed up
in this affair, for fear of the consequences."

"Could not, for instance," said the marquis, "a confinement be
effected without pain?"

"I don't know about that, but this I do" know, that I shall take very
good care not to practise any method contrary to the laws of nature."

"You are deceiving me: you are acquainted with this method, you have
already practised it upon a certain person whom I could name to you."

"Who has dared to calumniate me thus?  I operate only after the
decision of the Faculty.  God forbid that I should be stoned by all
the physicians, and perhaps expelled from France!"

"Will you then let me die of despair?  If I were capable of making a
bad use of your secrets, I could have done so long ago, for I know
them.  In Heaven's name, do not dissimulate any longer, and tell me
how it is possible to stifle the pangs of labour.  Do you want more
gold?  Here it is."  And he threw more Louis on the table.

"Stay," said the matron: "there is perhaps a method which I think I
have discovered, and which I have never employed, but I believe it
efficacious."

"But if you have never employed it, it may be dangerous, and risk the
life of the lady whom I love."

"When I say never, I mean that I have tried it once, and most
successfully.  Be at your ease."

"Ah!" cried the marquis, "you have earned my everlasting gratitude!
But," continued he, "if we could anticipate the confinement itself,
and remove from henceforth the symptoms of pregnancy?"

"Oh, sir, that is a great crime you speak of!"

"Alas!" continued the marquis, as if speaking to himself in a fit of
intense grief; "I had rather lose a dear child, the pledge of our
love, than bring into the world an unhappy creature which might
possibly cause its mother's death."

"I pray you, sir, let no more be said on the subject; it is a
horrible crime even to think of such a thing."

"But what is to be done?  Is it better to destroy two persons and
perhaps kill a whole family with despair?  Oh, madame, I entreat you,
extricate us from this extremity!"

The marquis buried his face in his hands, and sobbed as though he
were weeping copiously.

"Your despair grievously affects me," said the matron; "but consider
that for a woman of my calling it is a capital offence."

"What are you talking about?  Do not our mystery, our safety, and our
credit come in first?

"They can never get at you till after the death and dishonour of all
that is dear to me in the world."

"I might then, perhaps.  But in this case you must insure me against
legal complications, fines, and procure me a safe exit from the
kingdom."

"Ah! that is my affair.  Take my whole fortune!  Take my life!"

And he threw the whole purse on the table.

"In this case, and solely to extricate you from the extreme danger in
which I see you placed, I consent to give you a decoction, and
certain instructions, which will instantly relieve the lady from her
burden.  She must use the greatest precaution, and study to carry out
exactly what I am about to tell you.  My God!  only such desperate
occasions as this one could induce me to---- Here----"

She took a flask from the bottom of a cupboard, and continued--

"Here is a liquor which never fails."

"Oh, madame, you save my honour, which is dearer to me than life!
But this is not enough: tell me what use I am to make of this liquor,
and in what doses I am to administer it."

"The patient," replied the midwife, "must take one spoonful the first
day; the second day two; the third----"

"You will obey me to the minutest particular?"

"I swear it."

"Let us start, then."

She asked but for time to pack a little linen, put things in order,
then fastened her doors, and left the house with the marquis.
A quarter of an hour later they were galloping through the night,
without her knowing where the marquis was taking her.

The marquis reappeared three days later at the chateau, finding the
count's family as he had left them--that is to say, intoxicated with
hope, and counting the weeks, days, and hours before the accouchement
of the countess.  He excused his hurried departure on the ground of
the importance of the business which had summoned him away; and
speaking of his journey at table, he related a story current in the
country whence he came, of a surprising event which he had all but
witnessed.  It was the case of a lady of quality who suddenly found
herself in the most dangerous pangs of labour.  All the skill of the
physicians who had been summoned proved futile; the lady was at the
point of death; at last, in sheer despair, they summoned a midwife of
great repute among the peasantry, but whose practice did not include
the gentry.  From the first treatment of this woman, who appeared
modest and diffident to a degree, the pains ceased as if by
enchantment; the patient fell into an indefinable calm languor, and
after some hours was delivered of a beautiful infant; but after this
was attacked by a violent fever which brought her to death's door.
They then again had recourse to the doctors, notwithstanding the
opposition of the master of the house, who had confidence in the
matron.  The doctors' treatment only made matters worse.  In this
extremity they again called in the midwife, and at the end of three
weeks the lady was miraculously restored to life, thus, added the
marquis, establishing the reputation of the matron, who had sprung
into such vogue in the town where she lived and the neighbouring
country that nothing else was talked about.

This story made a great impression on the company, on account of the
condition of the countess; the dowager added that it was very wrong
to ridicule these humble country experts, who often through
observation and experience discovered secrets which proud doctors
were unable to unravel with all their studies.  Hereupon the count
cried out that this midwife must be sent for, as she was just the
kind of woman they wanted.  After this other matters were talked
about, the marquis changing the conversation; he had gained his point
in quietly introducing the thin end of the wedge of his design.

After dinner, the company walked on the terrace.  The countess
dowager not being able to walk much on account of her advanced age,
the countess and Madame de Bouille took chairs beside her.  The count
walked up and down with M. de Saint-Maixent.  The marquis naturally
asked how things had been going on during his absence, and if Madame
de Saint-Geran had suffered any inconvenience, for her pregnancy had
become the most important affair in the household, and hardly
anything else was talked about.

"By the way," said the count, "you were speaking just now of a very
skilful midwife; would it not be a good step to summon her?"

"I think," replied the marquis, "that it would be an excellent
selection, for I do not suppose there is one in this neighbourhood to
compare to her."

"I have a great mind to send for her at once, and to keep her about
the countess, whose constitution she will be all the better
acquainted with if she studies it beforehand.  Do you know where I
can send for her?"

"Faith," said the marquis, "she lives in a village, but I don't know
which."

"But at least you know her name?"

"I can hardly remember it.  Louise Boyard, I think, or Polliard, one
or the other."

"How! have you not even retained the name?"

"I heard the story, that's all.  Who the deuce can keep a name in his
head which he hears in such a chance fashion?"

"But did the condition of the countess never occur to you?"

"It was so far away that I did not suppose you would send such a
distance.  I thought you were already provided."

"How can we set about to find her?"

"If that is all, I have a servant who knows people in that part of
the country, and who knows how to go about things: if you like, he
shall go in quest of her."

"If I like?  This very moment."

The same evening the servant started on his errand with the count's
instructions, not forgetting those of his master.  He went at full
speed.  It may readily be supposed that he had not far to seek the
woman he was to bring back with him; but he purposely kept away for
three days, and at the end of this time Louise Goillard was installed
in the chateau.

She was a woman of plain and severe exterior, who at once inspired
confidence in everyone.  The plots of the marquis and Madame de
Bouille thus throve with most baneful success; but an accident
happened which threatened to nullify them, and, by causing a great
disaster, to prevent a crime.

The countess, passing into her apartments, caught her foot in a
carpet, and fell heavily on the floor.  At the cries of a footman all
the household was astir.  The countess was carried to bed; the most
intense alarm prevailed; but no bad consequences followed this
accident, which produced only a further succession of visits from the
neighbouring gentry.  This happened about the end of the seventh
month.

At length the moment of accouchement came.  Everything had long
before been arranged for the delivery, and nothing remained to be
done.  The marquis had employed all this time in strengthening Madame
de Bouille against her scruples.  He often saw Louise Goillard in
private, and gave her his instructions; but he perceived that the
corruption of Baulieu, the house steward, was an essential factor.
Baulieu was already half gained over by the interviews of the year
preceding; a large sum of ready money and many promises did the rest.
This wretch was not ashamed to join a plot against a master to whom
he owed everything.  The marchioness for her part, and always under
the instigation of M. de Saint-Maixent, secured matters all round by
bringing into the abominable plot the Quinet girls, her maids; so
that there was nothing but treason and conspiracy against this worthy
family among their upper servants, usually styled confidential.
Thus, having prepared matters, the conspirators awaited the event.

On the 16th of August the Countess de Saint-Geran was overtaken
by the pangs of labour in the chapel of the chateau, where she was
hearing mass.  They carried her to her room before mass was over, her
women ran around her, and the countess dowager with her own hands
arranged on her head a cap of the pattern worn by ladies about to be
confined--a cap which is not usually removed till some time later.

The pains recurred with terrible intensity.  The count wept at his
wife's cries.  Many persons were present.  The dowager's two
daughters by her second marriage, one of whom, then sixteen years of
age, afterwards married the Duke de Ventadour and was a party to the
lawsuit, wished to be present at this accouchement, which was to
perpetuate by a new scion an illustrious race near extinction.  There
were also Dame Saligny, sister of the late Marshal Saint-Geran, the
Marquis de Saint-Maixent, and the Marchioness de Bouille.

Everything seemed to favour the projects of these last two persons,
who took an interest in the event of a very different character from
that generally felt.  As the pains produced no result, and the
accouchement was of the most difficult nature, while the countess was
near the last extremity, expresses were sent to all the neighbouring
parishes to offer prayers for the mother and the child; the Holy
Sacrament was elevated in the churches at Moulins.

The midwife attended to everything herself.  She maintained that the
countess would be more comfortable if her slightest desires were
instantly complied with.  The countess herself never spoke a word,
only interrupting the gloomy silence by heart-rending cries.  A11 at
once, Madame de Boulle, who affected to be bustling about, pointed
out that the presence of so many persons was what hindered the
countess's accouchement, and, assuming an air of authority justified
by fictitious tenderness, said that everyone must retire, leaving the
patient in the hands of the persons who were absolutely necessary to
her, and that, to remove any possible objections, the countess
dowager her mother must set the example.  The opportunity was made
use of to remove the count from this harrowing spectacle, and
everyone followed the countess dowager.  Even the countess's own
maids were not allowed to remain, being sent on errands which kept
them out of the way.  This further reason was given, that the eldest
being scarcely fifteen, they were too young to be present on such an
occasion.  The only persons remaining by the bedside were the
Marchioness de Bouille, the midwife, and the two Quinet girls; the
countess was thus in the hands of her most cruel enemies.

It was seven o'clock in the evening; the labours continued; the elder
Quinet girl held the patient by the hand to soothe her.  The count
and the dowager sent incessantly to know the news.  They were told
that everything was going on well, and that shortly their wishes
would be accomplished; but none of the servants were allowed to enter
the room.

Three hours later, the midwife declared that the countess could not
hold out any longer unless she got some rest.  She made her swallow a
liquor which was introduced into her mouth by spoonfuls.  The
countess fell into so deep a sleep that she seemed to be dead.  The
younger Quinet girl thought for a moment that they had killed her,
and wept in a corner of the room, till Madame de Bouille reassured
her.

During this frightful night a shadowy figure prowled in the
corridors, silently patrolled the rooms, and came now and then to the
door of the bedroom, where he conferred in a low tone with the
midwife and the Marchioness de Bouille.  This was the Marquis de
Saint-Maixent, who gave his orders, encouraged his people, watched
over every point of his plot, himself a prey to the agonies of
nervousness which accompany the preparations for a great crime.

The dowager countess, owing to her great age, had been compelled to
take some rest.  The count sat up, worn out with fatigue, in a
downstairs room hard by that in which they were compassing the ruin
of all most dear to him in the world.

The countess, in her profound lethargy, gave birth, without being
aware of it, to a boy, who thus fell on his entry into the world into
the hands of his enemies, his mother powerless to defend him by her
cries and tears.  The door was half opened, and a man who was waiting
outside brought in; this was the major-domo Baulieu.

The midwife, pretending to afford the first necessary cares to the
child, had taken it into a corner.  Baulieu watched her movements,
and springing upon her, pinioned her arms.  The wretched woman dug
her nails into the child's head.  He snatched it from her, but the
poor infant for long bore the marks of her claws.

Possibly the Marchioness de Bouille could not nerve herself to the
commission of so great a crime; but it seems more probable that the
steward prevented the destruction of the child under the orders of
M. de Saint-Maixent.  The theory is that the marquis, mistrustful of
the promise made him by Madame de Bouille to marry him after the
death of her husband, desired to keep the child to oblige her to keep
her word, under threats of getting him acknowledged, if she proved
faithless to him.  No other adequate reason can be conjectured to
determine a man of his character to take such great care of his
victim.

Baulieu swaddled the child immediately, put it in a basket, hid it
under his cloak, and went with his prey to find the marquis; they
conferred together for some time, after which the house steward
passed by a postern gate into the moat, thence to a terrace by which
he reached a bridge leading into the park.  This park had twelve
gates, and he had the keys of all.  He mounted a blood horse which he
had left waiting behind a wall, and started off at full gallop.  The
same day he passed through the village of Escherolles, a league
distant from Saint-Geran, where he stopped at the house of a nurse,
wife of a glove-maker named Claude.  This peasant woman gave her
breast to the child; but the steward, not daring to stay in a village
so near Saint-Geran, crossed the river Allier at the port de la
Chaise, and calling at the house of a man named Boucaud, the good
wife suckled the child for the second time; he then continued his
journey in the direction of Auvergne.

The heat was excessive, his horse was done up, the child seemed
uneasy.  A carrier's cart passed him going to Riom; it was owned by a
certain Paul Boithion of the town of Aigueperce, a common carrier on
the road.  Baulieu went alongside to put the child in the cart, which
he entered himself, carrying the infant on his knees.  The horse
followed, fastened by the bridle to the back of the cart.

In the conversation which he held with this man, Baulieu said that he
should not take so much care of the child did it not belong to the
most noble house in the Bourbonnais.  They reached the village of Che
at midday.  The mistress of the house where he put up, who was
nursing an infant, consented to give some of her milk to the child.
The poor creature was covered with blood; she warmed some water,
stripped off its swaddling linen, washed it from head to foot, and
swathed it up again more neatly.

The carrier then took them to Riom.  When they got there, Baulieu got
rid of him by giving a false meeting-place for their departure; left
in the direction of the abbey of Lavoine, and reached the village of
Descoutoux, in the mountains, between Lavoine and Thiers.  The
Marchioness de Bouille had a chateau there where she occasionally
spent some time.

The child was nursed at Descoutoux by Gabrielle Moini, who was paid a
month in advance; but she only kept it a week or so, because they
refused to tell her the father and mother and to refer her to a place
where she might send reports of her charge.  This woman having made
these reasons public, no nurse could be found to take charge of the
child, which was removed from the village of Descoutoux.  The persons
who removed it took the highroad to Burgundy, crossing a densely
wooded country, and here they lost their way.

The above particulars were subsequently proved by the nurses, the
carrier, and others who made legal depositions.  They are stated at
length here, as they proved very important in the great lawsuit.  The
compilers of the case, into which we search for information, have
however omitted to tell us how the absence of the major-domo was
accounted for at the castle; probably the far-sighted marquis had got
an excuse ready.

The countess's state of drowsiness continued till daybreak.  She woke
bathed in blood, completely exhausted, but yet with a sensation of
comfort which convinced her that she had been delivered from her
burden.  Her first words were about her child; she wished to see it,
kiss it; she asked where it was.  The midwife coolly told her, whilst
the girls who were by were filled with amazement at her audacity,
that she had not been confined at all.  The countess maintained the
contrary, and as she grew very excited, the midwife strove to calm
her, assuring her that in any case her delivery could not be long
protracted, and that, judging from all the indications of the night,
she would give birth to a boy.  This promise comforted the count and
the countess dowager, but failed to satisfy the countess, who
insisted that a child had been born.

The same day a scullery-maid met a woman going to the water's edge in
the castle moat, with a parcel in her arms.  She recognised the
midwife, and asked what she was carrying and where she was going so
early.  The latter replied that she was very inquisitive, and that it
was nothing at all; but the girl, laughingly pretending to be angry
at this answer, pulled open one of the ends of the parcel before the
midwife had time to stop her, and exposed to view some linen soaked
in blood.

"Madame has been confined, then?" she said to the matron.

"No," replied she briskly, "she has not."

The girl was unconvinced, and said, "How do you mean that she has
not, when madame the marchioness, who was there, says she has?"  The
matron in great confusion replied, "She must have a very long tongue,
if she said so."

The girl's evidence was later found most important.

The countess's uneasiness made her worse the next day.  She implored
with sighs and tears at least to be told what had become of her
child, steadily maintaining that she was not mistaken when she
assured them that she had given birth to one.  The midwife with great
effrontery told her that the new moon was unfavourable to childbirth,
and that she must wait for the wane, when it would be easier as
matters were already prepared.

Invalids' fancies do not obtain much credence; still, the persistence
of the countess would have convinced everyone in the long run, had
not the dowager said that she remembered at the end of the ninth
month of one of her own pregnancies she had all the premonitory
symptoms of lying in, but they proved false, and in fact the
accouchement took place three months later.

This piece of news inspired great confidence.  The marquis and Madame
de Bouille did all in their power to confirm it, but the countess
obstinately refused to listen to it, and her passionate transports of
grief gave rise to the greatest anxiety.  The midwife, who knew not
how to gain time, and was losing all hope in face of the countess's
persistence, was almost frightened out of her wits; she entered into
medical details, and finally said that some violent exercise must be
taken to induce labour.  The countess, still unconvinced, refused to
obey this order; but the count, the dowager, and all the family
entreated her so earnestly that she gave way.

They put her in a close carriage, and drove her a whole day over
ploughed fields, by the roughest and hardest roads.  She was so
shaken that she lost the power of breathing; it required all the
strength of her constitution to support this barbarous treatment in
the delicate condition of a lady so recently confined.  They put her
to bed again after this cruel drive, and seeing that nobody took her
view, she threw herself into the arms of Providence, and consoled
herself by religion; the midwife administered violent remedies to
deprive her of milk; she got over all these attempts to murder her,
and slowly got better.

Time, which heals the deepest affliction, gradually soothed that of
the countess; her grief nevertheless burst out periodically on the
slightest cause; but eventually it died out, till the following
events rekindled it.

There had been in Paris a fencing-master who used to boast that he
had a brother in the service of a great house.  This fencing-master
had married a certain Marie Pigoreau, daughter of an actor.  He had
recently died in poor circumstances, leaving her a widow with two
children.  This woman Pigoreau did not enjoy the best of characters,
and no one knew how she made a living, when all at once, after some
short absences from home and visit from a man who came in the
evening, his face muffled in his cloak, she launched out into a more
expensive style of living; the neighbours saw in her house costly
clothes, fine swaddling-clothes, and at last it became known that she
was nursing a strange child.

About the same time it also transpired that she had a deposit of two
thousand livres in the hands of a grocer in the quarter, named
Raguenet; some days later, as the child's baptism had doubtless been
put off for fear of betraying his origin, Pigoreau had him christened
at St. Jean en Greve.  She did not invite any of the neighbours to
the function, and gave parents' names of her own choosing at the
church.  For godfather she selected the parish sexton, named Paul
Marmiou, who gave the child the name of Bernard.  La Pigoreau
remained in a confessional during the ceremony, and gave the man ten
sou.  The godmother was Jeanne Chevalier, a poor woman of the parish.

The entry in the register was as follows:-

     "On the seventh day of March one thousand six hundred and
     forty-two was baptized Bernard, son of .  .  .  and .  .  .  his
     godfather being Paul Marmiou, day labourer and servant of this
     parish, and his godmother Jeanne Chevalier, widow of Pierre
     Thibou."

A few days afterwards la Pigoreau put out the child to nurse in the
village of Torcy en Brie, with a woman who had been her godmother,
whose husband was called Paillard.  She gave out that it was a child
of quality which had been entrusted to her, and that she should not
hesitate, if such a thing were necessary, to save its life by the
loss of one of her own children.  The nurse did not keep it long,
because she fell ill; la Pigoreau went to fetch the child away,
lamenting this accident, and further saying that she regretted it all
the more, as the nurse would have earned enough to make her
comfortable for the rest of her life.  She put the infant out again
in the same village, with the widow of a peasant named Marc Peguin.
The monthly wage was regularly paid, and the child brought up as one
of rank.  La Pigoreau further told the woman that it was the son of a
great nobleman, and would later make the fortunes of those who served
him.  An elderly man, whom the people supposed to be the child's
father, but who Pigoreau assured them was her brother-in-law, often
came to see him.

When the child was eighteen months old, la Pigoreau took him away and
weaned him.  Of the two by her husband the elder was called Antoine,
the second would have been called Henri if he had lived; but he was
born on the 9th of August 1639, after the death of his father, who
was killed in June of the same year, and died shortly after his
birth.  La Pigoreau thought fit to give the name and condition of
this second son to the stranger, and thus bury for ever the secret of
his birth.  With this end in view, she left the quarter where she
lived, and removed to conceal herself in another parish where she was
not known.  The child was brought up under the name and style of
Henri, second son of la Pigoreau, till he was two and a half years of
age; but at this time, whether she was not engaged to keep it any
longer, or whether she had spent the two thousand livres deposited
with the grocer Raguenet, and could get no more from the principals,
she determined to get rid of it.

Her gossips used to tell this woman that she cared but little for her
eldest son, because she was very confident of the second one making
his fortune, and that if she were obliged to give up one of them, she
had better keep the younger, who was a beautiful boy.  To this she
would reply that the matter did not depend upon her; that the boy's
godfather was an uncle in good circumstances, who would not charge
himself with any other child.  She often mentioned this uncle, her
brother-in-law, she said, who was major-domo in a great house.

One morning, the hall porter at the hotel de Saint-Geran came to
Baulieu and told him that a woman carrying a child was asking for him
at the wicket gate; this Baulieu was, in fact, the brother of the
fencing master, and godfather to Pigoreau's second son.  It is now
supposed that he was the unknown person who had placed the child of
quality with her, and who used to go and see him at his nurse's.  La
Pigoreau gave him a long account of her situation.  The major-domo
took the child with some emotion, and told la Pigoreau to wait his
answer a short distance off, in a place which he pointed out.

Baulieu's wife made a great outcry at the first proposal of an
increase of family; but he succeeded in pacifying her by pointing out
the necessities of his sister-in-law, and how easy and inexpensive it
was to do this good work in such a house as the count's.  He went to
his master and mistress to ask permission to bring up this child in
their hotel; a kind of feeling entered into the charge he was
undertaking which in some measure lessened the weight on his
conscience.

The count and countess at first opposed this project; telling him
that having already five children he ought not to burden himself with
any more, but he petitioned so earnestly that he obtained what he
wanted.  The countess wished to see it, and as she was about to start
for Moulins she ordered it to be put in her women's coach; when it
was shown her, she cried out, "What a lovely child!"  The boy was
fair, with large blue eyes and very regular features, She gave him a
hundred caresses, which the child returned very prettily.  She at
once took a great fancy to him, and said to Baulieu, "I shall not put
him in my women's coach; I shall put him in my own."

After they arrived at the chateau of Saint-Geran, her affection for
Henri, the name retained by the child, increased day by day.  She
often contemplated him with sadness, then embraced him with
tenderness, and kept him long on her bosom.  The count shared this
affection for the supposed nephew of Baulieu, who was adopted, so to
speak, and brought up like a child of quality.

The Marquis de Saint-Maixent and Madame de Bouille had not married,
although the old Marquis de Bouille had long been dead.  It appeared
that they had given up this scheme.  The marchioness no doubt felt
scruples about it, and the marquis was deterred from marriage by his
profligate habits.  It is moreover supposed that other engagements
and heavy bribes compensated the loss he derived from the
marchioness's breach of faith.

He was a man about town at that period, and was making love to the
demoiselle Jacqueline de la Garde; he had succeeded in gaining her
affections, and brought matters to such a point that she no longer
refused her favours except on the grounds of her pregnancy and the
danger of an indiscretion.  The marquis then offered to introduce to
her a matron who could deliver women without the pangs of labour, and
who had a very successful practice.  The same Jacqueline de la Garde
further gave evidence at the trial that M. de Saint-Maixent had often
boasted, as of a scientific intrigue, of having spirited away the son
of a governor of a province and grandson of a marshal of France; that
he spoke of the Marchioness de Bouille, said that he had made her
rich, and that it was to him she owed her great wealth; and further,
that one day having taken her to a pretty country seat which belonged
to him, she praised its beauty, saying "c'etait un beau lieu"; he
replied by a pun on a man's name, saying that he knew another Baulieu
who had enabled him to make a fortune of five hundred thousand
crowns.  He also said to Jadelon, sieur de la Barbesange, when
posting with him from Paris, that the Countess de Saint-Geran had
been delivered of a son who was in his power.

The marquis had not seen Madame de Bouille for a long time; a common
danger reunited them.  They had both learned with terror the presence
of Henri at the hotel de Saint-Geran.  They consulted about this; the
marquis undertook to cut the danger short.  However, he dared put in
practice nothing overtly against the child, a matter still more
difficult just then, inasmuch as some particulars of his
discreditable adventures had leaked out, and the Saint-Geran family
received him more than coldly.

Baulieu, who witnessed every day the tenderness of the count and
countess for the boy Henri, had been a hundred times on the point of
giving himself up and confessing everything. He was torn to pieces
with remorse.  Remarks escaped him which he thought he might make
without ulterior consequences; seeing the lapse of time, but they
were noted and commented on.  Sometimes he would say that he held in
his hand the life and honour of Madame the Marchioness de Bouille;
sometimes that the count and countess had more reasons than they knew
of for loving Henri.  One day he put a case of conscience to a
confessor, thus: "Whether a man who had been concerned in the
abduction of a child could not satisfy his conscience by restoring
him to his father and mother without telling them who he was?"  What
answer the confessor made is not known, but apparently it was not
what the major-domo wanted.  He replied to a magistrate of Moulins,
who congratulated him on having a nephew whom his masters
overburdened with kind treatment, that they ought to love him, since
he was nearly related to them.

These remarks were noticed by others than those principally
concerned.  One day a wine merchant came to propose to Baulieu the
purchase of a pipe of Spanish wine, of which he gave him a sample
bottle; in the evening he was taken violently ill.  They carried him
to bed, where he writhed, uttering horrible cries.  One sole thought
possessed him when his sufferings left him a lucid interval, and in
his agony he repeated over and over again that he wished to implore
pardon from the count and countess for a great injury which he had
done them.  The people round about him told him that was a trifle,
and that he ought not to let it embitter his last moments, but he
begged so piteously that he got them to promise that they should be
sent for.

The count thought it was some trifling irregularity, some
misappropriation in the house accounts; and fearing to hasten the
death of the sufferer by the shame of the confession of a fault, he
sent word that he heartily forgave him, that he might die tranquil,
and refused to see him.  Baulieu expired, taking his secret with him.
This happened in 1648.

The child was then seven years old.  His charming manners grew with
his age, and the count and countess felt their love for him increase.
They caused him to be taught dancing and fencing, put him into
breeches and hose, and a page's suit of their livery, in which
capacity he served them.  The marquis turned his attack to this
quarter.  He was doubtless preparing some plot as criminal as the
preceding, when justice overtook him for some other great crimes of
which he had been guilty.  He was arrested one day in the street when
conversing with one of the Saint-Geran footmen, and taken to the
Conciergerie of the Palace of Justice.

Whether owing to these occurrences, or to grounds for suspicion
before mentioned, certain reports spread in the Bourbonnais embodying
some of the real facts; portions of them reached the ears of the
count and countess, but they had only the effect of renewing their
grief without furnishing a clue to the truth.

Meanwhile, the count went to take the waters at Vichy.  The countess
and Madame de Bouille followed him, and there they chanced to
encounter Louise Goillard, the midwife.  This woman renewed her
acquaintance with the house, and in particular often visited the
Marchioness de Bouille.  One day the countess, unexpectedly entering
the marchioness's room, found them both conversing in an undertone.
They stopped talking immediately, and appeared disconcerted.

The countess noticed this without attaching any importance to it, and
asked the subject of their conversation.

"Oh, nothing," said the marchioness.

"But what is it?" insisted the countess, seeing that she blushed.

The marchioness, no longer able to evade the question, and feeling
her difficulties increase, replied--

"Dame Louise is praising my brother for bearing no ill-will to her."

"Why?" said the countess, turning to the midwife,--"why should you
fear any ill-will on the part of my husband?"

"I was afraid," said Louise Goillard awkwardly, "that he might have
taken a dislike to me on account of all that happened when you
expected to be confined."

The obscurity of these words and embarrassment of the two women
produced a lively effect upon the countess; but she controlled
herself and let the subject drop.  Her agitation, however, did not
escape the notice of the marchioness, who the next day had horses put
to her coach and retired to hey estate of Lavoine.  This clumsy
proceeding strengthened suspicion.

The first determination of the countess was to arrest Louise
Goillard; but she saw that in so serious a matter every step must be
taken with precaution.  She consulted the count and the countess
dowager.  They quietly summoned the midwife, to question her without
any preliminaries.  She prevaricated and contradicted herself over
and over again; moreover, her state of terror alone sufficed to
convict her of a crime.  They handed her over to the law, and the
Count de Saint-Geran filed an information before the vice-seneschal
of Moulins.

The midwife underwent a first interrogatory.  She confessed the truth
of the accouchement, but she added that the countess had given birth
to a still-born daughter, which she had buried under a stone near the
step of the barn in the back yard.  The judge, accompanied by a
physician and a surgeon, repaired to the place, where he found
neither stone, nor foetus, nor any indications of an interment.  They
searched unsuccessfully in other places.

When the dowager countess heard this statement, she demanded that
this horrible woman should be put on her trial.  The civil
lieutenant, in the absence of the criminal lieutenant, commenced the
proceedings.

In a second interrogation, Louise Goillard positively declared that
the countess had never been confined;

In a third, that she had been delivered of a mole;

In a fourth, that she had been confined of a male infant, which
Baulieu had carried away in a basket;

And in a fifth, in which she answered from the dock, she maintained
that her evidence of the countess's accouchement had been extorted
from her by violence.  She made no charges against either Madame de
Bouille or the Marquis de Saint Maixent.  On the other hand, no
sooner was she under lock and key than she despatched her son
Guillemin to the marchioness to inform her that she was arrested.
The marchioness recognised how threatening things were, and was in a
state of consternation; she immediately sent the sieur de la
Foresterie, her steward, to the lieutenant-general, her counsel,
a mortal enemy of the count, that he might advise her in this
conjuncture, and suggest a means for helping the matron without
appearing openly in the matter.  The lieutenant's advice was to quash
the proceedings and obtain an injunction against the continuance of
the preliminaries to the action.  The marchioness spent a large sum
of money, and obtained this injunction; but it was immediately
reversed, and the bar to the suit removed.

La Foresterie was then ordered to pass to Riom, where the sisters
Quinet lived, and to bribe them heavily to secrecy.  The elder one,
on leaving the marchioness's service, had shaken her fist in her
face, feeling secure with the secrets in her knowledge, and told her
that she would repent having dismissed her and her sister, and that
she would make a clean breast of the whole affair, even were she to
be hung first.  These girls then sent word that they wished to enter
her service again; that the countess had promised them handsome terms
if they would speak; and that they had even been questioned in her
name by a Capuchin superior, but that they said nothing, in order to
give time to prepare an answer for them.  The marchioness found
herself obliged to take back the girls; she kept the younger, and
married the elder to Delisle, her house steward.  But la Foresterie,
finding himself in this network of intrigue, grew disgusted at
serving such a mistress, and left her house.  The marchioness told
him on his departure that if he were so indiscreet as to repeat a
word of what he had learned from the Quinet girls, she would punish
him with a hundred poniard stabs from her major-domo Delisle.  Having
thus fortified her position, she thought herself secure against any
hostile steps; but it happened that a certain prudent Berger,
gentleman and page to the Marquis de Saint-Maixent, who enjoyed his
master's confidence and went to see him in the Conciergerie, where he
was imprisoned, threw some strange light on this affair.  His master
had narrated to him all the particulars of the accouchement of the
countess and of the abduction of the child.

"I am astonished, my lord," replied the page, "that having so many
dangerous affairs on hand; you did not relieve your conscience of
this one."

"I intend," replied the marquis, "to restore this child to his
father: I have been ordered to do so by a Capuchin to whom I
confessed having carried off from the midst of the family, without
their knowing it, a grandson of a marshal of France and son of a
governor of a province."

The marquis had at that time permission to go out from prison
occasionally on his parole.  This will not surprise anyone acquainted
with the ideas which prevailed at that period on the honour of a
nobleman, even the greatest criminal.  The marquis, profiting by this
facility, took the page to see a child of about seven years of age,
fair and with a beautiful countenance.

"Page," said he, "look well at this child, so that you may know him
again when I shall send you to inquire about him."

He then informed him that this was the Count de Saint-Geran's son
whom he had carried away.

Information of these matters coming to the ears of justice, decisive
proofs were hoped for; but this happened just when other criminal
informations were lodged against the marquis, which left him helpless
to prevent the exposure of his crimes.  Police officers were
despatched in all haste to the Conciergerie; they were stopped by the
gaolers, who told them that the marquis, feeling ill, was engaged
with a priest who was administering the sacraments, to him.  As they
insisted on seeing him; the warders approached the cell: the priest
came out, crying that persons must be sought to whom the sick man had
a secret to reveal; that he was in a desperate state, and said he had
just poisoned himself; all entered the cell.

M. de Saint-Maixent was writhing on a pallet, in a pitiable
condition, sometimes shrieking like a wild beast, sometimes
stammering disconnected words.  All that the officers could hear was

"Monsieur le Comte .  .  .  call .  .  .  the Countess .  .  .  de
Saint-Geran .  .  .  let them come.  .  .  ."  The officers earnestly
begged him to try to be more explicit.

The marquis had another fit; when he opened his eyes, he said--

"Send for the countess .  .  .  let them forgive me .  .  .  I wish
to tell them everything."  The police officers asked him to speak;
one even told him that the count was there.  The marquis feebly
murmured--

"I am going to tell you----"  Then he gave a loud cry and fell back
dead.

It thus seemed as if fate took pains to close every mouth from which
the truth might escape.  Still, this avowal of a deathbed revelation
to be made to the Count de Saint-Geran and the deposition of the
priest who had administered the last sacraments formed a strong link
in the chain of evidence.

The judge of first instruction, collecting all the information he had
got, made a report the weight of which was overwhelming.  The
carters, the nurse, the domestic servants, all gave accounts
consistent with each other; the route and the various adventures of
the child were plainly detailed, from its birth till its arrival at
the village of Descoutoux.

Justice, thus tracing crime to its sources, had no option but to
issue a warrant for the arrest of the Marchioness de Bouilie; but it
seems probable that it was not served owing to the strenuous efforts
of the Count de Saint-Geran, who could not bring himself to ruin his
sister, seeing that her dishonour would have been reflected on him.
The marchioness hid her remorse in solitude, and appeared again no
more.  She died shortly after, carrying the weight of her secret till
she drew her last breath.

The judge of Moulins at length pronounced sentence on the midwife,
whom he declared arraigned and convicted of having suppressed the
child born to the countess; for which he condemned her to be tortured
and then hanged.  The matron lodged an appeal against this sentence,
and the case was referred to the Conciergerie.

No sooner had the count and countess seen the successive proofs of
the procedure, than tenderness and natural feelings accomplished the
rest.  They no longer doubted that their page was their son; they
stripped him at once of his livery and gave him his rank and
prerogatives, under the title of the Count de la Palice.

Meanwhile, a private person named Sequeville informed the countess
that he had made a very important discovery; that a child had been
baptized in 1642 at St. Jean-en-Greve, and that a woman named Marie
Pigoreau had taken a leading part in the affair.  Thereupon inquiries
were made, and it was discovered that this child had been nursed in
the village of Torcy.  The count obtained a warrant which enabled him
to get evidence before the judge of Torcy; nothing was left undone to
elicit the whole truth; he also obtained a warrant through which he
obtained more information, and published a monitory.  The elder of
the Quinet girls on this told the Marquis de Canillac that the count
was searching at a distance for things very near him.  The truth
shone out with great lustre through these new facts which gushed from
all this fresh information.  The child, exhibited in the presence of
a legal commissary to the nurses and witnesses of Torcy, was
identified, as much by the scars left by the midwife's nails on his
head, as by his fair hair and blue eyes.  This ineffaceable vestige
of the woman's cruelty was the principal proof; the witnesses
testified that la Pigoreau, when she visited this child with a man
who appeared to be of condition, always asserted that he was the son
of a great nobleman who had been entrusted to her care, and that she
hoped he would make her fortune and that of those who had reared him.

The child's godfather, Paul Marmiou, a common labourer; the grocer
Raguenet, who had charge of the two thousand livres; the servant of
la Pigoreau, who had heard her say that the count was obliged to take
this child; the witnesses who proved that la Pigoreau had told them
that the child was too well born to wear a page's livery, all
furnished convincing proofs; but others were forthcoming.

It was at la Pigoreau's that the Marquis de Saint-Maixent, living
then at the hotel de Saint-Geran, went to see the child, kept in her
house as if it were hers; Prudent Berger, the marquis's page,
perfectly well remembered la Pigoreau, and also the child, whom he
had seen at her house and whose history the marquis had related to
him.  Finally, many other witnesses heard in the course of the case,
both before the three chambers of nobles, clergy, and the tiers etat,
and before the judges of Torcy, Cusset, and other local magistrates,
made the facts so clear and conclusive in favour of the legitimacy of
the young count, that it was impossible to avoid impeaching the
guilty parties.  The count ordered the summons in person of la
Pigoreau, who had not been compromised in the original preliminary
proceedings.  This drastic measure threw the intriguing woman on her
beam ends, but she strove hard to right herself.

The widowed Duchess de Ventadour, daughter by her mother's second
marriage of the Countess dowager of Saint-Geran, and half-sister of
the count, and the Countess de Lude, daughter of the Marchioness de
Bouille, from whom the young count carried away the Saint-Geran
inheritance, were very warm in the matter, and spoke of disputing the
judgment.  La Pigoreau went to see them, and joined in concert with
them.

Then commenced this famous lawsuit, which long occupied all France,
and is parallel in some respects, but not in the time occupied in the
hearing, to the case heard by Solomon, in which one child was claimed
by two mothers.

The Marquis de Saint-Maixent and Madame de Bouille being dead, were
naturally no parties to the suit, which was fought against the
Saint-Geran family by la Pigoreau and Mesdames du Lude and de
Ventadour.  These ladies no doubt acted in good faith, at first at
any rate, in refusing to believe the crime; for if they had
originally known the truth it is incredible that they could have
fought the case so long aid so obstinately.

They first of all went to the aid of the midwife, who had fallen sick
in prison; they then consulted together, and resolved as follows:

That the accused should appeal against criminal proceedings;

That la Pigoreau should lodge a civil petition against the judgments
which ordered her arrest and the confronting of witnesses;

That they should appeal against the abuse of obtaining and publishing
monitories, and lodge an interpleader against the sentence of the
judge of first instruction, who had condemned the matron to capital
punishment;

And that finally, to carry the war into the enemy's camp, la Pigoreau
should impugn the maternity of the countess, claiming the child as
her own; and that the ladies should depose that the countess's
accouchement was an imposture invented to cause it to be supposed
that she had given birth to a child.

For more safety and apparent absence of collusion Mesdames du Lude
and de Ventadour pretended to have no communication with la Pigoreau.

About this time the midwife died in prison, from an illness which
vexation and remorse had aggravated.  After her death, her son
Guillemin confessed that she had often told him that the countess had
given birth to a son whom Baulieu had carried off, and that the child
entrusted to Baulieu at the chateau Saint-Geran was the same as the
one recovered; the youth added that he had concealed this fact so
long as it might injure his mother, and he further stated that the
ladies de Ventadour and du Lude had helped her in prison with money
and advice--another strong piece of presumptive evidence.

The petitions of the accused and the interpleadings of Mesdames du
Lude and de Ventadour were discussed in seven hearings, before three
courts convened.  The suit proceeded with all the languor and
chicanery of the period.

After long and specious arguments, the attorney general Bijnon gave
his decision in favour of the Count and Countess of Saint-Geran,
concluding thus:--

"The court rejects the civil appeal of la Pigoreau; and all the
opposition and appeals of the appellants and the defendants; condemns
them to fine and in costs; and seeing that the charges against la
Pigoreau were of a serious nature, and that a personal summons had
been decreed against her, orders her committal, recommending her to
the indulgence of the court."

By a judgment given in a sitting at the Tournelle by M. de Mesmes, on
the 18th of August 1657, the appellant ladies' and the defendants'
opposition was rejected with fine and costs.  La Pigoreau was
forbidden to leave the city and suburbs of Paris under penalty of
summary conviction.  The judgment in the case followed the rejection
of the appeal.

This reverse at first extinguished the litigation of Mesdames du Lude
and de Ventadour, but it soon revived more briskly than ever.  These
ladies, who had taken la Pigoreau in their coach to all the hearings,
prompted her, in order to procrastinate, to file a fresh petition, in
which she demanded the confrontment of all the witnesses to the
pregnancy, and the confinement.  On hearing this petition, the court
gave on the 28th of August 1658 a decree ordering the confrontment,
but on condition that for three days previously la Pigoreau should
deliver herself a prisoner in the Conciergerie.

This judgment, the consequences of which greatly alarmed la Pigoreau,
produced such an effect upon her that, after having weighed the
interest she had in the suit, which she would lose by flight, against
the danger to her life if she ventured her person into the hands of
justice, she abandoned her false plea of maternity, and took refuge
abroad.  This last circumstance was a heavy blow to Mesdames du Lude
and de Ventadour; but they were not at the end of their resources and
their obstinacy.

Contempt of court being decreed against la Pigoreau, and the case
being got up against the other defendants, the Count de Saint-Geran
left for the Bourbonnais, to put in execution the order to confront
the witnesses.  Scarcely had he arrived in the province when he was
obliged to interrupt his work to receive the king and the queen
mother, who were returning from Lyons and passing through Moulins.
He presented the Count de la Palice to their Majesties as his son;
they received him as such.  But during the visit of the king and
queen the Count de Saint-Geran fell ill, over fatigued, no doubt, by
the trouble he had taken to give them a suitable reception, over and
above the worry of his own affairs.

During his illness, which only lasted a week, he made in his will a
new acknowledgment of his son, naming his executors M. de Barriere,
intendant of the province, and the sieur Vialet, treasurer of France,
desiring them to bring the lawsuit to an end.  His last words were
for his wife and child; his only regret that he had not been able to
terminate this affair.  He died on the 31st of January 1659.

The maternal tenderness of the countess did not need stimulating by
the injunctions of her husband, and she took up the suit with energy.
The ladies de Ventadour and du Lude obtained by default letters of
administration as heiresses without liability, which were granted out
of the Chatelet.  At the same time they appealed against the judgment
of the lieutenant-general of the Bourbonnais, giving the tutelage of
the young count to the countess his mother, and his guardianship to
sieur de Bompre.  The countess, on her side, interpleaded an appeal
against the granting of letters of administration without liability,
and did all in her power to bring back the case to the Tournelle.
The other ladies carried their appeal to the high court, pleading
that they were not parties to the lawsuit in the Tournelle.

It would serve no purpose to follow the obscure labyrinth of legal
procedure of that period, and to recite all the marches and
countermarches which legal subtlety suggested to the litigants.  At
the end of three years, on the 9th of April 1661, the countess
obtained a judgment by which the king in person--

     "Assuming to his own decision the civil suit pending at the
     Tournelle, as well as the appeals pled by both parties, and the
     last petition of Mesdames du Lude and de Ventadour, sends back
     the whole case to the three assembled chambers of the States
     General, to be by them decided on its merits either jointly or
     separately, as they may deem fit."

The countess thus returned to her first battlefield.  Legal science
produced an immense quantity of manuscript, barristers and attorneys
greatly distinguishing themselves in their calling.  After an
interminable hearing, and pleadings longer and more complicated than
ever, which however did not bamboozle the court, judgment was
pronounced in Conformity with the summing up of the attorney-general,
thus--

"That passing over the petition of Mesdames Marie de la Guiche and
Eleonore de Bouille, on the grounds," etc.  etc.;

"Evidence taken," etc.;

"Appeals, judgments annulled," etc.;

"With regard to the petition of the late Claude de la Guiche and
Suzanne de Longaunay, dated 12th August 1658,"

"Ordered,

"That the rule be made absolute;

"Which being done, Bernard de la Guiche is pronounced, maintained,
and declared the lawfully born and legitimate son of Claude de la
Guiche and Suzanne de Longaunay; in possession and enjoyment of the
name and arms of the house of Guiche, and of all the goods left by
Claude de la Guiche, his father; and Marie de la Guiche and Eleonore
de Bouille are interdicted from interfering with him;

"The petitions of Eleonore de Bouille and Marie de la Guiche, dated
4th June 1664, 4th August 1665, 6th January, 10th February, 12th
March, 15th April, and 2nd June, 1666, are dismissed with costs;

"Declared,

"That the defaults against la Pigoreau are confirmed; and that she,
arraigned and convicted of the offences imputed to her, is condemned
to be hung and strangled at a gallows erected in the Place de Greve
in this city, if taken and apprehended; otherwise, in effigy at a
gallows erected in the Place de Greve aforesaid; that all her
property subject to confiscation is seized and confiscated from
whomsoever may be in possession of it; on which property and other
not subject to confiscation, is levied a fine of eight hundred Paris
livres, to be paid to the King, and applied to the maintenance of
prisoners in the Conciergerie of the Palace of justice, and to the
costs."

Possibly a more obstinate legal contest was never waged, on both
sides, but especially by those who lost it.  The countess, who played
the part of the true mother in the Bible, had the case so much to
heart that she often told the judges, when pleading her cause, that
if her son were not recognised as such, she would marry him, and
convey all her property to him.

The young Count de la Palice became Count de Saint-Geran through the
death of his father, married, in 1667, Claude Francoise Madeleine de
Farignies, only daughter of Francois de Monfreville and of Marguerite
Jourdain de Carbone de Canisi.  He had only one daughter, born in
1688, who became a nun.  He died at the age of fifty-five years, and
thus this illustrious family became extinct.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "COUNTESS OF SAINT GERAN"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 7.
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 7, Part 3

By Alexander Dumas, Pere



MURAT

1815


I

TOULON

On the 18th June, 1815, at the very moment when the destiny of Europe
was being decided at Waterloo, a man dressed like a beggar was
silently following the road from Toulon to Marseilles.

Arrived at the entrance of the Gorge of Ollioulles, he halted on a
little eminence from which he could see all the surrounding country;
then either because he had reached the end of his journey, or
because, before attempting that forbidding, sombre pass which is
called the Thermopylae of Provence, he wished to enjoy the
magnificent view which spread to the southern horizon a little
longer, he went and sat down on the edge of the ditch which bordered
the road, turning his back on the mountains which rise like an
amphitheatre to the north of the town, and having at his feet a rich
plain covered with tropical vegetation, exotics of a conservatory,
trees and flowers quite unknown in any other part of France.

Beyond this plain, glittering in the last rays of the sun, pale and
motionless as a mirror lay the sea, and on the surface of the water
glided one brig-of-war, which, taking advantage of a fresh land
breeze, had all sails spread, and was bowling along rapidly, making
for Italian seas.  The beggar followed it eagerly with his eyes until
it disappeared between the Cape of Gien and the first of the islands
of Hyeres, then as the white apparition vanished he sighed deeply,
let his head fall into his hands, and remained motionless and
absorbed in his reflections until the tramplings of a cavalcade made
him start; he looked up, shook back his long black hair, as if he
wished to get rid of the gloomy thoughts which were overwhelming him,
and, looking at the entrance to the gorge from whence the noise came,
he soon saw two riders appear, who were no doubt well known to him,
for, drawing himself up to his full height, he let fall the stick he
was carrying, and folding his arms he turned towards them.  On their
side the new-comers had hardly seen him before they halted, and the
foremost dismounted, threw his bridle to his companion, and
uncovering, though fifty paces from the man in rags, advanced
respectfully towards him.  The beggar allowed him to approach with an
air of sombre dignity and without a single movement; then, when he
was quite near--

"Well, marshal, have, you news for me?" said the beggar.

"Yes, sire," said the other sadly.

"And what are they?"

"Such that I could wish it were anyone but myself to announce them to
your Majesty----"

"So the Emperor refuses my services!  He forgets the victories of
Aboukir, Eylau, and Moscow?"

"No, sire; but he remembers the treaty of Naples, the taking of
Reggio, and the declaration of war of the viceroy of Italy."

The beggar struck his forehead.

"Yes, yes!  I daresay he thinks I deserve his reproaches, and yet it
seems to me that he ought to remember that there are two men in me--
the soldier whom he made his brother, and the brother whom he made a
king....  Yes, as brother I have treated him ill--very ill, but as
king, upon my soul, I could not have acted differently....  I had to
choose between my sword and my crown, and between a regiment and a
people.  Listen, Brune: you do not know how it all happened.  There
was an English fleet, the guns of which were growling in the port,
there was a Neapolitan population howling in the streets.  If I had
been alone, I would have passed through the fleet with one boat,
through the crowd with my sword alone, but I had a wife and children.
Yet I hesitated; the idea of being called traitor and deserter caused
me to shed more tears than the loss of my throne, or perhaps the
death of those I love best, will ever wring from me....  And so he
will have nothing more to do with me?  He refuses me as general,
captain, private?  Then what is left for me to do?"

"Sire, your Majesty must leave France immediately."

"And if I don't obey?"

"My orders are to arrest you and deliver you up to a court-martial!"

"Old comrade, you will not do that?"

"I shall do it, praying God to strike me dead in the moment I lay
hands on you!"

"That's you all over, Brune.  You have been able to remain a good,
loyal fellow.  He did not give you a kingdom, he did not encircle
your brow with a band of iron which men call a crown and which drives
one mad; he did not place you between your conscience and your
family.  So I must leave France, begin my vagabond life again, and
say farewell to Toulon, which recalls so many memories to me!  See,
Brune," continued Murat, leaning on the arm of the marshal, "are not
the pines yonder as fine as any at the Villa Pamfili, the palms as
imposing as any at Cairo, the mountains as grand as any range in the
Tyrol?  Look to your left, is not Cape Gien something like
Castellamare and Sorrento--leaving out Vesuvius?  And see, Saint-
Mandrier at the farthest point of the gulf, is it not like my rock of
Capri, which Lamarque juggled away so cleverly from that idiot of a
Sir Hudson Lowe?  My God! and I must leave all this!  Is there no way
of remaining on this little corner of French ground--tell me, Brune!"

"You'll break my heart, sire!" answered the marshal.

"Well, we'll say no more about it.  What news?"

"The Emperor has left Paris to join the army.  They must be fighting
now."

"Fighting now and I not there!  Oh, I feel I could have been of use
to him on this battlefield.  How I would have gloried in charging
those miserable Prussians and dastardly English!  Brune, give me a
passport, I'll go at full speed, I'll reach the army, I will make
myself known to some colonel, I shall say, 'Give me your regiment.'
I'll charge at its head, and if the Emperor does not clasp my hand
to-night, I'll blow my brains out, I swear I will.  Do what I ask,
Brune, and however it may end, my eternal gratitude will be yours!"

"I cannot, sire."

"Well, well, say no more about it."

"And your Majesty is going to leave France?"

"I don't know.  Obey your orders, marshal, and if you come across me
again, have me arrested.  That's another way of doing something for
me.  Life is a heavy burden nowadays.  He who will relieve me of it
will be welcome....  Good-bye, Brune."

He held out his hand to the marshal, who tried to kiss it; but Murat
opened his arms, the two old comrades held each other fast for a
moment, with swelling hearts and eyes full of tears; then at last
they parted.  Brune remounted his horse, Murat picked up his stick
again, and the two men went away in opposite directions, one to meet
his death by assassination at Avignon, the other to be shot at Pizzo.
Meanwhile, like Richard III, Napoleon was bartering his crown against
a horse at Waterloo.

After the interview that has just been related, Murat took refuge
with his nephew, who was called Bonafoux, and who was captain of a
frigate; but this retreat could only be temporary, for the
relationship would inevitably awake the suspicions of the
authorities.  In consequence, Bonafoux set about finding a more
secret place of refuge for his uncle.  He hit on one of his friends,
an avocat, a man famed for his integrity, and that very evening
Bonafoux went to see him.

After chatting on general subjects, he asked his friend if he had not
a house at the seaside, and receiving an affirmative answer, he
invited himself to breakfast there the next day; the proposal
naturally enough was agreed to with pleasure.  The next day at the
appointed hour Bonafoux arrived at Bonette, which was the name of the
country house where M. Marouin's wife and daughter were staying.
M. Marouin himself was kept by his work at Toulon.  After the
ordinary greetings, Bonafoux stepped to the window, beckoning to
Marouin to rejoin him.

"I thought," he said uneasily, "that your house was by the sea."

"We are hardly ten minutes' walk from it."

"But it is not in sight."

"That hill prevents you from seeing it."

"May we go for a stroll on the beach before breakfast is served?"

"By all means.  Well, your horse is still saddled.  I will order
mine--I will come back for you."

Marouin went out.  Bonafoux remained at the window, absorbed in his
thoughts.  The ladies of the house, occupied in preparations for the
meal, did not observe, or did not appear to observe, his
preoccupation.  In five minutes Marouin came back.  He was ready to
start.  The avocat and his friend mounted their horses and rode
quickly down to the sea.  On the beach the captain slackened his
pace, and riding along the shore for about half an hour, he seemed to
be examining the bearings of the coast with great attention.  Marouin
followed without inquiring into his investigations, which seemed
natural enough for a naval officer.

After about an hour the two men went back to the house.

Marouin wished to have the horses unsaddled, but Bonafoux objected,
saying that he must go back to Toulon immediately after lunch.
Indeed, the coffee was hardly finished before he rose and took leave
of his hosts.  Marouin, called back to town by his work, mounted his
horse too, and the two friends rode back to Toulon together.  After
riding along for ten minutes, Bonafoux went close to his companion
and touched him on the thigh--

"Marouin," he said, "I have an important secret to confide to you."

