by Robert Merle
“But, sire,” I replied, “didn’t you tell Quéribus that you yourself were suffering from a terrible sore throat?”
“No, no! He must have misunderstood. The only pain I feel is here,” he mused, touching his heart, “since I’m so devastated to see those I love betray me, especially those who are most guilty of ingratitude.”
At this, Chicot and I looked at each other in silence (Du Halde having left the chapel to enquire about a disturbance that we could hear in the antechamber) and wondered whether “those most guilty of ingratitude” referred to the queen mother, or Margot, or the Duc de Joyeuse—who, owing everything to the king, was now leaning towards Guise, according to what Quéribus had told us at the Rugged Oak—or perhaps all three of them together.
“Sire,” announced Du Halde, “it is Monsieur the Cardinal de Bourbon, whom you sent for.”
“Have him come in, Du Halde,” replied the king with a smile, which lit up not only his own face but ours as well, by a kind of after-effect. Chicot recovered his role as fool quickly enough to add:
“Henri, do you know what I found in your antechamber, left there intentionally by some wag? Two pencil drawings, one of which represents the Great Halfwit—”
“Quiet, Chicot!” hushed the king, his smile broadening.
“…in his doublet, sword by his side, but wearing his cardinal’s mitre, and underneath the drawing, this legend: ‘Ah Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia coepit?’”*
“Hush, Chicot!” hissed the king, laughing. “The presumptuous presumptive to the throne will be here any minute!”
“And the other,” continued Chicot, “representing the Great Whoremonger in his red robe and his cardinal’s mitre, but with a large unsheathed sword in his hand and, underneath, this legend: ‘Domine, mitte gladium in vaginam, Ecclesia nescit sanguinem.’”†
At this, the king burst out laughing and suddenly seemed to have regained his former vigour and been so cured of his sombre and ruminant mood that his face appeared rejuvenated and restored to health.
“Page,” he cried, “close the door to my chapel, so that the presumptive heir doesn’t see my childish activities! It would doubtless be the subject of an infinite number of calumnies he’d spread to his Guisard friends! And yet, when you think about it, if some grown men suck or bite their thumbs to ease their minds and calm their souls, why shouldn’t I, for the same purpose, cut out pictures? What’s more, I’ve done no harm except to this unhappy manuscript, which, in any guise, will be nothing but dust in a thousand years.”
“That’s well said,” exclaimed Chicot, pretending to have misheard. “All Guises will end up as dust, and much sooner than a thousand years from now!”
At this the king broke out laughing again, and even the grave and austere Du Halde allowed a trace of a smile to curl his lips at all this indecent craziness, since he could see that it had enticed Henri out of his melancholy. At length, he opened the door and introduced the Cardinal de Bourbon, who appeared not in a doublet as in the drawing, but in a red robe, his mitre on his head; beneath this mitre was a curious mixture of vanity, stupidity, weakness and violence that excited in one an immediate urge to abuse and make light of him. The king, bringing himself up to his full height, stepped confidently towards his guest with a smile on his face, his handsome Italian eyes sparkling with mirth, and, without offering his hand or allowing the cardinal to kneel, gave him a welcoming embrace and showered him with caresses, compliments and cajolery, which were so exaggerated and so excessive that one might have thought that this man, who was twice Henri’s age, was his son and heir.
“My cousin,” gushed the king, who, taking his arm, began walking the cardinal up and down his chambers at a much faster pace than the fat old prelate would have preferred to take, “will you answer truthfully the question I shall put to you?”
“Sire,” replied the old man, “providing I know the right answer to your question, I shall give it to you straight out.”
“Well then!” laughed the king. “I’ve got you, my cousin!”
“What do you mean ‘got me’?” stammered the cardinal, his stupid eyes widening.
“My cousin,” Henri continued, feigning some gravity, “God has not yet given me an heir, and it would appear that He’s not going to do so. Alas, we live in an uncertain world and the Lord could call me to His side at any minute! If that were to happen, the crown would fall directly to the Bourbon line. So tell me, Cousin, would you not like, even though you are descended from the cadet branch of the family, to take precedence over your nephew, the king of Navarre, and have the kingdom of France fall to you rather than to him?”
