Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  As for me, I felt extraordinarily happy and comforted by the brilliance with which the king had shaken the pack of wolves that were biting at his heels, and very curious too as to the political consequences of it all. I was unhappy, however, that I had to continue to blend in with the Forty-five (a good hiding place, since they were so despised by the Leaguers that the latter refused even to look at them), and was prevented from running outside to learn what was happening.

  Thirsty for news, barely had I returned to the Two Pigeons Inn before I sent off the chambermaid to Quéribus’s lodgings to ask him to visit me. But she returned without having delivered my message, the bird having flown from his cage—fluttering about, no doubt, from beauty to beauty, with his “veni, vidi, vici”. And it was quite fortuitous that, the next afternoon, while I was practising swordplay with La Bastide in my room, he paused to catch his breath and said:

  “Cap de Diou, Baron! Here we are wasting our time with our good blades, making buttonholes in each other’s tunics, when it’s through the heart of that monster Guise that we should be driving our points!”

  “Passinsa amic,” I replied. “Que mienja lo gal del rey, cent ans après raca las plumas.”||

  Bastide laughed and replied:

  “We have the same proverb in Gascony, but it’s worded a bit differently—which reminds me that before our exercise this afternoon I saw an older gentleman in the common room of the inn, with about as much hair as I’ve got on my hand” (an inapt expression since his hand was so hairy!) “who was asking his valet to bring him some wine and whose accent was so close to yours I thought he must be Périgordian.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was a nobleman, more of the robe I’ll warrant than of the sword, although he was wearing one. He seemed a good man, not so haughty, but I thought he must be high enough in the kingdom, since he was wearing the Order of Saint-Michel.”

  “By the belly of St Anthony, there are not many men in Périgord who belong to that order and I think I know who it must be!”

  So saying, I rushed from the room, silently descended the staircase that led to the common room (which I never entered), crouched down, peered through the railing and—true as gospel!—whom did I spy, happily ensconced at a table and greedily devouring his food, his tall forehead topped by a bald pate, with high cheekbones, long, aquiline nose and wise eyes focused on his meal, but Monsieur de Montaigne!

  “Hey, La Bastide,” I cried, rushing back upstairs, “ask Margot, I beg you, to carry a note to this gentleman, whom I know and love, requesting him to meet me in our room and not in the common room, for obvious reasons.”

  “Is he a friend of the king’s?” asked La Bastide as he twisted his moustache.

  “Indeed he is!”

  “In that case, no need to ask Margot! I’ll take your note to him.”

  Monsieur de Montaigne, who seemed to carry his fifty years with great vigour, had some trouble recognizing me, not only because I had dark skin and black hair, but because so many hard years had passed since we’d last met in 1572, sixteen years previously. Back then I was but a lad and had scarcely finished my studies. To tell the truth, he knew my father much better than he knew me, having entertained him frequently at Navarre’s court, and rumour had it that Montaigne had served—and perhaps still did—as a messenger between the king and the Béarnais. In any case, he was a faithful friend to both men, and one of those “politicals” whom the League hated because they seasoned their faith with some grains of tolerance.

  “Well, Monsieur!” I said. “Is it true that the Leaguers arrested you and threw you in the Bastille on the day of the barricades?”

  “Indeed it is!” he laughed. “Why didn’t I have the sense to stay peaceably at home on my sweet estate?” (By which he meant the Château de Montaigne, near Bordeaux.) “What a terrible time I had of it on that trip! I was attacked on the road by highwaymen, who robbed me of everything I had, but at least didn’t take my life. But scarcely had I arrived in Paris, where I was arranging for the publication of my Essais, when I was thrown in jail by the Leaguers, who, less merciful than the beggars who robbed me, would have killed me if the queen mother, who luckily still cared for me, hadn’t interceded in my favour!”

  “At last, something to be grateful to her for! Without her, this kingdom would have lost a wise man, not to mention those essays of yours, which we have been eagerly awaiting since you whet our appetites with your first volume.”

  “Ah,” said Montaigne, with half-sincere, half-feigned modesty, “I’m not sure I believe that!”

  “Well then, ask the king, who adores them and constantly reads and rereads the ones that have been published!”

  “As beset as he is by his affairs, he didn’t fail to tell me so this morning,” Montaigne replied. “And he had great things to say about you! He insisted I stay at this inn so that I would see you, and might perhaps take news of you back to your father, if Fortune allows me to see him on my return to Bordeaux.”