"Speak, captain.  After a father confessor, you know there is no one
so discreet as a notary, and after a notary an avocat."

"You can quite understand that I did not come to your country house
just for the pleasure of the ride.  A more important object, a
serious responsibility, preoccupied me; I have chosen you out of all
my friends, believing that you were devoted enough to me to render me
a great service."

"You did well, captain."

"Let us go straight to the point, as men who respect and trust each
other should do.  My uncle, King Joachim, is proscribed, he has taken
refuge with me; but he cannot remain there, for I am the first person
they will suspect.  Your house is in an isolated position, and
consequently we could not find a better retreat for him.  You must
put it at our disposal until events enable the king to come to some
decision."

"It is at your service," said Marouin.

"Right.  My uncle shall sleep there to-night."

"But at least give me time to make some preparations worthy of my
royal guest."

"My poor Marouin, you are giving yourself unnecessary trouble, and
making a vexatious delay for us: King Joachim is no longer accustomed
to palaces and courtiers; he is only too happy nowadays to find a
cottage with a friend in it; besides, I have let him know about it,
so sure was I of your answer.  He is counting on sleeping at your
house to-night, and if I try to change his determination now he will
see a refusal in what is only a postponement, and you will lose all
the credit for your generous and noble action.  There--it is agreed:
to-night at ten at the Champs de Mars."

With these words the captain put his horse to a gallop and
disappeared.  Marouin turned his horse and went back to his country
house to give the necessary orders for the reception of a stranger
whose name he did not mention.

At ten o'clock at night, as had been agreed, Marouin was on the
Champs de Mars, then covered with Marshal Brune's field-artillery.
No one had arrived yet.  He walked up and down between the gun-
carriages until a functionary came to ask what he was doing.  He was
hard put to it to find an answer: a man is hardly likely to be
wandering about in an artillery park at ten o'clock at night for the
mere pleasure of the thing.  He asked to see the commanding officer.
The officer came up: M.  Marouin informed him that he was an avocat,
attached to the law courts of Toulon, and told him that he had
arranged to meet someone on the Champs de Mars, not knowing that it
was prohibited, and that he was still waiting for that person.  After
this explanation, the officer authorised him to remain, and went back
to his quarters.  The sentinel, a faithful adherent to discipline,
continued to pace up and down with his measured step, without
troubling any more about the stranger's presence.

A few moments later a group of several persons appeared from the
direction of Les Lices.  The night was magnificent, and the moon
brilliant.  Marouin recognised Bonafoux, and went up to him.  The
captain at once took him by the hand and led him to the king, and
speaking in turn to each of them--

"Sire," he said, "here is the friend.  I told you of."

Then turning to Marouin--

"Here," he said, "is the King of Naples, exile and fugitive, whom I
confide to your care.  I do not speak of the possibility that some
day he may get back his crown, that would deprive you of the credit
of your fine action....  Now, be his guide--we will follow at a
distance.  March!"

The king and the lawyer set out at once together.  Murat was dressed
in a blue coat-semi-military, semi-civil, buttoned to the throat; he
wore white trousers and top boots with spurs; he had long hair,
moustache, and thick whiskers, which would reach round his neck.

As they rode along he questioned his host about the situation of his
country house and the facility for reaching the sea in case of a
surprise.  Towards midnight the king and Marouin arrived at Bonette;
the royal suite came up in about ten minutes; it consisted of about
thirty individuals.  After partaking of some light refreshment, this
little troop, the last of the court of the deposed king, retired to
disperse in the town and its environs, and Murat remained alone with
the women, only keeping one valet named Leblanc.

Murat stayed nearly a month in this retirement, spending all his time
in answering the newspapers which accused him of treason to the
Emperor.  This accusation was his absorbing idea, a phantom, a
spectre to him; day and night he tried to shake it off, seeking in
the difficult position in which he had found himself all the reasons
which it might offer him for acting as he had acted.  Meanwhile the
terrible news of the defeat at Waterloo had spread abroad.  The
Emperor who had exiled him was an exile himself, and he was waiting
at Rochefort, like Murat at Toulon, to hear what his enemies would
decide against him.  No one knows to this day what inward prompting
Napoleon obeyed when, rejecting the counsels of General Lallemande
and the devotion of Captain Bodin, he preferred England to America,
and went like a modern Prometheus to be chained to the rock of St.
Helena.

We are going to relate the fortuitous circumstance which led Murat to
the moat of Pizzo, then we will leave it to fatalists to draw from
this strange story whatever philosophical deduction may please them.
We, as humble annalists, can only vouch for the truth of the facts we
have already related and of those which will follow.

King Louis XVIII remounted his throne, consequently Murat lost all
hope of remaining in France; he felt he was bound to go.  His nephew
Bonafoux fitted out a frigate for the United States under the name of
Prince Rocca Romana.  The whole suite went on board, and they began
to carry on to the boat all the valuables which the exile had been
able to save from the shipwreck of his kingdom.  First a bag of gold
weighing nearly a hundred pounds, a sword-sheath on which were the
portraits of the king, the queen, and their children, the deed of the
civil estates of his family bound in velvet and adorned with his
arms.  Murat carried on his person a belt where some precious papers
were concealed, with about a score of unmounted diamonds, which he
estimated himself to be worth four millions.

When all these preparations for departing were accomplished, it was
agreed that the next day, the 1st of August, at five o'clock, a boat
should fetch the king to the brig from a little bay, ten minutes'
walk from the house where he was staying.  The king spent the night
making out a route for M. Marouin by which he could reach the queen,
who was then in Austria, I think.

It was finished just as it was time to leave, and on crossing the
threshold of the hospitable house where he had found refuge he gave
it to his host, slipped into a volume of a pocket edition of
Voltaire.  Below the story of 'Micromegas' the king had written:
[The volume is still in the hands of M.  Marouin, at Toulon.]

Reassure yourself, dear Caroline; although unhappy, I am free.  I am
departing, but I do not know whither I am bound.  Wherever I may be
my heart will be with you and my children.  "J. M."

Ten minutes later Murat and his host were waiting on the beach at
Bonette for the boat which was to take them out to the ship.

They waited until midday, and nothing appeared; and yet on the
horizon they could see the brig which was to be his refuge, unable to
lie at anchor on account of the depth of water, sailing along the
coast at the risk of giving the alarm to the sentinels.

At midday the king, worn out with fatigue and the heat of the sun,
was lying on the beach, when a servant arrived, bringing various
refreshments, which Madame Marouin, being very uneasy, had sent at
all hazards to her husband.  The king took a glass of wine and water
and ate an orange, and got up for a moment to see whether the boat he
was expecting was nowhere visible on the vastness of the sea.  There
was not a boat in sight, only the brig tossing gracefully on the
horizon, impatient to be off, like a horse awaiting its master.

The king sighed and lay down again on the sand.

The servant went back to Bonette with a message summoning
M. Marouin's brother to the beach.  He arrived in a few minutes, and
almost immediately afterwards galloped off at full speed to Toulon,
in order to find out from M. Bonafoux why the boat had not been sent
to the king.  On reaching the captain's house, he found it occupied
by an armed force.  They were making a search for Murat.

The messenger at last made his way through the tumult to the person
he was in search of, and he heard that the boat had started at the
appointed time, and that it must have gone astray in the creeks of
Saint Louis and Sainte Marguerite.  This was, in fact, exactly what
had happened.

By five o'clock M. Marouin had reported the news to his brother and
the king.  It was bad news.  The king had no courage left to defend
his life even by flight, he was in a state of prostration which
sometimes overwhelms the strongest of men, incapable of making any
plan for his own safety, and leaving M. Marouin to do the best he
could.  Just then a fisherman was coming into harbour singing.
Marouin beckoned to him, and he came up.

Marouin began by buying all the man's fish; then, when he had paid
him with a few coins, he let some gold glitter before his eyes, and
offered him three louis if he would take a passenger to the brig
which was lying off the Croix-des-Signaux.  The fisherman agreed to
do it.  This chance of escape gave back Murat all his strength; he
got up, embraced Marouin, and begged him to go to the queen with the
volume of Voltaire.  Then he sprang into the boat, which instantly
left the shore.

It was already some distance from the land when the king stopped the
man who was rowing and signed to Marouin that he had forgotten
something.  On the beach lay a bag into which Murat had put a
magnificent pair of pistols mounted with silver gilt which the queen
had given him, and which he set great store on.  As soon as he was
within hearing he shouted his reason for returning to his host.
Marouin seized the valise, and without waiting for Murat to land he
threw it into the boat; the bag flew open, and one of the pistols
fell out.  The fisherman only glanced once at the royal weapon, but
it was enough to make him notice its richness and to arouse his
suspicions.  Nevertheless, he went on rowing towards the frigate.
M. Marouin seeing him disappear in the distance, left his brother on
the beach, and bowing once more to the king, returned to the house to
calm his wife's anxieties and to take the repose of which he was in
much need.

Two hours later he was awakened.  His house was to be searched in its
turn by soldiers.  They searched every nook and corner without
finding a trace of the king.  Just as they were getting desperate,
the brother came in; Maroum smiled at him; believing the king to be
safe, but by the new-comer's expression he saw that some fresh
misfortune was in the wind.  In the first moment's respite given him
by his visitors he went up to his brother.

"Well," he said, "I hope the king is on board?"

"The king is fifty yards away, hidden in the outhouse."

"Why did he come back?"

"The fisherman pretended he was afraid of a sudden squall, and
refused to take him off to the brig."

"The scoundrel!"

The soldiers came in again.

They spent the night in fruitless searching about the house and
buildings; several times they passed within a few steps of the king,
and he could hear their threats and imprecations.  At last, half an
hour before dawn, they went away.  Marouin watched them go, and when
they were out of sight he ran to the king.  He found him lying in a
corner, a pistol clutched in each hand.  The unhappy man had been
overcome by fatigue and had fallen asleep.  Marouin hesitated a
moment to bring him back to his wandering, tormented life, but there
was not a minute to lose.  He woke him.

They went down to the beach at once.  A morning mist lay over the
sea.  They could not see anything two hundred yards ahead.  They were
obliged to wait.  At last the first sunbeams began to pierce this
nocturnal mist.  It slowly dispersed, gliding over the sea as clouds
move in the sky.  The king's hungry eye roved over the tossing waters
before him, but he saw nothing, yet he could not banish the hope that
somewhere behind that moving curtain he would find his refuge.
Little by little the horizon came into view; light wreaths of mist,
like smoke, still floated about the surface of the water, and in each
of them the king thought he recognised the white sails of his vessel.
The last gradually vanished, the sea was revealed in all its
immensity, it was deserted.  Not daring to delay any longer, the ship
had sailed away in the night.

"So," said the king, "the die is cast.  I will go to Corsica."

The same day Marshal Brune was assassinated at Avignon.




II

CORSICA

Once more on the same beach at Bonette, in the same bay where he had
awaited the boat in vain, still attended by his band of faithful
followers, we find Murat on the 22nd August in the same year.  It was
no longer by Napoleon that he was threatened, it was by Louis XVIII
that he was proscribed; it was no longer the military loyalty of
Marshal Brune who came with tears in his eyes to give notice of the
orders he had received, but the ungrateful hatred of M. de Riviere,
who had set a price [48,000 francs.] on the head of the man who had
saved his own.[Conspiracy of Pichegru.]  M. de Riviere had indeed
written to the ex-King of Naples advising him to abandon himself to
the good faith and humanity of the King of France, but his vague
invitation had not seemed sufficient guarantee to the outlaw,
especially on the part of one who had allowed the assassination
almost before his eyes of a man who carried a safe-conduct signed by
himself.  Murat knew of the massacre of the Mamelukes at Marseilles,
the assassination of Brune at Avignon; he had been warned the day
before by the police of Toulon that a formal order for his arrest was
out; thus it was impossible that he should remain any longer in
France.  Corsica, with its hospitable towns, its friendly mountains,
its impenetrable forests, was hardly fifty leagues distant; he must
reach Corsica, and wait in its towns, mountains, and forests until
the crowned heads of Europe should decide the fate of the man they
had called brother for seven years.

At ten o'clock at, night the king went down to the shore.  The boat
which was to take him across had not reached the rendezvous, but this
time there was not the slightest fear that it would fail; the bay had
been reconnoitred during the day by three men devoted to the fallen
fortunes of the king--Messieurs Blancard, Langlade, and Donadieu, all
three naval officers, men of ability and warm heart, who had sworn by
their own lives to convey Murat to Corsica, and who were in fact
risking their lives in order to accomplish their promise.  Murat saw
the deserted shore without uneasiness, indeed this delay afforded him
a few more moments of patriotic satisfaction.

On this little patch of land, this strip of sand, the unhappy exile
clung to his mother France, for once his foot touched the vessel
which was to carry him away, his separation from France would be
long, if not eternal.  He started suddenly amidst these thoughts and
sighed: he had just perceived a sail gliding over the waves like a
phantom through the transparent darkness of the southern night.  Then
a sailor's song was heard; Murat recognised the appointed signal, and
answered it by burning the priming of a pistol, and the boat
immediately ran inshore; but as she drew three feet of water, she was
obliged to stop ten or twelve feet from the beach; two men dashed
into the water and reached the beach, while a third remained
crouching in the stern-sheets wrapped in his boat-cloak.

"Well, my good friends," said the king, going towards Blancard and
Langlade until he felt the waves wet his feet "the moment is come, is
it not?  The wind is favourable, the sea calm, we must get to sea."

"Yes, answered Langlade, "yes, we must start; and yet perhaps it
would be wiser to wait till to-morrow."

"Why?" asked Murat.

Langlade did not answer, but turning towards the west, he raised his
hand, and according to the habit of sailors, he whistled to call the
wind.

"That's no good," said Donadieu, who had remained in the boat.  "Here
are the first gusts; you will have more than you know what to do with
in a minute....  Take care, Langlade, take care!  Sometimes in
calling the wind you wake up a storm."

Murat started, for he thought that this warning which rose from the
sea had been given him by the spirit of the waters; but the
impression was a passing one, and he recovered himself in a moment.

"All the better," he said; "the more wind we have, the faster we
shall go."

"Yes," answered Langlade, "but God knows where it will take us if it
goes on shifting like this."

"Don't start to-night, sire," said Blancard, adding his voice to
those of his two companions.

"But why not?"

"You see that bank of black cloud there, don't you?  Well, at sunset
it was hardly visible, now it covers a good part of the sky, in an
hour there won't be a star to be seen."

"Are you afraid?" asked Murat.

"Afraid!" answered Langlade.  "Of what?  Of the storm?  I might as
well ask if your Majesty is afraid of a cannon-ball.  We have
demurred solely on your account, sire; do you think seadogs like
ourselves would delay on account of the storm?"

"Then let us go!" cried Murat, with a sigh.

"Good-bye, Marouin....  God alone can reward you for what you have
done for me.  I am at your orders, gentlemen."

At these words the two sailors seized the king end hoisted him on to
their shoulders, and carried him into the sea; in another moment he
was on board.  Langlade and Blancard sprang in behind him.  Donadieu
remained at the helm, the two other officers undertook the management
of the boat, and began their work by unfurling the sails. Immediately
the pinnace seemed to rouse herself like a horse at touch of the
spur; the sailors cast a careless glance back, and Murat feeling that
they were sailing away, turned towards his host and called for a last
time--

"You have your route as far as Trieste.  Do not forget my wife!...
Good-bye-good-bye----!"

"God keep you, sire!" murmured Marouin.

And for some time, thanks to the white sail which gleamed through the
darkness, he could follow with his eyes the boat which was rapidly
disappearing; at last it vanished altogether.  Marouin lingered on
the shore, though he could see nothing; then he heard a cry, made
faint by the distance; it was Murat's last adieu to France.

When M. Marouin was telling me these details one evening on the very
spot where it all happened, though twenty years had passed, he
remembered clearly the slightest incidents of the embarkation that
night.  From that moment he assured me that a presentiment of
misfortune seized him; he could not tear himself away from the shore,
and several times he longed to call the king back, but, like a man in
a dream, he opened his mouth without being able to utter a sound.
He was afraid of being thought foolish, and it was not until one
o'clock that is, two and a half hours after the departure of the
boat-that he went home with a sad and heavy heart.

The adventurous navigators had taken the course from Toulon to
Bastia, and at first it seemed to the king that the sailors'
predictions were belied; the wind, instead of getting up, fell little
by little, and two hours after the departure the boat was rocking
without moving forward or backward on the waves, which were sinking
from moment to moment.  Murat sadly watched the phosphorescent furrow
trailing behind the little boat: he had nerved himself to face a
storm, but not a dead calm, and without even interrogating his
companions, of whose uneasiness he took no account, he lay down in
the boat, wrapped in his cloak, closing his eyes as if he were
asleep, and following the flow of his thoughts, which were far more
tumultuous than that of the waters.  Soon the two sailors, thinking
him asleep, joined the pilot, and sitting down beside the helm, they
began to consult together.

"You were wrong, Langlade," said Donadieu, "in choosing a craft like
this, which is either too small or else too big; in an open boat we
can never weather a storm, and without oars we can never make any way
in a calm."

"'Fore God!  I had no choice.  I was obliged to take what I could
get, and if it had not been the season for tunny-fishing I might not
even have got this wretched pinnace, or rather I should have had to
go into the harbour to find it, and they keep such a sharp lookout
that I might well have gone in without coming out again."

"At least it is seaworthy," said Blancard.

"Pardieu, you know what nails and planks are when they have been
soaked in sea-water for ten years.  On any ordinary occasion, a man
would rather not go in her from Marseilles to the Chateau d'If, but
on an occasion like this one would willingly go round the world in a
nutshell."

"Hush!" said Donadieu.  The sailors listened; a distant growl was
heard, but it was so faint that only the experienced ear of a sailor
could have distinguished it.

"Yes, yes," said Langlade, "it is a warning for those who have legs
or wings to regain the homes and nests that they ought never to have
left."

"Are we far from the islands?" asked Donadieu quickly.

"About a mile off."

"Steer for them."

"What for?" asked Murat, looking up.

"To put in there, sire, if we can."

"No, no," cried Murat; "I will not land except in Corsica.  I will
not leave France again.  Besides, the sea is calm and the wind is
getting up again--"

"Down with the sails!" shouted Donadieu.  Instantly Langlade and
Blancard jumped forward to carry out the order.  The sail slid down
the mast and fell in a heap in the bottom of the boat.

"What are you doing?" cried Murat.  "Do you forget that I am king and
that I command you?"

"Sire," said Donadieu, "there is a king more powerful than you--God;
there is a voice which drowns yours--the voice of the tempest: let us
save your Majesty if possible, and demand nothing more of us."

Just then a flash of lightning quivered along the horizon, a clap of
thunder nearer than the first one was heard, a light foam appeared on
the surface of the water, and the boat trembled like a living thing.
Murat began to understand that danger was approaching, then he got up
smiling, threw his hat behind him, shook back his long hair, and
breathed in the storm like the smell of powder--the soldier was ready
for the battle.

"Sire," said Donadieu, "you have seen many a battle, but perhaps you
have never watched a storm if you are curious about it, cling to the
mast, for you have a fine opportunity now."

"What ought I to do?" said Murat.  "Can I not help you in any way?"

"No, not just now, sire; later you will be useful at the pumps."

During this dialogue the storm had drawn near; it rushed on the
travellers like a war-horse, breathing out fire and wind through its
nostrils, neighing like thunder, and scattering the foam of the waves
beneath its feet.

Donadieu turned the rudder, the boat yielded as if it understood the
necessity for prompt obedience, and presented the poop to the shock
of wind; then the squall passed, leaving the sea quivering, and
everything was calm again.  The storm took breath.

"Will that gust be all?" asked Murat.

"No, your Majesty, that was the advance-guard only; the body of the
army will be up directly."

"And are you not going to prepare for it?" asked the king gaily.

"What could we do?" said Donadieu.  "We have not an inch of canvas to
catch the wind, and as long as we do not make too much water, we
shall float like a cork.  Look out-sire!"

Indeed, a second hurricane was on its way, bringing rain and
lightning; it was swifter than the first.  Donadieu endeavoured to
repeat the same manoeuvre, but he could not turn before the wind
struck the boat, the mast bent like a reed; the boat shipped a wave.

"To the pumps!" cried Donadieu.  "Sire, now is the moment to help us-
---"

Blancard, Langlade, and Murat seized their hats and began to bale out
the boat.  The position of the four men was terrible--it lasted three
hours.

At dawn the wind fell, but the sea was still high.  They began to
feel the need of food: all the provisions had been spoiled by
sea-water, only the wine had been preserved from its contact.

The king took a bottle and swallowed a little wine first, then he
passed it to his companions, who drank in their turn: necessity had
overcome etiquette.  By chance Langlade had on him a few chocolates,
which he offered to the king.  Murat divided them into four equal
parts, and forced his companions to take their shares; then, when the
meal was over, they steered for Corsica, but the boat had suffered so
much that it was improbable that it would reach Bastia.

The whole day passed without making ten miles; the boat was kept
under the jib, as they dared not hoist the mainsail, and the wind.
was so variable that much time was lost in humouring its caprices.

By evening the boat had drawn a considerable amount of water, it
penetrated between the boards, the handkerchiefs of the crew served
to plug up the leaks, and night, which was descending in mournful
gloom, wrapped them a second time in darkness.  Prostrated with
fatigue, Murat fell asleep, Blancard and Langlade took their places.
beside Donadieu, and the three men, who seemed insensible to the
calls of sleep and fatigue, watched over his slumbers.

The night was calm enough apparently, but low grumblings were heard
now and then.

The three sailors looked at each other strangely and then at the
king, who was sleeping at the bottom of the boat, his cloak soaked
with sea-water, sleeping as soundly as he had slept on the sands of
Egypt or the snows of Russia.

Then one of them got up and went to the other end of the boat,
whistling between his teeth a Provencal air; then, after examining
the sky, the waves; and the boat, he went back to his comrades and
sat down, muttering, "Impossible!  Except by a miracle, we shall
never make the land."

The night passed through all its phases.  At dawn there was a vessel
in sight.

"A sail!" cried Donadieu,--"a sail!"

At this cry the king--awoke; and soon a little trading brig hove in
sight, going from Corsica to Toulon.

Donadieu steered for the brig, Blancard hoisted enough sail to work
the boat, and Langlade ran to the prow and held up the king's cloak
on the end of a sort of harpoon.  Soon the voyagers perceived that
they had been sighted, the brig went about to approach them, and in
ten minutes they found themselves within fifty yards of it.  The
captain appeared in the bows.  Then the king hailed him and offered
him a substantial reward if he would receive them on board and take
them to Corsica.  The captain listened to the proposal; then
immediately turning to the crew, he gave an order in an undertone
which Donadieu could not hear, but which he understood probably by
the gesture, for he instantly gave Langlade and Blancard the order to
make away from the schooner.  They obeyed with the unquestioning
promptitude of sailors; but the king stamped his foot.

"What are you doing, Donadieu?  What are you about?  Don't you see
that she is coming up to us?"

"Yes--upon my soul--so she is....  Do as I say, Langlade; ready,
Blancard.  Yes, she is coming upon us, and perhaps I was too late in
seeing this.  That's all right--that's all right: my part now."

Then he forced over the rudder, giving it so violent a jerk that the
boat, forced to change her course suddenly, seemed to rear and plunge
like a horse struggling against the curb; finally she obeyed.  A huge
wave, raised by the giant bearing down on the pinnace, carried it on
like a leaf, and the brig passed within a few feet of the stern.

"Ah!....  traitor!" cried the king, who had only just begun to
realise the intention of the captain.  At the same time, he pulled a
pistol from his belt, crying "Board her!  board her!" and tried to
fire on the brig, but the powder was wet and would not catch.  The
king was furious, and went on shouting "Board her!  board her!"

"Yes, the wretch, or rather the imbecile," said Donadieu, "he took us
for pirates, and wanted to sink us--as if we needed him to do that!"

Indeed, a single glance at the boat showed that she was beginning to
make water.

The effort--to escape which Donadieu had made had strained the boat
terribly, and the water was pouring in by a number of leaks between
the planks; they had to begin again bailing out with their hats, and
went on at it for ten hours.  Then for the second time Donadieu heard
the consoling cry, "A sail!  a sail!" The king and his companions
immediately left off bailing; they hoisted the sails again, and
steered for the vessel which was coming towards them, and neglected
to fight against the water, which was rising rapidly.

From that time forth it was a question of time, of minutes, of
seconds; it was a question of reaching the ship before the boat
foundered.

The vessel, however, seemed to understand the desperate position of
the men imploring help; she was coming up at full speed.  Langlade
was the first to recognise her; she was a Government felucca plying
between Toulon and Bastia.  Langlade was a friend of the captain, and
he called his name with the penetrating voice of desperation, and he
was heard.  It was high time: the water kept on rising, and the king
and his companions were already up to their knees; the boat groaned
in its death-struggle; it stood still, and began to go round and
round.

Just then two or three ropes thrown from the felucca fell upon the
boat; the king seized one, sprang forward, and reached the
rope-ladder: he was saved.

Blancard and Langlade immediately followed.  Donadieu waited until
the last, as was his duty, and as he put his foot on the ladder he
felt the other boat begin to go under; he turned round with all a
sailor's calm, and saw the gulf open its jaws beneath him, and then
the shattered boat capsized, and immediately disappeared.  Five
seconds more, and the four men who were saved would have been lost
beyond recall! [These details are well known to the people of Toulon,
and I have heard them myself a score of times during the two stays
that I made in that town during 1834 and 1835.  Some of the people
who related them had them first-hand from Langlade and Donadieu
themselves.]

Murat had hardly gained the deck before a man came and fell at his
feet: it was a Mameluke whom he had taken to Egypt in former years,
and had since married at Castellamare; business affairs had taken him
to Marseilles, where by a miracle he had escaped the massacre of his
comrades, and in spite of his disguise and fatigue he had recognised
his former master.

His exclamations of joy prevented the king from keeping up his
incognito.  Then Senator Casabianca, Captain Oletta, a nephew of
Prince Baciocchi, a staff-paymaster called Boerco, who were
themselves fleeing from the massacres of the South, were all on board
the vessel, and improvising a little court, they greeted the king
with the title of "your Majesty."  It had been a sudden embarkation,
it brought about a swift change: he was no longer Murat the exile; he
was Joachim, the King of Naples.  The exile's refuge disappeared with
the foundered boat; in its place Naples and its magnificent gulf
appeared on the horizon like a marvellous mirage, and no doubt the
primary idea of the fatal expedition of Calabria was originated in
the first days of exultation which followed those hours of anguish.
The king, however, still uncertain of the welcome which awaited him
in Corsica, took the name of the Count of Campo Melle, and it was
under this name that he landed at Bastia on the 25th August.  But
this precaution was useless; three days after his arrival, not a soul
but knew of his presence in the town.

Crowds gathered at once, and cries of "Long live Joachim!" were
heard, and the king, fearing to disturb the public peace, left Bastia
the same evening with his three companions and his Mameluke.  Two
hours later he arrived at Viscovato, and knocked at the door of
General Franceschetti, who had been in his service during his whole
reign, and who, leaving Naples at the same time as the king, had gone
to Corsica with his wife, to live with his father-in-law, M. Colonna
Cicaldi.

He was in the middle of supper when a servant told him that a
stranger was asking to speak to him--he went out, and found Murat
wrapped in a military greatcoat, a sailor's cap drawn down on his
head, his beard grown long, and wearing a soldier's trousers, boots,
and gaiters.

The general stood still in amazement; Murat fixed his great dark eyes
on him, and then, folding his arms:--

"Franceschetti," said he, "have you room at your table for your
general, who is hungry?  Have you a shelter under your roof for your
king, who is an exile?"

Franceschetti looked astonished as he recognised Joachim, and could
only answer him by falling on his knees and kissing his hand.  From
that moment the general's house was at Murat's disposal.

The news of the king's arrival had hardly been handed about the
neighbourhood before officers of ail ranks hastened to Viscovato,
veterans who had fought under him, Corsican hunters who were
attracted by his adventurous character; in a few days the general's
house was turned into a palace, the village into a royal capital, the
island into a kingdom.

Strange rumours were heard concerning Murat's intentions.  An army of
nine hundred men helped to give them some amount of confirmation.
It was then that Blancard, Donadieu, and Langlade took leave of him;
Murat wished to keep them, but they had been vowed to the rescue of
the exile, not to the fortunes of the king.

We have related how Murat had met one of his former Mamelukes, a man
called Othello, on board the Bastia mailboat.  Othello had followed
him to Viscovato, and the ex-King of Naples considered how to make
use of him.  Family relations recalled him naturally to Castellamare,
and Murat ordered him to return there, entrusting to him letters for
persons on whose devotion he could depend.  Othello started, and
reached his father-in-law's safely, and thought he could confide in
him; but the latter was horror-struck, and alarmed the police, who
made a descent on Othello one night, and seized the letters.

The next day each man to whom a letter was addressed was arrested and
ordered to answer Murat as if all was well, and to point out Salerno
as the best place for disembarking: five out of seven were dastards
enough to obey; the two remaining, who were two Spanish brothers,
absolutely refused; they were thrown into a dungeon.

However, on the 17th September, Murat left Viscovato; General
Franceschetti and several Corsican officers served as escort; he took
the road to Ajaccio by Cotone, the mountains of Serra and Bosco,
Venaco and Vivaro, by the gorges of the forest of Vezzanovo and
Bogognone; he was received and feted like a king everywhere, and at
the gates of the towns he was met by deputations who made him
speeches and saluted him with the title of "Majesty"; at last, on the
23rd September, he arrived at Ajaccio.  The whole population awaited
him outside the walls, and his entry into the town was a triumphal
procession; he was taken to the inn which had been fixed upon
beforehand by the quartermasters.  It was enough to turn the head of
a man less impressionable than Murat; as for him, he was intoxicated
with it.  As he went into the inn he held out his hand to
Franceschetti.

"You see," he said, "what the Neapolitans will do for me by the way
the Corsicans receive me."

It was the first mention which had escaped him of his plans for the
future, and from that very day he began to give orders for his
departure.

They collected ten little feluccas: a Maltese, named Barbara, former
captain of a frigate of the Neapolitan navy, was appointed
commander-in-chief of the expedition; two hundred and fifty men were
recruited and ordered to hold themselves in readiness for the first
signal.

Murat was only waiting for the answers to Othello's letters: they
arrived on the afternoon of the 28th.  Murat invited all his officers
to a grand dinner, and ordered double pay and double rations to the
men.

The king was at dessert when the arrival of M. Maceroni was announced
to him: he was the envoy of the foreign powers who brought Murat the
answer which he had been awaiting so long at Toulon.  Murat left the
table and went into another room.  M. Maceroni introduced himself as
charged with an official mission, and handed the king the Emperor of
Austria's ultimatum.  It was couched in the following terms:

"Monsieur Maceroni is authorised by these presents to announce to
King Joachim that His Majesty the Emperor of Austria will afford him
shelter in his States on the following terms:--

"1. The king is to take a private name.  The queen having adopted that
of Lipano, it is proposed that the king should do likewise.

"2. It will be permitted to the king to choose a town in Bohemia,
Moravia, or the Tyrol, as a place of residence.  He could even
inhabit a country house in one of these same provinces without
inconvenience.

"3. The king is to give his word of honour to His Imperial and Royal
Majesty that he will never leave the States of Austria without the
express-permission of the Emperor, and that he is to live like a
private gentleman of distinction, but submitting to the laws in force
in the States of Austria.

"In attestation whereof, and to guard against abuse, the undersigned
has received the order of the Emperor to sign the present
declaration.

                         "(Signed) PRINCE OF METTERNICH
"PARIS, 1st Sept.  1815."


Murat smiled as he finished reading, then he signed to M.  Maceroni
to follow him:

He led him on to the terrace of the house, which looked over the
whole town, and over which a banner floated as it might on a royal
castle.  From thence they could see Ajaccio all gay and illuminated,
the port with its little fleet, and the streets crowded with people,
as if it were a fete-day.

Hardly had the crowd set eyes on Murat before a universal cry arose,
"Long live Joachim, brother of Napoleon!  Long live the King of
Naples!"

Murat bowed, and the shouts were redoubled, and the garrison band
played the national airs.

M. Maceroni did not know how to believe his own eyes and ears.

When the king had enjoyed his astonishment, he invited him to go down
to the drawing-room.  His staff were there, all in full uniform: one
might have been at Caserte or at Capo di Monte.  At last, after a
moment's hesitation, Maceroni approached Murat.

"Sir," he said, "what is my answer to be to His Majesty the Emperor
of Austria?"

"Sir," answered Murat, with the lofty dignity which sat so well on
his fine face, "tell my brother Francis what you have seen and heard,
and add that I am setting out this very night to reconquer my kingdom
of Naples."




III

PIZZO

The letters which had made Murat resolve to leave Corsica had been
brought to him by a Calabrian named Luidgi.  He had presented himself
to the king as the envoy of the Arab, Othello, who had been thrown
into prison in Naples, as we have related, as well as the seven
recipients of the letters.

The answers, written by the head of the Neapolitan police, indicated
the port of Salerno as the best place for Joachim to land; for King
Ferdinand had assembled three thousand Austrian troops at that point,
not daring to trust the Neapolitan soldiers, who cherished a
brilliant and enthusiastic memory of Murat.

Accordingly the flotilla was directed for the Gulf of Salerno, but
within sight of the island of Capri a violent storm broke over it,
and drove it as far as Paola, a little seaport situated ten miles
from Cosenza.  Consequently the vessels were anchored for the night
of the 5th of October in a little indentation of the coast not worthy
of the name of a roadstead.  The king, to remove all suspicion from
the coastguards and the Sicilian scorridori, [Small vessels fitted up
as ships-of-war.] ordered that all lights should be extinguished and
that the vessels should tack about during the night; but towards one
o'clock such a violent land-wind sprang up that the expedition was
driven out to sea, so that on the 6th at dawn the king's vessel was
alone.

During the morning they overhauled Captain Cicconi's felucca, and the
two ships dropped anchor at four o'clock in sight of Santo-Lucido.
In the evening the king commanded Ottoviani, a staff officer, to go
ashore and reconnoitre.  Luidgi offered to accompany him.  Murat
accepted his services.  So Ottoviani and his guide went ashore,
whilst Cicconi and his felucca put out to sea in search of the rest
of the fleet.

Towards eleven o'clock at night the lieutenant of the watch descried
a man in the waves swimming to the vessel.  As soon as he was within
hearing the lieutenant hailed him.  The swimmer immediately made
himself known: it was Luidgi.  They put out the boat, and he came on
board.  Then he told them that Ottoviani had been arrested, and he
had only escaped himself by jumping into the sea.  Murat's first idea
was to go to the rescue of Ottoviani; but Luidgi made the king
realise the danger and uselessness of such an attempt; nevertheless,
Joachim remained agitated and irresolute until two o'clock in the
morning.

At last he gave the order to put to sea again.  During the manoeuvre
which effected this a sailor fell overboard and disappeared before
they had time to help him.  Decidedly these were ill omens.

On the morning of the 7th two vessels were in sight.  The king gave
the order to prepare for action, but Barbara recognised them as
Cicconi's felucca and Courrand's lugger, which had joined each other
and were keeping each other company.  They hoisted the necessary
signals, and the two captains brought up their vessels alongside the
admiral's.

While they were deliberating as to what route to follow, a boat came
up to Murat's vessel.  Captain Pernice was on board with a
lieutenant.  They came to ask the king's permission to board his
ship, not wishing to remain on Courrand's, for in their opinion he
was a traitor.

Murat sent to fetch him, and in spite of his protestations he was
made to descend into a boat with fifty men, and the boat was moored
to the vessel.  The order was carried out at once, and the little
squadron advanced, coasting along the shores of Calabria without
losing sight of them; but at ten o'clock in the evening, just as they
came abreast of the Gulf of Santa-Eufemia, Captain Courrand cut the
rope which moored his boat to the vessel, and rowed away from the
fleet.

Murat had thrown himself on to his bed without undressing; they
brought him the news.

He rushed up to the deck, and arrived in time to see the boat, which
was fleeing in the direction of Corsica, grow small and vanish in the
distance.  He remained motionless, not uttering a cry, giving no
signs of rage; he only sighed and let his head fall on his breast: it
was one more leaf falling from the exhausted tree of his hopes.

General Franceschetti profited by this hour of discouragement to
advise him not to land in Calabria, and to go direct to Trieste, in
order to claim from Austria the refuge which had been offered.

The king was going through one of those periods of extreme
exhaustion, of mortal depression, when courage quite gives way: he
refused flatly at first, and there at last agreed to do it.

Just then the general perceived a sailor lying on some coils of
ropes, within hearing of all they said; he interrupted himself, and
pointed him out to Murat.

The latter got up, went to see the man, and recognised Luidgi;
overcome with exhaustion, he had fallen asleep on deck.  The king
satisfied himself that the sleep was genuine, and besides he had full
confidence in the man.  The conversation, which had been interrupted
for a moment, was renewed: it was agreed that without saying anything
about the new plans, they would clear Cape Spartivento and enter the
Adriatic; then the king and the general went below again to the lower
deck.

The next day, the 8th October, they found themselves abreast of
Pizzo, when Joachim, questioned by Barbara as to what he proposed to
do, gave the order to steer for Messina.  Barbara answered that he
was ready to obey, but that they were in need of food and water;
consequently he offered to go on, board Cicconi's vessel and to land
with him to get stores.  The king agreed; Barbara asked for the
passports which he had received from the allied powers, in order, he
said, not to be molested by the local authorities.

These documents were too important for Murat to consent to part with
them; perhaps the king was beginning to suspect: he refused.  Barbara
insisted; Murat ordered him to land without the papers; Barbara
flatly refused.

The king, accustomed to being obeyed, raised his riding-whip to
strike the Maltese, but, changing his resolution, he ordered the
soldiers to prepare their arms, the officers to put on full uniform;
he himself set the example.  The disembarkation was decided upon, and
Pizzo was to become the Golfe Juan of the new Napoleon.

Consequently the vessels were steered for land.  The king got down
into a boat with twenty-eight soldiers and three servants, amongst
whom was Luidgi.  As they drew near the shore General Franceschetti
made a movement as if to land, but Murat stopped him.

"It is for me to land first," he said, and he sprang on shore.

He was dressed in a general's coat, white breeches and riding-boots,
a belt carrying two pistols, a gold-embroidered hat with a cockade
fastened in with a clasp made of fourteen brilliants, and lastly he
carried under his arm the banner round which he hoped to rally his
partisans.  The town clock of Pizzo struck ten.  Murat went straight
up to the town, from which he was hardly a hundred yards distant.  He
followed the wide stone staircase which led up to it.

It was Sunday.  Mass was about to be celebrated, and the whole
population had assembled in the Great Square when he arrived.  No one
recognised him, and everyone gazed with astonishment at the fine
officer.  Presently he saw amongst the peasants a former sergeant of
his who had served in his guard at Naples.  He walked straight up to
him and put his hand on the man's shoulder.

"Tavella," he said, "don't you recognise me?"

But as the man made no answer:

"I am Joachim Murat, I am your king," he said.  "Yours be the honour
to shout 'Long live Joachim!' first."

Murat's suite instantly made the air ring with acclamations, but the
Calabrians remained silent, and not one of his comrades took up the
cry for which the king himself had given the signal; on the contrary,
a low murmur ran through the crowd.  Murat well understood this
forerunner of the storm.

"Well," he said to Tavella, "if you won't cry 'Long live Joachim!'
you can at least fetch me a horse, and from sergeant I will promote
you to be captain."

Tavella walked away without answering, but instead of carrying out
the king's behest, went into his house, and did not appear again.

In the meantime the people were massing together without evincing any
of the sympathy that the king had hoped for.  He felt that he was
lost if he did not act instantly.

"To Monteleone!" he cried, springing forward towards the road which
led to that town.

"To Monteleone!" shouted his officers and men, as they followed him.

And the crowd, persistently silent, opened to let them pass.

But they had hardly left the square before a great disturbance broke
out.  A man named Giorgio Pellegrino came out of his house with a gun
and crossed the square, shouting, "To your arms!"

He knew that Captain Trenta Capelli commanding the Cosenza garrison
was just then in Pizzo, and he was going to warn him.

The cry "To arms!" had more effect on the crowd than the cry "Long
live Joachim!"

Every Calabrian possesses a gun, and each one ran to fetch his, and
when Trenta Capelli and Giorgio Pellegrino came back to the square
they found nearly two hundred armed men there.

They placed themselves at the head of the column, and hastened
forward in pursuit of the king; they came up with him about ten
minutes from the square, where the bridge is nowadays.  Seeing them,
Murat stopped and waited for them.

Trenta Capelli advanced, sword in hand, towards the king.

"Sir," said the latter, "will you exchange your captain's epaulettes
for a general's?  Cry 'Long live Joachim!' and follow me with these
brave fellows to Monteleone."

"Sire," said Trenta Capelli, "we are the faithful subjects of King
Ferdinand, and we come to fight you, and not to bear you company.
Give yourself up, if you would prevent bloodshed."

Murat looked at the captain with an expression which it would be
impossible to describe; then without deigning to answer, he signed to
Cagelli to move away, while his other hand went to his pistol.
Giotgio Pellegrino perceived the movement.

"Down, captain, down!" he cried.  The captain obeyed.  Immediately a
bullet whistled over his head and brushed Murat's head.

"Fire!" commanded Franceschetti.

"Down with your arms!" cried Murat.

Waving his handkerchief in his right hand, he made a step towards the
peasants, but at the same moment a number of shots were fired, an
officer and two or three men fell.  In a case like this, when blood
has begun to flow, there is no stopping it.

Murat knew this fatal truth, and his course of action was rapidly
decided on.  Before him he had five hundred armed men, and behind him
a precipice thirty feet high: he sprang from the jagged rock on which
he was standing, and alighting on the sand, jumped up safe and sound.
General Franceschetti and his aide-de-camp Campana were able to
accomplish the jump in the same way, and all three went rapidly down
to the sea through the little wood which lay within a hundred yards
of the shore, and which hid them for a few moments from their
enemies.

As they came out of the wood a fresh discharge greeted them, bullets
whistled round them, but no one was hit, and the three fugitives went
on down to the beach.

It was only then that the king perceived that the boat which had
brought them to land had gone off again.  The three ships which
composed the fleet, far from remaining to guard his landing, were
sailing away at full speed into the open sea.

The Maltese, Barbara, was going off not only with Murat's fortune,
but with his hopes likewise, his salvation, his very life.  They
could not believe in such treachery, and the king took it for some
manoeuvre of seamanship, and seeing a fishing-boat drawn up on the
beach on some nets, he called to his two companions, "Launch that
boat!"

They all began to push it down to the sea with the energy of despair,
the strength of agony.

No one had dared to leap from the rock in pursuit of them; their
enemies, forced to make a detour, left them a few moments of liberty.

But soon shouts were heard: Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli,
followed by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred
and fifty paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were
straining themselves to make the boat glide down the sand.

These cries were immediately followed by a volley.  Campana fell,
with a bullet through his heart.

The boat, however, was launched.  Franceschetti sprang into it, Murat
was about to follow, but he had not observed that the spurs of his
riding-boots had caught in the meshes of the net.  The boat, yielding
to the push he gave it, glided away, and the king fell head foremost,
with his feet on land and his face in the water.  Before he had time
to pick himself up, the populace had fallen on him: in one instant
they had torn away his epaulettes, his banner, and his coat, and
would have torn him to bits himself, had not Giorgio Pellegrino and
Trenta Capelli taken him under their protection, and giving him an
arm on each side, defended him in their turn against the people.
Thus he crossed the square as a prisoner where an hour before he had
walked as a king.

His captors took him to the castle: he was pushed into the common
prison, the door was shut upon him, and the king found himself among
thieves and murderers, who, not knowing him, took him for a companion
in crime, and greeted him with foul language and hoots of derision.

A quarter of an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander
Mattei came in: he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and
folded arms.  There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in
this half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered
with mud.  Mattei bowed before him.

"Commander," said Murat, recognising his rank by his epaulettes,
"look round you and tell me whether this is a prison for a king."

Then a strange thing happened: the criminals, who, believing Murat
their accomplice, had welcomed him with vociferations and laughter,
now bent before his royal majesty, which had not overawed Pellegrino
and Trenta Capelli, and retired silently to the depths of their
dungeon.

Misfortune had invested Murat with a new power.

Commander Mattei murmured some excuse, and invited Murat to follow
him to a room that he had had prepared for him; but before going out,
Murat put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold and
let it fall in a shower in the midst of the gaol.

"See," he said, turning towards the prisoners, "it shall not be said
that you have received a visit from a king, prisoner and crownless as
he is, without having received largesse."

"Long live Joachim!" cried the prisoners.

Murat smiled bitterly.  Those same words repeated by the same number
of voices an hour before in the public square, instead of resounding
in the prison, would have made him King of Naples.

The most important events proceed sometimes from such mere trifles,
that it seems as if God and the devil must throw dice for the life or
death of men, for the rise or fall of empires.

Murat followed Commander Mattei: he led him to a little room which
the porter had put at his disposal.  Mattei was going to retire when
Murat called him back.

"Commander," he said, "I want a scented bath."

"Sire, it will be difficult to obtain."

"Here are fifty ducats; let someone buy all the eau de Cologne that
can be obtained.  Ah--and let some tailors be sent to me."

"It will be impossible to find anyone here capable of making anything
but a peasant's clothes."

"Send someone to Monteleone to fetch them from there."

The commander bowed and went out.

Murat was in his bath when the Lavaliere Alcala was announced, a
General and Governor of the town.  He had sent damask coverlets,
curtains, and arm-chairs.  Murat was touched by this attention, and
it gave him fresh composure.  At two o'clock the same day General
Nunziante arrived from Santa-Tropea with three thousand men.  Murat
greeted his old acquaintance with pleasure; but at the first word the
king perceived that he was before his judge, and that he had not come
for the purpose of making a visit, but to make an official inquiry.

Murat contented himself with stating that he had been on his way from
Corsica to Trieste with a passport from the Emperor of Austria when
stormy weather and lack of provisions had forced him to put into
Pizzo.  All other questions Murat met with a stubborn silence; then
at least, wearied by his importunity--

"General," he said, "can you lend me some clothes after my bath?"

The general understood that he could expect no more information, and,
bowing to the king, he went out.  Ten minutes later, a complete
uniform was brought to Murat; he put it on immediately, asked for a
pen and ink, wrote to the commander-in-chief of the Austrian troops
at Naples, to the English ambassador, and to his wife, to tell them
of his detention at Pizzo.  These letters written, he got up and
paced his room for some time in evident agitation; at last, needing
fresh air, he opened the window.  There was a view of the very beach
where he had been captured.

Two men were digging a hole in the sand at the foot of the little
redoubt.  Murat watched them mechanically.  When the two men had
finished, they went into a neighbouring house and soon came out,
bearing a corpse in their arms.

The king searched his memory, and indeed it seemed to him that in the
midst of that terrible scene he had seen someone fall, but who it was
he no longer remembered.  The corpse was quite without covering, but
by the long black hair and youthful outlines the king recognised
Campana, the aide-decamp he had always loved best.

This scene, watched from a prison window in the twilight, this
solitary burial on the shore, in the sand, moved Murat more deeply
than his own fate.  Great tears filled his eyes and fell silently
down the leonine face.  At that moment General Nunziante came in and
surprised him with outstretched arms and face bathed with tears.
Murat heard him enter and turned round, and seeing the old soldier's
surprise.

"Yes, general," he said, "I weep; I weep for that boy, just
twenty-four, entrusted to me by his parents, whose death I have
brought about.  I weep for that vast, brilliant future which is
buried in an unknown grave, in an enemy's country, on a hostile
shore.  Oh, Campana!  Campana!  if ever I am king again, I will raise
you a royal tomb."

The general had had dinner served in an adjacent room.  Murat
followed him and sat down to table, but he could not eat.  The sight
which he had just witnessed had made him heartbroken, and yet without
a line on his brow that man had been through the battles of Aboukir,
Eylau, and Moscow!  After dinner, Murat went into his room again,
gave his various letters to General Nunziante, and begged to be left
alone.  The general went away.

Murat paced round his room several times, walking with long steps,
and pausing from time to time before the window, but without opening
it.

At last he overcame a deep reluctance, put his hand on the bolt and
drew the lattice towards him.

It was a calm, clear night: one could see the whole shore.  He looked
for Campana's grave.  Two dogs scratching the sand showed him the
spot.

The king shut the window violently, and without undressing threw
himself onto his bed.  At last, fearing that his agitation would be
attributed to personal alarm, he undressed and went to bed, to sleep,
or seem to sleep all night.

On the morning of the 9th the tailors whom Murat had asked for
arrived.  He ordered a great many clothes, taking the trouble to
explain all the details suggested by his fastidious taste.  He was
thus employed when General Nunziante came in.  He listened sadly to
the king's commands.  He had just received telegraphic despatches
ordering him to try the King of Naples by court-martial as a public
enemy.  But he found the king so confident, so tranquil, almost
cheerful indeed, that he had not the heart to announce his trial to
him, and took upon himself to delay the opening of operation until he
received written instructions.  These arrived on the evening of the
12th.  They were couched in the following terms:

                         NAPLES, October 9, 1815

"Ferdinand, by the grace of God, etc .  .  .  .  wills and decrees
the following:

"Art.  1.  General Murat is to be tried by court-martial, the members
whereof are to be nominated by our Minister of War.

"Art.  2.  Only half an hour is to be accorded to the condemned for
the exercises of religion.

"(Signed) FERDINAND."


Another despatch from the minister contained the names of the members
of the commission.  They were:--

Giuseppe Fosculo, adjutant, commander-in-chief of the staff,
president.

Laffaello Scalfaro, chief of the legion of Lower Calabria.

Latereo Natali, lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Marines.

Gennaro Lanzetta, lieutenant-colonel of the Engineers.

W. T. captain of Artillery.

Francois de Venge, ditto.

Francesco Martellari, lieutenant of Artillery.

Francesco Froio, lieutenant in the 3rd regiment of the line.

Giovanni delta Camera, Public Prosecutor to the Criminal Courts of
Lower Calabria.

Francesco Papavassi, registrar.


The commission assembled that night.

On the 13th October, at six o'clock in the morning, Captain Stratti
came into the king's prison; he was sound asleep.  Stratti was going
away again, when he stumbled against a chair; the noise awoke Murat.

"What do you want with me, captain?" asked the king.

Stratti tried to speak, but his voice failed him.

"Ah ha!" said Murat, "you must have had news from Naples."

"Yes, sire," muttered Stratti.

"What are they?" said Murat.

"Your trial, sire."

"And by whose order will sentence be pronounced, if you please?
Where will they find peers to judge me?  If they consider me as a
king, I must have a tribunal of kings; if I am a marshal of France, I
must have a court of marshals; if I am a general, and that is the
least I can be, I must have a jury of generals."

"Sire, you are declared a public enemy, and as such you are liable to
be judged by court-martial: that is the law which you instituted
yourself for rebels."

"That law was made for brigands, and not for crowned heads, sir,"
said Murat scornfully.  "I am ready; let them butcher me if they
like.  I did not think King Ferdinand capable of such an action."

"Sire, will you not hear the names of your judges?"

"Yes, sir, I will.  It must be a curious list.  Read it: I am
listening."

Captain Stratti read out the names that we have enumerated.  Murat
listened with a disdainful smile.

"Ah," he said, as the captain finished, "it seems that every
precaution has been taken."

"How, sire?"

"Yes.  Don't you know that all these men, with the exception of
Francesco Froio, the reporter; owe their promotion to me?  They will
be afraid of being accused of sparing me out of gratitude, and save
one voice, perhaps, the sentence will be unanimous."

"Sire, suppose you were to appear before the court, to plead your own
cause?"

"Silence, sir, silence!" said Murat.  "I could, not officially
recognise the judges you have named without tearing too many pages of
history.  Such tribunal is quite incompetent; I should be disgraced
if I appeared before it.  I know I could not save my life, let me at
least preserve my royal dignity."

At this moment Lieutenant Francesco Froio came in to interrogate the
prisoner, asking his name, his age, and his nationality.  Hearing
these questions, Murat rose with an expression of sublime dignity.

"I am Joachim Napoleon, King of the Two Sicilies," he answered, "and
I order you to leave me."

The registrar obeyed.

Then Murat partially dressed himself, and asked Stratti if he could
write a farewell to his wife and children.  The Captain no longer
able to speak, answered by an affirmative sign; then Joachim sat down
to the table and wrote this letter:

"DEAR CAROLINE OF MY HEART,--The fatal moment has come: I am to
suffer the death penalty.  In an hour you will be a widow, our
children will be fatherless: remember me; never forget my memory.  I
die innocent; my life is taken from me unjustly.

"Good-bye, Achilles good-bye, Laetitia; goodbye, Lucien; good-bye,
Louise.

"Show yourselves worthy of me; I leave you in a world and in a
kingdom full of my enemies.  Show yourselves superior to adversity,
and remember never to think yourselves better than you are,
remembering what you have been.

"Farewell.  I bless you all.  Never curse my memory.  Remember that
the worst pang of my agony is in dying far from my children, far from
my wife, without a friend to close my eyes.  Farewell, my own
Caroline.  Farewell, my children.  I send you my blessing, my most
tender tears, my last kisses.  Farewell, farewell.  Never forget your
unhappy father,

"Pizzo, Oct. 13, 1815"

[We can guarantee the authenticity of this letter, having copied it
ourselves at Pizzo, from the Lavaliere Alcala's copy of the original]

Then he cut off a lock of his hair and put it in his letter.  Just
then General Nunziante came in; Murat went to him and held out his
hand.