“Sire! Sire!” stammered the cardinal, his terrified, wide chicken’s eyes rolling around in their orbits. “Who could ever contemplate your passing? I assure you, it’s not something I’ve ever thought of,” he continued lowering his eyes hypocritically. “I pray to God with all my heart that He spare us this calamity, and since I’m twice as old as you, I’m afraid the aches and pains of this old body will have ceased long before the Lord takes Your Majesty from us! What an idea, that you should disappear before me! No, sire, most assuredly I don’t think about it at all,” he continued, his lying, stupid eyes looking wildly around, as if to find a mouse hole to hide in. “No, no,” he added, his voice pushing up into a falsetto, “I never think about it, since it’s so beyond the realm of reason or appearance, and against the order of nature that ensures that old men go to the grave before the young ones.”
“My cousin,” insisted the king, his face deadly serious, but his eyes twinkling in amusement at the protestations of the cardinal, “haven’t you noticed that, every day, Nature’s orders are inverted and reversed, as the young precede the old on the road to the Styx? So, as you promised to do, tell me freely, my cousin: if that happened in my case, wouldn’t you stand in opposition to the king of Navarre as regards the succession to the throne?”
“Ah, sire!” moaned the cardinal, struggling timidly to free his arm from the king’s grasp and slow the pace with which His Majesty was moving him back and forth in the room. “Ah, sire, you’re too insistent!”
“But ultimately, Monsieur cardinal,” rejoined the king, “won’t you tell me the whole truth, since your sacred position naturally inclines you to honesty?”
“Assuredly so,” answered the cardinal, all out of breath from the promenade he’d been subjected to. “Well then, sire, since you command me so insistently: although the misfortune of losing you has never entered my mind, being so far from the natural course of things and from any reasonable discourse”—a phrase he must have used in his sermons, since it flowed so quickly and easily from his mouth—“nevertheless, if such a great misfortune were to befall us, and for which I could never shed enough tears, then, sire, then, indeed, the kingdom should be delivered into my hands, for I am a good Catholic, and should not be governed by Navarre, who is a Huguenot, and I should be quite resolved never to cede it to him.”
At this, the king stopped his mad pacing from one end of the room to the other, led the cardinal to the door, removed his arm from the prelate’s and, with a smile, said:
“My good friend, Paris might well offer you the crown, but the parliament would take it away from you.”
Having said this, he turned to Du Halde and told him in mocking tones:
“Du Halde, show the cardinal out with all the honours that you owe to his person, to his estate and to his ambitions.”
After which, without presenting him his hand, he made him a slight bow and turned his back on him.
As soon as the other had left, Henri threw himself down in his armchair and, hiding his mouth with his hand as women often do, burst out laughing; he was immediately joined in his mirth by Du Halde, Chicot and me, but not by the page, who stared at us with his big blue eyes but said not a word.
“Henri,” laughed Chicot, “you certainly pulled the worms out of the Great Halfwit’s nose!”
“Worms—or vipers!” said the king.
“Monsieur Chicot,” began the page, leaving me astonished that he should presume to open his mouth in the presence of His Majesty.
“Monsieur Chicot!” Chicot repeated, pretending to be indignant. “You good-for-nothing! How dare you ‘Monsieur’ me? If you must know, it’s just ‘Chicot’, fool to His Double Majesty, but when we’re not in the presence of the king you may call me ‘sire’, since I’m the king of fools!”
“Chicot,” began the page, blushing, “I shall remember.”
“You may speak now, my child,” said the king with his customary gentleness.
“Sire,” said the page, who wasn’t sure whether he should address the king of France or the king of fools, “why would the parliament take the crown away from the cardinal?”
“Because,” answered the king with great gravity, as though he were addressing his great council, “the cardinal belongs to the cadet branch of the Bourbons, whereas Navarre embodies the older branch.”