  As he said this, Montaigne smiled a slow and conspiratorial smile, which led me to believe that he continued to serve, on these occasions, as a messenger between the king and Navarre, since he couldn’t be seen with my father at Navarre’s court. In this capacity, he was like Monsieur de Rosny, whom I’d caught sight of in the streets of Blois the day before, the brim of his hat pulled down and his face buried in his collar.**

  I mentioned to Monsieur de Montaigne that I’d sighted Monsieur de Rosny, whose presence in Blois he confirmed, saying that, as far as he knew, Navarre had offered the king, in his present predicament, both military and financial support, which the king had not refused, but that it required further negotiations. Navarre wanted a city or town along the Loire in order to ensure his safety while he and the king were meeting. There was still some degree of mistrust that hadn’t entirely disappeared between the two, who had spent so many years fighting each other, though always with a certain amount of mutual restraint and consideration.

  I heard all this with the joy one can imagine, since I’d always thought that the king could never defeat Guise and the League without Navarre’s help.

  “Monsieur de Montaigne,” I asked, after calming down, “how did you find the king after his angry speech yesterday at the Estates-General, and the bitter anger of the gentlemen of the Holy League?”

  “I observed the same resolve when I met the king in his chambers this morning. He was seated in a very simple chair in an alcove covered with fleurs-de-lis when I entered, and scarcely had he said, ‘Monsieur de Montaigne, I’m delighted to see you and thank you for your devotion to my service…’ when there was a loud noise at the door, and the king sent Du Halde to see what was happening. Du Halde half-opened the door and returned, to announce:

  “‘Sire, it is the Cardinal de Guise, who demands to be received immediately by Your Majesty.’

  “‘Immediately?’ said the king in surprise. ‘He said “immediately”?’

  “‘Sire,’ said Du Halde, ‘he said it twice, adding that if he weren’t received within the hour, he would leave Blois.’

  “‘Monsieur de Montaigne,’ said the king without batting an eye, ‘you can see how things are. The Church cannot wait. May I ask you to withdraw into this alcove with François d’O? I’ll see you after I’ve received the cardinal.’

  “Whereupon, Du Halde having opened the door, the cardinal burst in furiously, as if mounting an assault, his long, purple robe flowing behind him, his figure tall and thin, his handsome face twisted in anger and his nostrils aflame as if he were breathing gunpowder. The king, sitting erect in his chair, his two hands on the armrests, immobile and majestic, did not present his hand, and his visitor scarcely bowed before him. Of the Duc de Guise and the cardinal,” Montaigne continued, with a derisive smile, “the least hypocritical, the least genuflecting and the most sparing in manners, smiles and unctuous phrases is, as you know, the cardinal, who, brandishing in his hand a printed copy of the king’s speech, scolded the
king and took him to task as if he were some schoolboy for having dared to write and publish that ‘some great men of his kingdom’ had made ‘leagues and associations against his authority’. The imputation was clear, he said, and injurious, and he would not suffer it, any more than would his brother the duc—or the clergy, since everything that had been done had been for the sole defence and preservation of their dying religion. He demanded that His Majesty reprint the speech, removing the sacrilegious phrase, before distributing copies, and warned that if His Majesty did not satisfy these demands, the clergy, having duly deliberated, would leave the Estates-General immediately, and depart from Blois, followed by the Third Estate and perhaps the nobility as well. He concluded by saying that the duc, his brother, had decided to retire to his house and no longer serve in any capacity, given this dissolution of the Estates-General.”

  “Well,” I cried indignantly, “the damnable impudence of this doctor of lies, who, denying that black is black, dares affirm both that his party has not hatched plots against the king and that these plots were religious! What did the king do?”

  “What else could he do but capitulate?” replied Montaigne. “The cardinal had a knife to his throat. If the Estates dissolved there would be no money! And if Monsieur de Guise were to leave Blois, there would be war! And you can’t fight a war without money!”

  “So what was the king’s expression as he gave in?” I asked after a moment’s reflection.

  “Inscrutable! The cardinal made him read and sign a retraction of the ‘sacrilegious phrase’. But, while the king was reading, the weather—which ever since dawn had been rainy and dark—suddenly got much darker. And, indeed, so dark did it get that they had to light a candle so that the king could continue reading the note and then sign it at the bottom. This all led François d’O, who was standing in the alcove with me, to whisper that it was the king’s last will and testament that they’d written there, and that they were lighting the candle to watch him draw his final breath.”

  “Ah!” I cried. “No! No! The last breath drawn in this affair will not be his, of this I’m sure! The king has declared to the Estates, with all his might, the principles of his politics. He has rightfully condemned Guise, and now, faced with superior forces, has cleverly given way, is tacking and ‘trimming his sails’, but will never lose sight of the shore where he wants to land.”