"General," he said, "you are a father, you are a husband, one day
you will know what it is to part from your wife and sons.  Swear to
me that this letter shall be delivered."

"On my epaulettes," said the general, wiping his eyes. [Madame Murat
never received this letter.]

"Come, come, courage, general," said Murat; "we are soldiers, we know
how to face death.  One favour--you will let me give the order to
fire, will you not?"

The general signed acquiescence: just then the registrar came in with
the king's sentence in his hand.

Murat guessed what it was.

"Read, sir," he said coldly; "I am listening."

The registrar obeyed.  Murat was right.

The sentence of death had been carried with only one dissentient
voice.

When the reading was finished, the king turned again to Nunziante.

"General," he said, "believe that I distinguish in my mind the
instrument which strikes me and the hand that wields that instrument.
I should never have thought that Ferdinand would have had me shot
like a dog; he does not hesitate apparently before such infamy.  Very
well.  We will say no more about it.  I have challenged my judges,
but not my executioners.  What time have you fixed for my execution?"

"Will you fix it yourself, sir?" said the general.

Murat pulled out a watch on which there was a portrait of his wife;
by chance he turned up the portrait, and not the face of the watch;
he gazed at it tenderly.

"See, general," he said, showing it to Nunziante; "it is a portrait
of the queen.  You know her; is it not like her?"

The general turned away his head.  Murat sighed and put away the
watch.

"Well, sire," said the registrar, "what time have you fixed?"

"Ah yes," said Murat, smiling, "I forgot why I took out my watch when
I saw Caroline's portrait."

Then he looked at his watch again, but this time at its face.

"Well, it shall be at four o'clock, if you like; it is past three
o'clock.  I ask for fifty minutes.  Is that too much, sir?"

The registrar bowed and went out.  The general was about to follow
him.

"Shall I never see you again, Nunziante?" said Murat.

"My orders are to be present at your death, sire, but I cannot do
it."

"Very well, general.  I will dispense with your presence at the last
moment, but I should like to say farewell once more and to embrace
you."

"I will be near, sire."

"Thank you.  Now leave me alone."

"Sire, there are two priests here."

Murat made an impatient movement.

"Will you receive them?" continued the general.

"Yes; bring them in."

The general went out.  A moment later, two priests appeared in the
doorway.  One of them was called Francesco Pellegrino, uncle of the
man who had caused the king's death; the other was Don Antonio
Masdea.

"What do you want here?" asked Murat.

"We come to ask you if you are dying a Christian?"

"I am dying as a soldier.  Leave me."

Don Francesco Pellegrino retired.  No doubt he felt ill at ease
before Joachim.  But Antonio Masdea remained at the door.

"Did you not hear me?" asked the king.

"Yes, indeed," answered the old man; "but permit me, sire, to hope
that it was not your last word to me.  It is not, the first time that
I see you or beg something of you.  I have already had occasion to
ask a favour of you."

"What was that?"

"When your Majesty came to Pizzo in 1810, I asked you for 25,000
francs to enable us to finish our church.  Your Majesty sent me
40,000 francs."

"I must have foreseen that I should be buried there," said Murat,
smiling.

"Ah, sire, I should like to think that you did not refuse my second
boon any more than my first.  Sire, I entreat you on my knees."

The old man fell at Murat's feet.

"Die as a Christian!"

"That would give you pleasure, then, would it?" said the king.

"Sire, I would give the few short days remaining to me if God would
grant that His Holy Spirit should fall upon you in your last hour."

"Well," said Murat, "hear my confession.  I accuse myself of having
been disobedient to my parents as a child.  Since I reached manhood I
have done nothing to reproach myself with."

"Sire, will you give me an attestation that you die in the Christian
faith?"

"Certainly," said Murat.

And he took a pen and wrote: "I, Joachim Murat, die a Christian,
believing in the Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman."

He signed it.

"Now, father," continued the king, "if you have a third favour to ask
of me, make haste, for in half an hour it will be too late."

Indeed, the castle clock was striking half-past three.  The priest
signed that he had finished.

"Then leave me alone," said Murat; and the old man went out.

Murat paced his room for a few moments, then he sat down on his bed
and let his head fall into his hands.  Doubtless, during the quarter
of an hour he remained thus absorbed in his thoughts, he saw his
whole life pass before him, from the inn where he had started to the
palace he had reached; no doubt his adventurous career unrolled
itself before him like some golden dream, some brilliant fiction,
some tale from the Arabian Nights.

His life gleamed athwart the storm like a rainbow, and like a
rainbow's, its two extremities were lost in clouds--the clouds of
birth and death.  At last he roused himself from this inward
contemplation, and lifted a pale but tranquil face.  Then he went to
the glass and arranged his hair.  His strange characteristics never
left him.  The affianced of Death, he was adorning himself to meet
his bride.

Four o'clock struck.

Murat went to the door himself and opened it.

General Nunziante was waiting for him.

"Thank you, general," said Murat.  "You have kept your word.  Kiss
me, and go at once, if you like."

The general threw himself into the king's arms, weeping, and utterly
unable to speak.

"Courage," said Murat.  "You see I am calm."  It was this very
calmness which broke the general's heart.  He dashed out of the
corridor, and left the castle, running like a madman.

Then the king walked out into the courtyard.

Everything was ready for the execution.

Nine men and a corporal were ranged before the door of the council
chamber.  Opposite them was a wall twelve feet high.  Three feet away
from the wall was a stone block: Murat mounted it, thus raising
himself about a foot above the soldiers who were to execute him.
Then he took out his watch,[Madame Murat recovered this watch at the
price of 200 Louis] kissed his wife's portrait, and fixing his eyes
on it, gave the order to fire.  At the word of command five out of
the nine men fired: Murat remained standing.  The soldiers had been
ashamed to fire on their king, and had aimed over his head.  That
moment perhaps displayed most gloriously the lionlike courage which
was Murat's special attribute.  His face never changed, he did not
move a muscle; only gazing at the soldiers with an expression of
mingled bitterness and gratitude, he said:

"Thank you; my friends.  Since sooner or later you will be obliged to
aim true, do not prolong my death-agonies.  All I ask you is to aim
at the heart and spare the face.  Now----"

With the same voice, the same calm, the same expression, he repeated
the fatal words one after another, without lagging, without
hastening, as if he were giving an accustomed command; but this time,
happier than the first, at the word "Fire!" he fell pierced by eight
bullets, without a sigh, without a movement, still holding the watch
in his left hand.

The soldiers took up the body and laid it on the bed where ten
minutes before he had been sitting, and the captain put a guard at
the door.

In the evening a man presented himself, asking to go into the
death-chamber: the sentinel refused to let him in, and he demanded an
interview with the governor of the prison.  Led before him, he
produced an order.  The commander read it with surprise and disgust,
but after reading it he led the man to the door where he had been
refused entrance.

"Pass the Signor Luidgi," he said to the sentinel.

Ten minutes had hardly elapsed before he came out again, holding a
bloodstained handkerchief containing something to which the sentinel
could not give a name.

An hour later, the carpenter brought the coffin which was to contain
the king's remains.  The workman entered the room, but instantly
called the sentinel in a voice of indescribable terror.

The sentinel half opened the door to see what had caused the man's
panic.

The carpenter pointed to a headless corpse!

At the death of King Ferdinand, that, head, preserved in spirits of
wine, was found in a secret cupboard in his bedroom.

A week after the execution of Pizzo everyone had received his reward:
Trenta Capelli was made a colonel, General Nunziante a marquis, and
Luidgi died from the effects of poison.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "MURAT", CELEBRATED CRIMES, v7
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 8 (of 8), Part 1

by ALEXANDER DUMAS, PERE




THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS



Towards the end of the year 1665, on a fine autumn evening, there was
a considerable crowd assembled on the Pont-Neuf where it makes a turn
down to the rue Dauphine.  The object of this crowd and the centre of
attraction was a closely shut, carriage.  A police official was
trying to force open the door, and two out of the four sergeants who
were with him were holding the horses back and the other two stopping
the driver, who paid no attention to their commands, but only
endeavoured to urge his horses to a gallop.  The struggle had been
going on same time, when suddenly one of the doors violentiy pushed
open, and a young officer in the uniform of a cavalry captain jumped
down, shutting the door as he did so though not too quickly for the
nearest spectators to perceive a woman sitting at the back of the
carriage.  She was wrapped in cloak and veil, and judging by the
precautions she, had taken to hide her face from every eye, she must
have had her reasons for avoiding recognition.

"Sir," said the young man, addressing the officer with a haughty air,
"I presume, till I find myself mistaken, that your business is with
me alone; so I will ask you to inform me what powers you may have for
thus stopping my coach; also, since I have alighted, I desire you to
give your men orders to let the vehicle go on."

"First of all," replied the man, by no means intimidated by these
lordly airs, but signing to his men that they must not release the
coach or the horses, "be so good as to answer my questions."

"I am attending," said the young man, controlling his agitation by a
visible effort.

"Are you the Chevalier Gaudin de Sainte-Croix?"

"I am he."

"Captain of the Tracy, regiment?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I arrest you in the king's name."

"What powers have you?"

"This warrant."

Sainte-Croix cast a rapid glance at the paper, and instantly
recognised the signature of the minister of police: he then
apparently confined his attention to the woman who was still in the
carriage; then he returned to his first question.

"This is all very well, sir," he said to the officer, "but this
warrant contains no other name than mine, and so you have no right to
expose thus to the public gaze the lady with whom I was travelling
when you arrested me.  I must beg of you to order your assistants to
allow this carriage to drive on; then take me where you please, for I
am ready to go with you."

To the officer this request seemed a just one: he signed to his men
to let the driver and the horses go on; and, they, who had waited
only for this, lost no time in breaking through the crowd, which
melted away before them; thus the woman escaped for whose safety the
prisoner seemed so much concerned.

Sainte-Croix kept his promise and offered no resistance; for some
moments he followed the officer, surrounded by a crowd which seemed
to have transferred all its curiosity to his account; then, at the
corner of the Quai de d'Horloge, a man called up a carriage that had
not been observed before, and Sainte-Croix took his place with the
same haughty and disdainful air that he had shown throughout the
scene we have just described.  The officer sat beside him, two of his
men got up behind, and the other two, obeying no doubt their master's
orders, retired with a parting direction to the driver,

"The Bastille!"

Our readers will now permit us to make them more fully acquainted
with the man who is to take the first place in the story.  The origin
of Gaudin de Sainte-Croix was not known: according to one tale, he
was the natural son of a great lord; another account declared that he
was the offspring of poor people, but that, disgusted with his
obscure birth, he preferred a splendid disgrace, and therefore chose
to pass for what he was not.  The only certainty is that he was born
at Montauban, and in actual rank and position he was captain of the
Tracy regiment.  At the time when this narrative opens, towards the
end of 1665, Sainte-Croix was about twenty-eight or thirty, a fine
young man of cheerful and lively appearance, a merry comrade at a
banquet, and an excellent captain: he took his pleasure with other
men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous
project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most
susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a
courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was
princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive
to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an
equivocal position, fancy that everyone who makes any reference to
their origin is offering an intentional insult.

We must now see by what a chain of circumstances he had arrived at
his present position.  About the year 1660, Sainte-Croix, while in
the army, had made the acquaintance of the Marquis de Brinvilliers,
maitre-de-camp of the Normandy regiment.

Their age was much the same, and so was their manner of life: their
virtues and their vices were similar, and thus it happened that a
mere acquaintance grew into a friendship, and on his return from the
field the marquis introduced Sainte-Croix to his wife, and he became
an intimate of the house.  The usual results followed.  Madame de
Brinvilliers was then scarcely eight-and-twenty: she had married the
marquis in 1651-that is, nine years before.  He enjoyed an income of
30,000 livres, to which she added her dowry of 200,000 livres,
exclusive of her expectations in the future.  Her name was Marie-
Madeleine; she had a sister and two brothers: her father, M. de Dreux
d'Aubray; was civil lieutenant at the Chatelet de Paris.  At the age
of twenty-eight the marquise was at the height of her beauty: her
figure was small but perfectly proportioned; her rounded face was
charmingly pretty; her features, so regular that no emotion seemed to
alter their beauty, suggested the lines of a statue miraculously
endowed with life: it was easy enough to mistake for the repose of a
happy conscience the cold, cruel calm which served as a mask to cover
remorse.

Sainte-Croix and the marquise loved at first sight, and she was soon
his mistress.  The marquis, perhaps endowed with the conjugal
philosophy which alone pleased the taste of the period, perhaps too
much occupied with his own pleasure to see what was going on before
his eyes, offered no jealous obstacle to the intimacy, and continued
his foolish extravagances long after they had impaired his fortunes:
his affairs became so entangled that the marquise, who cared for him
no longer, and desired a fuller liberty for the indulgence of her new
passion, demanded and obtained a separation.  She then left her
husband's house, and henceforth abandoning all discretion, appeared
everywhere in public with Sainte-Croix.  This behaviour, authorised
as it was by the example of the highest nobility, made no impression
upon the.  Marquis of Brinvilliers, who merrily pursued the road to
ruin, without worrying about his wife's behaviour.  Not so M. de
Dreux d'Aubray: he had the scrupulosity of a legal dignitary.  He was
scandalised at his daughter's conduct, and feared a stain upon his
own fair name: he procured a warrant for the arrest of Sainte-Croix
wheresoever the bearer might chance to encounter him.  We have seen
how it was put in execution when Sainte-Croix was driving in the
carriage of the marquise, whom our readers will doubtless have
recognised as the woman who concealed herself so carefully.

From one's knowledge of the character of Sainte-Croix, it is easy to
imagine that he had to use great self-control to govern the anger he
felt at being arrested in the middle of the street; thus, although
during the whole drive he uttered not a single word, it was plain to
see that a terrible storm was gathering, soon to break.  But he
preserved the same impossibility both at the opening and shutting of
the fatal gates, which, like the gates of hell, had so often bidden
those who entered abandon all hope on their threshold, and again when
he replied to the formal questions put to him by the governor.  His
voice was calm, and when they gave him they prison register he signed
it with a steady hand.  At once a gaoler, taking his orders from the
governor, bade him follow: after traversing various corridors, cold
and damp, where the daylight might sometimes enter but fresh air
never, he opened a door, and Sainte-Croix had no sooner entered than
he heard it locked behind him.

At the grating of the lock he turned.  The gaoler had left him with
no light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred
window some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a
miserable truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep
obscurity.  The prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then,
when he had heard the steps die away in the distance and knew himself
to be alone at last, he fell upon the bed with a cry more like the
roaring of a wild beast than any human sound: he cursed his fellow-
man who had snatched him from his joyous life to plunge him into a
dungeon; he cursed his God who had let this happen; he cried aloud to
whatever powers might be that could grant him revenge and liberty.

Just at that moment, as though summoned by these words from the
bowels of the earth, a man slowly stepped into the circle of blue
light that fell from the window-a man thin and pale, a man with long
hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where
Sainte-Croix lay.  Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered
to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic
was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of
the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now
come in answer to his prayers.  He sat up on the bed, feeling
mechanically at the place where the handle of his sword would have
been but two hours since, feeling his hair stand on end, and a cold
sweat began to stream down his face as the strange fantastic being
step by step approached him.  At length the apparition paused, the
prisoner and he stood face to face for a moment, their eyes riveted;
then the mysterious stranger spoke in gloomy tones.

"Young man," said he, "you have prayed to the devil for vengeance on
the men who have taken you, for help against the God who has
abandoned you.  I have the means, and I am here to proffer it.  Have
you the courage to accept?"

"First of all," asked Sainte-Croix; "who are you?"

"Why seek you to know who I am," replied the unknown, "at the very
moment when I come at your call, and bring what you desire?"

"All the same," said Sainte-Croix, still attributing what he heard to
a supernatural being, "when one makes a compact of this kind, one
prefers to know with whom one is treating."

"Well, since you must know," said the stranger, "I am the Italian
Exili."

Sainte-Croix shuddered anew, passing from a supernatural vision to a
horrible reality.  The name he had just heard had a terrible
notoriety at the time, not only in France but in Italy as well.
Exili had been driven out of Rome, charged with many poisonings,
which, however, could not be satisfactorily brought home to him.  He
had gone to Paris, and there, as in his native country, he had drawn
the eyes of the authorities upon himself; but neither in Paris nor in
Rome was he, the pupil of Rene and of Trophana, convicted of guilt.
All the same, though proof was wanting, his enormities were so well
accredited that there was no scruple as to having him arrested.  A
warrant was out against him: Exili was taken up, and was lodged in
the Bastille.  He had been there about six months when Sainte-Croix
was brought to the same place.  The prisoners were numerous just
then, so the governor had his new guest put up in the same room as
the old one, mating Exili and Sainte-Croix, not knowing that they
were a pair of demons.  Our readers now understand the rest.  Sainte-
Croix was put into an unlighted room by the gaoler, and in the dark
had failed to see his companion: he had abandoned himself to his
rage, his imprecations had revealed his state of mind to Exili, who
at once seized the occasion for gaining a devoted and powerful
disciple, who once out of prison might open the doors for him,
perhaps, or at least avenge his fate should he be incarcerated for
life.

The repugnance felt by Sainte-Croix for his fellow-prisoner did not
last long, and the clever master found his pupil apt.  Sainte-Croix,
a strange mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme
crisis of his life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to
prevail.  Maybe, if he had met some angelic soul at this point, he
would have been led to God; he encountered a demon, who conducted him
to Satan.

Exili was no vulgar poisoner: he was a great artist in poisons,
comparable with the Medici or the Borgias.  For him murder was a fine
art, and he had reduced it to fixed and rigid rules: he had arrived
at a point when he was guided not by his personal interest but by a
taste for experiment.  God has reserved the act of creation for
Himself, but has suffered destruction to be within the scope of man:
man therefore supposes that in destroying life he is God's equal.
Such was the nature of Exili's pride: he was the dark, pale alchemist
of death: others might seek the mighty secret of life, but he had
found the secret of destruction.

For a time Sainte-Croix hesitated: at last he yielded to the taunts
of his companion, who accused Frenchmen of showing too much honour in
their crimes, of allowing themselves to be involved in the ruin of
their enemies, whereas they might easily survive them and triumph
over their destruction.  In opposition to this French gallantry,
which often involves the murderer in a death more cruel than that he
has given, he pointed to the Florentine traitor with his amiable
smile and his deadly poison.  He indicated certain powders and
potions, some of them of dull action, wearing out the victim so
slowly that he dies after long suffering; others violent and so
quick, that they kill like a flash of lightning, leaving not even
time for a single cry.  Little by little Sainte-Croix became
interested in the ghastly science that puts the lives of all men in
the hand of one.  He joined in Exili's experiments; then he grew
clever enough to make them for himself; and when, at the year's end,
he left the Bastille, the pupil was almost as accomplished as his
master.

Sainte-Croix returned into that society which had banished him,
fortified by a fatal secret by whose aid he could repay all the evil
he had received.  Soon afterwards Exili was set free--how it happened
is not known--and sought out Sainte-Croix, who let him a room in the
name of his steward, Martin de Breuille, a room situated in the
blind, alley off the Place Maubert, owned by a woman called Brunet.

It is not known whether Sainte-Croix had an opportunity of seeing the
Marquise de Brinvilliers during his sojourn in the Bastille, but it
is certain that as soon as he was a free man the lovers were more
attached than ever.  They had learned by experience, however, of what
they had to fear; so they resolved that they would at once make trial
of Sainte-Croix's newly acquired knowledge, and M. d'Aubray was
selected by his daughter for the first victim.  At one blow she would
free herself from the inconvenience of his rigid censorship, and by
inheriting his goods would repair her own fortune, which had been
almost dissipated by her husband.  But in trying such a bold stroke
one must be very sure of results, so the marquise decided to
experiment beforehand on another person.  Accordingly, when one day
after luncheon her maid, Francoise Roussel, came into her room, she
gave her a slice of mutton and some preserved gooseberries for her
own meal.  The girl unsuspiciously ate what her mistress gave her,
but almost at once felt ill, saying she had severe pain in the
stomach, and a sensation as though her heart were being pricked with
pins.  But she did not die, and the marquise perceived that the
poison needed to be made stronger, and returned it to Sainte-Croix,
who brought her some more in a few days' time.

The moment had come for action.  M. d'Aubray, tired with business,
was to spend a holiday at his castle called Offemont.  The marquise
offered to go with him.  M. d'Aubray, who supposed her relations with
Sainte-Croix to be quite broken off, joyfully accepted.  Offemont was
exactly the place for a crime of this nature.  In the middle of the
forest of Aigue, three or four miles from Compiegne, it would be
impossible to get efficient help before the rapid action of the
poison had made it useless.

M. d'Aubray started with his daughter and one servant only.  Never
had the marquise been so devoted to her father, so especially
attentive, as she was during this journey.  And M. d'Aubray, like
Christ--who though He had no children had a father's heart--loved his
repentant daughter more than if she had never strayed.  And then the
marquise profited by the terrible calm look which we have already
noticed in her face: always with her father, sleeping in a room
adjoining his, eating with him, caring for his comfort in every way,
thoughtful and affectionate, allowing no other person to do anything
for him, she had to present a smiling face, in which the most
suspicious eye could detect nothing but filial tenderness, though the
vilest projects were in her heart.  With this mask she one evening
offered him some soup that was poisoned.  He took it; with her eyes
she saw him put it to his lips, watched him drink it down, and with a
brazen countenance she gave no outward sign of that terrible anxiety
that must have been pressing on her heart.  When he had drunk it all,
and she had taken with steady hands the cup and its saucer, she went
back to her own room, waited and listened....

The effect was rapid.  The marquise heard her father moan; then she
heard groans.  At last, unable to endure his sufferings, he called
out to his daughter.  The marquise went to him.  But now her face
showed signs of the liveliest anxiety, and it was for M. d'Aubray to
try to reassure her about himself!  He thought it was only a trifling
indisposition, and was not willing that a doctor should be disturbed.
But then he was seized by a frightful vomiting, followed by such
unendurable pain that he yielded to his daughter's entreaty that she
should send for help.  A doctor arrived at about eight o'clock in the
morning, but by that time all that could have helped a scientific
inquiry had been disposed of: the doctor saw nothing, in M. d'Aubray's
story but what might be accounted for by indigestion; so he dosed
him, and went back to Compiegne.

All that day the marquise never left the sick man.  At night she had
a bed made up in his room, declaring that no one else must sit up
with him; thus she, was able to watch the progress of the malady and
see with her own eyes the conflict between death and life in the body
of her father.  The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was
worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now
more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment
was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris.  He was soon so
weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne,
but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and
better advice than anything he could get away from home, that M.
d'Aubray decided to go.  He made the journey in his own carriage,
leaning upon his daughter's shoulder; the behaviour of the marquise
was always the same: at last M. d'Aubray reached Paris.  All had
taken place as the marquise desired; for the scene was now changed:
the doctor who had witnessed the symptoms would not be present at the
death; no one could discover the cause by studying the progress of
the disorder; the thread of investigation was snapped in two, and the
two ends were now too distant to be joined again.  In spite, of every
possible attention, M. d'Aubray grew continually worse; the marquise
was faithful to her mission, and never left him for an hour.  At
list, after four days of agony, he died in his daughter's arms,
blessing the woman who was his murderess.  Her grief then broke forth
uncontrolled.  Her sobs and tears were so vehement that her brothers'
grief seemed cold beside hers.  Nobody suspected a crime, so no
autopsy was held; the tomb was closed, and not the slightest
suspicion had approached her.

But the marquise had only gained half her purpose.  She had now more
freedom for her love affairs, but her father's dispositions were not
so favourable as she expected: the greater part of his property,
together with his business, passed to the elder brother and to the
second brother, who was Parliamentary councillor; the position of,
the marquise was very little improved in point of fortune.

Sainte-Croix was leading a fine and joyous life.  Although nobody
supposed him to be wealthy, he had a steward called Martin, three
lackeys called George, Lapierre, and Lachaussee, and besides his
coach and other carriages he kept ordinary bearers for excursions at
night.  As he was young and good-looking, nobody troubled about where
all these luxuries came from.  It was quite the custom in those days
that a well-set-up young gentleman should want for nothing, and
Sainte-Croix was commonly said to have found the philosopher's stone.
In his life in the world he had formed friendships with various
persons, some noble, some rich: among the latter was a man named
Reich de Penautier, receiver-general of the clergy and treasurer of
the States of Languedoc, a millionaire, and one of those men who are
always successful, and who seem able by the help of their money to
arrange matters that would appear to be in the province of God alone.
This Penautier was connected in business with a man called d'Alibert,
his first clerk, who died all of a sudden of apoplexy.  The attack
was known to Penautier sooner than to his own family: then the papers
about the conditions of partnership disappeared, no one knew how, and
d'Alibert's wife and child were ruined.  D'Alibert's brother-in-law,
who was Sieur de la Magdelaine, felt certain vague suspicions
concerning this death, and wished to get to the bottom of it; he
accordingly began investigations, which were suddenly brought to an
end by his death.

In one way alone Fortune seemed to have abandoned her favourite:
Maitre Penautier had a great desire to succeed the Sieur of
Mennevillette, who was receiver of the clergy, and this office was
worth nearly 60,000 livres.  Penautier knew that Mennevillette was
retiring in favour of his chief clerk, Messire Pierre Hannyvel, Sieur
de Saint-Laurent, and he had taken all the necessary, steps for
buying the place over his head: the Sieur de Saint-Laurent, with the
full support of the clergy, obtained the reversion for nothing--a
thing that never happened before.  Penautier then offered him 40,000
crowns to go halves, but Saint-Laurent refused.  Their relations,
however, were not broken off, and they continued to meet.  Penautier
was considered such a lucky fellow that it was generally expected he
would somehow or other get some day the post he coveted so highly.
People who had no faith in the mysteries of alchemy declared that
Sainte-Croix and Penautier did business together.

Now, when the period for mourning was over, the relations of the
marquise and Sainte-Croix were as open and public as before: the two
brothers d'Aubray expostulated with her by the medium of an older
sister who was in a Carmelite nunnery, and the marquise perceived
that her father had on his death bequeathed the care and supervision
of her to her brothers.  Thus her first crime had been all but in
vain: she had wanted to get rid of her father's rebukes and to gain
his fortune; as a fact the fortune was diminished by reason of her
elder brothers, and she had scarcely enough to pay her debts; while
the rebukes were renewed from the mouths of her brothers, one of
whom, being civil lieutenant, had the power to separate her again
from her lover.  This must be prevented.  Lachaussee left the service
of Sainte-Croix, and by a contrivance of the marquise was installed
three months later as servant of the elder brother, who lived with
the civil lieutenant.  The poison to be used on this occasion was not
so swift as the one taken by M. d'Aubray so violent a death happening
so soon in the same family might arouse suspicion.  Experiments were
tried once more, not on animals--for their different organisation
might put the poisoner's science in the wrong--but as before upon
human subjects; as before, a 'corpus vili' was taken.  The marquise
had the reputation of a pious and charitable lady; seldom did she
fail to relieve the poor who appealed: more than this, she took part
in the work of those devoted women who are pledged to the service of
the sick, and she walked the hospitals and presented wine and other
medicaments.  No one was surprised when she appeared in her ordinary
way at l'Hotel-Dieu.  This time she brought biscuits and cakes for
the convalescent patients, her gifts being, as usual, gratefully
received.  A month later she paid another visit, and inquired after
certain patients in whom she was particularly interested: since the
last time she came they had suffered a relapse--the malady had
changed in nature, and had shown graver symptoms.  It was a kind of
deadly fatigue, killing them by a slows strange decay.  She asked
questions of the doctors but could learn nothing: this malady was
unknown to them, and defied all the resources of their art.
A fortnight later she returned.  Some of the sick people were dead,
others still alive, but desperately ill; living skeletons, all that
seemed left of them was sight, speech, and breath.  At the end of two
months they were all dead, and the physicians had been as much at a
loss over the post-mortems as over the treatment of the dying.

Experiments of this kind were reassuring; so Lachaussee had orders to
carry out his instructions.  One day the civil lieutenant rang his
bell, and Lachaussee, who served the councillor, as we said before,
came up for orders.  He found the lieutenant at work with his
secretary, Couste what he wanted was a glass of wine and water.  In a
moment Lachaussee brought it in.  The lieutenant put the glass to his
lips, but at the first sip pushed it away, crying, "What have you
brought, you wretch?  I believe you want to poison me."  Then handing
the glass to his secretary, he added, "Look at it, Couste: what is
this stuff?"  The secretary put a few drops into a coffee-spoon,
lifting it to his nose and then to his mouth: the drink had the smell
and taste of vitriol.  Meanwhile Lachaussee went up to the secretary
and told him he knew what it must be: one of the councillor's valets
had taken a dose of medicine that morning, and without noticing he
must have brought the very glass his companion had used.  Saying
this, he took the glass from the secretary's hand, put it to his
lips, pretending to taste it himself, and then said he had no doubt
it was so, for he recognised the smell.  He then threw the wine into
the fireplace.

As the lieutenant had not drunk enough to be upset by it, he soon
forgot this incident and the suspicions that had been aroused at the
moment in his mind.  Sainte-Croix and the marquise perceived that
they had made a false step, and at the risk of involving several
people in their plan for vengeance, they decided on the employment of
other means.  Three months passed without any favourable occasion
presenting itself; at last, on one of the early days of April 1670,
the lieutenant took his brother to his country place, Villequoy, in
Beauce, to spend the Easter vacation.  Lachaussee was with his
master, and received his instructions at the moment of departure.

The day after they arrived in the country there was a pigeon-pie for
dinner: seven persons who had eaten it felt indisposed after the
meal, and the three who had not taken it were perfectly well.  Those
on whom the poisonous substance had chiefly acted were the
lieutenant, the councillor, and the commandant of the watch.  He may
have eaten more, or possibly the poison he had tasted on the former
occasion helped, but at any rate the lieutenant was the first to be
attacked with vomiting two hours later, the councillor showed the
same symptoms; the commandant and the others were a prey for several
hours to frightful internal pains; but from the beginning their
condition was not nearly so grave as that of the two brothers.  This
time again, as usual, the help of doctors was useless.  On the 12th
of April, five days after they had been poisoned, the lieutenant and
his brother returned to Paris so changed that anyone would have
thought they had both suffered a long and cruel illness.  Madame de
Brinvilliers was in the country at the time, and did not come back
during the whole time that her brothers were ill.  From the very
first consultation in the lieutenant's case the doctors entertained
no hope.  The symptoms were the same as those to which his father had
succumbed, and they supposed it was an unknown disease in the family.
They gave up all hope of recovery.  Indeed, his state grew worse and
worse; he felt an unconquerable aversion for every kind of food, and
the vomiting was incessant.  The last three days of his life he
complained that a fire was burning in his breast, and the flames that
burned within seemed to blaze forth at his eyes, the only part of his
body that appeared to live, so like a corpse was all the rest of him.
On the 17th of June 1670 he died: the poison had taken seventy-two
days to complete its work.  Suspicion began to dawn: the lieutenant's
body was opened, and a formal report was drawn up.  The operation was
performed in the presence of the surgeons Dupre and Durant, and
Gavart, the apothecary, by M. Bachot, the brothers' private
physician.  They found the stomach and duodenum to be black and
falling to pieces, the liver burnt and gangrened.  They said that
this state of things must have been produced by poison, but as the
presence of certain bodily humours sometimes produces similar
appearances, they durst not declare that the lieutenant's death could
not have come about by natural causes, and he was buried without
further inquiry.

It was as his private physician that Dr. Bachot had asked for the
autopsy of his patient's brother.  For the younger brother seemed to
have been attacked by the same complaint, and the doctor hoped to
find from the death of the one some means for preserving the life of
the other.  The councillor was in a violent fever, agitated
unceasingly both in body and mind: he could not bear any position of
any kind for more than a few minutes at a time.  Bed was a place of
torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a
change of suffering.  At the end of three months he died.  His
stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as
his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt
away.  This, said the doctors; was no dubious sign of poisoning;
although, they added, it sometimes happened that a 'cacochyme'
produced the same effect.  Lachaussee was so far from being
suspected, that the councillor, in recognition of the care he had
bestowed on him in his last illness, left him in his will a legacy of
a hundred crowns; moreover, he received a thousand francs from
Sainte-Croix and the marquise.

So great a disaster in one family, however, was not only sad but
alarming.  Death knows no hatred: death is deaf and blind, nothing
more, and astonishment was felt at this ruthless destruction of all
who bore one name.  Still nobody suspected the true culprits, search
was fruitless, inquiries led nowhere: the marquise put on mourning
for her brothers, Sainte-Croix continued in his path of folly, and
all things went on as before.  Meanwhile Sainte-Croix had made the
acquaintance of the Sieur de Saint Laurent, the same man from whom
Penautier had asked for a post without success, and had made friends
with him.  Penautier had meanwhile become the heir of his father-in-
law, the Sieur Lesecq, whose death had most unexpectedly occurred; he
had thereby gained a second post in Languedoc and an immense
property: still, he coveted the place of receiver of the clergy.
Chance now once more helped him: a few days after taking over from
Sainte-Croix a man-servant named George, M. de Saint-Laurent fell
sick, and his illness showed symptoms similar to those observed in
the case of the d'Aubrays, father and sons; but it was more rapid,
lasting only twenty-four hours.  Like them, M. de Saint-Laurent died
a prey to frightful tortures.  The same day an officer from the
sovereign's court came to see him, heard every detail connected with
his friend's death, and when told of the symptoms said before the
servants to Sainfray the notary that it would be necessary to examine
the body.  An hour later George disappeared, saying nothing to
anybody, and not even asking for his wages.  Suspicions were excited;
but again they remained vague.  The autopsy showed a state of things
not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the
intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the
case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-
bites.  In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by the
Sieur de Saint-Laurent.

But the widow had certain suspicions which were changed into
something like certainty by George's flight.  A particular
circumstance aided and almost confirmed her doubts.  An abbe who was
a friend of her husband, and knew all about the disappearance of
George, met him some days afterwards in the rue des Masons, near the
Sorbonne.  They were both on the same side, and a hay-cart coming
along the street was causing a block.  George raised his head and saw
the abbe, knew him as a friend of his late master, stooped under the
cart and crawled to the other side, thus at the risk of being crushed
escaping from the eyes of a man whose appearance recalled his crime
and inspired him with fear of punishment.  Madame de Saint-Laurent
preferred a charge against George, but though he was sought for
everywhere, he could never be found.  Still the report of these
strange deaths, so sudden and so incomprehensible, was bruited about
Paris, and people began to feel frightened.  Sainte-Croix, always in
the gay world, encountered the talk in drawing-rooms, and began to
feel a little uneasy.  True, no suspicion pointed as yet in his
direction; but it was as well to take precautions, and Sainte-Croix
began to consider how he could be freed from anxiety.  There was a
post in the king's service soon to be vacant, which would cost
100,000 crowns; and although Sainte-Croix had no apparent means, it
was rumoured that he was about to purchase it.  He first addressed
himself to Belleguise to treat about this affair with Penautier.
There was some difficulty, however, to be encountered in this
quarter.  The sum was a large one, and Penautier no longer required
help; he had already come into all the inheritance he looked for, and
so he tried to throw cold water on the project.

Sainte-Croix thus wrote to Belleguise:

"DEAR FRIEND,--Is it possible that you need any more talking to about
the matter you know of, so important as it is, and, maybe, able to
give us peace and quiet for the rest of our days!  I really think the
devil must be in it, or else you simply will not be sensible: do show
your common sense, my good man, and look at it from all points of
view; take it at its very worst, and you still ought to feel bound to
serve me, seeing how I have made everything all right for you: all
our interests are together in this matter.  Do help me, I beg of you;
you may feel sure I shall be deeply grateful, and you will never
before have acted so agreeably both for me and for yourself.  You
know quite enough about it, for I have not spoken so openly even to
my own brother as I have to you.  If you can come this afternoon,
I shall be either at the house or quite near at hand, you know where
I mean, or I will expect you tomorrow morning, or I will come and
find you, according to what you reply.--Always yours with all my
heart."


The house meant by Sainte-Croix was in the rue des Bernardins, and
the place near at hand where he was to wait for Belleguise was the
room he leased from the widow Brunet, in the blind alley out of the
Place Maubert.  It was in this room and at the apothecary Glazer's
that Sainte-Croix made his experiments; but in accordance with
poetical justice, the manipulation of the poisons proved fatal to the
workers themselves.  The apothecary fell ill and died; Martin was
attacked by fearful sickness, which brought, him to death's door.
Sainte-Croix was unwell, and could not even go out, though he did not
know what was the matter.  He had a furnace brought round to his
house from Glazer's, and ill as he was, went on with the experiments.
Sainte-Croix was then seeking to make a poison so subtle that the
very effluvia might be fatal.  He had heard of the poisoned napkin
given to the young dauphin, elder brother of Charles VII, to wipe his
hands on during a game of tennis, and knew that the contact had
caused his death; and the still discussed tradition had informed him
of the gloves of Jeanne d'Albret; the secret was lost, but Sainte-
Croix hoped to recover it.  And then there happened one of those
strange accidents which seem to be not the hand of chance but a
punishment from Heaven.  At the very moment when Sainte-Croix was
bending over his furnace, watching the fatal preparation as it became
hotter and hotter, the glass mask which he wore over his face as a
protection from any poisonous exhalations that might rise up from the
mixture, suddenly dropped off, and Sainte-Croix dropped to the ground
as though felled by a lightning stroke.  At supper-time, his wife
finding that he did not come out from his closet where he was shut
in, knocked at the door, and received no answer; knowing that her
husband was wont to busy himself with dark and mysterious matters,
she feared some disaster had occurred.  She called her servants, who
broke in the door.  Then she found Sainte-Croix stretched out beside
the furnace, the broken glass lying by his side.  It was impossible
to deceive the public as to the circumstances of this strange and
sudden death: the servants had seen the corpse, and they talked.  The
commissary Picard was ordered to affix the seals, and all the widow
could do was to remove the furnace and the fragments of the glass
mask.

The noise of the event soon spread all over Paris.  Sainte-Croix was
extremely well known, and the, news that he was about to purchase a
post in the court had made him known even more widely.  Lachaussee
was one of the first to learn of his master's death; and hearing that
a seal had been set upon his room, he hastened to put in an objection
in these terms:

"Objection of Lachaussee, who asserts that for seven years he was in
the service of the deceased; that he had given into his charge, two
years earlier, 100 pistoles and 200 white crowns, which should be
found in a cloth bag under the closet window, and in the same a paper
stating that the said sum belonged to him, together with the transfer
of 300 livres owed to him by the late M. d'Aubray, councillor; the
said transfer made by him at Laserre, together with three receipts
from his master of apprenticeship, 100 livres each: these moneys and
papers he claims."

To Lachaussee the reply was given that he must wait till the day when
the seals were broken, and then if all was as he said, his property
would be returned.

But Lachaussee was not the only person who was agitated about the
death of Sainte-Croix.  The, marquise, who was familiar with all the
secrets of this fatal closet, had hurried to the commissary as 2496
soon as she heard of the event, and although it was ten o'clock at
night had demanded to speak with him.  But he had replied by his head
clerk, Pierre Frater, that he was in bed; the marquise insisted,
begging them to rouse him up, for she wanted a box that she could not
allow to have opened.  The clerk then went up to the Sieur Picard's
bedroom, but came back saying that what the marquise demanded was for
the time being an impossibility, for the commissary was asleep.  She
saw that it was idle to insist, and went away, saying that she should
send a man the next morning to fetch the box.  In the morning the man
came, offering fifty Louis to the commissary on behalf of the
marquise, if he would give her the box.  But he replied that the box
was in the sealed room, that it would have to be opened, and that if
the objects claimed by the marquise were really hers, they would be
safely handed over to her.  This reply struck the marquise like a
thunderbolt.  There was no time to be lost: hastily she removed from
the rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, where her town house was, to Picpus, her
country place.  Thence she posted the same evening to Liege, arriving
the next morning, and retired to a convent.

The seals had been set on the 31st of July 1672, and they were taken
off on the 8th of August following.  Just as they set to work a
lawyer charged with full powers of acting for the marquise, appeared
and put in the following statement: "Alexandre Delamarre, lawyer
acting for the Marquise de Brinvilliers, has come forward, and
declares that if in the box claimed by his client there is found a
promise signed by her for the sum of 30,000 livres, it is a paper
taken from her by fraud, against which, in case of her signature
being verified, she intends to lodge an appeal for nullification."
This formality over, they proceeded to open Sainte-Croix's closet:
the key was handed to the commissary Picard by a Carmelite called
Friar Victorin.  The commissary opened the door, and entered with the
parties interested, the officers, and the widow, and they began by
setting aside the loose papers, with a view to taking them in order,
one at a time.  While they were thus busy, a small roll fell down, on
which these two words were written: "My Confession."  All present,
having no reason to suppose Sainte-Croix a bad man, decided that this
paper ought not to be read.  The deputy for the attorney general on
being consulted was of this opinion, and the confession of Sainte-
Croix was burnt.  This act of conscience performed, they proceeded to
make an inventory.  One of the first objects that attracted the
attention of the officers was the box claimed by Madame de
Brinvilliers.  Her insistence had provoked curiosity, so they began
with it.  Everybody went near to see what was in it, and it was
opened.

We shall let the report speak: in such cases nothing is so effective
or so terrible as the official statement.

"In the closet of Sainte-Croix was found a small box one foot square,
on the top of which lay a half-sheet of paper entitled 'My Will,'
written on one side and containing these words: 'I humbly entreat any
into whose hands this chest may fall to do me the kindness of putting
it into the hands of Madame the Marquise de Brinvilliers, resident in
the rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, seeing that all the contents concern and
belong to her alone, and are of no use to any person in the world
apart from herself: in case of her being already dead before me, the
box and all its contents should be burnt without opening or
disturbing anything.  And lest anyone should plead ignorance of the
contents, I swear by the God I worship and by all that is most sacred
that no untruth is here asserted.  If anyone should contravene my
wishes that are just and reasonable in this matter, I charge their
conscience therewith in discharging my own in this world and the
next, protesting that such is my last wish.

"'Given at Paris, the 25th of May after noon, 1672.  Signed by
Sainte-Croix,'

"And below were written these words: 'There is one packet only
addressed to M. Penautier which should be delivered.'"


It may be easily understood that a disclosure of this kind only
increased the interest of the scene; there was a murmur of curiosity,
and when silence again reigned, the official continued in these
words:

"A packet has been found sealed in eight different places with eight
different seals.  On this is written: 'Papers to be burnt in case of
my death, of no consequence to anyone.  I humbly beg those into whose
hands they may fall to burn them.  I give this as a charge upon their
conscience; all without opening the packet.' In this packet we find
two parcels of sublimate.

"Item, another packet sealed with six different seals, on which is a
similar inscription, in which is found more sublimate, half a pound
in weight.

"Item, another packet sealed with six different seals, on which is a
similar inscription, in which are found three parcels, one containing
half an ounce of sublimate, the second 2 1/4 ozs. of Roman vitriol,
and the third some calcined prepared vitriol.  In the box was found a
large square phial, one pint in capacity, full of a clear liquid,
which was looked at by M. Moreau, the doctor; he, however, could not
tell its nature until it was tested.

"Item, another phial, with half a pint of clear liquid with a white
sediment, about which Moreau said the same thing as before.

"Item, a small earthenware pot containing two or three lumps of
prepared opium.

"Item, a folded paper containing two drachms of corrosive sublimate
powdered.

"Next, a little box containing a sort of stone known as infernal
stone.

"Next, a paper containing one ounce of opium.

"Next, a piece of pure antimony weighing three ounces.

"Next, a packet of powder on which was written: 'To check the flow of
blood.'  Moreau said that it was quince flower and quince buds dried.

"Item, a pack sealed with six seals, on which was written, 'Papers to
be burnt in case of death.'  In this twenty-four letters were found,
said to have been written by the Marquise de Brinvilliers.

"Item, another packet sealed with six seals, on which a similar
inscription was written.  In this were twenty-seven pieces of paper
on each of which was written: 'Sundry curious secrets.'

"Item, another packet with six more seals, on which a similar
inscription was written.  In this were found seventy-five livres,
addressed to different persons.  Besides all these, in the box there
were two bonds, one from the marquise for 30,000, and one from
Penautier for 10,000 francs, their dates corresponding to the time of
the deaths of M. d'Aubray and the Sieur de St. Laurent."


The difference in the amount shows that Sainte-Croix had a tariff,
and that parricide was more expensive than simple assassination.
Thus in his death did Sainte-Croix bequeath the poisons to his
mistress and his friend; not content with his own crimes in the past,
he wished to be their accomplice in the future.

The first business of the officials was to submit the different
substances to analysis, and to experiment with them on animals.
The report follows of Guy Simon, an apothecary, who was charged to
undertake the analysis and the experiments:

"This artificial poison reveals its nature on examination.  It is so
disguised that one fails to recognise it, so subtle that it deceives
the scientific, so elusive that it escapes the doctor's eye:
experiments seem to be at fault with this poison, rules useless,
aphorisms ridiculous.  The surest experiments are made by the use of
the elements or upon animals.  In water, ordinary poison falls by its
own weight.  The water is superior, the poison obeys, falls
downwards, and takes the lower place.

"The trial by fire is no less certain: the fire evaporates and
disperses all that is innocent and pure, leaving only acrid and sour
matter which resists its influence.  The effect produced by poisons
on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every
part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; it burns
and scorches all the inner parts with a strange, irresistible fire.

"The poison employed by Sainte-Croix has been tried in all the ways,
and can defy every experiment.  This poison floats in water, it is
the superior, and the water obeys it; it escapes in the trial by
fire, leaving behind only innocent deposits; in animals it is so
skilfully concealed that no one could detect it; all parts of the
animal remain healthy and active; even while it is spreading the
cause of death, this artificial poison leaves behind the marks and
appearance of life.  Every sort of experiment has been tried.  The
first was to pour out several drops of the liquid found into oil of
tartar and sea water, and nothing was precipitated into the vessels
used; the second was to pour the same liquid into a sanded vessel,
and at the bottom there was found nothing acrid or acid to the
tongue, scarcely any stains; the third experiment was tried upon an
Indian fowl, a pigeon, a dog, and some other animals, which died soon
after.  When they were opened, however, nothing was found but a
little coagulated blood in the ventricle of the heart.  Another
experiment was giving a white powder to a cat, in a morsel of mutton.
The cat vomited for half an hour, and was found dead the next day,
but when opened no part of it was found to be affected by the poison.
A second trial of the same poison was made upon a pigeon, which soon
died.  When opened, nothing peculiar was found except a little
reddish water in the stomach."

These experiments proved that Sainte-Croix was a learned chemist, and
suggested the idea that he did not employ his art for nothing;
everybody recalled the sudden, unexpected deaths that had occurred,
and the bonds from the marquise and from Penautier looked like blood-
money.  As one of these two was absent, and the other so powerful and
rich that they dared not arrest him without proofs, attention was now
paid to the objection put in by Lachaussee.

It was said in the objection that Lachaussee had spent seven years in
the service of Sainte-Croix, so he could not have considered the time
he had passed with the d'Aubrays as an interruption to this service.
The bag containing the thousand pistoles and the three bonds for a
hundred livres had been found in the place indicated; thus Lachaussee
had a thorough knowledge of this closet: if he knew the closet, he
would know about the box; if he knew about the box, he could not be
an innocent man.  This was enough to induce Madame Mangot de
Villarceaux, the lieutenant's widow, to lodge an accusation against
him, and in consequence a writ was issued against Lachaussee, and he
was arrested.

When this happened, poison was found upon him.  The trial came on
before the Chatelet.  Lachaussee denied his guilt obstinately.  The
judges thinking they had no sufficient proof, ordered the preparatory
question to be applied.  Mme. Mangot appealed from a judgment which
would probably save the culprit if he had the strength to resist the
torture and own to nothing;

[Note: There were two kinds of question, one before and one after the
sentence was passed.  In the first, an accused person would endure
frightful torture in the hope of saving his life, and so would often
confess nothing.  In the second, there was no hope, and therefore it
was not worth while to suffer additional pains.]

so, in virtue of this appeal, a judgment, on March 4th, 1673,
declared that Jean Amelin Lachaussee was convicted of having poisoned
the lieutenant and the councillor; for which he was to be broken
alive on the wheel, having been first subjected to the question both
ordinary and extraordinary, with a view to the discovery of his
accomplices.  At the same time Madame de Brinvilliers was condemned
in default of appearance to have her head cut off.

Lachaussee suffered the torture of the boot.  This was having each
leg fastened between two planks and drawn together in an iron ring,
after which wedges were driven in between the middle planks; the
ordinary question was with four wedges, the extraordinary with eight.
At the third wedge Lachaussee said he was ready to speak; so the
question was stopped, and he was carried into the choir of the chapel
stretched on a mattress, where, in a weak voice--for he could hardly
speak--he begged for half an hour to recover himself.  We give a
verbatim extract from the report of the question and the execution of
the death-sentence:

"Lachaussee, released from the question and laid on the mattress, the
official reporter retired.  Half an hour later Lachaussee begged that
he might return, and said that he was guilty; that Sainte-Croix told
him that Madame de Brinvilliers had given him the poison to
administer to her brothers; that he had done it in water and soup,
had put the reddish water in the lieutenant's glass in Paris, and the
clear water in the pie at Villequoy; that Sainte-Croix had promised
to keep him always, and to make him a gift of 100 pistolets; that he
gave him an account of the effect of the poisons, and that Sainte-
Croix had given him some of the waters several times.  Sainte-Croix
told him that the marquise knew nothing of his other poisonings, but
Lachaussee thought she did know, because she had often spoken to him
about his poisons; that she wanted to compel him to go away, offering
him money if he would go; that she had asked him for the box and its
contents; that if Sainte-Croix had been able to put anyone into the
service of Madame d'Aubray, the lieutenant's widow, he would possibly
have had her poisoned also; for he had a fancy for her daughter."


This declaration, which left no room for doubt, led to the judgment
that came next, thus described in the Parliamentary register: "Report
of the question and execution on the 24th of March 1673, containing
the declarations and confessions of Jean Amelin Lachaussee; the court
has ordered that the persons mentioned, Belleguise, Martin, Poitevin,
Olivier, Veron pere, the wife of Quesdon the wigmaker, be summoned to
appear before the court to be interrogated and heard concerning
matters arising from the present inquiry, and orders that the decree
of arrest against Lapierre and summons against Penautier decreed by
the criminal lieutenant shall be carried out.  In Parliament, 27th
March 1673."  In virtue of this judgment, Penautier, Martin, and
Belleguise were interrogated on the 2lst, 22nd, and 24th of April.
On the 26th of July, Penautier was discharged; fuller information was
desired concerning Belleguise, and the arrest of Martin was ordered.
On the 24th of March, Lachaussee had been broken on the wheel.  As to
Exili, the beginner of it all, he had disappeared like Mephistopheles
after Faust's end, and nothing was heard of him.  Towards the end of
the year Martin was released for want of sufficient evidence.  But
the Marquise de Brinvilliers remained at Liege, and although she was
shut up in a convent she had by no means abandoned one, at any rate,
of the most worldly pleasures.  She had soon found consolation for
the death of Sainte-Croix, whom, all the same, she had loved so much
as to be willing to kill herself for his sake.  But she had adopted a
new lover, Theria by name.  About this man it has been impossible to
get any information, except that his name was several times mentioned
during the trial.  Thus, all the accusations had, one by one, fallen
upon her, and it was resolved to seek her out in the retreat where
she was supposed to be safe.  The mission was difficult and very
delicate.  Desgrais, one of the cleverest of the officials, offered
to undertake it.  He was a handsome man, thirty-six years old or
thereabouts: nothing in his looks betrayed his connection with the
police; he wore any kind of dress with equal ease and grace, and was
familiar with every grade in the social scale, disguising himself as
a wretched tramp or a noble lord.  He was just the right man, so his
offer was accepted.

He started accordingly for Liege, escorted by several archers, and,
fortified by a letter from the king addressed to the Sixty of that
town, wherein Louis xiv demanded the guilty woman to be given up for
punishment.  After examining the letter, which Desgrais had taken
pains to procure, the council authorised the extradition of the
marquise.

This was much, but it was not all.  The marquise, as we know, had
taken refuge in a convent, where Desgrais dared not arrest her by
force, for two reasons: first, because she might get information
beforehand, and hide herself in one of the cloister retreats whose
secret is known only to the superior; secondly, because Liege was so
religious a town that the event would produce a great sensation: the
act might be looked upon as a sacrilege, and might bring about a
popular rising, during which the marquise might possibly contrive to
escape.  So Desgrais paid a visit to his wardrobe, and feeling that
an abbe's dress would best free him from suspicion, he appeared at
the doors of the convent in the guise of a fellow-countryman just
returned from Rome, unwilling to pass through Liege without
presenting his compliments to the lovely and unfortunate marquise.
Desgrais had just the manner of the younger son of a great house: he
was as flattering as a courtier, as enterprising as a musketeer.  In
this first visit he made himself attractive by his wit and his
audacity, so much so that more easily than he had dared to hope, he
got leave to pay a second call.  The second visit was not long
delayed: Desgrais presented himself the very next day.  Such
eagerness was flattering to the marquise, so Desgrais was received
even better than the night before.  She, a woman of rank and fashion,
for more than a year had been robbed of all intercourse with people
of a certain set, so with Desgrais the marquise resumed her Parisian
manner.  Unhappily the charming abbe was to leave Liege in a few
days; and on that account he became all the more pressing, and a
third visit, to take place next day, was formally arranged.  Desgrais
was punctual: the marquise was impatiently waiting him; but by a
conjunction of circumstances that Desgrais had no doubt arranged
beforehand, the amorous meeting was disturbed two or three times just
as they were getting more intimate and least wanting to be observed.
Desgrais complained of these tiresome checks; besides, the marquise
and he too would be compromised: he owed concealment to his cloth: He
begged her to grant him a rendezvous outside the town, in some
deserted walk, where there would be no fear of their being recognised
or followed: the marquise hesitated no longer than would serve to put
a price on the favour she was granting, and the rendezvous was fixed
for the same evening.