“Nevertheless, Henri,” observed Chicot, “would the parliament dare take the sceptre away from the cardinal if Guise were in a position to hold a knife to their throats? I don’t believe the members are of the stuff heroes are made of!”
“Assuredly,” agreed Henri. “But if that happened, the rules of succession would be manifestly violated, and if they were, the legitimacy of the king would be open to question at any time and the state would find itself shaken to its foundations.”
“Force,” replied Chicot, “is a great strength.”
“Not at all!” said the king heatedly. “It’s a very weak form of strength, since it can only perpetuate itself by the use of more force: civil wars, usurpations that will invite other usurpations… Chicot, hear me well, for this is my gospel: the legitimacy assured by the laws of succession is the only peaceful foundation of power. If I did not hold on to the reins of government, we would soon see a swarm of presumptuous pretenders: the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Marquis de Pont-à-Mousson, the Comte de Soissons, and who knows how many others?”
“What, sire—the comte as well?” gasped Du Halde.
“He is thinking about it. And why not? He’s a Bourbon, a good Catholic. And after everything I’ve heard, he’s trying to bolster his right to the throne by marrying the sister of the king of Navarre—from which I conclude he must have a strong stomach. The lady is as ugly as the seven deadly sins!”
As I returned to my lodgings, I ruminated over this conversation that I have reported in detail, since Henri appears therein fully revealed and exposed in the curious diversity of his contrasting behaviour. However, childish though it might appear, his cutting out his miniatures should not, in my opinion, blind us to or diminish the clear understanding he had of the affairs of state, nor his remarkable cleverness in manipulating those around him when he thought it useful.
But nothing seemed to succeed, that year, in my good master’s hands. This dialogue with the cardinal was hardly useful, since the man was so abysmally vain and idiotic that nothing could have discouraged him from the stupid ambition Guise had insufflated in him. Nothing, and I mean nothing: not his ecclesiastical responsibilities, nor his age, nor his infirmities, nor the laws of the kingdom, nor the parliament, nor even the open opposition of the king. Proof indeed that great evils are perpetrated as often by idiots as by the wicked. Indeed, in reality they are most often a result of the conjunction of the two, as I have ascertained, even though I have occupied such a humble place in the affairs of the kingdom.
The next morning, I asked Miroul to seek out Nicolas Poulain and ask him to come to see me at nightfall in my lodgings. And, of course, you can easily imagine that my Miroul objected at first, saying that he wasn’t my message boy or my little valet, but my secretary, and that this errand was, consequently, beneath his station. And, knowing that Miroul would invariably begin by refusing whatever I asked of him (after which he always agreed to do it), I told him in the most succinct terms:
“This is not an errand, it is a mission of great consequence. If you don’t wish to do it, I’ll do it myself. The thing must be done post-haste.”
At which, I turned away, but watched him out of the corner of my eye as I walked away, and saw that he threw his cape over his shoulder, put on his hat and checked to be sure his knives were properly stowed in his boots.
It was not at nightfall, but in the dark of night that Mosca knocked on my door, well escorted and wearing a greatcoat. And when I spied him through the peephole, he seemed very loath to uncover his nose, which, as soon as he showed the tip of it, was so fox-like that I would have recognized it among a thousand noses.
“Come in, come in, Maître Fly,” I said, “I’m very glad to see you!”
He certainly couldn’t have said the same of me, and, pointing his aforementioned muzzle straight ahead—his long nose sniffing in advance my future words, his oblique gaze observing my face and Miroul’s, his unruly moustache bristling with suspicion—he sat down warily on the stool that Miroul offered him, not at all happy that Giacomi appeared, armed, and closed the door of the little cabinet behind him. As this room had, overlooking the ground floor, a small window that was protected by iron bars and reinforced by a solid oak shutter, Mosca found himself wholly isolated from his escort and, in a sense, caught in a trap, one against three, however smiling and accommodating we appeared.