The evening came: both waited with the same impatience, but with very
different hopes.  The marquise found Desgrais at the appointed spot:
he gave her his arm then holding her hand in his own, he gave a sign,
the archers appeared, the lover threw off his mask, Desgrais was
confessed, and the marquise was his prisoner.  Desgrais left her in
the hands of his men, and hastily made his way to the convent.  Then,
and not before, he produced his order from the Sixty, by means of
which he opened the marquise's room.  Under her bed he found a box,
which he seized and sealed; then he went back to her, and gave the
order to start.

When the marquise saw the box in the hands of Desgrais, she at first
appeared stunned; quickly recovering, she claimed a paper inside it
which contained her confession.  Desgrais refused, and as he turned
round for the carriage to come forward, she tried to choke herself by
swallowing a pin.  One of the archers, called Claude, Rolla,
perceiving her intention, contrived to get the pin out of her mouth.
After this, Desgrais commanded that she should be doubly watched.

They stopped for supper.  An archer called Antoine Barbier was
present at the meal, and watched so that no knife or fork should be
put on the table, or any instrument with which she could wound or
kill herself.  The marquise, as she put her glass to her mouth as
though to drink, broke a little bit off with her teeth; but the
archer saw it in time, and forced her to put it out on her plate.
Then she promised him, if he would save her, that she would make his
fortune.  He asked what he would have to do for that.  She proposed
that he should cut Desgrais' throat; but he refused, saying that he
was at her service in any other way.  So she asked him for pen and
paper, and wrote this letter:

"DEAR THERIA,--I am in the hands of Desgrais, who is taking me by
road from Liege to Paris.  Come quickly and save me."

Antoine Barbier took the letter, promising to deliver it at the right
address; but he gave it to Desgrais instead.  The next day, finding
that this letter had not been pressing enough, she wrote him another,
saying that the escort was only eight men, who could be easily
overcome by four or five determined assailants, and she counted on
him to strike this bald stroke.  But, uneasy when she got no answer
and no result from her letters, she despatched a third missive to
Theria.  In this she implored him by his own salvation, if he were
not strong enough to attack her escort and save her, at least to kill
two of the four horses by which she was conveyed, and to profit by
the moment of confusion to seize the chest and throw it into the
fire; otherwise, she declared, she was lost.  Though Theria received
none of these letters, which were one by one handed over by Barbier
to Desgrais, he all the same did go to Maestricht, where the marquise
was to pass, of his own accord.  There he tried to bribe the archers,
offering much as 10,000 livres, but they were incorruptible.  At
Rocroy the cortege met M. Palluau, the councillor, whom the
Parliament had sent after the prisoner, that he might put questions
to her at a time when she least expected them, and so would not have
prepared her answers.  Desgrais told him all that had passed, and
specially called his attention to the famous box, the object of so
much anxiety and so many eager instructions.  M. de Palluau opened
it, and found among other things a paper headed "My Confession."
This confession was a proof that the guilty feel great need of
discovering their crimes either to mankind or to a merciful God.
Sainte-Croix, we know, had made a confession that was burnt, and here
was the marquise equally imprudent.  The confession contained seven
articles, and began thus, "I confess to God, and to you, my father,"
and was a complete avowal, of all the crimes she had committed.

In the first article she accused herself of incendiarism;

In the second, of having ceased to be a virgin at seven years of age;

In the third of having poisoned her father;

In the fourth, of having poisoned her two brothers;

In the fifth, that she had tried to poison her sister, a Carmelite
nun.

The two other articles were concerned with the description of strange
and unnatural sins.  In this woman there was something of Locusta and
something of Messalina as well: antiquity could go no further.

M. de Palluau, fortified by his knowledge of this important document,
began his examination forthwith.  We give it verbatim, rejoicing that
we may substitute an official report for our own narrative.

Asked why she fled to Liege, she replied that she left France on
account of some business with her sister-in-law.

Asked if she had any knowledge of the papers found in the box, she
replied that in the box there were several family papers, and among
them a general confession which she desired to make; when she wrote
it, however, her mind was disordered; she knew not what she had said
or done, being distraught at the time, in a foreign country, deserted
by her relatives, forced to borrow every penny.

Asked as to the first article, what house it was she had burnt, she
replied that she had not burnt anything, but when she wrote that she
was out of her senses.

Asked about the six other articles she replied that she had no
recollection of them.

Asked if she had not poisoned her father and brothers, she replied
that she knew nothing at all about it.

Asked if it were not Lachaussee who poisoned her brothers, she
replied that she knew nothing about it.

Asked if she did not know that her sister could not live long, having
been poisoned, she said that she expected her sister to die, because
she suffered in the same way as her brothers; that she had lost all
memory of the time when she wrote this confession; admitted that she
left France by the advice of her relations.

Asked why her relations had advised her thus, she replied that it was
in connection with her brothers' affairs; admitted seeing Sainte-
Croix since his release from the Bastille.

Asked if Sainte-Croix had not persuaded her to get rid of her father,
she replied that she could not remember; neither did she remember if
Sainte-Croix had given her powders or other drugs, nor if Sainte-
Croix had told her he knew how to make her rich.

Eight letters having been produced, asked to whom she had written
them, she replied that she did not remember.

Asked why she had promised to pay 30,000 livres to Sainte-Croix, she
replied that she intended to entrust this sum to his care, so that
she might make use of it when she wanted it, believing him to be her
friend; she had not wished this to be known, by reason of her
creditors; that she had an acknowledgment from Sainte-Croix, but had
lost it in her travels; that her husband knew nothing about it.

Asked if the promise was made before or after the death of her
brothers, she replied that she could not remember, and it made no
difference.

Asked if she knew an apothecary called Glazer, she replied that she
had consulted him three times about inflammation.

Asked why she wrote to Theria to get hold of the box, she replied
that she did not understand.

Asked why, in writing to Theria, she had said she was lost unless he
got hold of the box, she replied that she could not remember.

Asked if she had seen during the journey with her father the first
symptoms of his malady, she replied that she had not noticed that her
father was ill on the journey, either going or coming back in 1666.

Asked if she had not done business with Penautier, she replied that
Penautier owed her 30,000 livres.

Asked how this was, she replied that she and her husband had lent
Penautier 10,000 crowns, that he had paid it back, and since then
they had had no dealings with him.

The marquise took refuge, we see, in a complete system of denial:
arrived in Paris, and confined in the Conciergerie, she did the same;
but soon other terrible charges were added, which still further
overwhelmed her.

The sergeant Cluet deposed: that, observing a lackey to M. d'Aubray,
the councillor, to be the man Lachaussee, whom he had seen in the
service of Sainte-Croix, he said to the marquise that if her brother
knew that Lachaussee had been with Sainte-Croix he would not like it,
but that Madame de Brinvilliers exclaimed, "Dear me, don't tell my
brothers; they would give him a thrashing, no doubt, and he may just
as well get his wages as any body else."  He said nothing to the
d'Aubrays, though he saw Lachaussee paying daily visits to Sainte-
Croix and to the marquise, who was worrying Sainte-Croix to let her
have her box, and wanted her bill for two or three thousand pistoles.
Other wise she would have had him assassinated.  She often said that
she was very anxious that no one should see the contents of the box;
that it was a very important matter, but only concerned herself.
After the box was opened, the witness added, he had told the
marquise, that the commissary Picard said to Lachaussee that there
were strange things in it; but the lady blushed, and changed the
subject.  He asked her if she were not an accomplice.  She said,
"What! I?" but then muttered to herself: "Lachaussee ought to be
sent off to Picardy."  The witness repeated that she had been after
Sainte-Croix along time about the box, and if she had got it she
would have had his throat cut.  The witness further said that when he
told Briancourt that Lachaussee was taken and would doubtless confess
all, Briancourt, speaking of the marquise, remarked, "She is a lost
woman."  That d'Aubray's daughter had called Briancourt a rogue, but
Briancourt had replied that she little knew what obligations she was
under to him; that they had wanted to poison both her and the
lieutenant's widow, and he alone had hindered it.  He had heard from
Briancourt that the marquise had often said that there are means to
get rid of people one dislikes, and they can easily be put an end to
in a bowl of soup.

The girl Edme Huet, a woman of Brescia, deposed that Sainte-Croix
went to see the marquise every day, and that in a box belonging to
that lady she had seen two little packets containing sublimate in
powder and in paste: she recognised these, because she was an
apothecary's daughter.  She added that one day Madame de
Brinvilliers, after a dinner party, in a merry mood, said, showing
her a little box, "Here is vengeance on one's enemies: this box is
small, but holds plenty of successsions!"  That she gave back the box
into her hands, but soon changing from her sprightly mood, she cried,
"Good heavens, what have I said?  Tell nobody."  That Lambert, clerk
at the palace, told her he had brought the packets to Madame from
Sainte-Croix; that Lachaussee often went to see her; and that she
herself, not being paid ten pistoles which the marquise owed her,
went to complain to Sainte-Croix, threatening to tell the lieutenant
what she had seen; and accordingly the ten pistoles were paid;
further, that the marquise and Sainte-Croix always kept poison about
them, to make use of, in case of being arrested.

Laurent Perrette, living with Glazer, said that he had often seen a
lady call on his mistress with Sainte-Croix; that the footman told
him she was the Marquise de Brinvilliers; that he would wager his
head on it that they came to Glazer's to make poison; that when they
came they used to leave their carriage at the Foire Saint-Germain.

Marie de Villeray, maid to the marquise, deposed that after the death
of M. d'Aubray the councillor, Lachaussee came to see the lady and
spoke with her in private; that Briancourt said she had caused the
death of a worthy men; that Briancourt every day took some electuary
for fear of being poisoned, and it was no doubt due to this
precaution that he was still alive; but he feared he would be
stabbed, because she had told him the secret about the poisoning;
that d'Aubray's daughter had to be warned; and that there was a
similar design against the tutor of M. de Brinvillier's children.
Marie de Villeray added that two days after the death of the
councillor, when Lachaussee was in Madame's bedroom, Couste, the late
lieutenant's secretary, was announced, and Lachaussee had to be
hidden in the alcove by the bed.  Lachaussee brought the marquise a
letter from Sainte-Croix.

Francois Desgrais, officer, deposed that when he was given the king's
orders he arrested the marquise at Liege; that he found under her bed
a box which he sealed; that the lady had demanded a paper which was
in it, containing her confession, but he refused it; that on the road
to Paris the marquise had told him that she believed it was Glazer
who made the poisons for Sainte-Croix; that Sainte-Croix, who had
made a rendezvous with her one day at the cross Saint-Honore, there
showed her four little bottles, saying, "See what Glazer has sent
me."  She asked him for one, but Sainte-Croix said he would rather
die than give it up.  He added that the archer Antoine Barbier had
given him three letters written by the marquise to Theria; that in
the first she had told him to come at once and snatch her from the
hands of the soldiers; that in the second she said that the escort
was only composed of eight persons, who could he worsted by five men;
that in the third she said that if he could not save her from the men
who were taking her away, he should at least approach the commissary,
and killing his valet's horse and two other horses in his carriage,
then take the box, and burn it; otherwise she was lost.

Laviolette, an archer, deposed that on the evening of the arrest.
the marquise had a long pin and tried to put it in her mouth; that he
stopped her, and told her that she was very wicked; that he perceived
that people said the truth and that she had poisoned all her family;
to which she replied, that if she had, it was only through following
bad advice, and that one could not always be good.

Antoine Barbier, an archer, said that the marquise at table took up a
glass as though to drink, and tried to swallow a piece of it; that he
prevented this, and she promised to make his fortune if only he would
save her; that she wrote several letters to Theria; that during the
whole journey she tried all she could to swallow pins, bits of glass,
and earth; that she had proposed that he should cut Desgrais' throat,
and kill the commissary's valet; that she had bidden him get the box
and burn it, and bring a lighted torch to burn everything; that she
had written to Penautier from the Conciergerie; that she gave him,
the letter, and he pretended to deliver it.

Finally, Francoise Roussel deposed that she had been in the service
of the marquise, and the lady had one day given her some preserved
gooseberries; that she had eaten some on the point of her knife, and
at once felt ill.  She also gave her a slice of mutton, rather wet,
which she ate, afterwards suffering great pain in the stomach,
feeling as though she had been pricked in the heart, and for three
years had felt the same, believing herself poisoned.

It was difficult to continue a system of absolute denial in face of
proofs like these.  The marquise persisted, all the same, that she
was in no way guilty; and Maitre Nivelle, one of the best lawyers of
the period, consented to defend her cause.

He combated one charge after another, in a remarkably clever way,
owning to the adulterous connection of the marquise with Sainte-
Croix, but denying her participation in the murders of the d'Aubrays,
father and sons: these he ascribed entirely to the vengeance desired
by Sainte-Croix.  As to the confession, the strongest and, he
maintained, the only evidence against Madame de Brinvilliers, he
attacked its validity by bringing forward certain similar cases,
where the evidence supplied by the accused against themselves had not
been admitted by reason of the legal action: 'Non auditur perire
volens'.  He cited three instances, and as they are themselves
interesting, we copy them verbatim from his notes.


                         FIRST CASE

Dominicus Soto, a very famous canonist and theologian, confessor to
Charles V, present at the first meetings of the Council of Trent
under Paul III, propounds a question about a man who had lost a paper
on which he had written down his sins.  It happened that this paper
fell into the hands of an ecclesiastical judge, who wished to put in
information against the writer on the strength of this document.  Now
this judge was justly punished by his superior, because confession is
so sacred that even that which is destined to constitute the
confession should be wrapped in eternal silence.  In accordance with
this precedent, the following judgment, reported in the 'Traite des
Confesseurs', was given by Roderic Acugno.  A Catalonian, native of
Barcelona, who was condemned to death for homicide and owned his
guilt, refused to confess when the hour of punishment arrived.
However strongly pressed, he resisted, and so violently, giving no
reason, that all were persuaded that his mind was unhinged by the
fear of death.  Saint-Thomas of Villeneuve, Archbishop of Valencia,
heard of his obstinacy.  Valencia was the place where his sentence
was given.  The worthy prelate was so charitable as to try to
persuade the criminal to make his confession, so as not to lose his
soul as well as his body.  Great was his surprise, when he asked the
reason of the refusal, to hear the doomed man declare that he hated
confessors, because he had been condemned through the treachery of
his own priest, who was the only person who knew about the murder.
In confession he had admitted his crime and said where the body was
buried, and all about it; his confessor had revealed it all, and he
could not deny it, and so he had been condemned.  He had only just
learned, what he did not know at the time he confessed, that his
confessor was the brother of the man he had killed, and that the
desire for vengeance had prompted the bad priest to betray his
confession.  Saint-Thomas, hearing this, thought that this incident
was of more importance than the trial, which concerned the life of
only one person, whereas the honour of religion was at stake, with
consequences infinitely more important.  He felt he must verify this
statement, and summoned the confessor.  When he had admitted the
breach of faith, the judges were obliged to revoke their sentence and
pardon the criminal, much to the gratification of the public mind.
The confessor was adjudged a very severe penance, which Saint-Thomas
modified because of his prompt avowal of his fault, and still more
because he had given an opportunity for the public exhibition of that
reverence which judges themselves are bound to pay to confessions.


                         SECOND CASE

In 1579 an innkeeper at Toulouse killed with his own hand, unknown to
the inmates of his house, a stranger who had come to lodge with him,
and buried him secretly in the cellar.  The wretch then suffered from
remorse, and confessed the crime with all its circumstances, telling
his confessor where the body was buried.  The relations of the dead
man, after making all possible search to get news of him, at last
proclaimed through the town a large reward to be given to anyone who
would discover what had happened to him.  The confessor, tempted by
this bait, secretly gave word that they had only to search in the
innkeeper's cellar and they would find the corpse.  And they found it
in the place indicated.  The innkeeper was thrown into prison, was
tortured, and confessed his crime.  But afterwards he always
maintained that his confessor was the only person who could have
betrayed him.  Then the Parliament, indignant with such means of
finding out the truth, declared him innocent, failing other proof
than what came through his confessor.  The confessor was himself
condemned to be hanged, and his body was burnt.  So fully did the
tribunal in its wisdom recognise the importance of securing the
sanctity of a sacrament that is indispensable to salvation.


                         THIRD CASE

An Armenian woman had inspired a violent passion in a young Turkish
gentleman, but her prudence was long an obstacle to her lover's
desires.  At last he went beyond all bounds, and threatened to kill
both her and her husband if she refused to gratify him.  Frightened
by this threat, which she knew too well he would carry out, she
feigned consent, and gave the Turk a rendezvous at her house at an
hour when she said her husband would be absent; but by arrangement
the husband arrived, and although the Turk was armed with a sabre and
a pair of pistols, it so befell that they were fortunate enough to
kill their enemy, whom they buried under their dwelling unknown to
all the world.  But some days after the event they went to confess to
a priest of their nation, and revealed every detail of the tragic
story.  This unworthy minister of the Lord supposed that in a
Mahommedan country, where the laws of the priesthood and the
functions of a confessor are either unknown or disapproved, no
examination would be made into the source of his information, and
that his evidence would have the same weight as any other accuser's.
So he resolved to make a profit and gratify his own avarice.  Several
times he visited the husband and wife, always borrowing considerable
sums, and threatening to reveal their crime if they refused him.  The
first few times the poor creatures gave in to his exactions; but the
moment came at last when, robbed of all their fortune, they were
obliged to refuse the sum he demanded.  Faithful to his threat, the
priest, with a view to more reward, at once denounced them to the
dead man's father.  He, who had adored his son, went to the vizier,
told him he had identified the murderers through their confessor, and
asked for justice.  But this denunciation had by no means the desired
effect.  The vizier, on the contrary, felt deep pity for the wretched
Armenians, and indignation against the priest who had betrayed them.
He put the accuser into a room which adjoined the court, and sent for
the Armenian bishop to ask what confession really was, and what
punishment was deserved by a priest who betrayed it, and what was the
fate of those whose crimes were made known in this fashion.  The
bishop replied that the secrets of confession are inviolable, that
Christians burn the priest who reveals them, and absolve those whom
he accuses, because the avowal made by the guilty to the priest is
proscribed by the Christian religion, on pain of eternal damnation.
The vizier, satisfied with the answer, took the bishop into another
room, and summoned the accused to declare all the circumstances: the
poor wretches, half dead, fell at the vizier's feet.  The woman
spoke, explaining that the necessity of defending life and honour had
driven them to take up arms to kill their enemy.  She added that God
alone had witnessed their crime, and it would still be unknown had
not the law of the same God compelled them to confide it to the ear
of one of His ministers for their forgiveness.  Now the priest's
insatiable avarice had ruined them first and then denounced them.
The vizier made them go into a third room, and ordered the
treacherous priest to be confronted with the bishop, making him again
rehearse the penalties incurred by those who betray confessions.
Then, applying this to the guilty priest, he condemned him to be
burnt alive in a public place;--in anticipation, said he, of burning
in hell, where he would assuredly receive the punishment of his
infidelity and crimes.  The sentence was executed without delay.

In spite of the effect which the advocate intended to produce by
these three cases, either the judges rejected them, or perhaps they
thought the other evidence without the confession was enough, and it
was soon clear to everyone, by the way the trial went forward, that
the marquise would be condemned.  Indeed, before sentence was
pronounced, on the morning of July 16th, 1676, she saw M. Pirot,
doctor of the Sorbonne, come into her prison, sent by the chief
president.  This worthy magistrate, foreseeing the issue, and feeling
that one so guilty should not be left till the last moment, had sent
the good priest.  The latter, although he had objected that the
Conciergerie had its own two chaplains, and added that he was too
feeble to undertake such a task, being unable even to see another man
bled without feeling ill, accepted the painful mission, the president
having so strongly urged it, on the ground that in this case he
needed a man who could be entirely trusted.  The president, in fact,
declared that, accustomed as he was to dealing with criminals, the
strength of the marquise amazed him.  The day before he summoned M.
Pirot, he had worked at the trial from morning to night, and for
thirteen hours the accused had been confronted with Briancourt, one
of the chief witnesses against her.  On that very day, there had
been five hours more, and she had borne it all, showing as much
respect towards her judges as haughtiness towards the witness,
reproaching him as a miserable valet, given to drink, and protesting
that as he had been dismissed for his misdemeanours, his testimony
against her ought to go for nothing.  So the chief president felt no
hope of breaking her inflexible spirit, except by the agency of a
minister of religion; for it was not enough to put her to death, the
poisons must perish with her, or else society would gain nothing.
The doctor Pirot came to the marquise with a letter from her sister,
who, as we know, was a nun bearing the name of Sister Marie at the
convent Saint-Jacques.  Her letter exhorted the marquise, in the most
touching and affectionate terms, to place her confidence in the good
priest, and look upon him not only as a helper but as a friend.

When M. Pirot came before the marquise, she had just left the dock,
where she had been for three hours without confessing anything, or
seeming in the least touched by what the president said, though he,
after acting the part of judge, addressed her simply as a Christian,
and showing her what her deplorable position was, appearing now for
the last time before men, and destined so soon to appear before God,
spoke to her such moving words that he broke down himself, and the
oldest and most obdurate judges present wept when they heard him.
When the marquise perceived the doctor, suspecting that her trial was
leading her to death, she approached him, saying:

"You have come, sir, because----"

But Father Chavigny, who was with M. Pirot; interrupted her, saying:

"Madame, we will begin with a prayer."

They all fell on their knees invoking the Holy Spirit; then the
marquise asked them to add a prayer to the Virgin, and, this prayer
finished, she went up to the doctor, and, beginning afresh, said:

"Sir, no doubt the president has sent you to give me consolation:
with you I am to pass the little life I have left.  I have long been
eager to see you."

"Madame," the doctor replied, "I come to render you any spiritual
office that I can; I only wish it were on another occasion."

"We must have resolution, sir," said she, smiling, "for all things."

Then turning to Father Chavigny, she said:

"My father, I am very grateful to you for bringing the doctor here,
and for all the other visits you have been willing to pay me.  Pray
to God for me, I entreat you; henceforth I shall speak with no one
but the doctor, for with him I must speak of things that can only be
discussed tete-a-tete.  Farewell, then, my father; God will reward
you for the attention you have been willing to bestow upon me."

With these words the father retired, leaving the marquise alone with
the doctor and the two men and one woman always in attendance on her.
They were in a large room in the Montgomery tower extending,
throughout its whole length.  There was at the end of the room a bed
with grey curtains for the lady, and a folding-bed for the custodian.
It is said to have been the same room where the poet Theophile was
once shut up, and near the door there were still verses in his well-
known style written by his hand.

As soon as the two men and the woman saw for what the doctor had
come, they retired to the end of the room, leaving the marquise free
to ask for and receive the consolations brought her by the man of
God.  Then the two sat at a table side by side.  The marquise thought
she was already condemned, and began to speak on that assumption; but
the doctor told her that sentence was not yet given, and he did not
know precisely when it would be, still less what it would be; but at
these words the marquise interrupted him.

"Sir," she said, "I am not troubled about the future.  If my sentence
is not given yet, it soon will be.  I expect the news this morning,
and I know it will be death: the only grace I look for from the
president is a delay between the sentence and its execution; for if I
were executed to-day I should have very little time to prepare, and I
feel I have need for more."

The doctor did not expect such words, so he was overjoyed to learn
what she felt.  In addition to what the president had said, he had
heard from Father Chavigny that he had told her the Sunday before
that it was very unlikely she would escape death, and indeed, so far
as one could judge by reports in the town, it was a foregone
conclusion.  When he said so, at first she had appeared stunned, and
said with an air of great terror, "Father, must I die?"  And when he
tried to speak words of consolation, she had risen and shaken her
head, proudly replying--

"No, no, father; there is no need to encourage me.  I will play my
part, and that at once: I shall know how to die like a woman of
spirit."

Then the father had told her that we cannot prepare for death so
quickly and so easily; and that we have to be in readiness for a long
time, not to be taken by surprise; and she had replied that she
needed but a quarter of an hour to confess in, and one moment to die.

So the doctor was very glad to find that between Sunday and Thursday
her feelings had changed so much.

"Yes," said she, "the more I reflect the more I feel that one day
would not be enough to prepare myself for God's tribunal, to be
judged by Him after men have judged me."

"Madame," replied the doctor, "I do not know what or when your
sentence will be; but should it be death, and given to-day, I may
venture to promise you that it will not be carried out before to-
morrow.  But although death is as yet uncertain, I think it well that
you should be prepared for any event."

"Oh, my death is quite certain," said she, "and I must not give way
to useless hopes.  I must repose in you the great secrets of my whole
life; but, father, before this opening of my heart, let me hear from
your lips the opinion you have formed of me, and what you think in my
present state I ought to do."

"You perceive my plan," said the doctor, "and you anticipate what I
was about to say.  Before entering into the secrets of your
conscience, before opening the discussion of your affairs with God, I
am ready, madame, to give you certain definite rules.  I do not yet
know whether you are guilty at all, and I suspend my judgment as to
all the crimes you are accused of, since of them I can learn nothing
except through your confession.  Thus it is my duty still to doubt
your guilt.  But I cannot be ignorant of what you are accused of:
this is a public matter, and has reached my ears; for, as you may
imagine, madame, your affairs have made a great stir, and there are
few people who know nothing about them."

"Yes," she said, smiling, "I know there has been a great deal of
talk, and I am in every man's mouth."

"Then," replied the doctor, "the crime you are accused of is
poisoning.  If you are guilty, as is believed, you cannot hope that
God will pardon you unless you make known to your judges what the
poison is, what is its composition and what its antidote, also the
names of your accomplices.  Madame, we must lay hands on all these
evil-doers without exception; for if you spared them, they would be
able to make use of your poison, and you would then be guilty of all
the murders committed by them after your death, because you did not
give them over to the judges during your life; thus one might say you
survive yourself, for your crime survives you.  You know, madame,
that a sin in the moment of death is never pardoned, and that to get
remission for your crimes, if crimes you have, they must die when you
die: for if you slay them not, be very sure they will slay you."

"Yes, I am sure of that," replied the marquise, after a moment of
silent thought; "and though I will not admit that I am guilty, I
promise, if I am guilty, to weigh your words.  But one question, sir,
and pray take heed that an answer is necessary.  Is there not crime
in this world that is beyond pardon?  Are not some people guilty of
sins so terrible and so numerous that the Church dares not pardon
them, and if God, in His justice, takes account of them, He cannot
for all His mercy pardon them?  See, I begin with this question,
because, if I am to have no hope, it is needless for me to confess."

"I wish to think, madame," replied the doctor, in spite of himself
half frightened at the marquise, "that this your first question is
only put by way of a general thesis, and has nothing to do with your
own state.  I shall answer the question without any personal
application.  No, madame, in this life there are no unpardonable
sinners, terrible and numerous howsoever their sins may be.  This is
an article of faith, and without holding it you could not die a good
Catholic.  Some doctors, it is true, have before now maintained the
contrary, but they have been condemned as heretics.  Only despair and
final impenitence are unpardonable, and they are not sins of our life
but in our death."

"Sir," replied the marquise, "God has given me grace to be convinced
by what you say, and I believe He will pardon all sins--that He has
often exercised this power.  Now all my trouble is that He may not
deign to grant all His goodness to one so wretched as I am, a
creature so unworthy of the favours already bestowed on her."

The doctor reassured her as best he could, and began to examine her
attentively as they conversed together.  "She was," he said, "a woman
naturally courageous and fearless; naturally gentle and good; not
easily excited; clever and penetrating, seeing things very clearly in
her mind, and expressing herself well and in few but careful words;
easily finding a way out of a difficulty, and choosing her line of
conduct in the most embarrassing circumstances; light-minded and
fickle; unstable, paying no attention if the same thing were said
several times over. For this reason," continued the doctor, "I was
obliged to alter what I had to say from time to time, keeping her but
a short time to one subject, to which, however, I would return later,
giving the matter a new appearance and disguising it a little. She
spoke little and well, with no sign of learning and no affectation,
always, mistress of herself, always composed and saying just what she
intended to say.  No one would have supposed from her face or from
her conversation that she was so wicked as she must have been,
judging by her public avowal of the parricide.  It is surprising,
therefore--and one must bow down before the judgment of God when He
leaves mankind to himself--that a mind evidently of some grandeur,
professing fearlessness in the most untoward and unexpected events,
an immovable firmness and a resolution to await and to endure death
if so it must be, should yet be so criminal as she was proved to be
by the parricide to which she confessed before her judges.  She had
nothing in her face that would indicate such evil.  She had very
abundant chestnut hair, a rounded, well-shaped face, blue eyes very
pretty and gentle, extraordinarily white skin, good nose, and no
disagreeable feature.  Still, there was nothing unusually attractive
in the face: already she was a little wrinkled, and looked older than
her age.  Something made me ask at our first interview how old she
was.  'Monsieur,' she said, 'if I were to live till Sainte-
Madeleine's day I should be forty-six.  On her day I came into the
world, and I bear her name.  I was christened Marie-Madeleine.  But
near to the day as we now are, I shall not live so long: I must end
to-day, or at latest to-morrow, and it will be a favour to give me
the one day.  For this kindness I rely on your word.'  Anyone would
have thought she was quite forty-eight.  Though her face as a rule
looked so gentle, whenever an unhappy thought crossed her mind she
showed it by a contortion that frightened one at first, and from time
to time I saw her face twitching with anger, scorn, or ill-will.
I forgot to say that she was very little and thin.  Such is, roughly
given, a description of her body and mind, which I very soon came to
know, taking pains from the first to observe her, so as to lose no
time in acting on what I discovered."

As she was giving a first brief sketch of her life to her confessor,
the marquise remembered that he had not yet said mass, and reminded
him herself that it was time to do so, pointing out to him the chapel
of the Conciergerie.  She begged him to say a mass for her and in
honour of Our Lady, so that she might gain the intercession of the
Virgin at the throne of God.  The Virgin she had always taken for her
patron saint, and in the midst of her crimes and disorderly life had
never ceased in her peculiar devotion.  As she could not go with the
priest, she promised to be with him at least in the spirit.  He left
her at half-past ten in the morning, and after four hours spent alone
together, she had been induced by his piety and gentleness to make
confessions that could not be wrung from her by the threats of the
judges or the fear of the question.  The holy and devout priest said
his mass, praying the Lord's help for confessor and penitent alike.
After mass, as he returned, he learned from a librarian called Seney,
at the porter's lodge, as he was taking a glass of wine, that
judgment had been given, and that Madame de Brinvilliers was to have
her hand cut off.  This severity--as a fact, there was a mitigation
of the sentence--made him feel yet more interest in his penitent, and
he hastened back to her side.

As soon as she saw the door open, she advanced calmly towards him,
and asked if he had truly prayed for her; and when he assured her of
this, she said, "Father, shall I have the consolation of receiving
the viaticum before I die?"

"Madame," replied the doctor, "if you are condemned to death, you
must die without that sacrament, and I should be deceiving you if I
let you hope for it.  We have heard of the death of the constable of
Saint-Paul without his obtaining this grace, in spite of all his
entreaties.  He was executed in sight of the towers of Notre-Dame.
He offered his own prayer, as you may offer yours, if you suffer the
same fate.  But that is all: God, in His goodness, allows it to
suffice."

"But," replied the marquise, "I believe M. de Cinq-Mars and M. de
Thou communicated before their death."

"I think not, madame," said the doctor; "for it is not so said in
the pages of Montresor or any other book that describes their
execution."

"But M. de Montmorency?" said she.

"But M. de Marillac?" replied the doctor.

In truth, if the favour had been granted to the first, it had been
refused to the second, and the marquise was specially struck thereby,
for M. de Marillac was of her own family, and she was very proud of
the connection.  No doubt she was unaware that M. de Rohan had
received the sacrament at the midnight mass said for the salvation of
his soul by Father Bourdaloue, for she said nothing about it, and
hearing the doctor's answer, only sighed.

"Besides," he continued, "in recalling examples of the kind, madame,
you must not build upon them, please: they are extraordinary cases,
not the rule.  You must expect no privilege; in your case the
ordinary laws will be carried out, and your fate will not differ from
the fate of other condemned persons.  How would it have been had you
lived and died before the reign of Charles VI?  Up to the reign of
this prince, the guilty died without confession, and it was only by
this king's orders that there was a relaxation of this severity.
Besides, communion is not absolutely necessary to salvation, and one
may communicate spiritually in reading the word, which is like the
body; in uniting oneself with the Church, which is the mystical
substance of Christ; and in suffering for Him and with Him, this last
communion of agony that is your portion, madame, and is the most
perfect communion of all.  If you heartily detest your crime and love
God with all your soul, if you have faith and charity, your death is
a martyrdom and a new baptism."

"Alas, my God," replied the marquise, "after what you tell me, now
that I know the executioner's hand was necessary to my salvation,
what should I have become had I died at Liege?  Where should I have
been now?  And even if I had not been taken, and had lived another
twenty years away from France, what would my death have been, since
it needed the scaffold for my purification?  Now I see all my wrong-
doings, and the worst of all is the last--I mean my effrontery before
the judges.  But all is not yet lost, God be thanked; and as I have
one last examination to go through, I desire to make a complete
confession about my whole life.  You, Sir, I entreat specially to ask
pardon on my behalf of the first president; yesterday, when I was in
the dock, he spoke very touching words to me, and I was deeply moved;
but I would not show it, thinking that if I made no avowal the
evidence would not be sufficiently strong to convict me.  But it has
happened otherwise, and I must have scandalised my judges by such an
exhibition of hardihood.  Now I recognise my fault, and will repair
it.  Furthermore, sir, far from feeling angry with the president for
the judgment he to-day passes against me, far from complaining of the
prosecutor who has demanded it, I thank them both most humbly, for my
salvation depends upon it."

The doctor was about to answer, encouraging her, when the door
opened: it was dinner coming in, for it was now half-past one.  The
marquise paused and watched what was brought in, as though she were
playing hostess in her own country house.  She made the woman and the
two men who watched her sit down to the table, and turning to the
doctor, said, "Sir, you will not wish me to stand on ceremony with
you; these good people always dine with me to keep me company, and if
you approve, we will do the same to-day.  This is the last meal," she
added, addressing them, "that I shall take with you."  Then turning
to the woman, "Poor Madame du Rus," said she, "I have been a trouble
to you for a long time; but have a little patience, and you will soon
be rid of me.  To-morrow you can go to Dravet; you will have time,
for in seven or eight hours from now there will be nothing more to do
for me, and I shall be in the gentleman's hands; you will not be
allowed near me.  After then, you can go away for good; for I don't
suppose you will have the heart to see me executed."  All this she
said quite calmly, but not with pride.  From time to time her people
tried to hide their tears, and she made a sign of pitying them.
Seeing that the dinner was on the table and nobody eating, she
invited the doctor to take some soup, asking him to excuse the
cabbage in it, which made it a common soup and unworthy of his
acceptance.  She herself took some soup and two eggs, begging her
fellow-guests to excuse her for not serving them, pointing out that
no knife or fork had been set in her place.

When the meal was almost half finished, she begged the doctor to let
her drink his health.  He replied by drinking hers, and she seemed to
be quite charmed by, his condescension.  "To-morrow is a fast day,"
said she, setting down her glass, "and although it will be a day of
great fatigue for me, as I shall have to undergo the question as well
as death, I intend to obey the orders of the Church and keep my
fast."

"Madame," replied the doctor, "if you needed soup to keep you up, you
would not have to feel any scruple, for it will be no self-
indulgence, but a necessity, and the Church does not exact fasting in
such a case."

"Sir," replied the marquise, "I will make no difficulty about it, if
it is necessary and if you order it; but it will not be needed, I
think: if I have some soup this evening for supper, and some more
made stronger than usual a little before midnight, it will be enough
to last me through to-morrow, if I have two fresh eggs to take after
the question."

"In truth," says the priest in the account we give here, "I was
alarmed by this calm behaviour.  I trembled when I heard her give
orders to the concierge that the soup was to be made stronger than
usual and that she was to have two cups before midnight.  When dinner
was over, she was given pen and ink, which she had already asked for,
and told me that she had a letter to write before I took up my pen to
put down what she wanted to dictate."  The letter, she explained,
which was difficult to write, was to her husband.  She would feel
easier when it was written.  For her husband she expressed so much
affection, that the doctor, knowing what had passed, felt much
surprised, and wishing to try her, said that the affection was not
reciprocated, as her husband had abandoned her the whole time of the
trial.  The marquise interrupted him:

"My father, we must not judge things too quickly or merely by
appearances.  M. de Brinvilliers has always concerned himself with
me, and has only failed in doing what it was impossible to do.  Our
interchange of letters never ceased while I was out of the kingdom;
do not doubt but that he would have come to Paris as soon as he knew
I was in prison, had the state of his affairs allowed him to come
safely.  But you must know that he is deeply in debt, and could not
appear in Paris without being arrested.  Do not suppose that he is
without feeling for me."

She then began to write, and when her letter was finished she handed
it to the doctor, saying, "You, sir, are the lord and master of all
my sentiments from now till I die; read this letter, and if you find
anything that should be altered, tell me."

This was the letter--

"When I am on the point of yielding up my soul to God, I wish to
assure you of my affection for you, which I shall feel until the last
moment of my life.  I ask your pardon for all that I have done
contrary to my duty.  I am dying a shameful death, the work of my
enemies: I pardon them with all my heart, and I pray you to do the
same.  I also beg you to forgive me for any ignominy that may attach
to you herefrom; but consider that we are only here for a time, and
that you may soon be forced to render an account to God of all your
actions, and even your idle words, just as I must do now.  Be mindful
of your worldly affairs, and of our children, and give them a good
example; consult Madame Marillac and Madame Couste.  Let as many
prayers as possible be said for me, and believe that in my death I am
still ever yours, D'AUBRAY."

The doctor read this letter carefully; then he told her that one of
her phrases was not right--the one about her enemies.  "For you have
no other enemies," said he, "than your own crimes.  Those whom you
call your enemies are those who love the memory of your father and
brothers, whom you ought to have loved more than they do."

"But those who have sought my death," she replied, "are my enemies,
are they not, and is it not a Christian act to forgive them?"

"Madame," said the doctor, "they are not your enemies, but you are
the enemy of the human race: nobody can think without, horror of your
crimes."

"And so, my father," she replied, "I feel no resentment towards them,
and I desire to meet in Paradise those who have been chiefly
instrumental in taking me and bringing me here."

"Madame," said the doctor, "what mean you by this?  Such words are
used by some when they desire people's death.  Explain, I beg, what
you mean."

"Heaven forbid," cried the marquise, "that you should understand me
thus!  Nay, may God grant them long prosperity in this world and
infinite glory in the next!  Dictate a new letter, and I will write
just what you please."

When a fresh letter had been written, the marquise would attend to
nothing but her confession, and begged the doctor to take the pen for
her.  "I have done so many wrong thing's," she said, "that if I only
gave you a verbal confession, I should never be sure I had given a
complete account."

Then they both knelt down to implore the grace of the Holy Spirit.
They said a 'Veni Creator' and a 'Salve Regina', and the doctor then
rose and seated himself at a table, while the marquise, still on her
knees, began a Confiteor and made her whole confession.  At nine
o'clock, Father Chavigny, who had brought Doctor Pirot in the
morning, came in again.  The marquise seemed annoyed, but still put a
good face upon it.  "My father," said she, "I did not expect to see
you so late; pray leave me a few minutes longer with the doctor."  He
retired.  "Why has he come?" asked the marquise.

"It is better for you not to be alone," said the doctor.

"Then do you mean to leave me?" cried the marquise, apparently
terrified.

"Madame, I will do as you wish," he answered; "but you would be
acting kindly if you could spare me for a few hours.  I might go
home, and Father Chavigny would stay with you."

"Ah!" she cried, wringing her hands, "you promised you would not
leave me till I am dead, and now you go away.  Remember, I never saw
you before this morning, but since then you have become more to me
than any of my oldest friends."

"Madame," said the good doctor, "I will do all I can to please you.
If I ask for a little rest, it is in order that I may resume my place
with more vigour to-morrow, and render you better service than I
otherwise could.  If I take no rest, all I say or do must suffer.
You count on the execution for tomorrow; I do not know if you are
right; but if so, to-morrow will be your great and decisive day, and
we shall both need all the strength we have.  We have already been
working for thirteen or fourteen hours for the good of your
salvation; I am not a strong man, and I think you should realise,
madame, that if you do not let me rest a little, I may not be able to
stay with you to the end."

"Sir," said the marquise, "you have closed my mouth.  To-morrow is
for me a far more important day than to-day, and I have been wrong:
of course you must rest to-night.  Let us just finish this one thing,
and read over what we have written."

It was done, and the doctor would have retired; but the supper came
in, and the marquise would not let him go without taking something.
She told the concierge to get a carriage and charge it to her.  She
took a cup of soup and two eggs, and a minute later the concierge
came back to say the carriage was at the door.  Then the marquise
bade the doctor good-night, making him promise to pray for her and to
be at the Conciergerie by six o'clock the next morning.  This he
promised her.

The day following, as he went into the tower, he found Father
Chavigny, who had taken his place with the marquise, kneeling and
praying with her.  The priest was weeping, but she was calm, and
received the doctor in just the same way as she had let him go.  When
Father Chavigny saw him, he retired.  The marquise begged Chavigny to
pray for her, and wanted to make him promise to return, but that he
would not do.  She then turned to the doctor, saying, "Sir, you are
punctual, and I cannot complain that you have broken your promise;
but oh, how the time has dragged, and how long it has seemed before
the clock struck six!"

"I am here, madame," said the doctor; "but first of all, how have you
spent the night?"

"I have written three letters," said the marquise, "and, short as
they were, they took a long time to write: one was to my sister, one
to Madame de Marillac, and the third to M. Couste.  I should have
liked to show them to you, but Father Chavigny offered to take charge
of them, and as he had approved of them, I could not venture to
suggest any doubts.  After the letters were written, we had some
conversation and prayer; but when the father took up his breviary and
I my rosary with the same intention, I felt so weary that I asked if
I might lie on my bed; he said I might, and I had two good hours'
sleep without dreams or any sort of uneasiness; when I woke we prayed
together, and had just finished when you came back."

"Well, madame," said the doctor, "if you will, we can pray again;
kneel down, and let us say the 'Veni Sancte Spiritus'."

She obeyed, and said the prayer with much unction and piety.  The
prayer finished, M. Pirot was about to take up the pen to go on with
the confession, when she said, "Pray let me submit to you one
question which is troubling me.  Yesterday you gave me great hope of
the mercy of God; but I cannot presume to hope I shall be saved
without spending a long time in purgatory; my crime is far too
atrocious to be pardoned on any other conditions; and when I have
attained to a love of God far greater than I can feel here, I should
not expect to be saved before my stains have been purified by fire,
without suffering the penalty that my sins have deserved.  But I have
been told that the flames of purgatory where souls are burned for a
time are just the same as the flames of hell where those who are
damned burn through all eternity tell me, then, how can a soul
awaking in purgatory at the moment of separation from this body be
sure that she is not really in hell? how can she know that the flames
that burn her and consume not will some day cease?  For the torment
she suffers is like that of the damned, and the flames wherewith she
is burned are even as the flames of hell.  This I would fain know,
that at this awful moment I may feel no doubt, that I may know for
certain whether I dare hope or must despair."

"Madame," replied the doctor, "you are right, and God is too just to
add the horror of uncertainty to His rightful punishments.  At that
moment when the soul quits her earthly body the judgment of God is
passed upon her: she hears the sentence of pardon or of doom; she
knows whether she is in the state of grace or of mortal sin; she sees
whether she is to be plunged forever into hell, or if God sends her
for a time to purgatory.  This sentence, madame, you will learn at
the very instant when the executioner's axe strikes you; unless,
indeed, the fire of charity has so purified you in this life that you
may pass, without any purgatory at all, straight to the home of the
blessed who surround the throne of the Lord, there to receive a
recompense for earthly martyrdom."

"Sir," replied the marquise, "I have such faith in all you say that I
feel I understand it all now, and I am satisfied."

The doctor and the marquise then resumed the confession that was
interrupted the night before.  The marquise had during the night
recollected certain articles that she wanted to add.  So they
continued, the doctor making her pause now and then in the narration
of the heavier offences to recite an act of contrition.

After an hour and a half they came to tell her to go down.  The
registrar was waiting to read her the sentence.  She listened very
calmly, kneeling, only moving her head; then, with no alteration in
her voice, she said, "In a moment: we will have one word more, the
doctor and I, and then I am at your disposal."  She then continued to
dictate the rest of her confession.  When she reached the end, she
begged him to offer a short prayer with her, that God might help her
to appear with such becoming contrition before her judges as should
atone for her scandalous effrontery.  She then took up her cloak, a
prayer-book which Father Chavigny had left with her, and followed the
concierge, who led her to the torture chamber, where her sentence was
to be read.

First, there was an examination which lasted five hours.  The
marquise told all she had promised to tell, denying that she had any
accomplices, and affirming that she knew nothing of the composition
of the poisons she had administered, and nothing of their antidotes.
When this was done, and the judges saw that they could extract
nothing further, they signed to the registrar to read the sentence.
She stood to hear it: it was as follows:

"That by the finding of the court, d'Aubray de Brinvilliers is
convicted of causing the death by poison of Maitre Dreux d'Aubray,
her father, and of the two Maitres d'Aubray, her brothers, one a
civil lieutenant, the other a councillor to the Parliament, also of
attempting the life of Therese d'Aubray, her sister; in punishment
whereof the court has condemned and does condemn the said d'Aubray de
Brinvilliers to make the rightful atonement before the great gate of
the church of Paris, whither she shall be conveyed in a tumbril,
barefoot, a rope on her neck, holding in her hands a burning torch
two pounds in weight; and there on her knees she shall say and
declare that maliciously, with desire for revenge and seeking their
goods, she did poison her father, cause to be poisoned her two
brothers, and attempt the life of her sister, whereof she doth
repent, asking pardon of God, of the king, and of the judges; and
when this is done, she shall be conveyed and carried in the same
tumbril to the Place de Greve of this town, there to have her head
cut off on a scaffold to be set up for the purpose at that place;
afterwards her body to be burnt and the ashes scattered; and first
she is to be subjected to the question ordinary and extraordinary,
that she may reveal the names of her accomplices.  She is declared to
be deprived of all successions from her said father, brothers, and
sister, from the date of the several crimes; and all her goods are
confiscated to the proper persons; and the sum of 4000 livres shall
be paid out of her estate to the king, and 400 livres to the Church
for prayers to be said on behalf of the poisoned persons; and all the
costs shall be paid, including those of Amelin called Lachaussee.  In
Parliament, 16th July 1676."

The marquise heard her sentence without showing any sign of fear or
weakness.  When it was finished, she said to the registrar, "Will
you, sir, be so kind as to read it again?  I had not expected the
tumbril, and I was so much struck by that that I lost the thread of
what followed."

The registrar read the sentence again.  From that moment she was the
property of the executioner, who approached her.  She knew him by the
cord he held in his hands, and extended her own, looking him over
coolly from head to foot without a word.  The judges then filed out,
disclosing as they did so the various apparatus of the question.  The
marquise firmly gazed upon the racks and ghastly rings, on which so
many had been stretched crying and screaming.  She noticed the three
buckets of water

[Note: The torture with the water was thus administered.  There were
eight vessels, each containing 2 pints of water.  Four of these
were given for the ordinary, and eight for the extraordinary.  The
executioner inserted a horn into the patient's mouth, and if he shut
his teeth, forced him to open them by pinching his nose with the
finger and thumb.]

prepared for her, and turned to the registrar--for she would not
address the executioner--saying, with a smile, "No doubt all this
water is to drown me in?  I hope you don't suppose that a person of
my size could swallow it all."  The executioner said not a word, but
began taking off her cloak and all her other garments, until she was
completely naked.  He then led her up to the wall and made her sit on
the rack of the ordinary question, two feet from the ground.  There
she was again asked to give the names of her accomplices, the
composition of the poison and its antidote; but she made the same
reply as to the doctor, only adding, "If you do not believe me, you
have my body in your hands, and you can torture me."

The registrar signed to the executioner to do his duty.  He first
fastened the feet of the marquise to two rings close together fixed
to a board; then making her lie down, he fastened her wrists to two
other rings in the wall, distant about three feet from each other.
The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on
a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel.  To
increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank,
which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings,
to a distance of six inches.  And here we may leave our narrative to
reproduce the official report.

"On the small trestle, while she was being stretched, she said
several times, 'My God!  you are killing me!  And I only spoke the
truth.'

"The water was given: she turned and twisted, saying, 'You are
killing me!'

"The water was again given.

"Admonished to name her accomplices, she said there was only one man,
who had asked her for poison to get rid of his wife, but he was dead.

"The water was given; she moved a little, but would not say anything.

"Admonished to say why, if she had no accomplice, she had written
from the Conciergerie to Penautier, begging him to do all he could
for her, and to remember that his interests in this matter were the
same as her own, she said that she never knew Penautier had had any
understanding with Sainte-Croix about the poisons, and it would be a
lie to say otherwise; but when a paper was found in Sainte-Croix's
box that concerned Penautier, she remembered how often she had seen
him at the house, and thought it possible that the friendship might
have included some business about the poisons; that, being in doubt
on the point, she risked writing a letter as though she were sure,
for by doing so she was not prejudicing her own case; for either
Penautier was an accomplice of Sainte-Croix or he was not.  If he
was, he would suppose the marquise knew enough to accuse him, and
would accordingly do his best to save her; if he was not, the letter
was a letter wasted, and that was all.

"The water was again given; she turned and twisted much, but said
that on this subject she had said all she possibly could; if she said
anything else, it would be untrue."

The ordinary question was at an end.  The marquise had now taken half
the quantity of water she had thought enough to drown her.  The
executioner paused before he proceeded to the extraordinary question.
Instead of the trestle two feet and a half high on which she lay,
they passed under her body a trestle of three and a half feet, which
gave the body a greater arch, and as this was done without
lengthening the ropes, her limbs were still further stretched, and
the bonds, tightly straining at wrists and ankles, penetrated the
flesh and made the blood run.  The question began once more,
interrupted by the demands of the registrar and the answers of the
sufferer.  Her cries seemed not even to be heard.

"On the large trestle, during the stretching, she said several times,
'O God, you tear me to, pieces!  Lord, pardon me!  Lord, have mercy
upon me!'

"Asked if she had nothing more to tell regarding her accomplices, she
said they might kill her, but she would not tell a lie that would
destroy her soul.

"The water was given, she moved about a little, but would not speak.

"Admonished that she should tell the composition of the poisons and
their antidotes, she said that she did not know what was in them; the
only thing she could recall was toads; that Sainte-Croix never
revealed his secret to her; that she did not believe he made them
himself, but had them prepared by Glazer; she seemed to remember that
some of them contained nothing but rarefied arsenic; that as to an
antidote, she knew of no other than milk; and Sainte-Croix had told
her that if one had taken milk in the morning, and on the first onset
of the poison took another glassful, one would have nothing to fear.

"Admonished to say if she could add anything further, she said she
had now told everything; and if they killed her, they could not
extract anything more.

"More water was given; she writhed a little, and said she was dead,
but nothing more.

"More water was given; she writhed more violently, but would say no
more.

"Yet again water was given; writhing and twisting, she said, with a
deep groan, 'O my God, I am killed!' but would speak no more."

Then they tortured her no further: she was let down, untied, and
placed before the fire in the usual manner.  While there, close to
the fire, lying on the mattress, she was visited by the good doctor,
who, feeling he could not bear to witness the spectacle just
described, had asked her leave to retire, that he might say a mass
for her, that God might grant her patience and courage.  It is plain
that the good priest had not prayed in vain.

"Ah," said the marquise, when she perceived him, "I have long been
desiring to see you again, that you might comfort me.  My torture has
been very long and very painful, but this is the last time I shall
have to treat with men; now all is with God for the future.  See my
hands, sir, and my feet, are they not torn and wounded?  Have not my
executioners smitten me in the same places where Christ was smitten?"

"And therefore, madame," replied the priest, "these sufferings now
are your happiness; each torture is one step nearer to heaven.  As
you say, you are now for God alone; all your thoughts and hopes must
be fastened upon Him; we must pray to Him, like the penitent king, to
give you a place among His elect; and since nought that is impure can
pass thither, we must strive, madame, to purify you from all that
might bar the way to heaven."

The marquise rose with the doctor's aid, for she could scarcely
stand; tottering, she stepped forward between him and the
executioner, who took charge of her immediately after the sentence
was read, and was not allowed to leave her before it was completely
carried out.  They all three entered the chapel and went into the
choir, where the doctor and the marquise knelt in adoration of the
Blessed Sacrament.  At that moment several persons appeared in the
nave, drawn by curiosity.  They could not be turned out, so the
executioner, to save the marquise from being annoyed, shut the gate
of the choir, and let the patient pass behind the altar.  There she
sat down in a chair, and the doctor on a seat opposite; then he first
saw, by the light of the chapel window, how greatly changed she was.
Her face, generally so pale, was inflamed, her eyes glowing and
feverish, all her body involuntarily trembling.  The doctor would
have spoken a few words of consolation, but she did not attend.
"Sir," she said, "do you know that my sentence is an ignominious one?
Do you know there is fire in the sentence?"

The doctor gave no answer; but, thinking she needed something, bade
the gaoler to bring her wine.  A minute later he brought it in a cup,
and the doctor handed it to the marquise, who moistened her lips and
then gave it back.  She then noticed that her neck was uncovered, and
took out her handkerchief to cover it, asking the gaoler for a pin to
fasten it with.  When he was slow in finding a pin, looking on his
person for it, she fancied that he feared she would choke herself,
and shaking her head, said, with a smile, "You have nothing to fear
now; and here is the doctor, who will pledge his word that I will do
myself no mischief."

"Madame," said the gaoler, handing her the pin she wanted, "I beg
your pardon for keeping you waiting.  I swear I did not distrust you;
if anyone distrusts you, it is not I."

Then kneeling before her, he begged to kiss her hand.  She gave it,
and asked him to pray to God for her.  "Ah yes," he cried, sobbing,
"with all my heart."  She then fastened her dress as best she could
with her hands tied, and when the gaoler had gone and she was alone
with the doctor, said:--

"Did you not hear what I said, sir?  I told you there was fire in my
sentence.  And though it is only after death that my body is to be
burnt, it will always be a terrible disgrace on my memory.  I am
saved the pain of being burnt alive, and thus, perhaps, saved from a
death of despair, but the shamefulness is the same, and it is that I
think of."

"Madame," said the doctor, "it in no way affects your soul's
salvation whether your body is cast into the fire and reduced to
ashes or whether it is buried in the ground and eaten by worms,
whether it is drawn on a hurdle and thrown upon a dung-heap, or
embalmed with Oriental perfumes and laid in a rich man's tomb.
Whatever may be your end, your body will arise on the appointed day,
and if Heaven so will, it will come forth from its ashes more
glorious than a royal corpse lying at this moment in a gilded casket.
Obsequies, madame, are for those who survive, not for the dead."

A sound was heard at the door of the choir.  The doctor went to see
what it was, and found a man who insisted on entering, all but
fighting with the executioner.  The doctor approached and asked what
was the matter.  The man was a saddler, from whom the marquise had
bought a carriage before she left France; this she had partly paid
for, but still owed him two hundred livres.  He produced the note he
had had from her, on which was a faithful record of the sums she had
paid on account.  The marquise at this point called out, not knowing
what was going on, and the doctor and executioner went to her.  "Have
they come to fetch me already?" said she.  "I am not well prepared
just at this moment; but never mind, I am ready."

The doctor reassured her, and told her what was going on.  "The man
is quite right," she said to the executioner; "tell him I will give
orders as far as I can about the money."  Then, seeing the
executioner retiring, she said to the doctor, "Must I go now, sir?
I wish they would give me a little more time; for though I am ready,
as I told you, I am not really prepared.  Forgive me, father; it is
the question and the sentence that have upset me it is this fire
burning in my eyes like hell-flames.

"Had they left me with you all this time, there would now be better
hope of my salvation."

"Madame," said the doctor, "you will probably have all the time
before nightfall to compose yourself and think what remains for you
to do."

"Ah, sir," she replied, with a smile, "do not think they will show so
much consideration for a poor wretch condemned to be burnt.  That
does not depend on ourselves; but as soon as everything is ready,
they will let us know, and we must start."

"Madame," said the doctor, "I am certain that they will give you the
time you need."

"No, no," she replied abruptly and feverishly, "no, I will not keep
them waiting.  As soon as the tumbril is at this door, they have only
to tell me, and I go down."

"Madame," said he, "I would not hold you back if I found you prepared
to stand before the face of God, for in your situation it is right to
ask for no time, and to go when the moment is come; but not everyone
is so ready as Christ was, who rose from prayer and awaked His
disciples that He might leave the garden and go out to meet His
enemies.  You at this moment are weak, and if they come for you just
now I should resist your departure."

"Be calm; the time is not yet come," said the executioner, who had
heard this talk.  He knew his statement must be believed, and wished
as far as possible to reassure the marquise.  "There is no hurry, and
we cannot start for another two of three hours."

This assurance calmed the marquise somewhat, and she thanked the man.
Then turning to the doctor, she said, "Here is a rosary that I would
rather should not fall into this person's hands.  Not that he could
not make good use of it; for, in spite of their trade, I fancy that
these people are Christians like ourselves.  But I should prefer to
leave this to somebody else."

"Madame," said the doctor, "if you will tell me your wishes in this
matter, I will see that they are carried out."

"Alas!" she said, "there is no one but my sister; and I fear lest
she, remembering my crime towards her, may be too horrified to touch
anything that belonged to me.  If she did not mind, it would be a
great comfort to me to think she would wear it after my death, and
that the sight of it would remind her to pray for me; but after what
has passed, the rosary could hardly fail to revive an odious
recollection.  My God, my God!  I am desperately wicked; can it be
that you will pardon me?"

"Madame," replied the doctor, "I think you are mistaken about Mlle,
d'Aubray.  You may see by her letter what are her feelings towards
you, and you must pray with this rosary up to the very end.  Let not
your prayers be interrupted or distracted, for no guilty penitent
must cease from prayer; and I, madame, will engage to deliver the
rosary where it will be gladly received."

And the marquise, who had been constantly distracted since the
morning, was now, thanks to the patient goodness of the doctor, able
to return with her former fervour to her prayers.  She prayed till
seven o'clock.  As the clock struck, the executioner without a word
came and stood before her; she saw that her moment had come, and said
to the doctor, grasping his arm, "A little longer; just a few
moments, I entreat."

"Madame," said the doctor, rising, "we will now adore the divine
blood of the Sacrament, praying that you may be thus cleansed from
all soil and sin that may be still in your heart.  Thus shall you
gain the respite you desire."

The executioner then tied tight the cords round her hands that he had
let loose before, and she advanced pretty firmly and knelt before the
altar, between the doctor and the chaplain.  The latter was in his
surplice, and chanted a 'Veni Creator, Salve Regina, and Tantum
ergo'.  These prayers over, he pronounced the blessing of the Holy
Sacrament, while the marquise knelt with her face upon the ground.
The executioner then went forward to get ready a shirt, and she made
her exit from the chapel, supported on the left by the doctor's arm,
on the right by the executioner's assistant.  Thus proceeding, she
first felt embarrassment and confusion.  Ten or twelve people were
waiting outside, and as she suddenly confronted them, she made a step
backward, and with her hands, bound though they were, pulled the
headdress down to cover half her face.  She passed through a small
door, which was closed behind her, and then found herself between the
two doors alone, with the doctor and the executioner's man.  Here the
rosary, in consequence of her violent movement to cover her face,
came undone, and several beads fell on the floor.  She went on,
however, without observing this; but the doctor stopped her, and he
and the man stooped down and picked up all the beads, which they put
into her hand.  Thanking them humbly for this attention, she said to
the man, "Sir, I know I have now no worldly possessions, that all I
have upon me belongs to you, and I may not give anything away without
your consent; but I ask you kindly to allow me to give this chaplet
to the doctor before I die: you will not be much the loser, for it is
of no value, and I am giving it to him for my sister.  Kindly let me
do this."

"Madame," said the man, "it is the custom for us to get all the
property of the condemned; but you are mistress of all you have, and
if the thing were of the very greatest value you might dispose of it
as you pleased."

The doctor, whose arm she held, felt her shiver at this gallantry,
which for her, with her natural haughty disposition, must have been
the worst humiliation imaginable; but the movement was restrained,
and her face gave no sign.  She now came to the porch of the
Conciergerie, between the court and the first door, and there she was
made to sit down, so as to be put into the right condition for making
the 'amende honorable'.  Each step brought her nearer to the
scaffold, and so did each incident cause her more uneasiness.  Now
she turned round desperately, and perceived the executioner holding a
shirt in his hand.  The door of the vestibule opened, and about fifty
people came in, among them the Countess of Soissons, Madame du
Refuge, Mlle. de Scudery, M, de Roquelaure, and the Abbe de Chimay.
At the sight the marquise reddened with shame, and turning to the
doctor, said, "Is this man to strip me again, as he did in the
question chamber?  All these preparations are very cruel; and, in
spite of myself, they divert my thoughts, from God."

Low as her voice was, the executioner heard, and reassured her,
saying that they would take nothing off, only putting the shirt over
her other clothes.

He then approached, and the marquise, unable to speak to the doctor
with a man on each side of her, showed him by her looks how deeply
she felt the ignominy of her situation.  Then, when the shirt had
been put on, for which operation her hands had to be untied, the man
raised the headdress which she had pulled down, and tied it round her
neck, then fastened her hands together with one rope and put another
round her waist, and yet another round her neck; then, kneeling
before her, he took off her shoes and stockings.  Then she stretched
out her hands to the doctor.

"Oh, sir," she cried, "in God's name, you see what they have done to
me!  Come and comfort me."

The doctor came at once, supporting her head upon his breast, trying
to comfort her; but she, in a tone of bitter lamentation, gazing at
the crowd, who devoured her with all their eyes, cried, "Oh, sir, is
not this a strange, barbarous curiosity?"

"Madame," said he, the tears in his eyes, "do not look at these eager
people from the point of view of their curiosity and barbarity,
though that is real enough, but consider it part of the humiliation
sent by God for the expiation of your crimes.  God, who was innocent,
was subject to very different opprobrium, and yet suffered all with
joy; for, as Tertullian observes, He was a victim fattened on the
joys of suffering alone."

As the doctor spoke these words, the executioner placed in the
marquise's hands the lighted torch which she was to carry to Notre-
Dame, there to make the 'amende honorable', and as it was too heavy,
weighing two pounds, the doctor supported it with his right hand,
while the registrar read her sentence aloud a second time.  The
doctor did all in his power to prevent her from hearing this by
speaking unceasingly of God.  Still she grew frightfully pale at the
words, "When this is done, she shall be conveyed on a tumbril,
barefoot, a cord round her neck, holding in her hands a burning torch
two pounds in weight," and the doctor could feel no doubt that in
spite of his efforts she had heard.  It became still worse when she
reached the threshold of the vestibule and saw the great crowd
waiting in the court.  Then her face worked convulsively, and
crouching down, as though she would bury her feet in the earth, she
addressed the doctor in words both plaintive and wild: "Is it
possible that, after what is now happening, M. de Brinvilliers can
endure to go on living?"

"Madame," said the doctor, "when our Lord was about to leave His
disciples, He did not ask God to remove them from this earth, but to
preserve them from all sin.  'My Father,' He said, 'I ask not that
You take them from the world, but keep them safe from evil.' If,
madame, you pray for M. de Brinvilliers, let it be only that he may
be kept in grace, if he has it, and may attain to it if he has it
not."

But the words were useless: at that moment the humiliation was too
great and too public; her face contracted, her eyebrows knit, flames
darted from her eyes, her mouth was all twisted.  Her whole
appearance was horrible; the devil was once more in possession.
During this paroxysm, which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour,
Lebrun, who stood near, got such a vivid impression of her face that
the following night he could not sleep, and with the sight of it ever
before his eyes made the fine drawing which--is now in the Louvre,
giving to the figure the head of a tiger, in order to show that the
principal features were the same, and the whole resemblance very
striking.

The delay in progress was caused by the immense crowd blocking the
court, only pushed aside by archers on horseback, who separated the
people. The marquise now went out, and the doctor, lest the sight of
the people should completely distract her, put a crucifix in her
hand, bidding her fix her gaze upon it.  This advice she followed
till they gained the gate into the street where the tumbril was
waiting; then she lifted her eyes to see the shameful object.  It was
one of the smallest of carts, still splashed with mud and marked by
the stones it had carried, with no seat, only a little straw at the
bottom.  It was drawn by a wretched horse, well matching the
disgraceful conveyance.

The executioner bade her get in first, which she did very rapidly, as
if to escape observation.  There she crouched like a wild beast, in
the left corner, on the straw, riding backwards.  The doctor sat
beside her on the right.  Then the executioner got in, shutting the
door behind him, and sat opposite her, stretching his legs between
the doctor's.  His man, whose business it was to guide the horse, sat
on the front, back to back with the doctor and the marquise, his feet
stuck out on the shafts.  Thus it is easy to understand how Madame de
Sevigne, who was on the Pont Notre-Dame, could see nothing but the
headdress of the marquise as she was driven to Notre-Dame.

The cortege had only gone a few steps, when the face of the marquise,
for a time a little calmer, was again convulsed.  From her eyes,
fixed constantly on the crucifix, there darted a flaming glance, then
came a troubled and frenzied look which terrified the doctor.  He
knew she must have been struck by something she saw, and, wishing to
calm her, asked what it was.

"Nothing, nothing," she replied quickly, looking towards him; "it was
nothing."

"But, madame," said he, "you cannot give the lie to your own eyes;
and a minute ago I saw a fire very different from the fire of love,
which only some displeasing sight can have provoked.  What may this
be?  Tell me, pray; for you promised to tell me of any sort of
temptation that might assail you."

"Sir," she said, "I will do so, but it is nothing."  Then, looking
towards the executioner, who, as we know, sat facing the doctor, she
said, "Put me in front of you, please; hide that man from me."  And
she stretched out her hands towards a man who was following the
tumbril on horseback, and so dropped the torch, which the doctor
took, and the crucifix, which fell on the floor.  The executioner
looked back, and then turned sideways as she wished, nodding and
saying, "Oh yes, I understand."  The doctor pressed to know what it
meant, and she said, "It is nothing worth telling you, and it is a
weakness in me not to be able to bear the sight of a man who has ill-
used me.  The man who touched the back of the tumbril is Desgrais,
who arrested me at Liege, and treated me so badly all along the road.
When I saw him, I could not control myself, as you noticed."

"Madame," said the doctor, "I have heard of him, and you yourself
spoke of him in confession; but the man was sent to arrest you, and
was in a responsible position, so that he had to guard you closely
and rigorously; even if he had been more severe, he would only have
been carrying out his orders.  Jesus Christ, madame, could but have
regarded His executioners as ministers of iniquity, servants of
injustice, who added of their own accord every indignity they could
think of; yet all along the way He looked on them with patience and
more than patience, and in His death He prayed for them."

In the heart of the marquise a hard struggle was passing, and this
was reflected on her face; but it was only for a moment, and after a
last convulsive shudder she was again calm and serene; then she
said:--

"Sir, you are right, and I am very wrong to feel such a fancy as
this: may God forgive me; and pray remember this fault on the
scaffold, when you give me the absolution you promise, that this too
may be pardoned me."  Then she turned to the executioner and said,
"Please sit where you were before, that I may see M. Desgrais."  The
man hesitated, but on a sign from the doctor obeyed.  The marquise
looked fully at Desgrais for some time, praying for him; then, fixing
her eyes on the crucifix, began to pray for herself: this incident
occurred in front of the church of Sainte-Genevieve des Ardents.

But, slowly as it moved, the tumbril steadily advanced, and at last
reached the place of Notre-Dame.  The archers drove back the crowding
people, and the tumbril went up to the steps, and there stopped.  The
executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his
arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement.  The doctor
then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had
been in since they left the Conciergerie.  He mounted the church
steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square,
with the registrar on her right, the executioner on her left, and a
great crowd of people behind her, inside the church, all the doors
being thrown open.  She was made to kneel, and in her hands was
placed the lighted torch, which up to that time the doctor had helped
to carry.  Then the registrar read the 'amende honorable' from a
written paper, and she began to say it after him, but in so low a
voice that the executioner said loudly, "Speak out as he does; repeat
every word.  Louder, louder!"  Then she raised her voice, and loudly
and firmly recited the following apology.

"I confess that, wickedly and for revenge, I poisoned my father and
my brothers, and attempted to poison my sister, to obtain possession
of their goods, and I ask pardon of God, of the king, and of my
country's laws."

The 'amende honorable' over, the executioner again carried her to the
tumbril, not giving her the torch any more: the doctor sat beside
her: all was just as before, and the tumbril went on towards La
Greve.  From that moment, until she arrived at the scaffold, she
never took her eyes off the crucifix, which the doctor held before
her the whole time, exhorting her with religious words, trying to
divert her attention from the terrible noise which the people made
around the car, a murmur mingled with curses.

When they reached the Place de Greve, the tumbril stopped at a little
distance from the scaffold.  Then the registrar M. Drouet, came up on
horseback, and, addressing the marquise, said, "Madame, have you
nothing more to say?  If you wish to make any declaration, the twelve
commissaries are here at hand, ready to receive it."

"You see, madame," said the doctor, "we are now at the end of our
journey, and, thank God, you have not lost your power of endurance on
the road; do not destroy the effect of all you have suffered and all
you have yet to suffer by concealing what you know, if perchance you
do know more than you have hitherto said."

"I have told all I know," said the marquise, "and there is no more I
can say."

"Repeat these words in a loud voice," said the doctor, "so that
everybody may hear."

Then in her loudest voice the marquise repeated--

"I have told all I know, and there is no more I can say."

After this declaration, they were going to drive the tumbril nearer
to the scaffold, but the crowd was so dense that the assistant could
not force a way through, though he struck out on every side with his
whip.  So they had to stop a few paces short.  The executioner had
already got down, and was adjusting the ladder.  In this terrible
moment of waiting, the marquise looked calmly and gratefully at the
doctor, and when she felt that the tumbril had stopped, said, "Sir,
it is not here we part: you promised not to leave me till my head is
cut off.  I trust you will keep your word."

"To be sure I will," the doctor replied; "we shall not be separated
before the moment of your death: be not troubled about that, for I
will never forsake you."

"I looked for this kindness," she said, "and your promise was too
solemn for you to think for one moment of failing me.  Please be on
the scaffold and be near me.  And now, sir, I would anticipate the
final farewell,--for all the things I shall have to do on the
scaffold may distract me,--so let me thank you here.  If I am
prepared to suffer the sentence of my earthly judge, and to hear that
of my heavenly judge, I owe it to your care for me, and I am deeply
grateful.  I can only ask your forgiveness for the trouble I have
given you."  Tears choked the doctor's speech, and he could not
reply.  "Do you not forgive me?" she repeated.  At her words, the
doctor tried to reassure her; but feeling that if he opened his mouth
he must needs break into sobs, he still kept silent.  The marquise
appealed to him a third time.  "I entreat you, sir, forgive me; and
do not regret the time you have passed with me.  You will say a De
Profundus at the moment of my death, and a mass far me to-morrow:
will you not promise?"

"Yes, madame," said the doctor in a choking voice; "yes, yes, be
calm, and I will do all you bid me."

The executioner hereupon removed the board, and helped the marquise
out of the tumbril; and as they advanced the few steps towards the
scaffold, and all eyes were upon them, the doctor could hide his
tears for a moment without being observed.  As he was drying his
eyes, the assistant gave him his hand to help him down.  Meanwhile
the marquise was mounting the ladder with the executioner, and when
they reached the platform he told her to kneel down in front of a
block which lay across it.  Then the doctor, who had mounted with a
step less firm than hers, came and knelt beside her, but turned in
the other direction, so that he might whisper in her ear--that is,
the marquise faced the river, and the doctor faced the Hotel de
Ville.  Scarcely had they taken their place thus when the man took
down her hair and began cutting it at the back and at the sides,
making her turn her head this way and that, at times rather roughly;
but though this ghastly toilet lasted almost half an hour, she made
no complaint, nor gave any sign of pain but her silent tears.  When
her hair was cut, he tore open the top of the shirt, so as to uncover
the shoulders, and finally bandaged her eyes, and lifting her face by
the chin, ordered her to hold her head erect.  She obeyed,
unresisting, all the time listening to the doctor's words and
repeating them from time to time, when they seemed suitable to her
own condition.  Meanwhile, at the back of the scaffold, on which the
stake was placed, stood the executioner, glancing now and again at
the folds of his cloak, where there showed the hilt of a long,
straight sabre, which he had carefully concealed for fear Madame de
Brinvilliers might see it when she mounted the scaffold.  When the
doctor, having pronounced absolution, turned his head and saw that
the man was not yet armed, he uttered these prayers, which she
repeated after him: "Jesus, Son of David and Mary, have mercy upon
me; Mary, daughter of David and Mother of Jesus, pray for me; my God,
I abandon my body, which is but dust, that men may burn it and do
with it what they please, in the firm faith that it shall one day
arise and be reunited with my soul.  I trouble not concerning my
body; grant, O God, that I yield up to Thee my soul, that it may
enter into Thy rest; receive it into Thy bosom; that it may dwell
once more there, whence it first descended; from Thee it came, to
Thee returns; Thou art the source and the beginning; be thou, O God,
the centre and the end!"

The marquise had said these words when suddenly the doctor heard a
dull stroke like the sound of a chopper chopping meat upon a block:
at that moment she ceased to speak.  The blade had sped so quickly
that the doctor had not even seen a flash.  He stopped, his hair
bristling, his brow bathed in sweat; for, not seeing the head fall,
he supposed that the executioner had missed the mark and must needs
start afresh.  But his fear was short-lived, for almost at the same
moment the head inclined to the left, slid on to the shoulder, and
thence backward, while the body fell forward on the crossway block,
supported so that the spectators could see the neck cut open and
bleeding.  Immediately, in fulfilment of his promise, the doctor said
a De Profundis.

When the prayer was done and the doctor raised his head, he saw
before him the executioner wiping his face.  "Well, sir," said he,
"was not that a good stroke?  I always put up a prayer on these
occasions, and God has always assisted me; but I have been anxious
for several days about this lady.  I had six masses said, and I felt
strengthened in hand and heart."  He then pulled out a bottle from
under his cloak, and drank a dram; and taking the body under one arm,
all dressed as it was, and the head in his other hand, the eyes still
bandaged, he threw both upon the faggots, which his assistant
lighted.

"The next day," says Madame de Sevigne, "people were looking for the
charred bones of Madame de Brinvilliers, because they said she was a
saint."

In 1814, M. d'Offemont, father of the present occupier of the castle
where the Marquise de Brinvilliers poisoned her father, frightened at
the approach of all the allied troops, contrived in one of the towers
several hiding-places, where he shut up his silver and such other
valuables as were to be found in this lonely country in the midst of
the forest of Laigue.  The foreign troops were passing backwards and
forwards at Offemont, and after a three months' occupation retired to
the farther side of the frontier.

Then the owners ventured to take out the various things that had been
hidden; and tapping the walls, to make sure nothing had been
overlooked, they detected a hollow sound that indicated the presence
of some unsuspected cavity.  With picks and bars they broke the wall
open, and when several stones had come out they found a large closet
like a laboratory, containing furnaces, chemical instruments, phials
hermetically sealed full of an unknown liquid, and four packets of
powders of different colours.  Unluckily, the people who made these
discoveries thought them of too much or too little importance; and
instead of submitting the ingredients to the tests of modern science,
they made away with them all, frightened at their probably deadly
nature.

Thus was lost this great opportunity--probably the last--for finding
and analysing the substances which composed the poisons of Sainte-
Croix and Madame de Brinvilliers.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 8,
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 8 (of 8) Part 2

By Alexander Dumas, Pere



VANINKA


About the end of the reign of the Emperor Paul I--that is to say,
towards the middle of the first year of the nineteenth century--just
as four o'clock in the afternoon was sounding from the church of St.
Peter and St. Paul, whose gilded vane overlooks the ramparts of the
fortress, a crowd, composed of all sorts and conditions of people,
began to gather in front of a house which belonged to General Count
Tchermayloff, formerly military governor of a fair-sized town in the
government of Pultava.  The first spectators had been attracted by
the preparations which they saw had been made in the middle of the
courtyard for administering torture with the knout.  One of the
general's serfs, he who acted as barber, was to be the victim.

Although this kind of punishment was a common enough sight in St.
Petersburg, it nevertheless attracted all passers-by when it was
publicly administered.  This was the occurrence which had caused a
crowd, as just mentioned, before General Tchermayloff's house.

The spectators, even had they been in a hurry, would have had no
cause to complain of being kept waiting, for at half-past four a
young man of about five-and-twenty, in the handsome uniform of an
aide-de-camp, his breast covered with decorations, appeared on the
steps at the farther end of the court-yard in front of the house.
These steps faced the large gateway, and led to the general's
apartments.

Arrived on the steps, the young aide-de-camp stopped a moment and
fixed his eyes on a window, the closely drawn curtains of which did
not allow him the least chance of satisfying his curiosity, whatever
may have been its cause.  Seeing that it was useless and that he was
only wasting time in gazing in that direction, he made a sign to a
bearded man who was standing near a door which led to the servants'
quarters.  The door was immediately opened, and the culprit was seen
advancing in the middle of a body of serfs and followed by the
executioner.  The serfs were forced to attend the spectacle, that it
might serve as an example to them.  The culprit was the general's
barber, as we have said, and the executioner was merely the coachman,
who, being used to the handling of a whip, was raised or degraded,
which you will, to the office of executioner every time punishment
with the knout was ordered.  This duty did not deprive him of either
the esteem or even the friendship of his comrades, for they well knew
that it was his arm alone that punished them and that his heart was
not in his work.  As Ivan's arm as well as the rest of his body was
the property of the general, and the latter could do as he pleased
with it, no one was astonished that it should be used for this
purpose.  More than that, correction administered by Ivan was nearly
always gentler than that meted out by another; for it often happened
that Ivan, who was a good-natured fellow, juggled away one or two
strokes of the knout in a dozen, or if he were forced by those
assisting at the punishment to keep a strict calculation, he
manoeuvred so that the tip of the lash struck the deal plank on which
the culprit was lying, thus taking much of the sting out of the
stroke. Accordingly, when it was Ivan's turn to be stretched upon the
fatal plank and to receive the correction he was in the habit of
administering, on his own account, those who momentarily played his
part as executioner adopted the same expedients, remembering only the
strokes spared and not the strokes received.  This exchange of mutual
benefits, therefore, was productive of an excellent understanding
between Ivan and his comrades, which was never so firmly knit as at
the moment when a fresh execution was about to take place.  It is
true that the first hour after the punishment was generally so full
of suffering that the knouted was sometimes unjust to the knouter,
but this feeling seldom out-lasted the evening, and it was rare when
it held out after the first glass of spirits that the operator drank
to the health of his patient.

The serf upon whom Ivan was about to exercise his dexterity was a man
of five or six-and-thirty, red of hair and beard, a little above
average height.  His Greek origin might be traced in his countenance,
which even in its expression of terror had preserved its habitual
characteristics of craft and cunning.

When he arrived at the spot where the punishment was to take place,
the culprit stopped and looked up at the window which had already
claimed the young aide-de-camp's attention; it still remained shut.
With a glance round the throng which obstructed the entrance leading
to the street, he ended by gazing, with a horror-stricken shudder
upon the plank on which he was to be stretched.  The shudder did not
escape his friend Ivan, who, approaching to remove the striped shirt
that covered his shoulders, took the opportunity to whisper under his
breath--

"Come, Gregory, take courage!"

"You remember your promise?" replied the culprit, with an indefinable
expression of entreaty.

"Not for the first lashes, Gregory; do not count on that, for during
the first strokes the aide-de-camp will be watching; but among the
later ones be assured I will find means of cheating him of some of
them."

"Beyond everything you will take care of the tip of the lash?"

"I will do my best, Gregory, I will do my best.  Do you not know that
I will?"

"Alas! yes," replied Gregory.

"Now, then!" said the aide-de-camp.

"We are ready, noble sir," replied Ivan.

"Wait, wait one moment, your high origin," cried poor Gregory,
addressing the young captain as though he had been a colonel, "Vache
Vousso Korodie," in order to flatter him.  "I believe that the lady
Vaninka's window is about to open!"

The young captain glanced eagerly towards the spot which had already
several times claimed his attention, but not a fold of the silken
curtains, which could be seen through the panes of the window, had
moved.

"You are mistaken, you rascal," said the aide-decamp, unwillingly
removing his eyes from the window, as though he also had hoped to see
it open," you are mistaken; and besides, what has your noble mistress
to do with all this?"

"Pardon, your excellency," continued Gregory, gratifying the aide-de-
camp with yet higher rank,--"pardon, but it is through her orders I
am about to suffer.  Perhaps she might have pity upon a wretched
servant!"

"Enough, enough; let us proceed," said the captain in an odd voice,
as though he regretted as well as the culprit that Vaninka had not
shown mercy.

"Immediately, immediately, noble sir," said Ivan; then turning to
Gregory, he continued, "Come, comrade; the time has come."

Gregory sighed heavily, threw a last look up at the window, and
seeing that everything remained the same there, he mustered up
resolution enough to lie down on the fatal plank.  At the same time
two other serfs, chosen by Ivan for assistants, took him by the arms
and attached his wrists to two stakes, one at either side of him, so
that it appeared as though he were stretched on a cross.  Then they
clamped his neck into an iron collar, and seeing that all was in
readiness and that no sign favourable to the culprit had been made
from the still closely shut window, the young aide-de-camp beckoned
with his hand, saying, "Now, then, begin!"

"Patience, my lord, patience," said Ivan, still delaying the
whipping, in the hope that some sign might yet be made from the
inexorable window.  "I have a knot in my knout, and if I leave it
Gregory will have good right to complain."

The instrument with which the executioner was busying himself, and
which is perhaps unknown to our readers, was a species of whip, with
a handle about two feet long.  A plaited leather thong, about four
feet long and two inches broad, was attached to this handle, this
thong terminating in an iron or copper ring, and to this another band
of leather was fastened, two feet long, and at the beginning about
one and a half inches thick: this gradually became thinner, till it
ended in a point.  The thong was steeped in milk and then dried in
the sun, and on account of this method of preparation its edge became
as keen and cutting as a knife; further, the thong was generally
changed at every sixth stroke, because contact with blood softened
it.

However unwillingly and clumsily Ivan set about untying the knot, it
had to come undone at last.  Besides, the bystanders were beginning
to grumble, and their muttering disturbed the reverie into which the
young aide-de-camp had fallen.  He raised his head, which had been
sunk on his breast, and cast a last look towards the window; then
with a peremptory sign; and in a voice which admitted of no delay, he
ordered the execution to proceed.

Nothing could put it off any longer: Ivan was obliged to obey, and he
did not attempt to find any new pretext for delay.  He drew back two
paces, and with a spring he returned to his place, and standing on
tiptoe, he whirled the knout above his head, and then letting it
suddenly fall, he struck Gregory with such dexterity that the lash
wrapped itself thrice round his victim's body, encircling him like a
serpent, but the tip of the thong struck the plank upon which Gregory
was lying.  Nevertheless, in spite of this precaution, Gregory
uttered a loud shriek, and Ivan counted "One."

At the shriek, the young aide-de-camp again turned towards the
window; but it was still shut, and mechanically his eyes went back to
the culprit, and he repeated the word "One."

The knout had traced three blue furrows on Gregory's shoulders.  Ivan
took another spring, and with the same skill as before he again
enveloped the culprit's body with the hissing thong, ever taking care
that the tip of it should not touch him.  Gregory uttered another
shriek, and Ivan counted "Two."  The blood now began to colour the
skin.

At the third stroke several drops of blood appeared; at the fourth
the blood spurted out; at the fifth some drops spattered the young
officer's face; he drew back, and wiped them away with his
handkerchief.  Ivan profited by his distraction, and counted seven
instead of six: the captain took no notice.  At the ninth stroke Ivan
stopped to change the lash, and in the hope that a second fraud might
pass off as luckily as the first, he counted eleven instead of ten.

At that moment a window opposite to Vaninka's opened, and a man about
forty-five or fifty in general's uniform appeared.  He called out in
a careless tone, "Enough, that will do," and closed the window again.

Immediately on this apparition the young aide-de-camp had turned
towards his general, saluting, and during the few seconds that the
general was present he remained motionless.  When the window had been
shut again, he repeated the general's words, so that the raised whip
fell without touching the culprit.

"Thank his excellency, Gregory," said Ivan, rolling the knout's lash
round his hand, "for having spared you two strokes;" and he added,
bending down to liberate Gregory's hand, "these two with the two I
was able to miss out make a total of eight strokes instead of twelve.
Come, now, you others, untie his other hand."

But poor Gregory was in no state to thank anybody; nearly swooning
with pain, he could scarcely stand.

Two moujiks took him by the arms and led him towards the serfs'
quarters, followed by Ivan.  Having reached the door, however,
Gregory stopped, turned his head, and seeing the aide-de-camp gazing
pitifully at him, "Oh sir," he cried, "please thank his excellency
the general for me.  As for the lady Vaninka," he added in a low
tone, "I will certainly thank her myself."

"What are you muttering between your teeth?" cried the young officer,
with an angry movement; for he thought he had detected a threatening
tone in Gregory's voice.

"Nothing, sir, nothing," said Ivan.  "The poor fellow is merely
thanking you, Mr. Foedor, for the trouble you have taken in being
present at his punishment, and he says that he has been much
honoured, that is all."

"That is right," said the young man, suspecting that Ivan had
somewhat altered the original remarks, but evidently not wishing to
be better informed.  "If Gregory wishes to spare me this trouble
another time, let him drink less vodka; or else, if he must get
drunk, let him at least remember to be more respectful."

Ivan bowed low and followed his comrades, Foedor entered the house
again, and the crowd dispersed, much dissatisfied that Ivan's
trickery and the general's generosity had deprived them of four
strokes of the knout--exactly a third of the punishment.

Now that we have introduced our readers to some of the characters in
this history, we must make them better acquainted with those who have
made their appearance, and must introduce those who are still behind
the curtain.

General Count Tchermayloff, as we have said, after having been
governor of one of the most important towns in the environs of
Pultava, had been recalled to St. Petersburg by the Emperor Paul, who
honoured him with his particular friendship.  The general was a
widower, with one daughter, who had inherited her mother's fortune,
beauty, and pride.  Vaninka's mother claimed descent from one of the
chieftains of the Tartar race, who had invaded Russia, under the
leadership of D'Gengis, in the thirteenth century.  Vaninka's
naturally haughty disposition had been fostered by the education she
had received.  His wife being dead, and not having time to look after
his daughter's education himself, General Tchermayloff had procured
an English governess for her.  This lady, instead of suppressing her
pupil's scornful propensities, had encouraged them, by filling her
head with those aristocratic ideas which have made the English
aristocracy the proudest in the world.  Amongst the different studies
to which Vaninka devoted herself, there was one in which she was
specially interested, and that one was, if one may so call it, the
science of her own rank.  She knew exactly the relative degree of
nobility and power of all the Russian noble families--those that were
a grade above her own, and those of whom she took precedence.  She
could give each person the title which belonged to their respective
rank, no easy thing to do in Russia, and she had the greatest
contempt for all those who were below the rank of excellency.  As for
serfs and slaves, for her they did not exist: they were mere bearded
animals, far below her horse or her dog in the sentiments which they
inspired in her; and she would not for one instant have weighed the
life of a serf against either of those interesting animals.

Like all the women of distinction in her nation, Vaninka was a good
musician, and spoke French, Italian, German, and English equally
well.

Her features had developed in harmony with her character.  Vaninka
was beautiful, but her beauty was perhaps a little too decided.  Her
large black eyes, straight nose, and lips curling scornfully at the
corners, impressed those who saw her for the first time somewhat
unpleasantly.  This impression soon wore off with her superiors and
equals, to whom she became merely an ordinary charming woman, whilst
to subalterns and such like she remained haughty and inaccessible as
a goddess.  At seventeen Vaninka's education was finished, and her
governess who had suffered in health through the severe climate of
St. Petersburg, requested permission to leave.  This desire was
granted with the ostentatious recognition of which the Russian
nobility are the last representatives in Europe.  Thus Vaninka was
left alone, with nothing but her father's blind adoration to direct
her.  She was his only daughter, as we have mentioned, and he thought
her absolutely perfect.

Things were in this state in the-general's house when he received a
letter, written on the deathbed of one of the friends of his youth.
Count Romayloff had been exiled to his estates, as a result of some
quarrel with Potemkin, and his career had been spoilt.  Not being
able to recover his forfeited position, he had settled down about
four hundred leagues from St. Petersburg; broken-hearted, distressed
probably less on account of his own exile and misfortune than of the
prospects of his only son, Foedor.  The count feeling that he was
leaving this son alone and friendless in the world, commended the
young man, in the name of their early friendship, to the general,
hoping that, owing to his being a favourite with Paul I, he would be
able to procure a lieutenancy in a regiment for him.  The general
immediately replied to the count that his son should find a second
father in himself; but when this comforting message arrived,
Romayloff was no more, and Foedor himself received the letter and
carried it back with him to the general, when he went to tell him of
his loss and to claim the promised protection.  So great was the
general's despatch, that Paul I, at his request, granted the young
man a sub-lieutenancy in the Semonowskoi regiment, so that Foedor
entered on his duties the very next day after his arrival in St.
Petersburg.

Although the young man had only passed through the general's house on
his way to the barracks, which were situated in the Litenoi quarter,
he had remained there long enough for him to have seen Vaninka, and
she had produced a great impression upon him.  Foedor had arrived
with his heart full of primitive and noble feelings; his gratitude to
his protector, who had opened a career for him, was profound, and
extended to all his family.  These feelings caused him perhaps to
have an exaggerated idea of the beauty of the young girl who was
presented to him as a sister, and who, in spite of this title,
received him with the frigidity and hauteur of a queen.
Nevertheless, her appearance, in spite of her cool and freezing
manner, had left a lasting impression upon the young man's heart, and
his arrival in St. Petersburg had been marked by feelings till then
never experienced before in his life.

As for Vaninka, she had hardly noticed Foedor; for what was a young
sub-lieutenant, without fortune or prospects, to her?  What she
dreamed of was some princely alliance, that would make her one of the
most powerful ladies in Russia, and unless he could realise some
dream of the Arabian Nights, Foedor could not offer her such a
future.

Some time after this first interview, Foedor came to take leave of
the general.  His regiment was to form part of a contingent that
Field-Marshal Souvarow was taking to Italy, and Foedor was about to
die, or show himself worthy of the noble patron who had helped him to
a career.

This time, whether on account of the elegant uniform that heightened
Foedor's natural good looks, or because his imminent departure,
glowing with hope and enthusiasm, lent a romantic interest to the
young man, Vaninka was astonished at the marvellous change in him,
and deigned, at her father's request, to give him her hand when he
left.  This was more than Foedor had dared to hope.  He dropped upon
his knee, as though in the presence of a queen, and took Vaninka's
between his own trembling hands, scarcely daring to touch it with his
lips.  Light though the kiss had been, Vaninka started as though she
had been burnt; she felt a thrill run through her, and she blushed
violently.  She withdrew her hand so quickly, that Foedor, fearing
this adieu, respectful though it was, had offended her, remained on
his knees, and clasping his hands, raised his eyes with such an
expression of fear in them, that Vaninka, forgetting her hauteur,
reassured him with a smile.  Foedor rose, his heart filled with
inexplicable joy, and without being able to say what had caused this
feeling, he only knew that it had made him absolutely happy, so that,
although he was just about to leave Vaninka, he had never felt
greater happiness in his life.

The young man left dreaming golden dreams; for his future, be it
gloomy or bright, was to be envied.  If it ended in a soldier's
grave, he believed he had seen in Vaninka's eyes that she would mourn
him; if his future was glorious, glory would bring him back to St.
Petersburg in triumph, and glory is a queen, who works miracles for
her favourites.

The army to which the young officer belonged crossed Germany,
descended into Italy by the Tyrolese mountains, and entered Verona on
the 14th of April 1799.  Souvarow immediately joined forces with
General Melas, and took command of the two armies.  General Chasteler
next day suggested that they should reconnoitre.  Souvarow, gazing at
him with astonishment, replied, "I know of no other way of
reconnoitring the enemy than by marching upon him and giving him
battle."

As a matter of fact Souvarow was accustomed to this expeditious sort
of strategy: through it he had defeated the Turks at Folkschany and
Ismailoff; and he had defeated the Poles, after a few days' campaign,
and had taken Prague in less than four hours.  Catherine, out of
gratitude, had sent her victorious general a wreath of oak-leaves,
intertwined with precious stones, and worth six hundred thousand
roubles, a heavy gold field-marshal's baton encrusted with diamonds;
and had created him a field-marshal, with the right of choosing a
regiment that should bear his name from that time forward.  Besides,
when he returned to Russia, she gave him leave of absence, that he
might take a holiday at a beautiful estate she had given him,
together with the eight thousand serfs who lived upon it.

What a splendid example for Foedor!  Souvarow, the son of a humble
Russian officer, had been educated at the ordinary cadets' training
college, and had left it as a sub-lieutenant like himself.  Why
should there not be two Souvarows in the same century?

Souvarow arrived in Italy preceded by an immense reputation;
religious, strenuous, unwearied, impassible, loving with the
simplicity of a Tartar and fighting with the fury of a Cossack, he
was just the man required to continue General Melas's successes over
the soldiers of the Republic, discouraged as they had been by the
weak vacillations of Scherer.

The Austro-Russian army of one hundred thousand men was opposed by
only twenty-nine or thirty thousand French.  Souvarow began as usual
with a thundering blow.  On 20th April he appeared before Brescia,
which made a vain attempt at resistance; after a cannonade of about
half an hour's duration, the Preschiera gate was forced, and the
Korsakow division, of which Foedor's regiment formed the vanguard,
charged into the town, pursuing the garrison, which only consisted of
twelve hundred men, and obliged them to take refuge in the citadel.
Pressed with an impetuosity the French were not accustomed to find in
their enemies, and seeing that the scaling ladders were already in
position against the ramparts, the captain Boucret wished to come to
terms; but his position was too precarious for him to obtain any
conditions from his savage conquerors, and he and his soldiers were
made prisoners of war.

Souvarow was experienced enough to know how best to profit by
victory; hardly master of Brescia, the rapid occupation of which had
discouraged our army anew, he ordered General Kray to vigorously
press on the siege of Preschiera.  General Kray therefore established
his headquarters at Valeggio, a place situated at an equal distance
between Preschiera and Mantua, and he extended from the Po to the
lake of Garda, on the banks of the Mencio, thus investing the two
cities at the same time.

Meanwhile the commander-in-chief had advanced, accompanied by the
larger part of his forces, and had crossed the Oglio in two columns:
he launched one column, under General Rosenberg, towards Bergamo, and
the other, with General Melas in charge, towards the Serio, whilst a
body of seven or eight thousand men, commanded by General Kaim and
General Hohenzollern, were directed towards Placentia and Cremona,
thus occupying the whole of the left bank of the Po, in such a manner
that the Austro-Russian army advanced deploying eighty thousand men
along a front of forty-five miles.

In view of the forces which were advancing, and which were three
times as large as his own, Scherer beat a retreat all along the line.
He destroyed the bridges over the Adda, as he did not consider that
he was strong enough to hold them, and, having removed his
headquarters to Milan, he awaited there the reply to a despatch which
he had sent to the Directory, in which, tacitly acknowledging his
incapacity, he tendered his resignation.  As the arrival of his
successor was delayed, and as Souvarow continued to advance, Scherer,
more and more terrified by the responsibility which rested upon him,
relinquished his command into the hands of his most able lieutenant.
The general chosen by him was Moreau, who was again about to fight
those Russians in whose ranks he was destined to die at last.

Moreau's unexpected nomination was proclaimed amidst the acclamation
of the soldiers.  He had been called the French Fabius, on account of
his magnificent campaign on the Rhine.  He passed his whole army in
review, saluted by the successive acclamations of its different
divisions, which cried, "Long live Moreau!  Long live the saviour of
the army of Italy!"  But however great this enthusiasm, it did not
blind Moreau to the terrible position in which he found himself.  At
the risk of being out-flanked, it was necessary for him to present a
parallel line to that of the Russian army, so that, in order to face
his enemy, he was obliged to extend his line from Lake Lecco to
Pizzighitone--that is to say, a distance of fifty miles.  It is true
that he might have retired towards Piedmont and concentrated his
troops at Alexandria, to await there the reinforcements the Directory
had promised to send him.  But if he had done this, he would have
compromised the safety of the army at Naples, and have abandoned it,
isolated as it was, to the mercy of the enemy.  He therefore resolved
to defend the passage of the Adda as long as possible, in order to
give the division under Dessolles, which was to be despatched to him
by Massena, time to join forces with him and to defend his left,
whilst Gauthier, who had received orders to evacuate Tuscany and to
hasten with forced marches to his aid, should have time to arrive and
protect his right.  Moreau himself took the centre, and personally
defended the fortified bridge of Cassano; this bridge was protected
by the Ritorto Canal, and he also defended it with a great deal of
artillery and an entrenched vanguard.  Besides, Moreau, always as
prudent as brave, took every precaution to secure a retreat, in case
of disaster, towards the Apennines and the coast of Genoa.  Hardly
were his dispositions completed before the indefatigable Souvarow
entered Triveglio.  At the same time as the Russian commander-in-
chief arrived at this last town, Moreau heard of the surrender of
Bergamo and its castle, and on 23rd April he saw the heads of the
columns of the allied army.

The same day the Russian general divided his troops into three strong
columns, corresponding to the three principal points in the French
line, each column numerically more than double the strength of those
to whom they were opposed.  The right column, led by General
Wukassowich, advanced towards Lake Lecco, where General Serrurier
awaited it.  The left column, under the command of Melas, took up its
position in front of the Cassano entrenchments; and the Austrian
division, under Generals Zopf and Ott, which formed the centre,
concentrated at Canonia, ready at a given moment to seize Vaprio.
The Russian and Austrian troops bivouacked within cannon-shot of the
French outposts.

That evening, Foedor, who with his regiment formed part of
Chasteler's division, wrote to General Tchermayloff:

"We are at last opposite the French, and a great battle must take
place to-morrow morning; tomorrow evening I shall be a lieutenant or
a corpse."

Next morning, 26th April, cannon resounded at break of day from the
extremities of the lines; on our left Prince Bagration's grenadiers
attacked us, on our right General Seckendorff, who had been detached
from the camp of Triveglio, was marching on Crema.

These two attacks met with very different success.  Bagration's
grenadiers were repulsed with terrible loss, whilst Seckendorff, on
the contrary, drove the French out of Crema, and pushed forward
towards the bridge of Lodi.  Foedor's predictions were falsified: his
portion of the army did nothing the whole day; his regiment remained
motionless, waiting for orders that did not come.

Souvarow's arrangements were not yet quite complete, the night was
needed for him to finish them.  During the night, Moreau, having
heard of Seckendorff's success on his extreme right, sent an order to
Serrurier commanding him to leave at Lecco, which was an easy post to
defend, the 18th light brigade and a detachment of dragoons only, and
to draw back with the rest of his troops towards the centre.
Serrurier received this order about two o'clock in the morning, and
executed it immediately.

On their side the Russians had lost no time, profiting by the
darkness of the night.  General Wukassowich had repaired the bridge
at Brevio, which had been destroyed by the French, whilst General
Chasteler had built another bridge two miles below the castle of
Trezzo.  These two bridges had been, the one repaired and the other
built, without the French outposts having the slightest suspicion of
what was taking place.

Surprised at two o'clock in the morning by two Austrian divisions,
which, concealed by the village of San Gervasio, had reached the
right bank of the Adda without their being discovered, the soldiers
defending the castle of Trezzo abandoned it and beat a retreat.  The
Austrians pursued them as far as Pozzo, but there the French suddenly
halted and faced about, for General Serrurier was at Pozzo, with the
troops he had brought from Lecco.  He heard the cannonade behind him,
immediately halted, and, obeying the first law of warfare, he marched
towards the noise and smoke.  It was therefore through him that the
garrison of Trezzo rallied and resumed the offensive.  Serrurier sent
an aide-de-Camp to Moreau to inform him of the manoeuvre he had
thought proper to execute.

The battle between the French and Austrian troops raged with
incredible fury.  Bonaparte's veterans, during their first Italian
campaigns, had adopted a custom which they could not renounce: it was
to fight His Imperial Majesty's subjects wherever they found them.
Nevertheless, so great was the numerical superiority of the allies,
that our troops had begun to retreat, when loud shouts from the
rearguard announced that reinforcements had arrived.  It was General
Grenier, sent by Moreau, who arrived with his division at the moment
when his presence was most necessary.

One part of the new division reinforced the centre column, doubling
its size; another part was extended upon the left to envelop the
enemy.  The drums beat afresh down the whole line, and our grenadiers
began again to reconquer this battle field already twice lost and
won.  But at this moment the Austrians were reinforced by the Marquis
de Chasteler and his division, so that the numerical superiority was
again with the enemy.  Grenier drew back his wing to strengthen the
centre, and Serrurier, preparing for retreat in case of disaster,
fell back on Pozzo, where he awaited the enemy. It was here that the
battle raged most fiercely: thrice the village of Pozzo was taken and
re-taken, until at last, attacked for the fourth time by a force
double their own in numbers, the French were obliged to evacuate it.
In this last attack an Austrian colonel was mortally wounded, but, on
the other hand, General Beker, who commanded the French rearguard,
refused to retreat with his soldiers, and maintained his ground with
a few men, who were slain as they stood; he was at length obliged to
give up his sword to a young Russian officer of the Semenofskoi
regiment, who, handing over his prisoner to his own soldiers,
returned immediately to the combat.

The two French generals had fixed on the village of Vaprio as a
rallying-place, but at the moment when our troops were thrown into
disorder through the evacuation of Pozzo, the Austrian cavalry
charged heavily, and Serrurier, finding himself separated from his
colleague, was obliged to retire with two thousand five hundred men
to Verderio, whilst Grenier, having reached the appointed place,
Vaprio, halted to face the enemy afresh.

During this time a terrible fight was taking place in the centre.
Melas with eighteen to twenty thousand men had attacked the fortified
posts at the head of the bridge of Cassano and the Ritorto Canal.
About seven o'clock in the morning, when Moreau had weakened himself
by despatching Grenier and his division, Melas, leading three
battalions of Austrian grenadiers, had attacked the fortifications,
and for two hours there was terrible carnage; thrice repulsed, and
leaving more than fifteen hundred men at the base of the
fortifications, the Austrians had thrice returned to the attack, each
time being reinforced by fresh troops, always led on and encouraged
by Melas, who had to avenge his former defeats.  At length, having
been attacked for the fourth time, forced from their entrenchments,
and contesting the ground inch by inch, the French took shelter
behind their second fortifications, which defended the entrance to
the bridge itself: here they were commanded by Moreau in person.
There, for two more hours, a hand-to-hand struggle took place, whilst
the terrible artillery belched forth death almost muzzle to muzzle.
At last the Austrians, rallying for a last time, advanced at the
point of the bayonet, and; lacking either ladders or fascines, piled
the bodies of their dead comrades against the fortifications, and
succeeded in scaling the breastworks.  There was not a moment to be
lost.  Moreau ordered a retreat, and whilst the French were
recrossing the Adda, he protected their passage in person with a
single battalion of grenadiers, of whom at the end of half an hour
not more than a hundred and twenty men remained; three of his aides-
de-camp were killed at his side.  This retreat was accomplished
without disorder, and then Moreau himself retired, still fighting the
enemy, who set foot on the bridge as soon as he reached the other
bank.  The Austrians immediately rushed forward to capture him, when
suddenly a terrible noise was heard rising above the roar of the
artillery; the second arch of the bridge was blown into the air,
carrying with it all those who were standing on the fatal spot.  The
armies recoiled, and into the empty space between them fell like rain
a debris of stones and human beings.  But at this moment, when Moreau
had succeeded in putting a momentary obstacle between himself and
Melas, General Grenier's division arrived in disorder, after having
been forced to evacuate Vaprio, pursued by the Austro-Russians under
Zopf, Ott, and Chasteler.  Moreau ordered a change of front, and
faced this new enemy, who fell upon him when he least expected them;
he succeeded in rallying Grenier's troops and in re-establishing the
battle.  But whilst his back was turned Melas repaired the bridge and
crossed the river; thus Moreau found himself attacked frontally, in
the rear, and on his two flanks, by forces three times larger than
his own.  It was then that all the officers who surrounded him begged
him to retreat, for on the preservation of his person depended the
preservation of Italy for France.  Moreau refused for some time, for
he knew the awful consequences of the battle he had just lost, and he
did not wish to survive it, although it had been impossible for him
to win it.  At last a chosen band surrounded him, and, forming a
square, drew back, whilst the rest of the army sacrificed themselves
to cover his retreat; for Moreau's genius was looked upon as the sole
hope that remained to them.

The battle lasted nearly three hours longer, during which the
rearguard of the army performed prodigies of valour.  At length
Melas, seeing that the enemy had escaped him, and believing that his
troops, tired by the stubborn fight, needed rest, gave orders that
the fighting should cease.  He halted on the left bank of the Adda,
encamping his army in the villages of Imago, Gorgonzola, and Cassano,
and remained master of the battlefield, upon which we had left two
thousand five hundred dead, one hundred pieces of cannon, and twenty
howitzers.

That night Souvarow invited General Becker to supper with him, and
asked him by whom he had been taken prisoner.  Becker replied that it
was a young officer belonging to the regiment which had first entered
Pozzo.  Souvarow immediately inquired what regiment this was, and
discovered that it was the Semenofskoi; he then ordered that
inquiries should be made to ascertain the young officer's name.
Shortly afterwards Sub-Lieutenant Foedor Romayloff was announced.  He
presented General Becker's sword to Souvarow, who invited him to
remain and to have supper with his prisoner.

Next day Foedor wrote to his protector: "I have kept my word.  I am a
lieutenant, and Field-Marshal Souvarow has requested his Majesty
Paul I to bestow upon me the order of Saint Vladimir."