“Monsieur Mosca,” I began, “I’m very happy that you’ve hurried to shed some light on the situation, even though it is the middle of the night. But knowing that your time is no less valuable than mine, I’m going to come straight to the point, without further ado.”
As I spoke, I saw my fox tense up in all the muscles, nerves and tendons of his frail but large frame, and observed that his eyes were rolling in their sockets like little cornered animals, so I decided to press my advantage.
“Mosca,” I began with a harsh and rapid delivery, “someone is creating problems for the king in his capital. You are part of this problem—the king knows it, and orders you to come clean. It’s your choice, Monsieur Mosca. Open mouth: life and money. Closed mouth: torture.”
A lieutenant of the provostry who takes poor devils to be hanged at Montfaucon for the theft of a few pennies on an almost daily basis is very accustomed to seeing the cord squeeze the necks of others, yet cannot imagine it around his own, especially since he knows from experience the horrible grimace that they make on the gibbet, tongue hanging out and feet dancing very uncomfortably in the air.
My Mosca, upon hearing my brutal options, almost fainted, and seemed suddenly unable to catch his breath. When he regained his composure, he threw me an incredibly false look, closed one pious eyelid and said:
“Monsieur chevalier, it’s not the promise of life and a few coins that will open my lips, but my conscience, which, for the last three months, has been nagging me over this wicked and damnable enterprise on which I have unwillingly embarked, so astonished am I by all the blood that has to be spilt and the pillaging and murder that are supposed to take place here in Paris. In addition to all the horror and great carnage that are planned, it would mean the ruination and dissipation of the state, so that I would profit very little from the great riches that have been promised me if I were to lose my soul into the bargain and had to take the road to hell.”
“I detest this wily rascal,” broke in Giacomi in Italian, adding, “El mangia santi e caga diaboli.”‡
“Mosca,” I asked, in the same curt and cutting tone, “how much did they promise you?”
“Twenty thousand écus.”
“The king will give you an equal amount.”
“Ah, Monsieur chevalier,” replied Mosca, “it’s not the gold that motivates me, but my duty as a natural-born Frenchman, citizen of the first city in France, where my king was crowned and where I pledged my obedience at the time when I served as the lieutenant of the provostry of the Île-de-France. So much so that if some revolt were planned against the state, given the wages and profits that His Majesty bestows on me, I would b
e bound to warn him of it. Given these considerations, together with those that I’ve mentioned, and that I hold very dear to my heart—”
“Repeat those words, I beg you, Mosca—I didn’t quite hear them.”
“Which ones, Monsieur chevalier?” said Mosca, screwing up his eyes.
“The last ones.”
“I hold very dear to my heart.”
“Ah, that’s very good. Go on, I beg you.”
“…I decided to warn the king. But in considering how I’d go about it, I found myself very perplexed and troubled, given the difficulties attendant on it (not to mention the fear of being discovered by the conspirators), so that I remained perplexed and, as it were, sitting on my arse on the ground between two saddles.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Monsieur,” he explained, suddenly opening his eyes wide and looking straight at me, “I couldn’t come to you because you had left on your feigned exile.”
At this blow, I remained silent, Giacomi, Miroul and I exchanging astonished glances.
“Mosca,” I said after a moment, “what do you mean, my ‘feigned’ exile? What are you talking about? Who considers it thus?”
“I do, Monsieur chevalier, and the Holy League. The League believes you to be the most faithful and immutable servant of the king, so much so that your house is marked as one of the first to be attacked and pillaged, and its occupants massacred.”
“Bah!” I said, more shaken than I wanted to appear. “We shall see what we shall see! Monsieur Mosca, let’s get back to our subject. Since I was away, why didn’t you warn Chancellor de Villequier, since you know him?”
“But that’s just it! I do know him,” replied Mosca. “Villequier would immediately have warned the queen mother, and she, to cover herself, would have warned the king. After which, the queen mother and Villequier would have persuaded the king that I was paid by the Huguenots and that my entire report was nothing but lies and falsehoods. So I would have risked being tortured by the king or killed by the League, if Villequier had secretly denounced me to them.”