On 28th of April, Souvarow entered Milan, which Moreau had just
abandoned in order to retreat beyond Tesino.  The following
proclamation was by his order posted on all the walls of the capital;
it admirably paints the spirit of the Muscovite:

"The victorious army of the Apostolical and Roman Emperor is here; it
has fought solely for the restoration of the Holy Faith,--the clergy,
nobility, and ancient government of Italy.  People, join us for God
and the Faith, for we have arrived with an army at Milan and
Placentia to assist you!"

The dearly bought victories of Trebia and Novi succeeded that of
Cassano, and left Souvarow so much weakened that he was unable to
profit by them.  Besides, just when the Russian general was about to
resume his march, a new plan of campaign arrived, sent by the Aulic
Council at Vienna.  The Allied Powers had decided upon the invasion
of France, and had fixed the route each general must follow in order
to accomplish this new project.  It way decided that Souvarow should
invade France by Switzerland, and that the arch-duke should yield him
his positions and descend on the Lower Rhine.

The troops with which Souvarow was to operate against Massena from
this time were the thirty thousand Russians he had with him, thirty
thousand others detached from the reserve army commanded by Count
Tolstoy in Galicia, who were to be led to join him in Switzerland by
General Korsakoff, about thirty thousand Austrians under General
Hotze, and lastly, five or six thousand French emigrants under the
Prince de Conde in all, an army of ninety or ninety-five thousand
men.  The Austrians were to oppose Moreau and Macdonald.

Foedor had been wounded when entering Novi, but Souvarow had rewarded
him with a second cross, and the rank of captain hastened his
convalescence, so that the young officer, more happy than proud of
the new rank he had received, was in a condition to follow the army,
when on 13th September it moved towards Salvedra and entered the
valley of Tesino.

So far all had gone well, and as long as they remained in the rich
and beautiful Italian plains, Suovarow had nothing but praise for the
courage and devotion of his soldiers.  But when to the fertile fields
of Lombardy, watered by its beautiful river, succeeded the rough ways
of the Levantine, and when the lofty summits of the St. Gothard,
covered with the eternal snows, rose before them, their enthusiasm
was quenched, their energy disappeared, and melancholy forebodings
filled the hearts of these savage children of the North.

Unexpected grumblings ran through the ranks; then suddenly the
vanguard stopped, and declared that it would go no farther.  In vain
Foedor, who commanded a company, begged and entreated his own men to
set an example by continuing the march: they threw down their arms,
and lay down beside them.  Just as they had given this proof of
insubordination, fresh murmurs, sounding like an approaching storm,
rose from the rear of the army: they were caused by the sight of
Souvarow, who was riding from the rear to the vanguard, and who
arrived at the front accompanied by this terrible proof of mutiny and
insubordination.  When he reached the head of the column, the
murmurings had developed into imprecations.

Then Souvarow addressed his soldiers with that savage eloquence to
which he owed the miracles he had effected with them, but cries of
"Retreat!  Retreat!" drowned his voice.  Then he chose out the most
mutinous, and had them thrashed until they were overcome by this
shameful punishment: But the thrashings had no more influence than
the exhortation, and the shouts continued.  Souvarow saw that all was
lost if he did not employ some powerful and unexpected means of
regaining the mutineers.  He advanced towards Foedor.  "Captain,"
said he, "leave these fools here, take eight non-commissioned
officers and dig a grave."  Foedor, astonished, gazed at his general
as though demanding an explanation of this strange order.  "Obey
orders," said Souvarow.

Foedor obeyed, and the eight men set to work; and ten minutes later
the grave was dug, greatly to the astonishment of the whole army,
which had gathered in a semicircle on the rising slopes of the two
hills which bordered the road, standing as if on the steps of a huge
amphitheatre.

Souvarow dismounted from his horse, broke his sword in two and threw
it into the grave, detached his epaulets one by one and threw them
after his sword, dragged off the decorations which covered his breast
and cast these after the sword and epaulets, and then, stripping
himself naked, he lay down in the grave himself, crying in a loud
voice--

"Cover me with earth!  Leave your general here.  You are no longer my
children, and I am no longer your father; nothing remains to me but
death."

At these strange words, which were uttered in so powerful a voice
that they were heard by the whole army, the Russian grenadiers threw
themselves weeping into the grave, and, raising their general, asked
pardon of him, entreating him to lead them again against the enemy.

"At last," cried Souvarow, "I recognise my children again.  To the
enemy!"

Not cries but yells of joy greeted his words.  Souvarav dressed
himself again, and whilst he was dressing the leaders of the mutiny
crept in the dust to kiss his feet.  Then, when his epaulets were
replaced on his shoulders, and when his decorations again shone on
his breast, he remounted his horse, followed by the army, the
soldiers swearing with one voice that they would all die rather than
abandon their father.

The same day Souvarow attacked Aerolo; but his luck had turned: the
conqueror of Cassano, Trebia, and Novi had left his good-fortune
behind in the plains of Italy.  For twelve hours six hundred French
opposed three thousand Russian grenadiers beneath the walls of the
town, and so successfully that night fell without Souvarow being able
to defeat them.  Next day he marched the whole of his troops against
this handful of brave men, but the sky clouded over and the wind.
blew a bitter rain into the faces of the Russians; the French
profited by this circumstance to beat a retreat, evacuating the
valley of Ursern, crossing the Reuss, and taking up their position on
the heights of the Furka and Grimsel.  One portion of the Russian
army's design had been achieved, they were masters of the St.
Gothard.  It is true that as soon as they marched farther on, the
French would retake it and cut off their retreat; but what did this
matter to Souvarow?  Did he not always march forward?

He marched on, then, without worrying about that which was behind
him, reached Andermatt, cleared Trou d'Ury, and found Lecourbe
guarding the defile of the Devil's Bridge with fifteen hundred men.
There the struggle began again; for three days fifteen hundred
Frenchmen kept thirty thousand Russians at bay.  Souvarow raged like
a lion trapped in a snare, for he could not understand this change of
fortune.  At last, on the fourth day, he heard that General
Korsakoff, who had preceded him and who was to rejoin him later, had
been beaten by Molitor, and that Massena had recaptured Zurich and
occupied the canton of Glaris.  Souvarow now gave up the attempt to
proceed up the valley of the Reuss, and wrote to Korsakoff and
Jallachieh, "I hasten to retrieve your losses; stand firm as
ramparts: you shall answer to me with your heads for every step in
retreat that you take."  The aide-de-camp was also charged to
communicate to the Russian and Austrian generals a verbal plan of
battle.  Generals Linsken and Jallachieh were to attack the French
troops separately and then to join the forces in the valley of
Glaris, into which Souvarow himself was to descend by the Klon-Thal,
thus hemming Molitor in between two walls of iron.

Souvarow was so sure that this plan would be successful, that when he
arrived on the borders of the lake of Klon-Thal, he sent a bearer
with a flag of truce, summoning Molitor to surrender, seeing that he
was surrounded on every side.

Molitor replied, to the field-marshal that his proposed meeting with
his generals had failed, as he had beaten them one after the other,
and driven them back into the Grisons, and that moreover, in
retaliation, as Massena was advancing by Muotta, it was he, Souvarow,
who was between two fires, and therefore he called upon him to lay
down his arms instead.

On hearing this strange reply, Souvarow thought that he must be
dreaming, but soon recovering himself and realising the danger of his
position in the defiles, he threw himself on General Molitor, who
received him at the point of the bayonet, and then closing up the
pass with twelve hundred men, the French succeeded in holding fifteen
to eighteen thousand Russians in check for eight hours.  At length
night came, and Molitor evacuated the Klon Thal, and retired towards
the Linth, to defend the bridges of Noefels and Mollis.

The old field-marshal rushed like a torrent over Glaris and Miltodi;
there he learnt that Molitor had told him the truth, and that
Jallachieh and Linsken had been beaten and dispersed, that Massena
was advancing on Schwitz, and that General Rosenberg, who had been
given the defence of the bridge of Muotta, had been forced to
retreat, so that he found himself in the position in which he had
hoped to place Molitor.

No time was to be lost in retreating.  Souvarow hurried through the
passes of Engi, Schwauden, and Elm.  His flight was so hurried that
he was obliged to abandon his wounded and part of his artillery.
Immediately the French rushed in pursuit among the precipices and
clouds.  One saw whole armies passing over places where chamois-
hunters took off their shoes and walked barefoot, holding on by their
hands to prevent themselves from falling.  Three nations had come
from three different parts to a meeting-place in the home of the
eagles, as if to allow those nearest God to judge the justice of
their cause.  There were times when the frozen mountains changed into
volcanoes, when cascades now filled with blood fell into the valleys,
and avalanches of human beings rolled down the deepest precipices.
Death reaped such a harvest there where human life had never been
before, that the vultures, becoming fastidious through the abundance,
picked out only the eyes of the corpses to carry to their young--at
least so says the tradition of the peasants of these mountains.

Souvarow was able to rally his troops at length in the neighbourhood
of Lindau.  He recalled Korsakoff, who still occupied Bregenz; but
all his troops together did not number more than thirty thousand men-
all that remained of the eighty thousand whom Paul had furnished as
his contingent in the coalition.  In fifteen days Massena had
defeated three separate armies, each numerically stronger than his
own.  Souvarow, furious at having been defeated by these same
Republicans whom he had sworn to exterminate, blamed the Austrians
for his defeat, and declared that he awaited orders from his emperor,
to whom he had made known the treachery of the allies, before
attempting anything further with the coalition.

Paul's answer was that he should immediately return to Russia with
his soldiers, arriving at St. Petersburg as soon as possible, where a
triumphal entry awaited them.

The same ukase declared that Souvarow should be quartered in the
imperial palace for the rest of his life, and lastly that a monument
should be raised to him in one of the public places of St.
Petersburg.

Foedor was thus about to see Vaninka once more.  Throughout the
campaign, where there was a chance of danger, whether in the plains
of Italy, in the defiles of Tesino, or on the glaciers of Mount
Pragal, he was the first to throw himself into it, and his name had
frequently been mentioned as worthy of distinction.  Souvarow was too
brave himself to be prodigal of honours where they were not merited.
Foedor was returning, as he had promised, worthy of his noble
protector's friendship, and who knows, perhaps worthy of Vaninka's
love.  Field-Marshal Souvarow had made a friend of him, and none
could know to what this friendship might not lead; for Paul honoured
Souvarow like one of the ancient heroes.

But no one could rely upon Paul, for his character was made up of
extreme impulses.  Without having done anything to offend his master,
and without knowing the cause of his disgrace, Souvarow, on arriving
at Riga, received a private letter which informed him, in the
emperor's name, that, having tolerated an infraction of the laws of
discipline among his soldiers, the emperor deprived him of all the
honours with which he had been invested, and also forbade him to
appear before him.

Such tidings fell like a thunderbolt upon the old warrior, already
embittered by his reverses: he was heart-broken that such storm-
clouds should tarnish the end of his glorious day.

In consequence of this order, he assembled all his officers in the
market-place of Riga, and took leave of them sorrowfully, like a
father taking leave of his family.  Having embraced the generals and
colonels, and having shaken hands with the others, he said good-bye
to them once more, and left them free to continue their march to
their destination.

Souvarow took a sledge, and, travelling night and day, arrived
incognito in the capital, which he was to have entered in triumph,
and was driven to a distant suburb, to the house of one of his
nieces, where he died of a broken heart fifteen days afterwards.

On his own account, Foedor travelled almost as rapidly as his
general, and entered St. Petersburg without having sent any letter to
announce his arrival.  As he had no parent in the capital, and as his
entire existence was concentrated in one person, he drove direct to
the general's house, which was situated in the Prospect of Niewski,
at an angle of the Catherine Canal.

Having arrived there, he sprang out of his carriage, entered the
courtyard, and bounded up the steps.  He opened the ante-chamber
door, and precipitated himself into the midst of the servants and
subordinate household officers.  They cried out with surprise upon
seeing him: he asked them where the general was; they replied by
pointing to the door of the diningroom; he was in there, breakfasting
with his daughter.

Then, through a strange reaction, Foedor felt his knees failing him,
and he was obliged to lean against a wall to prevent himself from
falling.  At this moment, when he was about to see Vaninka again,
this soul of his soul, for whom alone he had done so much, he dreaded
lest he should not find her the same as when he had left her.
Suddenly the dining-room door opened, and Vaninka appeared.  Seeing
the young man, she uttered a cry, and, turning to the general, said,
"Father, it is Foedor"; and the expression of her voice left no doubt
of the sentiment which inspired it.

"Foedor!" cried the general, springing forward and holding out his
arms.

Foedor did not know whether to throw himself at the feet of Vaninka
or into the arms of her father.  He felt that his first recognition
ought to be devoted to respect and gratitude, and threw himself into
the general's arms.  Had he acted otherwise, it would have been an
avowal of his love, and he had no right to avow this love till he
knew that it was reciprocated.

Foedor then turned, and as at parting, sank on his knee before
Vaninka; but a moment had sufficed for the haughty girl to banish the
feeling she had shown.  The blush which had suffused her cheek had
disappeared, and she had become again cold and haughty like an
alabaster statue-a masterpiece of pride begun by nature and finished
by education.  Foedor kissed her hand; it was trembling but cold he
felt his heart sink, and thought he was about to die.

"Why, Vaninka," said the general--"why are you so cool to a friend
who has caused us so much anxiety and yet so much pleasure?  Come,
Fordor, kiss my daughter."

Foedor rose entreatingly, but waited motionless, that another
permission might confirm that of the general.

"Did you not hear my father?" said Vaninka, smiling, but nevertheless
possessing sufficient self-control to prevent the emotion she was
feeling from appearing in her voice.

Foedor stooped to kiss Vaninka, and as he held her hands it seemed to
him that she lightly pressed his own with a nervous, involuntary
movement.  A feeble cry of joy nearly escaped him, when, suddenly
looking at Vaninka, he was astonished at her pallor: her lips were as
white as death.

The general made Foedor sit down at the table: Vaninka took her place
again, and as by chance she was seated with her back to the light,
the general noticed nothing.

Breakfast passed in relating and listening to an account of this
strange campaign which began under the burning sun of Italy and ended
in the glaciers of Switzerland.  As there are no journals in St.
Petersburg which publish anything other than that which is permitted
by the emperor, Souvarow's successes were spread abroad, but his
reverses were ignored.  Foedor described the former with modesty and
the latter with frankness.

One can imagine, the immense interest the general took in Foedor's
story.  His two captain's epaulets and the decorations on his breast
proved that the young man had modestly suppressed his own part in the
story he had told.  But the general, too courageous to fear that he
might share in Souvarow's disgrace, had already visited the dying
field-marshal, and had heard from him an account of his young
protege's bravery.  Therefore, when Foedor had finished his story, it
was the general's turn to enumerate all the fine things Foedor had
done in a campaign of less than a year.  Having finished this
enumeration, he added that he intended next day to ask the emperor's
permission to take the young captain for his aide-de-camp.  Foedor
hearing this wished to throw himself at the general's feet, but he
received him again in his arms, and to show Foedor how certain he was
that he would be successful in his request, he fixed the rooms that
the young man was to occupy in the house at once.

The next day the general returned from the palace of St.  Michel with
the pleasant news that his request had been granted.

Foedor was overwhelmed with joy: from this time he was to form part
of the general's family.  Living under the same roof as Vaninka,
seeing her constantly, meeting her frequently in the rooms, seeing
her pass like an apparition at the end of a corridor, finding himself
twice a day at the same table with her, all this was more than Foedor
had ever dared hope, and he thought for a time that he had attained
complete happiness.

For her part, Vaninka, although she was so proud, at the bottom of
her heart took a keen interest in Foedor.  He had left her with the
certainty that he loved her, and during his absence her woman's pride
had been gratified by the glory he had acquired, in the hope of
bridging the distance which separated them.  So that, when she saw
him return with this distance between them lessened, she felt by the
beating of her heart that gratified pride was changing into a more
tender sentiment, and that for her part she loved Foedor as much as
it was possible for her to love anyone.

She had nevertheless concealed these feelings under an appearance of
haughty indifference, for Vaninka was made so: she intended to let
Foedor know some day that she loved him, but until the time came when
it pleased her to reveal it, she did not wish the young man to
discover her love.  Things went on in this way for several months,
and the circumstances which had at first appeared to Foedor as the
height of happiness soon became awful torture.

To love and to feel his heart ever on the point of avowing its love,
to be from morning till night in the company of the beloved one, to
meet her hand at the table, to touch her dress in a narrow corridor,
to feel her leaning on his arm when they entered a salon or left a
ballroom, always to have ceaselessly to control every word, look, or
movement which might betray his feelings, no human power could endure
such a struggle.

Vaninka saw that Foedor could not keep his secret much longer, and
determined to anticipate the avowal which she saw every moment on the
point of escaping his heart.

One day when they were alone, and she saw the hopeless efforts the
young man was making to hide his feelings from her, she went straight
up to him, and, looking at him fixedly, said:

"You love me!"

"Forgive me, forgive me," cried the young man, clasping his hands.

"Why should you ask me to forgive you, Foedor?  Is not your love
genuine?"

"Yes, yes, genuine but hopeless."

"Why hopeless?  Does not my father love you as a son?" said Vaninka.

"Oh, what do you mean?" cried Foedor.  "Do you mean that if your
father will bestow your hand upon me, that you will then consent--?"

"Are you not both noble in heart and by birth, Foedor?  You are not
wealthy, it is true, but then I am rich enough for both."

"Then I am not indifferent to you?"

"I at least prefer you to anyone else I have met."

"Vaninka!" The young girl drew herself away proudly.

"Forgive me!" said Foedor.  "What am I doing?  You have but to order:
I have no wish apart from you.  I dread lest I shall offend you.
Tell me what to do, and I will obey."

"The first thing you must do, Foedor, is to ask my father's consent."

"So you will allow me to take this step?"

"Yes, but on one condition."

"What is it?  Tell me."

"My father, whatever his answer, must never know that I have
consented to your making this application to him; no one must know
that you are following my instructions; the world must remain
ignorant of the confession I have just made to you; and, lastly, you
must not ask me, whatever happens, to help you in any other way than
with my good wishes."

"Whatever you please.  I will do everything you wish me to do.  Do
you not grant me a thousand times more than I dared hope, and if your
father refuses me, do I not know myself that you are sharing my
grief?" cried Foedor.

"Yes; but that will not happen, I hope," said Vaninka, holding out
her hand to the young officer, who kissed it passionately.

"Now be hopeful and take courage;" and Vaninka retired, leaving the
young man a hundred times more agitated and moved than she was
herself, woman though she was.

The same day Foedor asked for an interview with the general.  The
general received his aide-de-camp as usual with a genial and smiling
countenance, but with the first words Foedor uttered his face
darkened.  However, when he heard the young man's description of the
love, so true, constant, and passionate, that he felt for Vaninka,
and when he heard that this passion had been the motive power of
those glorious deeds he had praised so often, he held out his hand to
Foedor, almost as moved as the young soldier.

And then the general told him, that while he had been away, and
ignorant of his love for Vaninka, in whom he had observed no trace of
its being reciprocated, he had, at the emperor's desire, promised her
hand to the son of a privy councillor.  The only stipulation that the
general had made was, that he should not be separated from his
daughter until she had attained the age of eighteen.  Vaninka had
only five months more to spend under her father's roof.  Nothing more
could be said: in Russia the emperor's wish is an order, and from the
moment that it is expressed, no subject would oppose it, even in
thought.  However, the refusal had imprinted such despair on the
young man's face, that the general, touched by his silent and
resigned sorrow, held out his arms to him.  Foedor flung himself into
them with loud sobs.

Then the general questioned him about his daughter, and Foedor
answered, as he had promised, that Vaninka was ignorant of
everything, and that the proposal came from him alone, without her
knowledge.  This assurance calmed the general: he had feared that he
was making two people wretched.

At dinner-time Vaninka came downstairs and found her father alone.
Foedor had not enough courage to be present at the meal and to meet
her again, just when he had lost all hope: he had taken a sleigh, and
driven out to the outskirts of the city.

During the whole time dinner lasted Vaninka and the general hardly
exchanged a word, but although this silence was so expressive,
Vaninka controlled her face with her usual power, and the general
alone appeared sad and dejected.

That evening, just when Vaninka was going downstairs, tea was brought
to her room, with the message that the general was fatigued and had
retired.  Vaninka asked some questions about the nature of his
indisposition, and finding that it was not serious, she told the
servant who had brought her the message to ask her father to send for
her if he wanted anything.  The general sent to say that he thanked
her, but he only required quiet and rest.  Vaninka announced that she
would retire also, and the servant withdrew.

Hardly had he left the room when Vaninka ordered Annouschka, her
foster-sister, who acted as her maid, to be on the watch for Foedor's
return, and to let her know as soon as he came in.

At eleven o'clock the gate of the mansion opened: Foedor got out of
his sleigh, and immediately went up to his room.  He threw himself
upon a sofa, overwhelmed by his thoughts.  About midnight he heard
someone tapping at the door: much astonished, he got up and opened
it.  It was Annouschka, who came with a message from her mistress,
that Vaninka wished to see him immediately.  Although he was
astonished at this message, which he was far from expecting, Foedor
obeyed.

He found Vaninka seated, dressed in a white robe, and as she was
paler than usual he stopped at the door, for it seemed to him that he
was gazing at a marble statue.

"Come in," said Vaninka calmly.

Foedor approached, drawn by her voice like steel to a magnet.
Annouschka shut the door behind him.

"Well, and what did my father say?" said Vaninka.

Foedor told her all that had happened.  The young girl listened to
his story with an unmoved countenance, but her lips, the only part of
her face which seemed to have any colour, became as white as the
dressing-gown she was wearing.  Foedor, on the contrary, was consumed
by a fever, and appeared nearly out of his senses.

"Now, what do you intend to do?" said Vaninka in the same cold tone
in which she had asked the other questions.

"You ask me what I intend to do, Vaninka?  What do you wish me to do?
What can I do, but flee from St. Petersburg, and seek death in the
first corner of Russia where war may break out, in order not to repay
my patron's kindness by some infamous baseness?"

"You are a fool," said Vaninka, with a mixed smile of triumph and
contempt; for from that moment she felt her superiority over Foedor,
and saw that she would rule him like a queen for the rest of her
life.

"Then order me--am I not your slave?" cried the young soldier.

"You must stay here," said Vaninka.

"Stay here?"

"Yes; only women and children will thus confess themselves beaten at
the first blow: a man, if he be worthy of the name, fights."

"Fight!--against whom?--against your father?  Never!"

"Who suggested that you should contend against my father?  It is
against events that you must strive; for the generality of men do not
govern events, but are carried away by them.  Appear to my father as
though you were fighting against your love, and he will think that
you have mastered yourself.  As I am supposed to be ignorant of your
proposal, I shall not be suspected.  I will demand two years' more
freedom, and I shall obtain them.  Who knows what may happen in the
course of two years?  The emperor may die, my betrothed may die, my
father--may God protect him!--my father himself may die--!"

"But if they force you to marry?"

"Force me!" interrupted Vaninka, and a deep flush rose to her cheek
and immediately disappeared again.  "And who will force me to do
anything?  Father?  He loves me too well.  The emperor?  He has
enough worries in his own family, without introducing them into
another's.  Besides, there is always a last resource when every other
expedient fails: the Neva only flows a few paces from here, and its
waters are deep."

Foedor uttered a cry, for in the young girl's knit brows and tightly
compressed lips there was so much resolution that he understood that
they might break this child but that they would not bend her.  But
Foedor's heart was too much in harmony with the plan Vaninka had
proposed; his objections once removed, he did not seek fresh ones.
Besides, had he had the courage to do so; Vaninka's promise to make
up in secret to him for the dissimulation she was obliged to practise
in public would have conquered his last scruples.

Vaninka, whose determined character had been accentuated by her
education, had an unbounded influence over all who came in contact
with her; even the general, without knowing why, obeyed her.  Foedor
submitted like a child to everything she wished, and the young girl's
love was increased by the wishes she opposed and by a feeling of
gratified pride.

It was some days after this nocturnal decision that the knouting had
taken place at which our readers have assisted.  It was for some
slight fault, and Gregory had been the victim; Vaninka having
complained to her father about him.  Foedor, who as aide-de-camp had
been obliged to preside over Gregory's punishment, had paid no more
attention to the threats the serf had uttered on retiring.

Ivan, the coachman, who after having been executioner had become
surgeon, had applied compresses of salt and water to heal up the
scarred shoulders of his victim.  Gregory had remained three days in
the infirmary, and during this time he had turned over in his mind
every possible means of vengeance.  Then at the end of three days,
being healed, he had returned to his duty, and soon everyone except
he had forgotten the punishment.  If Gregory had been a real Russian,
he would soon have forgotten it all; for this punishment is too
familiar to the rough Muscovite for him to remember it long and with
rancour.  Gregory, as we have said, had Greek blood in his veins; he
dissembled and remembered.  Although Gregory was a serf, his duties
had little by little brought him into greater familiarity with the
general than any of the other servants.  Besides, in every country in
the world barbers have great licence with those they shave; this is
perhaps due to the fact that a man is instinctively more gracious to
another who for ten minutes every day holds his life in his hands.
Gregory rejoiced in the immunity of his profession, and it nearly
always happened that the barber's daily operation on the general's
chin passed in conversation, of which he bore the chief part.

One day the general had to attend a review: he sent for Gregory
before daybreak, and as the barber was passing the razor as gently as
possible over his master's cheek, the conversation fell, or more
likely was led, on Foedor.  The barber praised him highly, and this
naturally caused his master to ask him, remembering the correction
the young aide-decamp had superintended, if he could not find some
fault in this model of perfection that might counterbalance so many
good qualities.  Gregory replied  that with the exception of pride he
thought Foedor irreproachable.

"Pride?" asked the astonished general.  "That is a failing from which
I should have thought him most free."

"Perhaps I should have said ambition," replied Gregory.

"Ambition!" said the general.  "It does not seem to me that he has
given much proof of ambition in entering my service; for after his
achievements in the last campaign he might easily have aspired to the
honour of a place in the emperor's household."

"Oh yes, he is ambitious," said Gregory, smiling.  "One man's
ambition is for high position, another's an illustrious alliance: the
former will owe everything to himself, the latter will make a
stepping-stone of his wife, then they raise their eyes higher than
they should."

"What do you mean to suggest?" said the general, beginning to see
what Gregory was aiming at.

"I mean, your excellency," replied Gregory, "there are many men who,
owing to the kindness shown them by others, forget their position and
aspire to a more exalted one; having already been placed so high,
their heads are turned."

"Gregory,"  cried the general, "believe me, you are getting into a
scrape; for you are making an accusation, and if I take any notice of
it, you will have to prove your words."

"By St. Basilius, general, it is no scrape when you have truth on
your side; for I have said nothing I am not ready to prove."

"Then," said the general, "you persist in declaring that Foedor loves
my daughter?"

"Ah! I have not said that: it is your excellency.  I have not named
the lady Vaninka," said Gregory, with the duplicity of his nation.

"But you meant it, did you not?  Come, contrary to your custom, reply
frankly."

"It is true, your excellency; it is what I meant."

"And, according to you, my daughter reciprocates the passion, no
doubt?"

"I fear so, your excellency."

"And what makes you think this, say?"

"First, Mr. Foedor never misses a chance of speaking to the lady
Vaninka."

"He is in the same house with her, would you have him avoid her?"

"When the lady Vaninka returns late, and when perchance Mr. Foedor
has not accompanied you, whatever the hour Mr. Foedor is there,
ready, to help her out of the carriage."

"Foedor attends me, it is his duty," said the general, beginning to
believe that the serf's suspicions were founded on slight grounds.
"He waits for me," he, continued, "because when I return, at any hour
of the day or night, I may have orders to give him."

"Not a day passes without Mr. Foedor going into my lady Vaninka's
room, although such a favour is not usually granted to a young man in
a house like that of your excellency."

"Usually it is I who send him to her," said the general.

"Yes, in the daytime," replied Gregory, "but at night?"

"At night!" cried the general, rising to his feet, and turning so
pale that, after a moment, he was forced to lean for support on a
table.

"Yes, at night, your excellency," answered Gregory quietly; "and
since, as you say, I have begun to mix myself up in a bad business, I
must go on with it; besides, even if there were to result from it
another punishment for me, even more terrible than that I have
already endured, I should not allow so good, a master to be deceived
any longer."

"Be very careful about what you are going to say, slave; for I know
the men of your nation.  Take care, if the accusation you are making
by way of revenge is not supported by visible, palpable, and positive
proofs, you shall be punished as an infamous slanderer."

"To that I agree," said Gregory.

"Do you affirm that you have seen Foedor enter my daughter's chamber
at night?"

"I do not say that I have seen him enter it, your excellency.  I say
that I have seen him come out."

"When was that?"

"A quarter of an hour ago, when I was on my way to your excellency."

"You lie!" said the general, raising his fist.

"This is not our agreement, your excellency," said the slave, drawing
back.  "I am only to be punished if I fail to give proofs."

"But what are your proofs?"

"I have told you."

"And do you expect me to believe your word alone?"

"No; but I expect you to believe your own eyes."

"How?"

"The first time that Mr. Foedor is in my lady Vaninka's room after
midnight, I shall come to find your excellency, and then you can
judge for yourself if I lie; but up to the present, your excellency,
all the conditions of the service I wish to render you are to my
disadvantage."

"In what way?"

"Well, if I fail to give proofs, I am to be treated as an infamous
slanderer; but if I give them, what advantage shall I gain?"

"A thousand roubles and your freedom."

"That is a bargain, then, your excellency," replied Gregory quietly,
replacing the razors on the general's toilet-table, "and I hope that
before a week has passed you will be more just to me than you are
now."

With these words the slave left the room, leaving the general
convinced by his confidence that some dreadful misfortune threatened
him.

From this time onward, as might be expected, the general weighed
every word and noticed every gesture which passed between Vaninka and
Foedor in his presence; but he saw nothing to confirm his suspicions
on the part of the aide-de-camp or of his daughter; on the contrary,
Vaninka seemed colder and more reserved than ever.

A week passed in this way.  About two o'clock in the morning of the
ninth day, someone knocked at the general's door.  It was Gregory.

"If your excellency will go into your daughter's room," said Gregory,
"you will find Mr. Foedor there."

The general turned pale, dressed himself without uttering a word, and
followed the slave to the door of Vaninka's room.  Having arrived
there, with a motion of his hand he dismissed the informer, who,
instead of retiring in obedience to this mute command, hid himself in
the corner of the corridor.

When the general believed himself to be alone, he knocked once; but
all was silent.  This silence, however, proved nothing; for Vaninka
might be asleep.  He knocked a second time, and the young girl, in a
perfectly calm voice, asked, "Who is there?"

"It is I," said the general, in a voice trembling with emotion.

"Annouschka!" said the girl to her foster-sister, who slept in the
adjoining room, "open the door to my father.  Forgive me, father,"
she continued; "but Annouschka is dressing, and will be with you in a
moment."

The general waited patiently, for he could discover no trace of
emotion in his daughter's voice, and he hoped that Gregory had been
mistaken.

In a few moments the door opened, and the general went in, and cast a
long look around him; there was no one in this first apartment.

Vaninka was in bed, paler perhaps than usual, but quite calm, with
the loving smile on her lips with which she always welcomed her
father.

"To what fortunate circumstance," asked the young girl in her softest
tones, "do I owe the pleasure of seeing you at so late an hour?"

"I wished to speak to you about a very important matter," said the
general, "and however late it was, I thought you would forgive me for
disturbing you."

"My father will always be welcome in his daughter's room, at whatever
hour of the day or night he presents himself there."

The general cast another searching look round, and was convinced that
it was impossible for a man to be concealed in the first room--but
the second still remained.

"I am listening," said Vaninka, after a moment of silence.

"Yes, but we are not alone," replied the general, "and it is
important that no other ears should hear what I have to say to you."

"Annauschka, as you know, is my foster-sister," said Vaninka.

"That makes no difference," said the general, going candle in hand
into the next room, which was somewhat smaller than his daughter's.
"Annouschka," said he, "watch in the corridor and see that no one
overhears us."

As he spoke these words, the general threw the same scrutinizing
glance all round the room, but with the exception of the young girl
there was no one there.

Annouschka obeyed, and the general followed her out, and, looking
eagerly round for the last time, re-entered his daughter's room, and
seated himself on the foot of her bed.  Annouschka, at a sign from
her mistress, left her alone with her father.  The general held out
his hand to Vaninka, and she took it without hesitation.

"My child," said the general, "I have to speak to you about a very
important matter."

"What is it, father?" said Vaninka.

"You will soon be eighteen," continued the general, "and that is the
age at which the daughters of the Russian nobility usually marry."
The general paused for a moment to watch the effect of these words
upon Vaninka, but her hand rested motionless in his.  "For the last
year your hand has been engaged by me," continued the general.

"May I know to whom?" asked Vaninka coldly.

"To the son of the Councillor-in-Ordinary," replied the general.
"What is your opinion of him?"

"He is a worthy and noble young man, I am told, but I can have formed
no opinion except from hearsay.  Has he not been in garrison at
Moscow for the last three months?"

"Yes," said the general, "but in three months' time he should
return."

Vaninka remained silent.

"Have you nothing to say in reply?" asked the general.

"Nothing, father; but I have a favour to ask of you."

"What is it?"

"I do not wish to marry until I am twenty years old."

"Why not?"

"I have taken a vow to that effect."

"But if circumstances demanded the breaking of this vow, and made the
celebration of this marriage imperatively necessary?"

"What circumstances?" asked Vaninka.

"Foedor loves you," said the general, looking steadily at Vaninka.

"I know that," said Vaninka, with as little emotion as if the
question did not concern her.

"You know that!" cried the general.

"Yes; he has told me so."

"When?"

"Yesterday."

"And you replied--?"

"That he must leave here at once."

"And he consented?"

"Yes, father."

"When does he go?"

"He has gone."

"How can that be?" said the general: "he only left me at ten
o'clock."

"And he left me at midnight," said Vaninka.

"Ah!" said the general, drawing a deep breath of relief, "you are a
noble girl, Vaninka, and I grant you what you ask-two years more.
But remember it is the emperor who has decided upon this marriage."

"My father will do me the justice to believe that I am too submissive
a daughter to be a rebellious subject."

"Excellent, Vaninka, excellent," said the general.  "So, then, poor
Foedor has told you all?"

"Yes," said Vaninka.

"You knew that he addressed himself to me first?"

"I knew it."

"Then it was from him that you heard that your hand was engaged?"

"It was from him."

"And he consented to leave you?  He is a good and noble young man,
who shall always be under my protection wherever he goes.  Oh, if my
word had not been given, I love him so much that, supposing you did
not dislike him, I should have given him your hand."

"And you cannot recall your promise?" asked Vaninka.

"Impossible," said the general.

"Well, then, I submit to my father's will," said Vaninka.

"That is spoken like my daughter," said the general, embracing her.
"Farewell, Vaninka; I do not ask if you love him.  You have both
done your duty, and I have nothing more to exact."

With these words, he rose and left the room.  Annouschka was in the
corridor; the general signed to her that she might go in again, and
went on his way.  At the door of his room he found Gregory waiting
for him.

"Well, your excellency?" he asked.

"Well," said the general, "you are both right and wrong.  Foedor
loves my daughter, but my daughter does not love him.  He went into
my daughter's room at eleven o'clock, but at midnight he left her for
ever.  No matter, come to me tomorrow, and you shall have your
thousand roubles and your liberty."

Gregory went off, dumb with astonishment.

Meanwhile, Annouschka had re-entered her mistress's room, as she had
been ordered, and closed the door carefully behind her.

Vaninka immediately sprang out of bed and went to the door, listening
to the retreating footsteps of the general.  When they had ceased to
be heard, she rushed into Annouschka's room, and both began to pull
aside a bundle of linen, thrown down, as if by accident, into the
embrasure of a window.  Under the linen was a large chest with a
spring lock.  Annouschka pressed a button, Vaninka raised the lid.
The two women uttered a loud cry: the chest was now a coffin; the
young officer, stifled for want of air, lay dead within.

For a long time the two women hoped it was only a swoon.  Annouschka
sprinkled his face with water; Vaninka put salts to his nose.  All
was in vain.  During the long conversation which the general had had
with his daughter, and which had lasted more than half an hour,
Foedor, unable to get out of the chest, as the lid was closed by a
spring, had died for want of air.  The position of the two girls shut
up with a corpse was frightful.  Annouschka saw Siberia close at
hand; Vaninka, to do her justice, thought of nothing but Foedor.
Both were in despair.  However, as the despair of the maid was more
selfish than that of her mistress, it was Annouschka who first
thought of a plan of escaping from the situation in which they were
placed.

"My lady," she cried suddenly, "we are saved."  Vaninka raised her
head and looked at her attendant with her eyes bathed in tears.

"Saved?" said she, "saved?  We are, perhaps, but Foedor!"

"Listen now," said Annouschka: "your position is terrible, I grant
that, and your grief is great; but your grief could be greater and
your position more terrible still.  If the general knew this."

"What difference would it make to me?" said Vaninka.  "I shall weep
for him before the whole world."

"Yes, but you will be dishonoured before the whole world!  To-morrow
your slaves, and the day after all St. Petersburg, will know that a
man died of suffocation while concealed in your chamber.  Reflect, my
lady: your honour is the honour of your father, the honour of your
family."

"You are right," said Vaninka, shaking her head, as if to disperse
the gloomy thoughts that burdened her brain,--"you are right, but
what must we do?"

"Does my lady know my brother Ivan?"

"Yes."

"We must tell him all."

"Of what are you thinking?" cried Vaninka.  "To confide in a man?  A
man, do I say?  A serf! a slave!"

"The lower the position of the serf and slave, the safer will our
secret be, since he will have everything to gain by keeping faith
with us."

"Your brother is a drunkard," said Vaninka, with mingled fear and
disgust.

"That is true," said Annouschka; "but where will you find a slave
who is not?  My brother gets drunk less than most, and is therefore
more to be trusted than the others.  Besides, in the position in
which we are we must risk something."

"You are right," said Vaninka, recovering her usual resolution, which
always grew in the presence of danger.  "Go and seek your brother."

"We can do nothing this morning," said Annouschka, drawing back the
window curtains.  "Look, the dawn is breaking."

"But what can we do with the body of this unhappy man?" cried
Vaninka.

"It must remain hidden where it is all day, and this evening, while
you are at the Court entertainment, my brother shall remove it."

"True," murmured Vaninka in a strange tone, "I must go to Court this
evening; to stay away would arouse suspicion.  Oh, my God! my God!"

"Help me, my lady," said Annouschka; "I am not strong enough alone."

Vaninka turned deadly pale, but, spurred on by the danger, she went
resolutely up to the body of her lover; then, lifting it by the
shoulders, while her maid raised it by the legs, she laid it once
more in the chest.  Then Annouschka shut down the lid, locked the
chest, and put the key into her breast.  Then both threw back the
linen which had hidden it from the eyes of the general.  Day dawned,
as might be expected, ere sleep visited the eyes of Vaninka.

She went down, however, at the breakfast hour; for she did not wish
to arouse the slightest suspicion in her father's mind.  Only it
might have been thought from her pallor that she had risen from the
grave, but the general attributed this to the nocturnal disturbance
of which he had been the cause.

Luck had served Vaninka wonderfully in prompting her to say that
Foedor had already gone; for not only did the general feel no
surprise when he did not appear, but his very absence was a proof of
his daughter's innocence.  The general gave a pretext for his aide-
de-camp's absence by saying that he had sent him on a mission.  As
for Vaninka, she remained out of her room till it was time to dress.
A week before, she had been at the Court entertainment with Foedor.

Vaninka might have excused herself from accompanying her father by
feigning some slight indisposition, but two considerations made her
fear to act thus: the first was the fear of making the general
anxious, and perhaps of making him remain at home himself, which
would make the removal of the corpse more difficult; the second was
the fear of meeting Ivan and having to blush before a slave.  She
preferred, therefore, to make a superhuman effort to control herself;
and, going up again into her room, accompanied by her faithful
Annouschka, she began to dress with as much care as if her heart were
full of joy.  When this cruel business was finished, she ordered
Annouschka to shut the door; for she wished to see Foedor once more,
and to bid a last farewell to him who had been her lover.  Annouschka
obeyed; and Vaninka, with flowers in her hair and her breast covered
with jewels, glided like a phantom into her servant's room.

Annouschka again opened the chest, and Vaninka, without shedding a
tear, without breathing a sigh, with the profound and death-like calm
of despair, leant down towards Foedor and took off a plain ring which
the young man had on his finger, placed it on her own, between two
magnificent rings, then kissing him on the brow, she said, "Goodbye,
my betrothed."

At this moment she heard steps approaching.  It was a groom of the
chambers coming from the general to ask if she were ready.
Annouschka let the lid of the chest fall, and Vaninka going herself
to open the door, followed the messenger, who walked before her,
lighting the way.

Such was her trust in her foster-sister that she left her to
accomplish the dark and terrible task with which she had burdened
herself.

A minute later, Annouschka saw the carriage containing the general
and his daughter leave by the main gate of the hotel.

She let half an hour go by, and then went down to look for Ivan.  She
found him drinking with Gregory, with whom the general had kept his
word, and who had received the same day one thousand roubles and his
liberty.  Fortunately, the revellers were only beginning their
rejoicings, and Ivan in consequence was sober enough for his sister
to entrust her secret to him without hesitation.

Ivan followed Annouschka into the chamber of her mistress.  There she
reminded him of all that Vaninka, haughty but generous, had allowed
his sister to do for him.  The, few glasses of brandy Ivan had
already swallowed had predisposed him to gratitude (the drunkenness
of the Russian is essentially tender).  Ivan protested his devotion
so warmly that Annouschka hesitated no longer, and, raising the lid
of the chest, showed him the corpse of Foedor.  At this terrible
sight Ivan remained an instant motionless, but he soon began to
calculate how much money and how many benefits the possession of such
a secret would bring him.  He swore by the most solemn oaths never to
betray his mistress, and offered, as Annouschka had hoped, to dispose
of the body of the unfortunate aide-decamp.

The thing was easily done.  Instead of returning to drink with
Gregory and his comrades, Ivan went to prepare a sledge, filled it
with straw, and hid at the bottom an iron crowbar.  He brought this
to the outside gate, and assuring himself he was not being spied
upon, he raised the body of the dead man in his arms, hid it under
the straw, and sat down above it.  He had the gate of the hotel
opened, followed Niewski Street as far as the Zunamenie Church,
passed through the shops in the Rejestwenskoi district, drove the
sledge out on to the frozen Neva, and halted in the middle of the
river, in front of the deserted church of Ste. Madeleine.  There,
protected by the solitude and darkness, hidden behind the black mass
of his sledge, he began to break the ice, which was fifteen inches
thick, with his pick.  When he had made a large enough hole, he
searched the body of Foedor, took all the money he had about him, and
slipped the body head foremost through the opening he had made.  He
then made his way back to the hotel, while the imprisoned current of
the Neva bore away the corpse towards the Gulf of Finland.  An hour
after, a new crust of ice had formed, and not even a trace of the
opening made by Ivan remained.

At midnight Vaninka returned with her father.  A hidden fever had
been consuming her all the evening: never had she looked so lovely,
and she had been overwhelmed by the homage of the most distinguished
nobles and courtiers.  When she returned, she found Annouschka in the
vestibule waiting to take her cloak.  As she gave it to her, Vaninka
sent her one of those questioning glances that seem to express so
much.  "It is done," said the girl in a low voice.  Vaninka breathed
a sigh of relief, as if a mountain had been removed from her breast.
Great as was her self-control, she could no longer bear her father's
presence, and excused herself from remaining to supper with him, on
the plea of the fatigues of the evening.  Vaninka was no sooner in
her room, with the door once closed, than she tore the flowers from
her hair, the necklace from her throat, cut with scissors the corsets
which suffocated her, and then, throwing herself on her bed, she gave
way to her grief.  Annouschka thanked God for this outburst; her
mistress's calmness had frightened her more than her despair.  The
first crisis over, Vaninka was able to pray.  She spent an hour on
her knees, then, yielding to the entreaties of her faithful
attendant, went to bed.  Annouschka sat down at the foot of the bed.

Neither slept, but when day came the tears which Vaninka had shed had
calmed her.

Annouschka was instructed to reward her brother.  Too large a sum
given to a slave at once might have aroused suspicion, therefore
Annouschka contented herself with telling Ivan that when he had need
of money he had only to ask her for it.

Gregory, profiting by his liberty and wishing to make use of his
thousand roubles, bought a little tavern on the outskirts of the
town, where, thanks to his address and to the acquaintances he had
among the servants in the great households of St. Petersburg, he
began to develop an excellent business, so that in a short time the
Red House (which was the name and colour of Gregory's establishment)
had a great reputation.  Another man took over his duties about the
person of the general, and but for Foedor's absence everything
returned to its usual routine in the house of Count Tchermayloff.

Two months went by in this way, without anybody having the least
suspicion of what had happened, when one morning before the usual
breakfast-hour the general begged his daughter to come down to his
room.  Vaninka trembled with fear, for since that fatal night
everything terrified her.  She obeyed her father, and collecting all
her strength, made her way to his chamber, The count was alone, but
at the first glance Vaninka saw she had nothing to fear from this
interview: the general was waiting for her with that paternal smile
which was the usual expression of his countenance when in his
daughter's presence.

She approached, therefore, with her usual calmness, and, stooping
down towards the general, gave him her forehead to kiss.

He motioned to her to sit down, and gave her an open letter.  Vaninka
looked at him for a moment in surprise, then turned her eyes to the
letter.

It contained the news of the death of the man to whom her hand had
been promised: he had been killed in a duel.

The general watched the effect of the letter on his daughter's face,
and great as was Vaninka's self-control, so many different thoughts,
such bitter regret, such poignant remorse assailed her when she
learnt that she was now free again, that she could not entirely
conceal her emotion.  The general noticed it, and attributed it to
the love which he had for a long time suspected his daughter felt for
the young aide-de-camp.

"Well," he said, smiling, "I see it is all for the best."

"How is that, father?" asked Vaninka.

"Doubtless," said the general.  "Did not Foedor leave because he
loved you?"

"Yes," murmured the young girl.

"Well, now he may return," said the general.

Vaninka remained silent, her eyes fixed, her lips trembling.

"Return!" she said, after a moment's silence.

"Yes, certainly return.  We shall be most unfortunate," continued the
general, smiling, "if we cannot find someone in the house who knows
where he is.  Come, Vaninka, tell me the place of his exile, and I
will undertake the rest."

"Nobody knows where Foedor is," murmured Vaninka in a hollow voice;
"nobody but God, nobody!"

"What!" said the general, "he has sent you no news since the day he
left?"

Vaninka shook her head in denial.  She was so heart-broken that she
could not speak.

The general in his turn became gloomy.  "Do you fear some misfortune,
then?" said he.

"I fear that I shall never be happy again on earth," cried Vaninka,
giving way under the pressure of her grief; then she continued at
once, "Let me retire, father; I am ashamed of what I have said."

The general, who saw nothing in this exclamation beyond regret for
having allowed the confession of her love to escape her, kissed his
daughter on the brow and allowed her to retire.  He hoped that, in
spite of the mournful way in which Vaninka had spoken of Foedor, that
it would be possible to find him.  The same day he went to the
emperor and told him of the love of Foedor for his daughter, and
requested, since death had freed her from her first engagement, that
he might dispose of her hand.  The emperor consented, and the general
then solicited a further favour.  Paul was in one of his kindly
moods, and showed himself disposed to grant it.  The general told him
that Foedor had disappeared for two months; that everyone, even his
daughter, was ignorant of his whereabouts, and begged him to have
inquiries made.  The emperor immediately sent for the chief of
police, and gave him the necessary orders.

Six weeks went by without any result.  Vaninka, since the day when
the letter came, was sadder and more melancholy than ever.  Vainly
from time to time the general tried to make her more hopeful.
Vaninka only shook her head and withdrew.  The general ceased to
speak, of Foedor.

But it was not the same among the household.  The young aide-de-camp
had been popular with the servants, and, with the exception of
Gregory, there was not a soul who wished him harm, so that, when it
became known that he had not been sent on a mission, but had
disappeared, the matter became the constant subject of conversation
in the antechamber, the kitchen, and the stables.  There was another
place where people busied themselves about it a great deal--this was
the Red House.

From the day when he heard of Foedor's mysterious departure Gregory
had his suspicions.  He was sure that he had seen Foedor enter
Vaninka's room, and unless he had gone out while he was going to seek
the general, he did not understand why the latter had not found him
in his daughter's room.  Another thing occupied his mind, which it
seemed to him might perhaps have some connection with this event--the
amount of money Ivan had been spending since that time, a very
extraordinary amount for a slave.  This slave, however, was the
brother of Vaninka's cherished foster-sister, so that, without being
sure, Gregory already suspected the source from whence this money
came.  Another thing confirmed him in his suspicions, which was that
Ivan, who had not only remained his most faithful friend, but had
become one of his best customers, never spoke of Foedor, held his
tongue if he were mentioned in his presence, and to all questions,
however pressing they were, made but one answer: "Let us speak of
something else."

In the meantime the Feast of Kings arrived.  This is a great day in
St. Petersburg, for it is also the day for blessing the waters.

As Vaninka had been present at the ceremony, and was fatigued after
standing for two hours on the Neva, the general did not go out that
evening, and gave Ivan leave to do so.  Ivan profited by the
permission to go to the Red House.

There was a numerous company there, and Ivan was welcomed; for it was
known that he generally came with full pockets.  This time he did not
belie his reputation, and had scarcely arrived before he made the
sorok-kopecks ring, to the great envy of his companions.

At this warning sound Gregory hastened up with all possible
deference, a bottle of brandy in each hand; for he knew that when
Ivan summoned him he gained in two ways, as innkeeper and as boon
companion.  Ivan did not disappoint these hopes, and Gregory was
invited to share in the entertainment.  The conversation turned on
slavery, and some of the unhappy men, who had only four days in the
year of respite from their eternal labour, talked loudly of the
happiness Gregory had enjoyed since he had obtained his freedom.

"Bah!" said Ivan, on whom the brandy had begun to take effect, "there
are some slaves who are freer than their masters."

"What do you mean?" said Gregory, pouring him out another glass of
brandy.

"I meant to say happier," said Ivan quickly.

"It is difficult to prove that," said Gregory doubtingly.

"Why difficult?  Our masters, the moment they are born, are put into
the hands of two or three pedants, one French, another German, and a
third English, and whether they like them or not, they must be
content with their society till they are seventeen, and whether they
wish to or not, must learn three barbarous languages, at the expense
of our noble Russian tongue, which they have sometimes completely
forgotten by the time the others are acquired.  Again, if one of them
wishes for some career, he must become a soldier: if he is a
sublieutenant, he is the slave of the lieutenant; if he is a
lieutenant, he is the slave of the captain, and the captain of the
major, and so on up to the emperor, who is nobody's slave, but who
one fine day is surprised at the table, while walking, or in his bed,
and is poisoned, stabbed, or strangled.  If he chooses a civil
career, it is much the same.  He marries a wife, and does not love
her; children come to him he knows not how, whom he has to provide
for; he must struggle incessantly to provide for his family if he is
poor, and if he is rich to prevent himself being robbed by his
steward and cheated by his tenants.  Is this life?  While we,
gentlemen, we are born, and that is the only pain we cost our
mothers--all the rest is the master's concern.  He provides for us,
he chooses our calling, always easy enough to learn if we are not
quite idiots.  Are we ill?  His doctor attends us gratis; it is a
loss to him if we die.  Are we well?  We have our four certain meals
a day, and a good stove to sleep near at night.  Do we fall in love?
There is never any hindrance to our marriage, if the woman loves us;
the master himself asks us to hasten our marriage, for he wishes us
to have as many children as possible.  And when the children are
born, he does for them in their turn all he has done for us.  Can you
find me many great lords as happy as their slaves?"

"All this is true," said Gregory, pouring him out another glass of
brandy; "but, after all, you are not free."

"Free to do what?" asked Ivan.

"Free to go where you will and when you will."

"I am as free as the air," replied Ivan.

"Nonsense!" said Gregory.

"Free as air, I tell you; for I have good masters, and above all a
good mistress," continued Ivan, with a significant smile, "and I have
only to ask and it is done."

"What! if after having got drunk here to-day, you asked to come back
to-morrow to get drunk again?" said Gregory, who in his challenge to
Ivan did not forget his own interests,--"if you asked that?"

"I should come back again," said Ivan.

"To-morrow?" said Gregory.

"To-morrow, the day after, every day if I liked...."

"The fact is, Ivan is our young lady's favourite," said another of
the count's slaves who was present, profiting by his comrade Ivan's
liberality.

"It is all the same," said Gregory; "for supposing such permission
were given you, money would soon run short."

"Never!" said Ivan, swallowing another glass of brandy, "never will
Ivan want for money as long as there is a kopeck in my lady's purse."

"I did not find her so liberal," said Gregory bitterly.

"Oh, you forget, my friend; you know well she does not reckon with
her friends: remember the strokes of the knout."

"I have no wish to speak about that," said Gregory.  "I know that she
is generous with blows, but her money is another thing.  I have never
seen the colour of that."

"Well, would you like to see the colour of mine?" said Ivan, getting
more and more drunk. "See here, here are kopecks, sorok-kopecks, blue
notes worth five roubles, red notes worth twenty five roubles, and
to-morrow, if you like, I will show you white notes worth fifty
roubles.  A health to my lady Vaninka!"  And Ivan held out his glass
again, and Gregory filled it to the brim.

"But does money," said Gregory, pressing Ivan more and more,--"does
money make up for scorn?"

"Scorn!" said Ivan,--"scorn!  Who scorns me?  Do you, because you are
free?  Fine freedom!  I would rather be a well-fed slave than a free
man dying of hunger."

"I mean the scorn of our masters," replied Gregory.

"The scorn of our masters!  Ask Alexis, ask Daniel there, if my lady
scorns me."

"The fact is," said the two slaves in reply, who both belonged to the
general's household, "Ivan must certainly have a charm; for everyone
talks to him as if to a master."

"Because he is Annouschka's brother," said Gregory, "and Annouschka
is my lady's foster-sister."

"That may be so," said the two slaves.

"For that reason or for some other," said Ivan; "but, in short, that
is the case."

"Yes; but if your sister should die?" said Gregory.  "Ah!"

"If my sister should die, that would be a pity, for she is a good
girl.  I drink to her health!  But if she should die, that would make
no difference.  I am respected for myself; they respect me because
they fear me."

"Fear my lord Ivan!" said Gregory, with a loud laugh.  "It follows,
then, that if my lord Ivan were tired of receiving orders, and gave
them in his turn, my lord Ivan would be obeyed."

"Perhaps," said Ivan.

"He said 'perhaps,' repeated Gregory, laughing louder than ever,--"he
said 'perhaps.' Did you hear him?"

"Yes," said the slaves, who had drunk so much that they could only
answer in monosyllables.

"Well, I no longer say 'perhaps,' I now say 'for certain.'"

"Oh, I should like to see that," said Gregory; "I would give
something to see that."

"Well, send away these fellows, who are getting drunk like pigs, and
for nothing, you will find."

"For nothing?" said Gregory.  "You are jesting.  Do you think I
should give them drink for nothing?"

"Well, we shall see.  How much would be their score, for your
atrocious brandy, if they drank from now till midnight, when you are
obliged to shut up your tavern?"

"Not less than twenty roubles."

"Here are thirty; turn there out, and let us remain by ourselves."

"Friends," said Gregory, taking out his watch as if to look at the
time, "it is just upon midnight; you know the governor's orders, so
you must go."  The men, habituated like all Russians to passive
obedience, went without a murmur, and Gregory found himself alone
with Ivan and the two other slaves of the general.

"Well, here we are alone," said Gregory.  "What do you mean to do?"

"Well, what would you say," replied Ivan, "if in spite of the late
hour and the cold, and in spite of the fact that we are only slaves,
my lady were to leave her father's house and come to drink our
healths?"

"I would say that you ought to take advantage of it," said Gregory,
shrugging his shoulders, "and tell her to bring at the same time a
bottle of brandy.  There is probably better brandy in the general's
cellar than in mine."

"There is better," said Ivan, as if he was perfectly sure of it, "and
my lady shall bring you a bottle of it."

"You are mad!" said Gregory.

"He is mad!" repeated the other two slaves mechanically.

"Oh, I am mad?" said Ivan.  "Well, will you take a wager?"

"What will you wager?"

"Two hundred roubles against a year of free drinking in your inn."

"Done!" said Gregory.

"Are your comrades included?" said the two moujiks.

"They are included," said Ivan, "and in consideration of them we will
reduce the time to six months.  Is that agreed?"

"It is agreed," said Gregory.

The two who were making the wager shook hands, and the agreement was
perfected.  Then, with an air of confidence, assumed to confound the
witnesses of this strange scene, Ivan wrapped himself in the fur coat
which, like a cautious man, he had spread on the stove, and went out.

At the end of half an hour he reappeared.

"Well!" cried Gregory and the two slaves together.

"She is following," said Ivan.

The three tipplers looked at one another in amazement, but Ivan
quietly returned to his place in the middle of them, poured out a new
bumper, and raising his glass, cried--

"To my lady's health!  It is the least we can do when she is kind
enough to come and join us on so cold a night, when the snow is
falling fast."

"Annouschka," said a voice outside, "knock at this door and ask
Gregory if he has not some of our servants with him."

Gregory and the two other slaves looked at one another, stupefied:
they had recognised Vaninka's voice.  As for Ivan, he flung himself
back in his chair, balancing himself with marvellous impertinence.

Annouschka opened the door, and they could see, as Ivan had said,
that the snow was falling heavily.

"Yes, madam," said the girl; "my brother is there, with Daniel and
Alexis."

Vaninka entered.

"My friends," said she, with a strange smile, "I am told that you
were drinking my health, and I have come to bring you something to
drink it again.  Here is a bottle of old French brandy which I have
chosen for you from my father's cellar.  Hold out your glasses."

Gregory and the slaves obeyed with the slowness and hesitation of
astonishment, while Ivan held out his glass with the utmost
effrontery.

Vaninka filled them to the brim herself, and then, as they hesitated
to drink, "Come, drink to my health, friends," said she.

"Hurrah!" cried the drinkers, reassured by the kind and familiar tone
of their noble visitor, as they emptied their glasses at a draught.

Vaninka at once poured them out another glass; then putting the
bottle on the table, "Empty the bottle, my friends," said she, "and
do not trouble about me.  Annouschka and I, with the permission 2668
of the master of the house, will sit near the stove till the storm is
over."

Gregory tried to rise and place stools near the stove, but whether he
was quite drunk or whether some narcotic had been mixed with the
brandy, he fell back on his seat, trying to stammer out an excuse.

"It is all right," said Vaninka: "do not disturb yourselves; drink,
my friends, drink."

The revellers profited by this permission, and each emptied the glass
before him.  Scarcely had Gregory emptied his before he fell forward
on the table.

"Good!" said Vaninka to her maid in a low voice: "the opium is taking
effect."

"What do you mean to do?" said Annouschka.

"You will soon see," was the answer.

The two moujiks followed the example of the master of the house, and
fell down side by side on the ground.  Ivan was left struggling
against sleep, and trying to sing a drinking song; but soon his
tongue refused to obey him, his eyes closed in spite of him, and
seeking the tune that escaped him, and muttering words he was unable
to pronounce, he fell fast asleep near his companions.

Immediately Vaninka rose, fixed them with flashing eyes, and called
them by name one after another.  There was no response.

Then she clapped her hands and cried joyfully, "The moment has come!"
Going to the back of the room, she brought thence an armful of straw,
placed it in a corner of the room, and did the same in the other
corners.  She then took a flaming brand from the stove and set fire
in succession to the four corners of the room.


"What are you doing?" said Annouschka, wild with terror, trying to
stop her.

"I am going to bury our secret in the ashes of this house," answered
Vaninka.

"But my brother, my poor brother!" said the girl.

"Your brother is a wretch who has betrayed me, and we are lost if we
do not destroy him."

"Oh, my brother, my poor brother!"

"You can die with him if you like," said Vaninka, accompanying the
proposal with a smile which showed she would not have been sorry if
Annouschka had carried sisterly affection to that length.

"But look at the fire, madam--the fire!"

"Let us go, then," said Vaninka; and, dragging out the heart-broken
girl, she locked the door behind her and threw the key far away into
the snow.

"In the name of Heaven," said Annouschka, "let us go home quickly: I
cannot gaze upon this awful sight!"

"No, let us stay here!" said Vaninka, holding her back with a grasp
of almost masculine strength.  "Let us stay until the house falls in
on them, so that we may be certain that not one of them escapes."

"Oh, my God!" cried Annouschka, falling on her knees, "have mercy
upon my poor brother, for death will hurry him unprepared into Thy
presence."

"Yes, yes, pray; that is right," said Vaninka.  "I wish to destroy
their bodies, not their souls."

Vaninka stood motionless, her arms crossed, brilliantly lit up by the
flames, while her attendant prayed.  The fire did not last long: the
house was wooden, with the crevices filled with oakum, like all those
of Russian peasants, so that the flames, creeping out at the four
corners, soon made great headway, and, fanned by the wind, spread
rapidly to all parts of the building.  Vaninka followed the progress
of the fire with blazing eyes, fearing to see some half-burnt
spectral shape rush out of the flames.  At last the roof fell in, and
Vaninka, relieved of all fear, then at last made her way to the
general's house, into which the two women entered without being seen,
thanks to the permission Annouschka had to go out at any hour of the
day or night.

The next morning the sole topic of conversation in St. Petersburg was
the fire at the Red House.  Four half-consumed corpses were dug out
from beneath the ruins, and as three of the general's slaves were
missing, he had no doubt that the unrecognisable bodies were those of
Ivan, Daniel, and Alexis: as for the fourth, it was certainly that of
Gregory.

The cause of the fire remained a secret from everyone: the house was
solitary, and the snowstorm so violent that nobody had met the two
women on the deserted road.  Vaninka was sure of her maid.  Her
secret then had perished with Ivan.  But now remorse took the place
of fear: the young girl who was so pitiless and inflexible in the
execution of the deed quailed at its remembrance.  It seemed to her
that by revealing the secret of her crime to a priest, she would be
relieved of her terrible burden.  She therefore sought a confessor
renowned for his lofty charity, and, under the seal of confession,
told him all.  The priest was horrified by the story.  Divine mercy
is boundless, but human forgiveness has its limits.  He refused
Vaninka the absolution she asked.  This refusal was terrible: it
would banish Vaninka from the Holy Table; this banishment would be
noticed, and could not fail to be attributed to some unheard-of and
secret crime.  Vaninka fell at the feet of the priest, and in the
name of her father, who would be disgraced by her shame, begged him
to mitigate the rigour of this sentence.

The confessor reflected deeply, then thought he had found a way to
obviate such consequences.  It was that Vaninka should approach the
Holy Table with the other young girls; the priest would stop before
her as before all the others, but only say to her, "Pray and weep";
the congregation, deceived by this, would think that she had received
the Sacrament like her companions.  This was all that Vaninka could
obtain.

This confession took place about seven o'clock in the evening, and
the solitude of the church, added to the darkness of night, had given
it a still more awful character.  The confessor returned home, pale
and trembling.  His wife Elizabeth was waiting for him alone.  She
had just put her little daughter Arina, who was eight years old, to
bed in an adjoining room.  When she saw her husband, she uttered a
cry of terror, so changed and haggard was his appearance.  The
confessor tried to reassure her, but his trembling voice only
increased her alarm.  She asked the cause of his agitation; the
confessor refused to tell her.  Elizabeth had heard the evening
before that her mother was ill; she thought that her husband had
received some bad news.  The day was Monday, which is considered an
unlucky day among the Russians, and, going out that day, Elizabeth
had met a man in mourning; these omens were too numerous and too
strong not to portend misfortune.

Elizabeth burst into tears, and cried out, "My mother is dead!"

The priest in vain tried to reassure her by telling her that his
agitation was not due to that.  The poor woman, dominated by one
idea, made no response to his protestations but this everlasting cry,
"My mother is dead!"

Then, to bring her to reason, the confessor told her that his emotion
was due to the avowal of a crime which he had just heard in the
confessional.  But Elizabeth shook her head: it was a trick, she
said, to hide from her the sorrow which had fallen upon her.  Her
agony, instead of calming, became more violent; her tears ceased to
flow, and were followed by hysterics.  The priest then made her swear
to keep the secret, and the sanctity of the confession was betrayed.

Little Arina had awakened at Elizabeth's cries, and being disturbed
and at the same time curious as to what her parents were doing, she
got up, went to listen at the door, and heard all.

The day for the Communion came; the church of St. Simeon was crowded.
Vaninka came to kneel at the railing of the choir.  Behind her was
her father and his aides-de-camp, and behind them their servants.

Arina was also in the church with her mother.  The inquisitive child
wished to see Vaninka, whose name she had heard pronounced that
terrible night, when her father had failed in the first and most
sacred of the duties imposed on a priest.  While her mother was
praying, she left her chair and glided among the worshippers, nearly
as far as the railing.

But when she had arrived there, she was stopped by the group of the
general's servants.  But Arina had not come so far to be, stopped so
easily: she tried to push between them, but they opposed her; she
persisted, and one of them pushed her roughly back.  The child fell,
struck her head against a seat, and got up bleeding and crying, "You
are very proud for a slave.  Is it because you belong to the great
lady who burnt the Red House?"

These words, uttered in a loud voice, in the midst of the silence
which preceded, the sacred ceremony, were heard by everyone.  They
were answered by a shriek.  Vaninka had fainted.  The next day the
general, at the feet of Paul, recounted to him, as his sovereign and
judge, the whole terrible story, which Vaninka, crushed by her long
struggle, had at last revealed to him, at night, after the scene in
the church.

The emperor remained for a moment in thought at the end of this
strange confession; then, getting up from the chair where he had been
sitting while the miserable father told his story, he went to a
bureau, and wrote on a sheet of paper the following sentence:

"The priest having violated what should have been inviolable, the
secrets of the confessional, is exiled to Siberia and deprived of his
priestly office.  His wife will follow him: she is to be blamed for
not having respected his character as a minister of the altar.  The
little girl will not leave her parents.

"Annouschka, the attendant, will also go to Siberia for not having
made known to her master his daughter's conduct.

"I preserve all my esteem for the general, and I mourn with him for
the deadly blow which has struck him.

"As for Vaninka, I know of no punishment which can be inflicted upon
her.  I only see in her the daughter of a brave soldier, whose whole
life has been devoted to the service of his country.  Besides, the
extraordinary way in which the crime was discovered, seems to place
the culprit beyond the limits of my severity.  I leave her punishment
in her own hands.  If I understand her character, if any feeling of
dignity remains to her, her heart and her remorse will show her the
path she ought to follow."

Paul handed the paper open to the general, ordering him to take it to
Count Pahlen, the governor of St. Petersburg.

On the following day the emperor's orders were carried out.

Vaninka went into a convent, where towards the end of the same year
she died of shame and grief.

The general found the death he sought on the field of Austerlitz.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "VANINKA", CELEBRATED CRIMES, v8
by Alexander Dumas, Pere






CELEBRATED CRIMES VOLUME 8 (of 8), Part 3

By Alexander Dumas, Pere





THE MARQUISE DE GANGES



Toward the close of the year 1657, a very plain carriage, with no
arms painted on it, stopped, about eight o'clock one evening, before
the door of a house in the rue Hautefeuille, at which two other
coaches were already standing.  A lackey at once got down to open the
carriage door; but a sweet, though rather tremulous voice stopped
him, saying, "Wait, while I see whether this is the place."

Then a head, muffled so closely in a black satin mantle that no
feature could be distinguished, was thrust from one of the carriage
windows, and looking around, seemed to seek for some decisive sign on
the house front.  The unknown lady appeared to be satisfied by her
inspection, for she turned back to her companion.

"It is here," said she.  "There is the sign."

As a result of this certainty, the carriage door was opened, the two
women alighted, and after having once more raised their eyes to a
strip of wood, some six or eight feet long by two broad, which was
nailed above the windows of the second storey, and bore the
inscription, "Madame Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage,
the door of which was unfastened, and in which there was just so much
light as enabled persons passing in or out to find their way along
the narrow winding stair that led from the ground floor to the fifth
storey.
The two strangers, one of whom appeared to be of far higher rank than
the other, did not stop, as might have been expected, at the door
corresponding with the inscription that had guided them, but, on the
contrary, went on to the next floor.

Here, upon the landing, was a kind of dwarf, oddly dressed after the
fashion of sixteenth-century Venetian buffoons, who, when he saw the
two women coming, stretched out a wand, as though to prevent them
from going farther, and asked what they wanted.

"To consult the spirit," replied the woman of the sweet and tremulous
voice.

"Come in and wait," returned the dwarf, lifting a panel of tapestry
and ushering the two women into a waiting-room.

The women obeyed, and remained for about half an hour, seeing and
hearing nothing.  At last a door, concealed by the tapestry, was
suddenly opened; a voice uttered the word "Enter," and the two women
were introduced into a second room, hung with black, and lighted
solely by a three-branched lamp that hung from the ceiling.  The door
closed behind them, and the clients found themselves face to face
with the sibyl.

She was a woman of about twenty-five or twenty-six, who, unlike other
women, evidently desired to appear older than she was.  She was
dressed in black; her hair hung in plaits; her neck, arms, and feet
were bare; the belt at her waist was clasped by a large garnet which
threw out sombre fires.  In her hand she held a wand, and she was
raised on a sort of platform which stood for the tripod of the
ancients, and from which came acrid and penetrating fumes; she was,
moreover, fairly handsome, although her features were common, the
eyes only excepted, and these, by some trick of the toilet, no doubt,
looked inordinately large, and, like the garnet in her belt, emitted
strange lights.

When the two visitors came in, they found the soothsayer leaning her
forehead on her hand, as though absorbed in thought.  Fearing to
rouse her from her ecstasy, they waited in silence until it should
please her to change her position.  At the end of ten minutes she
raised her head, and seemed only now to become aware that two persons
were standing before her.

"What is wanted of me again?" she asked, "and shall I have rest only
in the grave?"

"Forgive me, madame," said the sweet-voiced unknown, "but I am
wishing to know----"

"Silence!" said the sibyl, in a solemn voice.  "I will not know your
affairs.  It is to the spirit that you must address yourself; he is a
jealous spirit, who forbids his secrets to be shared; I can but pray
to him for you, and obey his will."

At these words, she left her tripod, passed into an adjoining room,
and soon returned, looking even paler and more anxious than before,
and carrying in one hand a burning chafing dish, in the other a red
paper.  The three flames of the lamp grew fainter at the same moment,
and the room was left lighted up only by the chafing dish; every
object now assumed a fantastic air that did not fail to disquiet the
two visitors, but it was too late to draw back.

The soothsayer placed the chafing dish in the middle of the room,
presented the paper to the young woman who had spoken, and said to
her--

"Write down what you wish to know."

The woman took the paper with a steadier hand than might have been
expected, seated herself at a table, and wrote:--

"Am I young?  Am I beautiful?  Am I maid, wife, or widow?  This is
for the past.

"Shall I marry, or marry again?  Shall I live long, or shall I die
young?  This is for the future."

Then, stretching out her hand to the soothsayer, she asked--

"What am I to do now with this?"

"Roll that letter around this ball," answered the other, handing to
the unknown a little ball of virgin wax.  "Both ball and letter will
be consumed in the flame before your eyes; the spirit knows your
secrets already.  In three days you will have the answer."

The unknown did as the sibyl bade her; then the latter took from her
hands the ball and the paper in which it was wrapped, and went and
threw both into the chafing pan.

" And now all is done as it should be," said the soothsayer.
"Comus!"

The dwarf came in.

"See the lady to her coach."

The stranger left a purse upon the table, and followed Comus.  He
conducted her and her companion, who was only a confidential maid,
down a back staircase, used as an exit, and leading into a different
street from that by which the two women had come in; but the
coachman, who had been told beforehand of this circumstance, was
awaiting them at the door, and they had only to step into their
carriage, which bore them rapidly away in the direction of the rue
Dauphine.

Three days later, according to the promise given her, the fair
unknown, when she awakened, found on the table beside her a letter in
an unfamiliar handwriting; it was addressed "To the beautiful
Provencale," and contained these words--

"You are young; you are beautiful; you are a widow.  This is for the
present.

"You will marry again; you will die young, and by a violent death.
This is for the future.
                                        THE SPIRIT."


The answer was written upon a paper like that upon which the
questions had been set down.

The marquise turned pale and uttered a faint cry of terror; the
answer was so perfectly correct in regard to the past as to call up a
fear that it might be equally accurate in regard to the future.

The truth is that the unknown lady wrapped in a mantle whom we have
escorted into the modern sibyl's cavern was no other than the
beautiful Marie de Rossan, who before her marriage had borne the name
of Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc, from that of an estate belonging to
her maternal grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, who owned a fortune
of five to six hundred thousand livres.  At the age of thirteen--that
is to say, in 1649--she had married the Marquis de Castellane, a
gentleman of very high birth, who claimed to be descended from John
of Castille, the son of Pedro the Cruel, and from Juana de Castro,
his mistress.  Proud of his young wife's beauty, the Marquis de
Castellane, who was an officer of the king's galleys, had hastened to
present her at court.  Louis XIV, who at the time of her presentation
was barely twenty years old, was struck by her enchanting face, and
to the great despair of the famous beauties of the day danced with
her three times in one evening.  Finally, as a crowning touch to her
reputation, the famous Christina of Sweden, who was then at the
French court, said of her that she had never, in any of the kingdoms
through which she had passed, seen anything equal to "the beautiful
Provencale."  This praise had been so well received, that the name of
"the beautiful Provencale" had clung to Madame de Castellane, and she
was everywhere known by it.

This favour of Louis XIV and this summing up of Christina's had been
enough to bring the Marquise de Castellane instantly into fashion;
and Mignard, who had just received a patent of nobility and been made
painter to the king, put the seal to her celebrity by asking leave to
paint her portrait.  That portrait still exists, and gives a perfect
notion of the beauty which it represents; but as the portrait is far
from our readers' eyes, we will content ourselves by repeating, in
its own original words, the one given in 1667 by the author of a
pamphlet published at Rouen under the following title: True and
Principal Circumstances of the Deplorable Death of Madame the
Marquise de Ganges:

[Note: It is from this pamphlet, and from the Account of the Death of
Madame the Marquise de Ganges, formerly Marquise de Castellane, that
we have borrowed the principal circumstances of this tragic story.
To these documents we must add--that we may not be constantly
referring our readers to original sources--the Celebrated Trials by
Guyot de Pitaval, the Life of Marie de Rossan, and the Lettres
galantes of Madame Desnoyers.]


"Her complexion, which was of a dazzling whiteness, was illumined by
not too brilliant a red, and art itself could not have arranged more
skilfully the gradations by which this red joined and merged into the
whiteness of the complexion.  The brilliance of her face was
heightened by the decided blackness of her hair, growing, as though
drawn by a painter of the finest taste, around a well proportioned
brow; her large, well opened eyes were of the same hue as her hair,
and shone with a soft and piercing flame that rendered it impossible
to gaze upon her steadily; the smallness, the shape, the turn of her
mouth, and, the beauty of her teeth were incomparable; the position
and the regular proportion of her nose added to her beauty such an
air of dignity, as inspired a respect for her equal to the love that
might be inspired by her beauty; the rounded contour of her face,
produced by a becoming plumpness, exhibited all the vigour and
freshness of health; to complete her charms, her glances, the
movements of her lips and of her head, appeared to be guided by the
graces; her shape corresponded to the beauty of her face; lastly, her
arms, her hands, her bearing, and her gait were such that nothing
further could be wished to complete the agreeable presentment of a
beautiful woman."


[Note: All her contemporaries, indeed, are in agreement as to her
marvellous beauty; here is a second portrait of the marquise,
delineated in a style and manner still more characteristic of that
period:--

"You will remember that she had a complexion smoother and finer than
a mirror, that her whiteness was so well commingled with the lively
blood as to produce an exact admixture never beheld elsewhere, and
imparting to her countenance the tenderest animation; her eyes and
hair were blacker than jet; her eyes, I say, of which the gaze could
scarce, from their excess of lustre, be supported, which have been
celebrated as a miracle of tenderness and sprightliness, which have
given rise, a thousand times, to the finest compliments of the day,
and have been the torment of many a rash man, must excuse me, if I do
not pause longer to praise them, in a letter; her mouth was the
feature of her face which compelled the most critical to avow that
they had seen none of equal perfection, and that, by its shape, its
smallness, and its brilliance, it might furnish a pattern for all
those others whose sweetness and charms had been so highly vaunted;
her nose conformed to the fair proportion of all her features; it
was, that is to say, the finest in the world; the whole shape of her
face was perfectly round, and of so charming a fullness that such an
assemblage of beauties was never before seen together.  The
expression of this head was one of unparalleled sweetness and of a
majesty which she softened rather by disposition than by study; her
figure was opulent, her speech agreeable, her step noble, her
demeanour easy, her temper sociable, her wit devoid of malice, and
founded upon great goodness of heart."]


It is easy to understand that a woman thus endowed could not, in a
court where gallantry was more pursued than in any other spot in the
world, escape the calumnies of rivals; such calumnies, however, never
produced any result, so correctly, even in the absence of her
husband, did the marquise contrive to conduct herself; her cold and
serious conversation, rather concise than lively, rather solid than
brilliant, contrasted, indeed, with the light turn, the capricious
and fanciful expressions employed by the wits of that time; the
consequence was that those who had failed to succeed with her, tried
to spread a report that the marquise was merely a beautiful idol,
virtuous with the virtue of a statue.  But though such things might
be said and repeated in the absence of the marquise, from the moment
that she appeared in a drawing-room, from the moment that her
beautiful eyes and sweet smile added their indefinable expression to
those brief, hurried, and sensible words that fell from her lips, the
most prejudiced came back to her and were forced to own that God had
never before created anything that so nearly touched perfection.

She was thus in the enjoyment of a triumph that backbiters failed to
shake, and that scandal vainly sought to tarnish, when news came of
the wreck of the French galleys in Sicilian waters, and of the death
of the Marquis de Castellane, who was in command.  The marquise on
this occasion, as usual, displayed the greatest piety and propriety:
although she had no very violent passion for her husband, with whom
she had spent scarcely one of the seven years during which their
marriage had lasted, on receipt of the news she went at once into
retreat, going to live with Madame d'Ampus, her mother-in-law, and
ceasing not only to receive visitors but also to go out.

Six months after the death of her husband, the marquise received
letters from her grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, begging her to
come and finish her time of mourning at Avignon.  Having been
fatherless almost from childhood, Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc had
been brought up by this good old man, whom she loved dearly; she
hastened accordingly to accede to his invitation, and prepared
everything for her departure.

This was at the moment when la Voisin, still a young woman, and far
from having the reputation which she subsequently acquired, was yet
beginning to be talked of.  Several friends of the Marquise de
Castellane had been to consult her, and had received strange
predictions from her, some of which, either through the art of her
who framed them, or through some odd concurrence of circumstances,
had come true.  The marquise could not resist the curiosity with
which various tales that she had heard of this woman's powers had
inspired her, and some days before setting out for Avignon she made
the visit which we have narrated.  What answer she received to her
questions we have seen.

The marquise was not superstitious, yet this fatal prophecy impressed
itself upon her mind and left behind a deep trace, which neither the
pleasure of revisiting her native place, nor the affection of her
grandfather, nor the fresh admiration which she did not fail to
receive, could succeed in removing; indeed, this fresh admiration was
a weariness to the marquise, and before long she begged leave of her
grandfather to retire into a convent and to spend there the last
three months of her mourning.

It was in that place, and it was with the warmth of these poor
cloistered maidens, that she heard a man spoken of for the first
time, whose reputation for beauty, as a man, was equal to her own, as
a woman.  This favourite of nature was the sieur de Lenide, Marquis
de Ganges, Baron of Languedoc, and governor of Saint-Andre, in the
diocese of Uzes.  The marquise heard of him so often, and it was so
frequently declared to her that nature seemed to have formed them for
each other, that she began to allow admission to a very strong desire
of seeing him.  Doubtless, the sieur de Lenide, stimulated by similar
suggestions, had conceived a great wish to meet the marquise; for,
having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt regretted her prolonged
retreat--to entrust him with a commission for his granddaughter, he
came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair recluse.  She,
although she had never seen him, recognised him at the first glance;
for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now presented
himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the
Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had so often spoken to her.

That which was to happen, happened: the Marquise de Castellane and
the Marquis de Ganges could not look upon each other without loving.
Both were young, the marquis was noble and in a good position, the
marquise was rich; everything in the match, therefore, seemed
suitable: and indeed it was deferred only for the space of time
necessary to complete the year of mourning, and the marriage was
celebrated towards the beginning of the year 1558.  The marquis was
twenty years of age, and the marquise twenty-two.

The beginnings of this union were perfectly happy; the marquis was in
love for the first time, and the marquise did not remember ever to
have been in love.  A son and a daughter came to complete their
happiness.  The marquise had entirely forgotten the fatal prediction,
or, if she occasionally thought of it now, it was to wonder that she
could ever have believed in it.  Such happiness is not of this world,
and when by chance it lingers here a while, it seems sent rather by
the anger than by the goodness of God.  Better, indeed, would it be
for him who possesses and who loses it, never to have known it.

The Marquis de Ganges was the first to weary of this happy life.
Little by little he began to miss the pleasures of a young man; he
began to draw away from the marquise and to draw nearer to his former
friends.  On her part, the marquise, who for the sake of wedded
intimacy had sacrificed her habits of social life, threw herself into
society, where new triumphs awaited her.  These triumphs aroused the
jealousy of the marquis; but he was too much a man of his century to
invite ridicule by any manifestation; he shut his jealousy into his
soul, and it emerged in a different form on every different occasion.
To words of love, so sweet that they seemed the speech of angels,
succeeded those bitter and biting utterances that foretell
approaching division.  Before long, the marquis and the marquise only
saw each other at hours when they could not avoid meeting; then, on
the pretext of necessary journeys, and presently without any pretext
at all, the marquis would go away for three-quarters of a year, and
once more the marquise found herself widowed.  Whatever contemporary
account one may consult, one finds them all agreeing to declare that
she was always the same--that is to say, full of patience, calmness,
and becoming behaviour--and it is rare to find such a unanimity of
opinion about a young and beautiful woman.

About this time the marquis, finding it unendurable to be alone with
his wife during the short spaces of time which he spent at home,
invited his two brothers, the chevalier and the abbe de Ganges, to
come and live with him.  He had a third brother, who, as the second
son, bore the title of comte, and who was colonel of the Languedoc
regiment, but as this gentleman played no part in this story we shall
not concern ourselves with him.

The abbe de Ganges, who bore that title without belonging to the
Church, had assumed it in order to enjoy its privileges: he was a
kind of wit, writing madrigals and 'bouts-rimes' [Bouts-rimes are
verses written to a given set of rhymes.] on occasion, a handsome man
enough, though in moments of impatience his eyes would take a
strangely cruel expression; as dissolute and shameless to boot, as
though he had really belonged to the clergy of the period.

The chevalier de Ganges, who shared in some measure the beauty so
profusely showered upon the family, was one of those feeble men who
enjoy their own nullity, and grow on to old age inapt alike for good
and evil, unless some nature of a stronger stamp lays hold on them
and drags them like faint and pallid satellites in its wake.  This
was what befell the chevalier in respect of his brother: submitted to
an influence of which he himself was not aware, and against which,
had he but suspected it, he would have rebelled with the obstinacy of
a child, he was a machine obedient to the will of another mind and to
the passions of another heart, a machine which was all the more
terrible in that no movement of instinct or of reason could, in his
case, arrest the impulse given.

Moreover, this influence which the abbe had acquired over the
chevalier extended, in some degree also, to the marquis.  Having as a
younger son no fortune, having no revenue, for though he wore a
Churchman's robes he did not fulfil a Churchman's functions, he had
succeeded in persuading the marquis, who was rich, not only in the
enjoyment of his own fortune, but also in that of his wife, which was
likely to be nearly doubled at the death of M. de Nocheres, that some
zealous man was needed who would devote himself to the ordering of
his house and the management of his property; and had offered himself
for the post.  The marquis had very gladly accepted, being, as we
have said, tired by this time of his solitary home life; and the abbe
had brought with him the chevalier, who followed him like his shadow,
and who was no more regarded than if he had really possessed no body.

The marquise often confessed afterwards that when she first saw these
two men, although their outward aspect was perfectly agreeable, she
felt herself seized by a painful impression, and that the fortune-
teller's prediction of a violent death, which she had so long
forgotten, gashed out like lightning before her eyes.  The effect on
the two brothers was not of the same kind: the beauty of the marquise
struck them both, although in different ways.  The chevalier was in
ecstasies of admiration, as though before a beautiful statue, but the
impression that she made upon him was that which would have been made
by marble, and if the chevalier had been left to himself the
consequences of this admiration would have been no less harmless.
Moreover, the chevalier did not attempt either to exaggerate or to
conceal this impression, and allowed his sister-in-law to see in what
manner she struck him.  The abbe, on the contrary, was seized at
first sight with a deep and violent desire to possess this woman--the
most beautiful whom he had ever met; but being as perfectly capable
of mastering his sensations as the chevalier was incapable, he merely
allowed such words of compliment to escape him as weigh neither with
him who utters nor her who hears them; and yet, before the close of
this first interview, the abbe had decided in his irrevocable will
that this woman should be his.

As for the marquise, although the impression produced by her two
brothers-in-law could never be entirely effaced, the wit of the abbe,
to which he gave, with amazing facility, whatever turn he chose, and
the complete nullity of the chevalier brought her to certain feelings
of less repulsion towards them: for indeed the marquise had one of
those souls which never suspect evil, as long as it will take the
trouble to assume any veil at all of seeming, and which only
recognise it with regret when it resumes its true shape.

Meanwhile the arrival of these two new inmates soon spread a little
more life and gaiety through the house.  Furthermore; greatly to the
astonishment of the marquise, her husband, who had so long been
indifferent to her beauty, seemed to remark afresh that she was too
charming to be despised; his words accordingly began little by little
to express an affection that had long since gradually disappeared
from them.  The marquise had never ceased to love him; she had
suffered the loss of his love with resignation, she hailed its return
with joy, and three months elapsed that resembled those which had
long ceased to be more to the poor wife than a distant and half-worn-
out memory.

Thus she had, with the supreme facility of youth, always ready to be
happy, taken up her gladness again, without even asking what genius
had brought back to her the treasure which she had thought lost, when
she received an invitation from a lady of the neighbourhood to spend
some days in her country house.  Her husband and her two brothers-in-
law, invited with her, were of the party, and accompanied her.
A great hunting party had been arranged beforehand, and almost
immediately upon arriving everyone began to prepare for taking part
in it.

The abbe, whose talents had made him indispensable in every company,
declared that for that day he was the marquise's cavalier, a title
which his sister-in-law, with her usual amiability, confirmed.  Each
of the huntsmen, following this example, made choice of a lady to
whom to dedicate his attentions throughout the day; then, this
chivalrous arrangement being completed, all present directed their
course towards the place of meeting.

That happened which almost always happens the dogs hunted on their
own account.  Two or three sportsmen only followed the dogs; the rest
got lost.  The abbe, in his character of esquire to the marquise, had
not left her for a moment, and had managed so cleverly that he was
alone with her--an opportunity which he had been seeking for a month
previously with no less care--than the marquise had been using to
avoid it.  No sooner, therefore, did the marquise believe herself
aware that the abbe had intentionally turned aside from the hunt than
she attempted to gallop her horse in the opposite direction from that
which she had been following; but the abbe stopped her.  The marquise
neither could nor would enter upon a struggle; she resigned herself,
therefore, to hearing what the abbe had to say to her, and her face
assumed that air of haughty disdain which women so well know how to
put on when they wish a man to understand that he has nothing to hope
from them.  There was an instant's silence; the abbe was the first to
break it.

"Madame," said he, "I ask your pardon for having used this means to
speak to you alone; but since, in spite of my rank of brother-in-law,
you did not seem inclined to grant me that favour if I had asked it,
I thought it would be better for me, to deprive you of the power to
refuse it me."

"If you have hesitated to ask me so simple a thing, monsieur,"
replied the marquise, "and if you have taken such precautions to
compel me to listen to you, it must, no doubt, be because you knew
beforehand that the words you had to say to me were such as I could
not hear.  Have the goodness, therefore, to reflect, before you open
this conversation, that here as elsewhere I reserve the right--and I
warn you of it--to interrupt what you may say at the moment when it
may cease to seem to me befitting."

"As to that, madame," said the abbe, "I think I can answer for it
that whatever it may please me to say to you, you will hear to the
end; but indeed the matters are so simple that there is no need to
make you uneasy beforehand: I wished to ask you, madame, whether you
have perceived a change in the conduct of your husband towards you."

"Yes, monsieur," replied the marquise, "and no single day has passed
in which I have not thanked Heaven for this happiness."

"And you have been wrong, madame," returned the abbe, with one of
those smiles that were peculiar to himself; "Heaven has nothing to do
with it.  Thank Heaven for having made you the most beautiful and
charming of women, and that will be enough thanksgiving without
despoiling me of such as belong to my share."

"I do not understand you, monsieur," said the marquise in an icy
tone.

"Well, I will make myself comprehensible, my dear sister-in-law.  I
am the worker of the miracle for which you are thanking Heaven; to me
therefore belongs your gratitude.  Heaven is rich enough not to rob
the poor."

"You are right, monsieur: if it is really to you that I owe this
return, the cause of which I did not know, I will thank you in the
first place; and then afterwards I will thank Heaven for having
inspired you with this good thought."

"Yes," answered the abbe, "but Heaven, which has inspired me with a
good thought, may equally well inspire me with a bad one, if the good
thought does not bring me what I expect from it."

"What do you mean, monsieur?"

"That there has never been more than one will in the family, and that
will is mine; that the minds of my two brothers turn according to the
fancy of that will like weathercocks before the wind, and that he who
has blown hot can blow cold."

"I am still waiting for you to explain yourself, monsieur."

"Well, then, my dear sister-in-law, since you are pleased not to
understand me, I will explain myself more clearly.  My brother turned
from you through jealousy; I wished to give you an idea of my power
over him, and from extreme indifference I have brought him back, by
showing him that he suspected you wrongly, to the ardours of the
warmest love.  Well, I need only tell him that I was mistaken, and
fix his wandering suspicions upon any man whatever, and I shall take
him away from you, even as I have brought him back.  I need give you
no proof of what I say; you know perfectly well that I am speaking
the truth."

"And what object had you, in acting this part?"

"To prove to you, madame, that at my will I can cause you to be sad
or joyful, cherished or neglected, adored or hated.  Madame, listen
to me: I love you."

"You insult me, monsieur!" cried the marquise, trying to withdraw the
bridle of her horse from the abbe's hands.

"No fine words, my dear sister-in-law; for, with me, I warn you, they
will be lost.  To tell a woman one loves her is never an insult; only
there are a thousand different ways of obliging her to respond to
that love.  The error is to make a mistake in the way that one
employs--that is the whole of the matter."

"And may I inquire which you have chosen?" asked the marquise, with a
crushing smile of contempt.

"The only one that could succeed with a calm, cold, strong woman like
you, the conviction that your interest requires you to respond to my
love."

"Since you profess to know me so well," answered the marquise, with
another effort, as unsuccessful as the former, to free the bridle of
her horse, "you should know how a woman like me would receive such an
overture; say to yourself what I might say to you, and above all,
what I might say to my husband."

The abbe smiled.

"Oh, as to that," he returned, "you can do as you please, madame.
Tell your husband whatever you choose; repeat our conversation word
for word; add whatever your memory may furnish, true or false, that
may be most convincing against me; then, when you have thoroughly
given him his cue, when you think yourself sure of him, I will say
two words to him, and turn him inside out like this glove.  That is
what I had to say to you, madame I will not detain you longer.  You
may have in me a devoted friend or a mortal enemy.  Reflect."

At these words the abbe loosed his hold upon the bridle of the
marquise's horse and left her free to guide it as she would.  The
marquise put her beast to a trot, so as to show neither fear nor
haste.  The abbe followed her, and both rejoined the hunt.

The abbe had spoken truly.  The marquise, notwithstanding the threat
which she had made, reflected upon the influence which this man had
over her husband, and of which she had often had proof she kept
silence, therefore, and hoped that he had made himself seem worse
than he was, to frighten her.  On this point she was strangely
mistaken.

The abbe, however, wished to see, in the first place, whether the
marquise's refusal was due to personal antipathy or to real virtue.
The chevalier, as has been said, was handsome; he had that usage of
good society which does instead of mind, and he joined to it the
obstinacy of a stupid man; the abbe undertook to persuade him that he
was in love with the marquise.  It was not a difficult matter.  We
have described the impression made upon the chevalier by the first
sight of Madame de Ganges; but, owing beforehand the reputation of
austerity that his sister-in-law had acquired, he had not the
remotest idea of paying court to her.  Yielding, indeed, to the
influence which she exercised upon all who came in contact with her,
the chevalier had remained her devoted servant; and the marquise,
having no reason to mistrust civilities which she took for signs of
friendliness, and considering his position as her husband's brother,
treated him with less circumspection than was her custom.

The abbe sought him out, and, having made sure they were alone, said,
"Chevalier, we both love the same woman, and that woman is our
brother's wife; do not let us thwart each other: I am master of my
passion, and can the more easily sacrifice it to you that I believe
you are the man preferred; try, therefore, to obtain some assurance
of the love which I suspect the marquise of having for you; and from
the day when you reach that point I will withdraw, but otherwise, if
you fail, give up your place civilly to me, that I may try, in my
turn, whether her heart is really impregnable, as everybody says."

The chevalier had never thought of the possibility of winning the
marquise; but from the moment in which his brother, with no apparent
motive of personal interest, aroused the idea that he might be
beloved, every spark of passion and of vanity that still existed in
this automaton took fire, and he began to be doubly assiduous and
attentive to his sister-in-law.  She, who had never suspected any evil
in this quarter, treated the chevalier at first with a kindliness
that was heightened by her scorn for the abbe.  But, before long, the
chevalier, misunderstanding the grounds of this kindliness, explained
himself more clearly.  The marquise, amazed and at first incredulous,
allowed him to say enough to make his intentions perfectly clear;
then she stopped him, as she had done the abbe, by some of those
galling words which women derive from their indifference even more
than from their virtue.

At this check, the chevalier, who was far from possessing his
brother's strength and determination, lost all hope, and came
candidly to own to the latter the sad result of his attentions and
his love.  This was what the abbe had awaited, in the first place for
the satisfaction of his own vanity, and in the second place for the
means of carrying out his schemes.  He worked upon the chevalier's
humiliation until he had wrought it into a solid hatred; and then,
sure of having him for a supporter and even for an accomplice, he
began to put into execution his plan against the marquise.

The consequence was soon shown in a renewal of alienation on the part
of M. de Ganges.  A young man whom the marquise sometimes met in
society, and to whom, on account of his wit, she listened perhaps a
little more willingly than to others, became, if not the cause, at
least the excuse of a fresh burst of jealousy.  This jealousy was
exhibited as on previous occasions, by quarrels remote from the real
grievance; but the marquise was not deceived: she recognised in this
change the fatal hand of her brother-in-law.  But this certainty,
instead of drawing her towards him, increased her repulsion; and
thenceforward she lost no opportunity of showing him not only that
repulsion but also the contempt that accompanied it.

Matters remained in this state for some months.  Every day the
marquise perceived her husband growing colder, and although the spies
were invisible she felt herself surrounded by a watchfulness that
took note of the most private details of her life.  As to the abbe
and the chevalier, they were as usual; only the abbe had hidden his
hate behind a smile that was habitual, and the chevalier his
resentment behind that cold and stiff dignity in which dull minds
enfold themselves when they believe themselves injured in their
vanity.

In the midst of all this, M. Joannis de Nocheres died, and added to
the already considerable fortune of his granddaughter another fortune
of from six to seven hundred thousand livres.

This additional wealth became, on accruing to the marquise, what was
then called, in countries where the Roman law prevailed, a
'paraphernal' estate that is to say that, falling in, after marriage?
it was not included in the dowry brought by the wife, and that she
could dispose freely both of the capital and the income, which might
not be administered even by her husband without a power of attorney,
and of which she could dispose at pleasure, by donation or by will.
And in fact, a few days after the marquise had entered into
possession of her grandfather's estate, her husband and his brothers
learned that she had sent for a notary in order to be instructed as
to her rights.  This step betokened an intention of separating this
inheritance from the common property of the marriage; for the
behaviour of the marquis towards his wife--of which within himself he
often recognised the injustice--left him little hope of any other
explanation.

About this time a strange event happened.  At a dinner given by the
marquise, a cream was served at dessert: all those who partook of
this cream were ill; the marquis and his two brothers, who had not
touched it, felt no evil effects.  The remainder of this cream, which
was suspected of having caused illness to the guests, and
particularly to the marquise, who had taken of it twice, was
analysed, and the presence of arsenic in it demonstrated.  Only,
having been mixed with milk, which is its antidote, the poison had
lost some of its power, and had produced but half the expected
effect.  As no serious disaster had followed this occurrence, the
blame was thrown upon a servant, who was said to have mistaken
arsenic for sugar, and everybody forgot it, or appeared to forget it.

The marquis, however, seemed to be gradually and naturally drawing
nearer again to his wife; but this time Madame de Ganges was not
deceived by his returning kindness.  There, as in his alienation, she
saw the selfish hand of the abbe: he had persuaded his brother that
seven hundred thousand livres more in the house would make it worth
while to overlook some levities of behaviour; and the marquis,
obeying the impulse given, was trying, by kind dealing, to oppose his
wife's still unsettled intention of making a will.

Towards the autumn there was talk of going to spend that season at
Ganges, a little town situated in Lower Languedoc, in the diocese of
Montpellier, seven leagues from that town, and nineteen from Avignon.
Although this was natural enough, since the marquis was lord of the
town and had a castle there, the marquise was seized by a strange
shudder when she heard the proposal.  Remembrance of the prediction
made to her returned immediately to her mind.  The recent and ill
explained attempt to poison her, too, very naturally added to her
fears.

Without directly and positively suspecting her brothers-in-law of
that crime, she knew that in them she had two implacable enemies.
This journey to a little town, this abode in a lonely castle, amid
new, unknown neighbours, seemed to her of no good omen; but open
opposition would have been ridiculous.  On what grounds, indeed,
could she base resistance?  The marquise could only own her terrors
by accusing her husband and her brothers-in-law.  And of what could
she accuse them?  The incident of the poisoned cream was not a
conclusive proof.  She resolved accordingly to lock up all her fears
in her heart, and to commit herself to the hands of God.

Nevertheless, she would not leave Avignon without signing the will
which she had contemplated making ever since M. de Nocheres' death.
A notary was called in who drew up the document.  The Marquise de
Ganges made her mother, Madame de Rossan, her sole inheritor, and
left in her charge the duty of choosing between the testatrix's two
children as to which of them should succeed to the estate.  These two
children were, one a boy of six years old, the other a girl of five.
But this was not enough for the marquise, so deep was her impression
that she would not survive this fatal journey; she gathered together,
secretly and at night, the magistrates of Avignon and several persons
of quality, belonging to the first families of the town, and there,
before them, verbally at first, declared that, in case of her death,
she begged the honourable witnesses whom she had assembled on
purpose, not to recognise as valid, voluntary, or freely written
anything except the will which she had signed the day before, and
affirmed beforehand that any later will which might be produced would
be the effect of fraud or of violence.  Then, having made this verbal
declaration, the marquise repeated it in writing, signed the paper
containing it, and gave the paper to be preserved by the honour of
those whom she constituted its guardians.  Such a precaution, taken
with such minute detail, aroused the lively curiosity of her hearers.
Many pressing questions were put to the marquise, but nothing could
be extracted from her except that she had reasons for her action
which she could not declare.  The cause of this assemblage remained a
secret, and every person who formed part of it promised the marquise
not to reveal it.

On the next day, which was that preceding her departure for Ganges,
the marquise visited all the charitable institutions and religious
communities in Avignon; she left liberal alms everywhere, with the
request that prayers and masses should be said for her, in order to
obtain from God's grace that she should not be suffered to die
without receiving the sacraments of the Church.  In the evening, she
took leave of all her friends with the affection and the tears of a
person convinced that she was bidding them a last farewell; and
finally she spent the whole night in prayer, and the maid who came to
wake her found her kneeling in the same spot where she, had left her
the night before.

The family set out for Ganges; the journey was performed without
accident.  On reaching the castle, the marquise found her mother-in-
law there; she was a woman of remarkable distinction and piety, and
her presence, although it was to be but temporary, reassured the poor
fearful marquise a little.  Arrangements had been made beforehand at
the old castle, and the most convenient and elegant of the rooms had
been assigned to the marquise; it was on the first floor, and looked
out upon a courtyard shut in on all sides by stables.

On the first evening that she was to sleep here, the marquise
explored the room with the greatest attention.  She inspected the
cupboards, sounded the walls, examined the tapestry, and found
nothing anywhere that could confirm her terrors, which, indeed, from
that time began to decrease.  At the end of a certain time; however,
the marquis's mother left Ganges to return to Montpellier.  Two, days
after her departure, the marquis talked of important business which
required him to go back to Avignon, and he too left the castle.  The
marquise thus remained alone with the abbe, the chevalier, and a
chaplain named Perette, who had been attached for five-and-twenty
years to the family of the marquis.  The rest of the household
consisted of a few servants.

The marquise's first care, on arriving at the castle, had been to
collect a little society for herself in the town.  This was easy: not
only did her rank make it an honour to belong to her circle, her
kindly graciousness also inspired at first-sight the desire of having
her for a friend.  The marquise thus endured less dulness than she
had at first feared.  This precaution was by no means uncalled for;
instead of spending only the autumn at Ganges, the marquise was
obliged, in consequence of letters from her husband, to spend the
winter there.  During the whole of this time the abbe and the
chevalier seemed to have completely forgotten their original designs
upon her, and had again resumed the conduct of respectful, attentive
brothers.  But with all this, M. de Ganges remained estranged, and
the marquise, who had not ceased to love him, though she began to
lose her fear, did not lose her grief.

One day the abbe entered her room suddenly enough to surprise her
before she had time to dry her tears; the secret being thus half
surprised, he easily obtained a knowledge of the whole.  The
marquise owned to him that happiness in this world was impossible for
her so long as her husband led this separate and hostile life.  The
abbe tried to console her; but amid his consolations he told her that
the grief which she was suffering had its source in herself; that her
husband was naturally wounded by her distrust of him--a distrust of
which the will, executed by her, was a proof, all the more
humiliating because public, and that, while that will existed, she
could expect no advances towards reconciliation from her husband.
For that time the conversation ended there.

Some days later, the abbe came into the marquise's room with a letter
which he had just received from his brother.  This letter, supposed
confidential, was filled with tender complaints of his wife's conduct
towards him, and showed, through every sentence, a depth of affection
which only wrongs as serious as those from which the marquis
considered himself to be feeling could counterbalance.  The marquise
was, at first, very much touched by this letter; but having soon
reflected that just sufficient time had elapsed since the explanation
between herself and the abbe for the marquis to be informed of it,
she awaited further and stronger proofs before changing her mind.

From day to day, however, the abbe, under the pretext of reconciling
the husband and wife, became more pressing upon the matter of the
will, and the marquise, to whom this insistence seemed rather
alarming, began to experience some of her former fears.  Finally, the
abbe pressed her so hard as to make her reflect that since, after the
precautions which she had taken at Avignon, a revocation could have
no result, it would be better to seem to yield rather than irritate
this man, who inspired her with so great a fear, by constant and
obstinate refusals.  The next time that he returned to the subject
she accordingly replied that she was ready to offer her husband this
new proof of her love if it would bring him back to her, and having
ordered a notary to be sent for, she made a new will, in the presence
of the abbe and the chevalier, and constituted the marquis her
residuary legatee.  This second instrument bore date the 5th of May
1667.  The abbe and the chevalier expressed the greatest joy that
this subject of discord was at last removed, and offered themselves
as guarantees, on their brother's behalf, of a better future.  Some
days were passed in this hope, which a letter from the marquis came
to confirm; this letter at the same time announced his speedy return
to Ganges.

On the 16th of May; the marquise, who for a month or two had not been
well, determined to take medicine; she therefore informed the chemist
of what she wanted, and asked him to make her up something at his
discretion and send it to her the next day.  Accordingly, at the
agreed hour in the morning, the draught was brought to the marquise;
but it looked to her so black and so thick that she felt some doubt
of the skill of its compounder, shut it up in a cupboard in her room
without saying anything of the matter, and took from her dressing-
case some pills, of a less efficacious nature indeed, but to which
she was accustomed, and which were not so repugnant to her.

The hour in which the marquise was to take this medicine was hardly
over when the abbe and the chevalier sent to know how she was.  She
replied that she was quite well, and invited them to a collation
which she was giving about four o'clock to the ladies who made up her
little circle.  An hour afterwards the abbe and the chevalier sent a
second time to inquire after her; the marquise, without paying
particular attention to this excessive civility, which she remembered
afterwards, sent word as before that she was perfectly well.
The marquise had remained in bed to do the honours of her little
feast, and never had she felt more cheerful.  At the hour named all
her guests arrived; the abbe and the chevalier were ushered in, and
the meal was served.  Neither one nor the other would share it; the
abbe indeed sat down to table, but the chevalier remained leaning on
the foot of the bed.  The abbe appeared anxious, and only roused
himself with a start from his absorption; then he seemed to drive
away some dominant idea, but soon the idea, stronger than his will,
plunged him again into a reverie, a state which struck everyone the
more particularly because it was far from his usual temper.  As to
the chevalier, his eyes were fixed constantly upon his sister-in-law,
but in this there was not, as in his brother's behaviour, anything
surprising, since the marquise had never looked so beautiful.

The meal over, the company took leave.  The abbe escorted the ladies
downstairs; the chevalier remained with the marquise; but hardly had
the abbe left the room when Madame de Ganges saw the chevalier turn
pale and drop in a sitting position--he had been standing on the foot
of the bed.  The marquise, uneasy, asked what was the matter; but
before he could reply, her attention was called to another quarter.
The abbe, as pale and as disturbed as the chevalier, came back into
the room, carrying in his hands a glass and a pistol, and double-
locked the door behind him.  Terrified at this spectacle, the
marquise half raised herself in her bed, gazing voiceless and
wordless.  Then the abbe approached her, his lips trembling; his hair
bristling and his eyes blazing, and, presenting to her the glass and
the pistol, "Madame," said he, after a moment of terrible silence,
"choose, whether poison, fire, or"--he made a sign to the chevalier,
who drew his sword--" or steel."

The marquise had one moment's hope: at the motion which she saw the
chevalier make she thought he was coming to her assistance; but being
soon undeceived, and finding herself between two men, both
threatening her, she slipped from her bed and fell on her knees.

"What have I done," she cried, "oh, my God?  that you should thus
decree my death, and after having made yourselves judges should make
yourselves executioners?  I am guilty of no fault towards you except
of having been too faithful in my duty to my husband, who is your
brother."

Then seeing that it was vain to continue imploring the abbe, whose
looks and gestures spoke a mind made up, she turned towards the
chevalier.

"And you too, brother," said she, "oh, God, God!  you, too!  Oh, have
pity on me, in the name of Heaven!"

But he, stamping his foot and pressing the point of his sword to her
bosom, answered--

"Enough, madam, enough; take your choice without delay; for if you do
not take it, we will take it for you."

The marquise turned once again to the abbe, and her forehead struck
the muzzle of the pistol.  Then she saw that she must die indeed, and
choosing of the three forms of death that which seemed to her the
least terrible, "Give me the poison, then," said she, "and may God
forgive you my death!"

With these words she took the glass, but the thick black liquid of
which it was full aroused such repulsion that she would have
attempted a last appeal; but a horrible imprecation from the abbe and
a threatening movement from his brother took from her the very last
gleam of hope.  She put the glass to her lips, and murmuring once
more, "God!  Saviour!  have pity on me!" she swallowed the contents.

As she did so a few drops of the liquid fell upon her breast, and
instantly burned her skin like live coals; indeed, this infernal
draught was composed of arsenic and sublimate infused in aqua-fortis;
then, thinking that no more would be required of her, she dropped the
glass.

The marquise was mistaken: the abbe picked it up, and observing that
all the sediment had remained at the bottom, he gathered together on
a silver bodkin all that had coagulated on the sides of the glass and
all that had sunk to the bottom, and presenting this ball, which was
about the size of a nut, to the marquise, on the end of the bodkin,
he said, "Come, madame, you must swallow the holy-water sprinkler."

The marquise opened her lips, with resignation; but instead of doing
as the abbe commanded, she kept this remainder of the poison in her
mouth, threw herself on the bed with a scream, and clasping the
pillows, in her pain, she put out the poison between the sheets,
unperceived by her assassins; and then turning back to them, folded
her hands in entreaty and said, "In the name of God, since you have
killed my body, at least do not destroy my soul, but send me a
confessor."

Cruel though the abbe and the chevalier were, they were no doubt
beginning to weary of such a scene; moreover, the mortal deed was
accomplished--after what she had drunk, the marquise could live but a
few minutes; at her petition they went out, locking the door behind
them.  But no sooner did the marquise find herself alone than the
possibility of flight presented itself to her.  She ran to the
window: this was but twenty-two feet above the ground, but the earth
below was covered with stones and rubbish.  The marquise, being only
in her nightdress, hastened to slip on a silk petticoat; but at the
moment when she finished tying it round her waist she heard a step
approaching her room, and believing that her murderers were returning
to make an end of her, she flew like a madwoman to the window.  At
the moment of her setting foot on the window ledge, the door opened:
the marquise, ceasing to consider anything, flung herself down, head
first.

Fortunately, the new-comer, who was the castle chaplain, had time to
reach out and seize her skirt.  The skirt, not strong enough to bear
the weight of the marquise, tore; but its resistance, slight though it
was, sufficed nevertheless to change the direction of her body: the
marquise, whose head would have been shattered on the stones, fell on
her feet instead, and beyond their being bruised by the stones,
received no injury.  Half stunned though she was by her fall, the
marquise saw something coming after her, and sprang aside.  It was an
enormous pitcher of water, beneath which the priest, when he saw her
escaping him, had tried to crush her; but either because he had ill
carried out his attempt or because the marquise had really had time
to move away, the vessel was shattered at her feet without touching
her, and the priest, seeing that he had missed his aim, ran to warn
the abbe and the chevalier that the victim was escaping.

As for the marquise, she had hardly touched the ground, when with
admirable presence of mind she pushed the end of one of her long
plaits so far down her throat as to provoke a fit of vomiting; this
was the more easily done that she had eaten heartily of the
collation, and happily the presence of the food had prevented the
poison from attacking the coats of the stomach so violently as would
otherwise have been the case.  Scarcely had she vomited when a tame
boar swallowed what she had rejected, and falling into a convulsion,
died immediately.

As we have said, the room looked upon an enclosed courtyard; and the
marquise at first thought that in leaping from her room into this
court she had only changed her prison; but soon perceiving a light
that flickered from an upper window of ore of the stables, she ran
thither, and found a groom who was just going to bed.

"In the name of Heaven, my good man," said she to him, "save me!
I am poisoned!  They want to kill me!  Do not desert me, I entreat
you!  Have pity on me, open this stable for me; let me get away!  Let
me escape!"

The groom did not understand much of what the marquise said to him;
but seeing a woman with disordered hair, half naked, asking help of
him, he took her by the arm, led her through the stables, opened a
door for her, and the marquise found herself in the street.  Two
women were passing; the groom put her into their hands, without being
able to explain to them what he did not know himself.  As for the
marquise, she seemed able to say nothing beyond these words: "Save
me!  I am poisoned!  In the name of Heaven, save me!"

All at once she escaped from their hands and began to run like a mad
woman; she had seen, twenty steps away, on the threshold of the door
by which she had come, her two murderers in pursuit of her.

Then they rushed after her; she shrieking that she was poisoned, they
shrieking that she was mad; and all this happening amid a crowd
which, not knowing what part to take, divided and made way for the
victim and the murderers.  Terror gave the marquise superhuman
strength: the woman who was accustomed to walk in silken shoes upon
velvet carpets, ran with bare and bleeding feet over stocks and
stones, vainly asking help, which none gave her; for, indeed, seeing
her thus, in mad flight, in a nightdress, with flying hair, her only
garment a tattered silk petticoat, it was difficult not to--think
that this woman was, as her brothers-in-law said, mad.

At last the chevalier came up with her, stopped her, dragged her, in
spite of her screams, into the nearest house, and closed the door
behind them, while the abbe, standing at the threshold with a pistol
in his hand, threatened to blow out the brains of any person who
should approach.

The house into which the chevalier and the marquise had gone belonged
to one M. Desprats, who at the moment was from home, and whose wife
was entertaining several of her friends.  The marquise and the
chevalier, still struggling together, entered the room where the
company was assembled: as among the ladies present were several who
also visited the marquise, they immediately arose, in the greatest
amazement, to give her the assistance that she implored; but the
chevalier hastily pushed them aside, repeating that the marquise was
mad.  To this reiterated accusation--to which, indeed, appearances
lent only too great a probability--the marquise replied by showing
her burnt neck and her blackened lips, and wringing her hands in
pain, cried out that she was poisoned, that she was going to die, and
begged urgently for milk, or at least for water.  Then the wife of a
Protestant minister, whose name was Madame Brunel, slipped into her
hand a box of orvietan, some pieces of which she hastened to swallow,
while another lady gave her a glass of water; but at the instant when
she was lifting it to her mouth, the chevalier broke it between her
teeth, and one of the pieces of glass cut her lips.  At this, all the
women would have flung themselves upon the chevalier; but the
marquise, fearing that he would only become more enraged, and hoping
to disarm him, asked, on the contrary, that she might be left alone
with him: all the company, yielding to her desire, passed into the
next room; this was what the chevalier, on his part, too, asked.

Scarcely were they alone, when the marquise, joining her hands, knelt
to him and said in the gentlest and most appealing voice that it was
possible to use, "Chevalier, my dear brother, will you not have pity
upon me, who have always had so much affection for you, and who, even
now, would give my blood for your service?  You know that the things
I am saying are not merely empty words; and yet how is it you are
treating me, though I have not deserved it?  And what will everyone
say to such dealings?  Ah, brother, what a great unhappiness is mine,
to have been so cruelly treated by you!  And yet--yes, brother--if
you will deign to have pity on me and to save my life, I swear, by my
hope of heaven, to keep no remembrance of what has happened; and to
consider you always as my protector and my friend."

All at once the marquise rose with a great cry and clasped her hand
to her right side.  While she was speaking, and before she perceived
what he was doing, the chevalier had drawn his sword, which was very
short, and using it as a dagger, had struck her in the breast; this
first blow was followed by a second, which came in contact with the
shoulder blade, and so was prevented from going farther.  At these
two blows the marquise rushed towards the door, of the room into
which the ladies had retired, crying, "Help!  He is killing me!"

But during the time that she took to cross the room the chevalier
stabbed her five times in the back with his sword, and would no doubt
have done more, if at the last blow his sword had not broken; indeed,
he had struck with such force that the fragment remained embedded in
her shoulder, and the marquise fell forward on the floor, in a pool
of her blood, which was flowing all round her and spreading through
the room.

The chevalier thought he had killed her, and hearing the women
running to her assistance, he rushed from the room.  The abbe was
still at the door, pistol in hand; the chevalier took him by the arm
to drag him away, and as the abbe hesitated to follow, he said:--

"Let us go, abbe; the business is done."

The chevalier and the abbe had taken a few steps in the street when a
window opened and the women who had found the marquise expiring
called out for help: at these cries the abbe stopped short, and
holding back the chevalier by the arm, demanded

"What was it you said, chevalier?  If they are calling help, is she
not dead, after all?"

"'Ma foi', go and see for yourself," returned the chevalier.  "I have
done enough for my share; it is your turn now."

"'Pardieu', that is quite my opinion," cried the abbe; and rushing
back to the house, he flung himself into the room at the moment when
the women, lifting the marquise with great difficulty, for she was so
weak that she could no longer help herself, were attempting to carry
her to bed.  The abbe pushed them away, and arriving at the marquise,
put his pistol to her heart; but Madame Brunel, the same who had
previously given the marquise a box of orvietan, lifted up the barrel
with her hand, so that the shot went off into the air, and the bullet
instead of striking the marquise lodged in the cornice of the
ceiling.  The abbe then took the pistol by the barrel and gave Madame
Brunet so violent a blow upon the head with the butt that she
staggered and almost fell; he was about to strike her again, but all
the women uniting against him, pushed him, with thousands of
maledictions, out of the room, and locked the door behind him.  The
two assassins, taking advantage of the darkness, fled from Ganges,
and reached Aubenas, which is a full league away, about ten in the
evening.

Meanwhile the women were doing all they could for the marquise.
Their first intention, as we have already said, was to put her to
bed, but the broken sword blade made her unable to lie down, and they
tried in vain to pull it out, so deeply had it entered the bone.
Then the marquise herself showed Madame Brunei what method to take:
the operating lady was to sit on the bed, and while the others helped
to hold up the marquise, was to seize the blade with both hands, and
pressing her--knees against the patient's back, to pull violently and
with a great jerk.  This plan at last succeeded, and the marquise was
able to get to bed; it was nine in the evening, and this horrible
tragedy had been going on for nearly three hours.

The magistrates of Ganges, being informed of what had happened, and
beginning to believe that it was really a case of murder, came in
person, with a guard, to the marquise.  As soon as she saw them come
in she recovered strength, and raising herself in bed, so great was
her fear, clasped her hands and besought their protection; for she
always expected to see one or the other of her murderers return.  The
magistrates told her to reassure herself, set armed men to guard all
the approaches to the house, and while physicians and surgeons were,
summoned in hot haste from Montpellier, they on their part sent word
to the Baron de Trissan, provost of Languedoc, of the crime that had
just been committed, and gave him the names and the description of
the murderers.  That official at once sent people after them, but it
was already too late: he learned that the abbe and the chevalier had
slept at Aubenas on the night of the murder, that there they had
reproached each other for their unskilfulness, and had come near
cutting each other's throats, that finally they had departed before
daylight, and had taken a boat, near Agde, from a beach called the
"Gras de Palaval."

The Marquis de Ganges was at Avignon, where he was prosecuting a
servant of his who had robbed him of two hundred crowns; when he
heard news of the event.  He turned horribly pale as he listened to
the messenger's story, then falling into a violent fury against his
brothers, he swore that they should have no executioners other than
himself.  Nevertheless, though he was so uneasy about the marquise's
condition, he waited until the next day in the afternoon before
setting forth, and during the interval he saw some of his friends at
Avignon without saying anything to them of the matter.  He did not
reach Ganges until four days after the murder, then he went to the
house of M. Desprats and asked to see his wife, whom some kind
priests had already prepared for the meeting; and the marquise, as
soon as she heard of his arrival, consented to receive him.  The
marquis immediately entered the room, with his eyes full of tears,
tearing his hair, and giving every token of the deepest despair.

The marquise receivers her husband like a forgiving wife and a dying
Christian.  She scarcely even uttered some slight reproaches about
the manner in which he had deserted her; moreover, the marquis having
complained to a monk of these reproaches, and the monk having
reported his complaints to the marquise, she called her husband to
her bedside, at a moment when she was surrounded by people, and made
him a public apology, begging him to attribute the words that seemed
to have wounded him to the effect of her sufferings, and not to any
failure in her regard for him.  The marquis, left alone with his
wife, tried to take advantage of this reconciliation to induce her to
annul the declaration that she had made before the magistrates of
Avignon; for the vice-legate and his officers, faithful to the
promises made to the marquise, had refused to register the fresh
donation which she had made at Ganges, according to the suggestions
of the abbe, and which the latter had sent off, the very moment it
was signed, to his brother.  But on this point the marquise was
immovably resolute, declaring that this fortune was reserved for her
children and therefore sacred to her, and that she could make no
alteration in what had been done at Avignon, since it represented her
genuine and final wishes.  Notwithstanding this declaration, the
marquis did not cease to--remain beside his wife and to bestow upon
her every care possible to a devoted and attentive husband.

Two days later than the Marquis de Ganges arrived Madame de Rossan
great was her amazement, after all the rumours that were already in
circulation about the marquis, at finding her daughter in the hands
of him whom she regarded as one of her murderers.  But the marquise,
far from sharing that opinion, did all she could, not only to make
her mother feel differently, but even to induce her to embrace the
marquis as a son.  This blindness on the part of the marquise caused
Madame de Rossan so much grief that notwithstanding her profound
affection for her daughter she would only stay two days, and in spite
of the entreaties that the dying woman made to her, she returned
home, not allowing anything to stop her.  This departure was a great
grief to the marquise, and was the reason why she begged with renewed
entreaties to be taken to Montpellier.  The very sight of the place
where she had been so cruelly tortured continually brought before
her, not only the remembrance of the murder, but the image of the
murderers, who in her brief moments of sleep so haunted her that she
sometimes awoke suddenly, uttering shrieks and calling for help.
Unfortunately, the physician considered her too weak to bear removal,
and declared that no change of place could be made without extreme
danger.

Then, when she heard this verdict, which had to be repeated to her,
and which her bright and lively complexion and brilliant eyes seemed
to contradict, the marquise turned all her thoughts towards holy
things, and thought only of dying like a saint after having already
suffered like a martyr.  She consequently asked to receive the last
sacrament, and while it was being sent for, she repeated her
apologies to her husband and her forgiveness of his brothers, and
this with a gentleness that, joined to her beauty, made her whole
personality appear angelic.  When, however, the priest bearing the
viaticum entered, this expression suddenly changed, and her face
presented every token of the greatest terror.  She had just
recognised in the priest who was bringing her the last consolations
of Heaven the infamous Perette, whom she could not but regard as an
accomplice of the abbe and the chevalier, since, after having tried
to hold her back, he had attempted to crush her beneath the pitcher
of water which he had thrown at her from the window, and since, when
he saw her escaping, he had run to warn her assassins and to set them
on her track.  She recovered herself quickly, however, and seeing
that the priest, without any sign of remorse, was drawing near to her
bedside, she would not cause so great a scandal as would have been
caused by denouncing him at such a moment.  Nevertheless, bending
towards him, she said, "Father, I hope that, remembering what has
passed, and in order to dispel fears that--I may justifiably
entertain, you will make no difficulty of partaking with me of the
consecrated wafer; for I have sometimes heard it said that the body
of our Lord Jesus Christ, while remaining a token of salvation, has
been known to be made a principle of death."

The priest inclined his head as a sign of assent.

So the marquise communicated thus, taking a sacrament that she shared
with one of her murderers, as an evidence that she forgave this one
like the others and that she prayed God to forgive them as she
herself did.

The following days passed without any apparent increase in her
illness, the fever by which she was consumed rather enhancing her
beauties, and imparting to her voice and gestures a vivacity which
they had never had before.  Thus everybody had begun to recover hope,
except herself, who, feeling better than anyone else what was her
true condition, never for a moment allowed herself any illusion, and
keeping her son, who was seven years old, constantly beside her bed,
bade him again and again look well at her, so that, young as he was,
he might remember her all his life and never forget her in his
prayers.  The poor child would burst into tears and promise not only
to remember her but also to avenge her when he was a man.  At these
words the marquise gently reproved him, telling him that all
vengeance belonged to the king and to God, and that all cares of the
kind must be left to those two great rulers of heaven and of earth.

On the 3rd of June, M.  Catalan, a councillor, appointed as a
commissioner by the Parliament of Toulouse, arrived at Ganges,
together with all the officials required by his commission; but he
could not see the marquise that night, for she had dozed for some
hours, and this sleep had left a sort of torpor upon her mind, which
might have impaired the lucidity of her depositions.  The next
morning, without asking anybody's opinion, M. Catalan repaired to the
house of M.  Desprats, and in spite of some slight resistance on the
part of those who were in charge of her, made his way to the presence
of the marquise.  The dying woman received him with an admirable
presence of mind, that made M. Catalan think there had been an
intention the night before to prevent any meeting between him and the
person whom he was sent to interrogate.  At first the marquise would
relate nothing that had passed, saying that she could not at the same
time accuse and forgive; but M. Catalan brought her to see that
justice required truth from her before all things, since, in default
of exact information, the law might go astray, and strike the
innocent instead of the guilty.  This last argument decided the
marquise, and during the hour and a half that he spent alone with her
she told him all the details of this horrible occurrence.  On the
morrow M. Catalan was to see her again; but on the morrow the
marquise was, in truth, much worse.  He assured himself of this by
his own eyes, and as he knew almost all that he wished to know, did
not insist further, for fear of fatiguing her.

Indeed, from that day forward, such atrocious sufferings laid hold
upon the marquise, that notwithstanding the firmness which she had
always shown, and which she tried to maintain to the end, she could
not prevent herself from uttering screams mingled with prayers.  In
this manner she spent the whole day of the 4th and part of the 5th.
At last, on that day, which was a Sunday, towards four o'clock in the
afternoon, she expired.

The body was immediately opened, and the physicians attested that the
marquise had died solely from the power of the poison, none of the
seven sword cuts which she had received being, mortal.  They found
the stomach and bowels burned and the brain blackened.  However, in
spite of that infernal draught, which, says the official report,
"would have killed a lioness in a few hours," the marquise struggled
for nineteen days, so much, adds an account from which we have
borrowed some of these details, so much did nature lovingly defend
the beautiful body that she had taken so much trouble to make.

M. Catalan, the very moment he was informed of the marquise's death,
having with him twelve guards belonging to the governor, ten archers,
and a poqueton,--despatched them to the marquis's castle with orders
to seize his person, that of the priest, and those of all the
servants except the groom who had assisted the marquise in her
flight.  The officer in command of this little squad found the
marquis walking up and down, melancholy and greatly disturbed, in the
large hall of the castle, and when he signified to him the order of
which he was the bearer, the marquis, without making any resistance,
and as though prepared for what was happening to him, replied that he
was ready to obey, and that moreover he had always intended to go
before the Parliament to accuse the murderers of his wife.  He was
asked for the key of his cabinet, which he gave up, and the order was
given to conduct him, with the other persons accused, to the prisons
of Montpellier.  As soon as the marquis came into that town, the
report of his arrival spread with incredible rapidity from street to
street.  Then, as it was dark, lights came to all the windows, and
people corning out with torches formed a torchlight procession, by
means of which everybody could see him.  He, like the priest, was
mounted on a sorry hired horse, and entirely surrounded by archers,
to whom, no doubt, he owed his life on this occasion; for the
indignation against him was so great that everyone was egging on his
neighbours to tear him limb from limb, which would certainly have
come to pass had he not been so carefully defended and guarded.

Immediately upon receiving news of her daughter's death, Madame de
Rossan took possession of all her property, and, making herself a
party to the case, declared that she would never desist from her suit
until her daughter's death was avenged.  M. Catalan began the
examination at once, and the first interrogation to which he
submitted the marquis lasted eleven hours.  Then soon afterwards he
and the other persons accused were conveyed from the prisons of
Montpellier to those of Toulouse.  A crushing memorial by Madame de
Rossan followed them, in which she demonstrated with absolute
clearness that the marquis had participated in the crime of his two
brothers, if not in act, in thought, desire, and intention.

The marquis's defence was very simple: it was his misfortune to have
had two villains for brothers, who had made attempts first upon the
honour and then upon the life of a wife whom he loved tenderly; they
had destroyed her by a most atrocious death, and to crown his evil
fortune, he, the innocent, was accused of having had a hand in that
death.  And, indeed, the examinations in the trial did not succeed in
bringing any evidence against the marquis beyond moral presumptions,
which, it appears, were insufficient to induce his judges to award a
sentence of death.

A verdict was consequently given, upon the 21st of August, 1667,
which sentenced the abbe and the chevalier de Ganges to be broken
alive on the wheel, the Marquis de Ganges to perpetual banishment
from the kingdom, his property to be confiscated to the king, and
himself to lose his nobility and to become incapable of succeeding to
the property of his children.  As for the priest Perette, he was
sentenced to the galleys for life, after having previously been
degraded from his clerical orders by the ecclesiastical authorities.

This sentence made as great a stir as the murder had done, and gave
rise, in that period when "extenuating circumstances" had not been
invented, to long and angry discussions.  Indeed, the marquis either
was guilty of complicity or was not: if he was not, the punishment
was too cruel; if he was, the sentence was too light.  Such was the
opinion of Louis XIV., who remembered the beauty of the Marquis de
Ganges; for, some time afterwards, when he was believed to have
forgotten this unhappy affair, and when he was asked to pardon the
Marquis de la Douze, who was accused of having poisoned his wife, the
king answered, "There is no need for a pardon, since he belongs to
the Parliament of Toulouse, and the Marquis de Ganges did very well
without one."

It may easily be supposed that this melancholy event did not pass
without inciting the wits of the day to write a vast number of verses
and bouts-rimes about the catastrophe by which one of the most
beautiful women of the country was carried off.  Readers who have a
taste for that sort of literature are referred to the journals and
memoirs of the times.

Now, as our readers, if they have taken any interest at all in the
terrible tale just narrated, will certainly ask what became of the
murderers, we will proceed to follow their course until the moment
when they disappeared, some into the night of death, some into the
darkness of oblivion.

The priest Perette was the first to pay his debt to Heaven: he died
at the oar on the way from Toulouse to Brest.

The chevalier withdrew to Venice, took service in the army of the
Most Serene Republic, then at war with Turkey, and was sent to
Candia, which the Mussulmans had been besieging for twenty years; he
had scarcely arrived there when, as he was walking on the ramparts of
the town with two other officers, a shell burst at their feet, and a
fragment of it killed the chevalier without so much as touching his
companions, so that the event was regarded as a direct act of
Providence.

As for the abbe, his story is longer and stranger.  He parted from
the chevalier in the neighbourhood of Genoa, and crossing the whole
of Piedmont, part of Switzerland, and a corner of Germany, entered
Holland under the name of Lamartelliere.  After many hesitations as
to the place where he would settle, he finally retired to Viane, of
which the Count of Lippe was at that time sovereign; there he made
the acquaintance of a gentleman who presented him to the count as a
French religious refugee.

The count, even in this first conversation, found that the foreigner
who had come to seek safety in his dominions possessed not only great
intelligence but a very solid sort of intelligence, and seeing that
the Frenchman was conversant with letters and with learning, proposed
that he should undertake the education of his son, who at that time
was nine years old.  Such a proposal was a stroke of fortune for the
abbe de Ganges, and he did not dream of refusing it.

The abbe de Ganges was one of those men who have great mastery over
themselves: from the moment when he saw that his interest, nay, the
very safety of his life required it, he concealed with extreme care
whatever bad passions existed within him, and only allowed his good
qualities to appear.  He was a tutor who supervised the heart as
sharply as the mind, and succeeded in making of his pupil a prince so
accomplished in both respects, that the Count of Lippe, making use of
such wisdom and such knowledge, began to consult the tutor upon all
matters of State, so that in course of time the so-called
Lamartelliere, without holding any public office, had become the soul
of the little principality.

The countess had a young relation living with her, who though without
fortune was of a great family, and for whom the countess had a deep
affection; it did not escape her notice that her son's tutor had
inspired this poor young girl with warmer feelings than became her
high station, and that the false Lamartelliere, emboldened by his own
growing credit, had done all he could to arouse and keep up these
feelings.  The countess sent for her cousin, and having drawn from
her a confession of her love, said that she herself had indeed a
great regard for her son's governor, whom she and her husband
intended to reward with pensions and with posts for the services he
had rendered to their family and to the State, but that it was too
lofty an ambition for a man whose name was Lamartelliere, and who had
no relations nor family that could be owned, to aspire to the hand of
a girl who was related to a royal house; and that though she did not
require that the man who married her cousin should be a Bourbon, a
Montmorency, or a Rohan, she did at least desire that he should be
somebody, though it were but a gentleman of Gascony or Poitou.

The Countess of Lippe's young kinswoman went and repeated this
answer, word for word, to her lover, expecting him to be overwhelmed
by it; but, on the contrary, he replied that if his birth was the
only obstacle that opposed their union, there might be means to
remove it.  In fact, the abbe, having spent eight years at the
prince's court, amid the strongest testimonies of confidence and
esteem, thought himself sure enough of the prince's goodwill to
venture upon the avowal of his real name.

He therefore asked an audience of the countess, who immediately
granted it.  Bowing to her respectfully, he said, "Madame, I had
flattered myself that your Highness honoured me with your esteem, and
yet you now oppose my happiness: your Highness's relative is willing
to accept me as a husband, and the prince your son authorises my
wishes and pardons my boldness; what have I done to you, madame, that
you alone should be against me? and with what can you reproach me
during the eight years that I have had the honour of serving your
Highness?"

"I have nothing to reproach you with, monsieur," replied the
countess: "but I do not wish to incur reproach on my own part by
permitting such a marriage: I thought you too sensible and reasonable
a man to need reminding that, while you confined yourself to suitable
requests and moderate ambitions, you had reason to be pleased with
our gratitude.  Do you ask that your salary shall be doubled?  The
thing is easy.  Do you desire important posts?  They shall be given
you; but do not, sir, so far forget yourself as to aspire to an
alliance that you cannot flatter yourself with a hope of ever
attaining."

"But, madame," returned the petitioner, "who told you that my birth
was so obscure as to debar me from all hope of obtaining your
consent?"

"Why, you yourself, monsieur, I think," answered the countess in
astonishment; "or if you did not say so, your name said so for you."

"And if that name is not mine, madame?" said the abbe, growing
bolder; "if unfortunate, terrible, fatal circumstances have compelled
me to take that name in order to hide another that was too unhappily
famous, would your Highness then be so unjust as not to change your
mind?"

"Monsieur," replied the countess, "you have said too much now not to
go on to the end.  Who are you?  Tell me.  And if, as you give me to
understand, you are of good birth, I swear to you that want of
fortune shall not stand in the way."

"Alas, madame," cried the abbe, throwing himself at her feet, "my
name, I am sure, is but too familiar to your Highness, and I would
willingly at this moment give half my blood that you had never heard
it uttered; but you have said it, madame, have gone too far to
recede.  Well, then, I am that unhappy abbe de Ganges whose crimes
are known and of whom I have more than once heard you speak."

"The abbe de Ganges!" cried the countess in horror,--"the abbe de
Ganges!  You are that execrable abbe de Ganges whose very name makes
one shudder?  And to you, to a man thus infamous, we have entrusted
the education of our only son?  Oh, I hope, for all our sakes,
monsieur, that you are speaking falsely; for if you were speaking the
truth I think I should have you arrested this very instant and taken
back to France to undergo your punishment.  The best thing you can
do, if what you have said to me is true, is instantly to leave not
only the castle, but the town and the principality; it will be
torment enough for the rest of my life whenever I think that I have
spent seven years under the same roof with you."

The abbe would have replied; but the countess raised her voice so
much, that the young prince, who had been won over to his tutor's
interests and who was listening at his mother's door, judged that his
protege's business was taking an unfavourable turn; and went in to
try and put things right.  He found his mother so much alarmed that
she drew him to her by an instinctive movement, as though to put
herself under his protection, and beg and pray as he might; he could
only obtain permission for his tutor to go away undisturbed to any
country of the world that he might prefer, but with an express
prohibition of ever again entering the presence of the Count or the
Countess of Lippe.

The abbe de Ganges withdrew to Amsterdam, where he became a teacher
of languages, and where his lady-love soon after came to him and
married him: his pupil, whom his parents could not induce, even when
they told him the real name of the false Lamartelliere, to share
their horror of him, gave him assistance as long as he needed it; and
this state of things continued until upon his wife attaining her
majority he entered into possession of some property that belonged to
her.  His regular conduct and his learning, which had been rendered
more solid by long and serious study, caused him to be admitted into
the Protestant consistory; there, after an exemplary life, he died,
and none but God ever knew whether it was one of hypocrisy or of
penitence.

As for the Marquis de Ganges, who had been sentenced, as we have
seen, to banishment and the confiscation of his property, he was
conducted to the frontier of Savoy and there set at liberty.  After
having spent two or three years abroad, so that the terrible
catastrophe in which he had been concerned should have time to be
hushed up, he came back to France, and as nobody--Madame de Rossan
being now dead--was interested in prosecuting him, he returned to his
castle at Ganges, and remained there, pretty well hidden.  M. de
Baville, indeed, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, learned that the
marquis had broken from his exile; but he was told, at the same time,
that the marquis, as a zealous Catholic, was forcing his vassals to
attend mass, whatever their religion might be: this was the period in
which persons of the Reformed Church were being persecuted, and the
zeal of the marquis appeared to M. de Baville to compensate and more
than compensate for the peccadillo of which he had been accused;
consequently, instead of prosecuting him, he entered into secret
communication with him, reassuring him about his stay in France, and
urging on his religious zeal; and in this manner twelve years passed
by.

During this time the marquise's young son, whom we saw at his
mother's deathbed, had reached the age of twenty, and being rich in
his father's possessions--which his uncle had restored to him--and
also by his mother's inheritance, which he had shared with his
sister, had married a girl of good family, named Mademoiselle de
Moissac, who was both rich and beautiful.  Being called to serve in
the royal army, the count brought his young wife to the castle of
Ganges, and, having fervently commended her to his father, left her
in his charge.

The Marquis de Ganges was forty-two veers old, and scarcely seemed
thirty; he was one of the handsomest men living; he fell in love with
his daughter-in-law and hoped to win her love, and in order to
promote this design, his first care was to separate from her, under
the excuse of religion, a maid who had been with her from childhood
and to whom she was greatly attached.

This measure, the cause of which the young marquise did not know,
distressed her extremely.  It was much against her will that she had
come to live at all in this old castle of Ganges, which had so
recently been the scene of the terrible story that we have just told.
She inhabited the suite of rooms in which the murder had been
committed; her bedchamber was the same which had belonged to the late
marquise; her bed was the same; the window by which she had fled was
before her eyes; and everything, down to the smallest article of
furniture, recalled to her the details of that savage tragedy.  But
even worse was her case when she found it no longer possible to doubt
her father-in-law's intentions; when she saw herself beloved by one
whose very name had again and again made her childhood turn pale with
terror, and when she was left alone at all hours of the day in the
sole company of the man whom public rumour still pursued as a
murderer.  Perhaps in any other place the poor lonely girl might have
found some strength in trusting herself to God; but there, where God
had suffered one of the fairest and purest creatures that ever
existed to perish by so cruel a death, she dared not appeal to Him,
for He seemed to have turned away from this family.

She waited, therefore, in growing terror; spending her days, as much
as she could, with the women of rank who lived in the little town of
Ganges, and some of whom, eye-witnesses of her mother-in-law's
murder, increased her terrors by the accounts which they gave of it,
and which she, with the despairing obstinacy of fear, asked to hear
again and again.  As to her nights, she spent the greater part of
them on her knees, and fully dressed, trembling at the smallest
sound; only breathing freely as daylight came back, and then
venturing to seek her bed for a few hours' rest.

At last the marquis's attempts became so direct and so pressing, that
the poor young woman resolved to escape at all costs from his hands.
Her first idea was to write to her father, explain to him her
position and ask help; but her father had not long been a Catholic,
and had suffered much on behalf of the Reformed religion, and on
these accounts it was clear that her letter would be opened by the
marquis on pretext of religion, and thus that step, instead of
saving, might destroy her.  She had thus but one resource: her
husband had always been a Catholic; her husband was a captain of
dragoons, faithful in the service of the king and faithful in the
service of God; there could be no excuse for opening a letter to him;
she resolved to address herself to him, explained the position in
which she found herself, got the address written by another hand, and
sent the letter to Montpellier, where it was posted.

The young marquis was at Metz when he received his wife's missive.
At that instant all his childish memories awoke; he beheld himself at
his dying mother's bedside, vowing never to forget her and to pray
daily for her.  The image presented itself of this wife whom he
adored, in the same room, exposed to the same violence, destined
perhaps to the same fate; all this was enough to lead him to take
positive action: he flung himself into a post-chaise, reached
Versailles, begged an audience of the king, cast himself, with his
wife's letter in his hand, at the feet of Louis XIV, and besought him
to compel his father to return into exile, where he swore upon has
honour that he would send him everything he could need in order to
live properly.

The king was not aware that the Marquis do Ganges had disobeyed the
sentence of banishment, and the manner in which he learned it was not
such as to make him pardon the contradiction of his laws.  In
consequence he immediately ordered that if the Marquis de Ganges were
found in France he should be proceeded against with the utmost
rigour.

Happily for the marquis, the Comte de Ganges, the only one of his
brothers who had remained in France, and indeed in favour, learned
the king's decision in time.  He took post from Versailles, and
making the greatest haste, went to warn him of the danger that was
threatening; both together immediately left Ganges, and withdrew to
Avignon.  The district of Venaissin, still belonging at that time to
the pope and being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as
foreign territory.  There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who
did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would
have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis
was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him;
he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a
charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he was lost sight
of; none ever heard him spoken of again, and when I myself travelled
in the south of France in 1835, I sought in vain any trace of the
obscure and forgotten death which closed so turbulent and stormy an
existence.

As, in speaking of the last adventures of the Marquis de Ganges, we
have mentioned the name of Madame d'Urban, his daughter, we cannot
exempt ourselves from following her amid the strange events of her
life, scandalous though they may be; such, indeed, was the fate of
this family, that it was to occupy the attention of France through
well-nigh a century, either by its crimes or by its freaks.

On the death of the marquise, her daughter, who was barely six years
old, had remained in the charge of the dowager Marquise de Ganges,
who, when she had attained her twelfth year, presented to her as her
husband the Marquis de Perrant, formerly a lover of the grandmother
herself.  The marquis was seventy years of age, having been born in
the reign of Henry IV; he had seen the court of Louis XIII and that
of Louis XIV's youth, and he had remained one of its most elegant and
favoured nobles; he had the manners of those two periods, the
politest that the world has known, so that the young girl, not
knowing as yet the meaning of marriage and having seen no other man,
yielded without repugnance, and thought herself happy in becoming the
Marquise de Perrant.

The marquis, who was very rich, had quarrelled With his younger
brother, and regarded him with such hatred that he was marrying only
to deprive his brother of the inheritance that would rightfully
accrue to him, should the elder die childless.  Unfortunately, the
marquis soon perceived that the step which he had taken, however
efficacious in the case of another man, was likely to be fruitless in
his own.  He did not, however, despair, and waited two or three
years, hoping every day that Heaven would work a miracle in his
favour; but as every day diminished the chances of this miracle, and
his hatred for his brother grew with the impossibility of taking
revenge upon him, he adopted a strange and altogether antique scheme,
and determined, like the ancient Spartans, to obtain by the help of
another what Heaven refused to himself.

The marquis did not need to seek long for the man who should give him
his revenge: he had in his house a young page, some seventeen or
eighteen years old, the son of a friend of his, who, dying without
fortune, had on his deathbed particularly commended the lad to the
marquis.  This young man, a year older than his mistress, could not
be continually about her without falling passionately in love with
her; and however much he might endeavour to hide his love, the poor
youth was as yet too little practised in dissimulation to succeed iii
concealing it from the eyes of the marquis, who, after having at
first observed its growth with uneasiness, began on the contrary to
rejoice in it, from the moment when he had decided upon the scheme
that we have just mentioned.

The marquis was slow to decide but prompt to execute.  Having taken
his resolution, he summoned his page, and, after having made him
promise inviolable secrecy, and having undertaken, on that condition,
to prove his gratitude by buying him a regiment, explained what was
expected of him.  The poor youth, to whom nothing could have been
more unexpected than such a communication, took it at first for a
trick by which the marquis meant to make him own his love, and was
ready to throw himself at his feet and declare everything; but the
marquis seeing his confusion, and easily guessing its cause,
reassured him completely by swearing that he authorised him to take
any steps in order to attain the end that the marquis had in view.
As in his inmost heart the aim of the young man was the same, the
bargain was soon struck: the page bound himself by the most terrible
oaths to keep the secret; and the marquis, in order to supply
whatever assistance was in his power, gave him money to spend,
believing that there was no woman, however virtuous, who could resist
the combination of youth, beauty, and fortune: unhappily for the
marquis, such a woman, whom he thought impossible, did exist, and was
his wife.

The page was so anxious to obey his master, that from that very day
his mistress remarked the alteration that arose from the permission
given him--his prompt obedience to her orders and his speed in
executing them, in order to return a few moments the sooner to her
presence.  She was grateful to him, and in the simplicity of her
heart she thanked him.  Two days later the page appeared before her
splendidly dressed; she observed and remarked upon his improved
appearance, and amused herself in conning over all the parts of his
dress, as she might have done with a new doll.  All this familiarity
doubled the poor young man's passion, but he stood before his
mistress, nevertheless, abashed and trembling, like Cherubino before
his fair godmother.  Every evening the marquis inquired into his
progress, and every evening the page confessed that he was no farther
advanced than the day before; then the marquis scolded, threatened to
take away his fine clothes, to withdraw his own promises, and finally
to address himself to some other person.  At this last threat the
youth would again call up his courage, and promise to be bolder
to-morrow; and on the morrow would spend the day in making a thousand
compliments to his mistress's eyes, which she, in her innocence, did
not understand.  At last, one day, Madame de Perrant asked him what
made him look at her thus, and he ventured to confess his love; but
then Madame de Perrant, changing her whole demeanour, assumed a face
of sternness and bade him go out of her room.

The poor lover obeyed, and ran, in despair, to confide his grief to
the husband, who appeared sincerely to share it, but consoled him by
saying that he had no doubt chosen his moment badly; that all women,
even the least severe, had inauspicious hours in which they would not
yield to attack, and that he must let a few days pass, which he must
employ in making his peace, and then must take advantage of a better
opportunity, and not allow himself to be rebuffed by a few refusals;
and to these words the marquis added a purse of gold, in order that
the page might, if necessary, win over the marquise's waiting-woman.

Guided thus by the older experience of the husband, the page began to
appear very much ashamed and very penitent; but for a day or two the
marquise, in spite of his apparent humility, kept him at a distance:
at last, reflecting no doubt, with the assistance of her mirror and
of her maid, that the crime was not absolutely unpardonable, and
after having reprimanded the culprit at some length, while he stood
listening with eyes cast down, she gave a him her hand, forgave him,
and admitted him to her companionship as before.

Things went on in this way for a week.  The page no longer raised his
eyes and did not venture to open his mouth, and the marquise was
beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak,
when, one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had
allowed him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left
her alone, to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had
vainly tried to stifle his love, and that, even although he were to
die under the weight of her anger, he must tell her that this love
was immense, eternal, stronger than his life.  The marquise upon this
wished to send him away, as on the former occasion, but instead of
obeying her, the page, better instructed, took her in his arms.  The
marquise called, screamed, broke her bell-rope; the waiting-maid, who
had been bought over, according to the marquis's advice, had kept the
other women out of the way, and was careful not to come herself.
Then the marquise, resisting force by force, freed herself from the
page's arms, rushed to her husband's room, and there, bare-necked,
with floating hair, and looking lovelier than ever, flung herself
into his arms and begged his protection against the insolent fellow
who had just insulted her.  But what was the amazement of the
marquise, when, instead of the anger which she expected to see break
forth, the marquis answered coldly that what she was saying was
incredible, that he had always found the young man very well behaved,
and that, no doubt, having taken up some frivolous ground of
resentment against him, she was employing this means to get rid of
him; but, he added, whatever might be his love for her, and his
desire to do everything that was agreeable to her, he begged her not
to require this of him, the young man being his friend's son, and
consequently his own adopted child.  It was now the marquise who, in
her turn, retired abashed, not knowing what to make of such a reply,
and fully resolving, since her husband's protection failed her, to
keep herself well guarded by her own severity.

Indeed, from that moment the marquise behaved to the poor youth with
so much prudery, that, loving her as he did, sincerely, he would have
died of grief, if he had not had the marquis at hand to encourage and
strengthen him.  Nevertheless, the latter himself began to despair,
and to be more troubled by the virtue of his wife than another man
might have been by the levity of his.  Finally, he resolved, seeing
that matters remained at the same point and that the marquise did not
relax in the smallest degree, to take extreme measures.  He hid his
page in a closet of his wife's bedchamber, and, rising during her
first sleep, left empty his own place beside her, went out softly,
double-locked the door, and listened attentively to hear what would
happen.

He had not been listening thus for ten minutes when he heard a great
noise in the room, and the page trying in vain to appease it.  The
marquis hoped that he might succeed, but the noise increasing, showed
him that he was again to be disappointed; soon came cries for help,
for the marquise could not ring, the bell-ropes having been lifted
out of her reach, and no one answering her cries, he heard her spring
from her high bed, run to the door, and finding it locked rush to the
window, which she tried to open: the scene had come to its climax.

The marquis decided to go in, lest some tragedy should happen, or
lest his wife's screams should reach some belated passer-by, who next
day would make him the talk of the town.  Scarcely did the marquise
behold him when she threw herself into his arms, and pointing to the
page, said:--

"Well, monsieur, will you still hesitate to free me from this
insolent wretch?"

"Yes, madame," replied the marquis; "for this insolent wretch has
been acting for the last three months not only with my sanction but
even by my orders."

The marquise remained stupefied.  Then the marquis, without sending
away the page, gave his wife an explanation of all that had passed,
and besought her to yield to his desire of obtaining a successor,
whom he would regard as his own child, so long as it was hers; but
young though she was, the marquise answered with a dignity unusual at
her age, that his power over her had the limits that were set to it
by law, and not those that it might please him to set in their place,
and that however much she might wish to do what might be his
pleasure, she would yet never obey him at the expense of her soul and
her honour.

So positive an answer, while it filled her husband with despair,
proved to him that he must renounce the hope of obtaining an heir;
but since the page was not to blame for this, he fulfilled the
promise that he had made, bought him a regiment, and resigned himself
to having the most virtuous wife in France.  His repentance was not,
however, of long duration; he died at the end of three months, after
having confided to his friend, the Marquis d'Urban, the cause of his
sorrows.

The Marquis d'Urban had a son of marriageable age; he thought that he
could find nothing more suitable for him than a wife whose virtue had
come triumphantly through such a trial: he let her time of mourning
pass, and then presented the young Marquis d'Urban, who succeeded in
making his attentions acceptable to the beautiful widow, and soon
became her husband.  More fortunate than his predecessor, the Marquis
d'Urban had three heirs to oppose to his collaterals, when, some two
years and a half later, the Chevalier de Bouillon arrived at the
capital of the county of Venaissin.

The Chevalier de Bouillon was a typical rake of the period, handsome,
young, and well-grown; the nephew of a cardinal who was influential
at Rome, and proud of belonging to a house which had privileges of
suzerainty.  The chevalier, in his indiscreet fatuity, spared no
woman; and his conduct had given some scandal in the circle of Madame
de Maintenon, who was rising into power.  One of his friends, having
witnessed the displeasure exhibited towards him by Louis XIV, who was
beginning to become devout, thought to do him a service by warning
him that the king "gardait une dent" against him. [ Translator's
note.--"Garder une dent," that is, to keep up a grudge, means
literally "to keep a tooth" against him.]

"Pardieu!" replied the chevalier, "I am indeed unlucky when the only
tooth left to him remains to bite me."

This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the
chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king
desired him to travel for some years.  He knew the danger of
neglecting--such intimations, and since he thought the country after
all preferable to the Bastille, he left Paris, and arrived at
Avignon, surrounded by the halo of interest that naturally attends a
handsome young persecuted nobleman.

The virtue of Madame d'Urban was as much cried up at Avignon as the
ill-behaviour of the chevalier had been reprobated in Paris.  A
reputation equal to his own, but so opposite in kind, could not fail
to be very offensive to him, therefore he determined immediately upon
arriving to play one against the other.

Nothing was easier than the attempt.  M. d'Urban, sure of his wife's
virtue, allowed her entire liberty; the chevalier saw her wherever he
chose to see her, and every time he saw her found means to express a
growing passion.  Whether because the hour had come for Madame
d'Urban, or whether because she was dazzled by the splendour of the
chevalier's belonging to a princely house, her virtue, hitherto so
fierce, melted like snow in the May sunshine; and the chevalier,
luckier than the poor page, took the husband's place without any
attempt on Madame d'Urban's part to cry for help.

As all the chevalier desired was public triumph, he took care to make
the whole town acquainted at once with his success; then, as some
infidels of the neighbourhood still doubted, the chevalier ordered
one of his servants to wait for him at the marquise's door with a
lantern and a bell.  At one in the morning, the chevalier came out,
and the servant walked before him, ringing the bell.  At this
unaccustomed sound, a great number of townspeople, who had been
quietly asleep, awoke, and, curious to see what was happening, opened
their windows.  They beheld the chevalier, walking gravely behind his
servant, who continued to light his master's way and to ring
along the course of the street that lay between Madame d'Urban's
house and his own.  As he had made no mystery to anyone of his love
affair, nobody took the trouble even to ask him whence he came.
However, as there might possibly be persons still unconvinced, he
repeated this same jest, for his own satisfaction, three nights
running; so that by the morning of the fourth day nobody had any
doubts left.

As generally happens in such cases, M. d'Urban did not know a word of
what was going on until the moment when his friends warned him that
he was the talk of the town.  Then he forbade his wife to see her
lover again.  The prohibition produced the usual results: on the
morrow, as, soon as M. d'Urban had gone out, the marquise sent for
the chevalier to inform him of the catastrophe in which they were
both involved; but she found him far better prepared than herself for
such blows, and he tried to prove to her, by reproaches for her
imprudent conduct, that all this was her fault; so that at last the
poor woman, convinced that it was she who had brought these woes upon
them, burst into tears.  Meanwhile, M. d'Urban, who, being jealous
for the first time, was the more seriously so, having learned that
the chevalier was with his wife, shut the doors, and posted himself
in the ante-chamber with his servants, in order to seize him as he
came out.  But the chevalier, who had ceased to trouble himself about
Madame d'Urban's tears, heard all the preparations, and, suspecting
some ambush, opened the window, and, although it was one o'clock in
the afternoon and the place was full of people, jumped out of the
window into the street, and did not hurt himself at all, though the
height was twenty feet, but walked quietly home at a moderate pace.

The same evening, the chevalier, intending to relate his new
adventure in all its details, invited some of his friends to sup with
him at the pastrycook Lecoq's.  This man, who was a brother of the
famous Lecoq of the rue Montorgueil, was the cleverest eating-house-
keeper in Avignon; his own unusual corpulence commended his cookery,
and, when he stood at the door, constituted an advertisement for his
restaurant.  The good man, knowing with what delicate appetites he
had to deal, did his very best that evening, and that nothing might
be wanting, waited upon his guests himself.  They spent the night
drinking, and towards morning the chevalier and his companions, being
then drunk, espied their host standing respectfully at the door, his
face wreathed in smiles.  The chevalier called him nearer, poured him
out a glass of wine and made him drink with them; then, as the poor
wretch, confused at such an honour, was thanking him with many bows,
he said:--

"Pardieu, you are too fat for Lecoq, and I must make you a capon."

This strange proposition was received as men would receive it who
were drunk and accustomed by their position to impunity.  The
unfortunate pastry-cook was seized, bound down upon the table, and
died under their treatment.  The vice-legate being informed of the
murder by one of the waiters, who had run in on hearing his master's
shrieks, and had found him, covered with blood, in the hands of his
butchers, was at first inclined to arrest the chevalier and bring him
conspicuously to punishment.  But he was restrained by his regard for
the Cardinal de Bouillon, the chevalier's uncle, and contented
himself with warning the culprit that unless he left the town
instantly he would be put into the hands of the authorities.  The
chevalier, who was beginning to have had enough of Avignon, did not
wait to be told twice, ordered the wheels of his chaise to be greased
and horses to be brought.  In the interval before they were ready the
fancy took him to go and see Madame d'Urban again.

As the house of the marquise was the very last at which, after the
manner of his leaving it the day before, the chevalier was expected
at such an hour, he got in with the greatest ease, and, meeting a
lady's-maid, who was in his interests, was taken to the room where
the marquise was.  She, who had not reckoned upon seeing the
chevalier again, received him with all the raptures of which a woman
in love is capable, especially when her love is a forbidden one.  But
the chevalier soon put an end to them by announcing that his visit
was a visit of farewell, and by telling her the reason that obliged
him to leave her.  The marquise was like the woman who pitied the
fatigue of the poor horses that tore Damien limb from limb; all her
commiseration was for the chevalier, who on account of such a trifle
was being forced to leave Avignon.  At last the farewell had to be
uttered, and as the chevalier, not knowing what to say at the fatal
moment, complained that he had no memento of her, the marquise took
down the frame that contained a portrait of herself corresponding
with one of her husband, and tearing out the canvas, rolled, it up
and gave it to the chevalier.  The latter, so far from being touched
by this token of love, laid it down, as he went away, upon a piece of
furniture, where the marquise found it half an hour later.  She
imagined that his mind being so full of the original, he had
forgotten the copy, and representing to herself the sorrow which the
discovery of this forgetfulness would cause him, she sent for a
servant, gave him the picture, and ordered him to take horse and ride
after the chevalier's chaise.  The man took a post-horse, and, making
great speed, perceived the fugitive in the distance just as the
latter had finished changing horses.  He made violent signs and
shouted loudly, in order to stop the postillion.  But the postillion
having told his fare that he saw a man coming on at full speed, the
chevalier supposed himself to be pursued, and bade him go on as fast
as possible.  This order was so well obeyed that the unfortunate
servant only came up with the chaise a league and a half farther on;
having stopped the postillion, he got off his horse, and very
respectfully presented to the chevalier the picture which he had been
bidden to bring him.  But the chevalier, having recovered from his
first alarm, bade him go about his business, and take back the
portrait--which was of no use to him--to the sender.  The servant,
however, like a faithful messenger, declared that his orders were
positive, and that he should not dare go back to Madame d'Urban
without fulfilling them.  The chevalier, seeing that he could not
conquer the man's determination, sent his postillion to a farrier,
whose house lay on the road, for a hammer and four nails, and with
his own hands nailed the portrait to the back of his chaise; then he
stepped in again, bade the postillion whip up his horses, and drove
away, leaving Madame d'Urban's messenger greatly astonished at the
manner in which the chevalier had used his mistress's portrait.

At the next stage, the postillion, who was going back, asked for his
money, and the chevalier answered that he had none.  The postillion
persisted; then the chevalier got out of his chaise, unfastened
Madame d'Urban's portrait, and told him that he need only put it up
for sale in Avignon and declare how it had come into his possession,
in order to receive twenty times the price of his stage; the
postillion, seeing that nothing else was to be got out of the
chevalier, accepted the pledge, and, following his instructions
precisely, exhibited it next morning at the door of a dealer in the
town, together with an exact statement of the story.  The picture was
bought back the same day for twenty-five Louis.

As may be supposed, the adventure was much talked of throughout the
town.  Next day, Madame d'Urban disappeared, no one knew whither, at
the very time when the relatives of the marquis were met together and
had decided to ask the king for a 'lettre-de-cachet'.  One of the
gentlemen present was entrusted with the duty of taking the necessary
steps; but whether because he was not active enough, or whether
because he was in Madame d'Urban's interests, nothing further was
heard in Avignon of any consequences ensuing from such steps.  In the
meantime, Madame d'Urban, who had gone to the house of an aunt,
opened negotiations with her husband that were entirely successful,
and a month after this adventure she returned triumphantly to the
conjugal roof.

Two hundred pistoles, given by the Cardinal de Bouillon, pacified the
family of the unfortunate pastry-cook, who at first had given notice
of the affair to the police, but who soon afterwards withdrew their
complaint, and gave out that they had taken action too hastily on the
strength of a story told in joke, and that further inquiries showed
their relative to have died of an apoplectic stroke.

Thanks--to this declaration, which exculpated the Chevalier de
Bouillon in the eyes of the king, he was allowed, after travelling
for two years in Italy and in Germany, to return undisturbed to
France.

Thus ends, not the family of Ganges, but the commotion which the
family made in the world.  From time to time, indeed, the playwright
or the novelist calls up the pale and bloodstained figure of the
marquise to appear either on the stage or in a book; but the
evocation almost always ceases at her, and many persons who have
written about the mother do not even know what became of the
children.  Our intention has been to fill this gap; that is why we
have tried to tell what our predecessors left out, and try offer to
our readers what the stage--and often the actual world--offers;
comedy after melodrama.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of "MARQUISE DE GANGES"
From CELEBRATED CRIMES, VOL. 8
by Alexander Dumas, Pere




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of CELEBRATED CRIMES, Complete
by Alexander Dumas, Pere