  “Fortune will decide!” mused Montaigne, who surprised me by using the word “Fortune” rather than “God”—as he does throughout his Essais, as I noticed later, something that led Rome to censor his writings. Which reminds me that Montaigne also said during this conversation that, having known Guise and Navarre well, he thought that the first was hardly Catholic and the second not very Protestant… And as for me, having reflected on these words of Montaigne, the use of the word “Fortune” in place of the word “God” led me to believe that he himself was scarcely the one and not very much the other. I say this here without in any way wishing to detract from the merits of this great man.

  “The worst part of this,” he told me the next morning as he was taking leave of me, carrying in his bags a letter I’d written to my father, “is that the king, after this retraction, is going to appear soft, timid and a coward, and that there won’t be any affront that the Estates, the League and Guise will not direct at him.”

  In this, he was not mistaken, except that the word “affront” was far too weak to describe the rebuffs that the king had to endure over the next two months. The hatred and disdain that the League-supporting Estates felt for him knew no bounds, as I was to witness every day, placed as I was among the Forty-five during these interminable sessions.

  To the king—who didn’t want Navarre to be stripped of his rights to the crown without having listened to him, and who said, “It would surely be just at least to have a discussion with him and determine whether he wants to convert!”—the Estates replied, with great clamour, “A king who was once a heretic shall never govern us!” Even if he were to convert, they wanted none of Navarre! The zeal of these fanatics took them even further than the Pope would have gone.

  The Estates held the strings of the purse, and, far from loosening them, tightened them considerably, so that it was clear that they were trying to strangle the king. They wanted him to declare all-out war on his Huguenot subjects but refused him the means to do so: neither subsidies, nor contributions, nor extraordinary subventions would they offer, and all taxes that had been established since 1576 were suppressed. The king pleaded reason to these fanatics. “Messieurs,” he said, “how can I be expected to make do with the taxes agreed all those years ago when the cost of living has increased so much? How do you propose I live? To refuse money is to defeat me and to defeat yourselves and the state with us.” One of the deputies shouted in reply: “Then don’t be king any more!”

  At the beginning of December, one of the deputies of the Third Estate proposed, “as a demand from the Estates to the king, that he reform his household by dispensing with the Forty-five”, and this was heartily applauded, since most people thought that this had been suggested to him by Guise. When we returned to the Two Pigeons Inn and heard a report of this motion, La Bastide and Montseris began pacing up and down in our room, rolling their eyes, and La Bastide exclaimed through clenched teeth:

  “Cap de Diou! These Guise brothers are devils incarnate! They want to take the bread from our mouths!”

  “Am I going to have to go looking for work at my age?” moaned Montseris, who was almost thirty.

  “Or return to our Gascon misery?” said La Bastide. “’Sblood! I won’t stand for it! It’s clear that this shithead Guise wants to take the wasp’s sting away before crushing him.”

  “You’re right!” added Montseris. “What are we doing here but being the dogs protecting this lamb! Whoever chases the dogs away wants to devour the lamb! There’s not a man who doesn’t understand this! Cap de Diou!” he continued, his hand on his dagger. “Let the king give me this Guise and I’ll make lace of his liver!”

  I repeated these words to the king, who, having gathered his Forty-five around him in the chateau at dawn—a time when Monsieur de Guise, who slept at the chateau, was still asleep, exhausted by his revels with Madame de Noirmoutiers—told them that in no case would he consent to be separated from them, holding them each in such affection that he considered them his sons; that he loved them in proportion to the hatred others directed at them, not without reason, since they were his sword and shield; and that even if they reduced him to one capon for his dinner, he’d share it with them.

  “Captatio benevolentiae,” observed my secretary, Miroul, when I repeated these words to him. “I think the king will prevail. He knows men so well. And he’s so clever…”

  As for me, I was champing at the bit, for the simple reason that, after two months, and I don’t know how many attempts by Giacomi, I hadn’t been able to meet La Cavalletta, much less Venetianelli, since his lady, more distrustful than a weasel and sensing that my overtures originated with the king, couldn’t help but rebut them, since her favourite was linked to Guise’s fortunes.

  Towards mid-December, however, having heard from Giacomi that La Cavalletta was now engaging in the magical arts, selling very expensive bewitched dolls and potions (which may have been poisons), I had the maestro show me her window (since it seemed that she had a weakness for him); then, having persuaded the king to lend me five of his Forty-five (including La Bastide and Montseris) for this expedition, we managed to enter her room at midnight by means of a ladder and a broken pane, and found a blazing fire waiting for her to finish her damnable activities.

  As we had quite a while to wait, I began to examine the place, and was lucky enough to discover, in a sewing basket, a doll that resembled the king, and whose heart was pierced through by a needle. To tell the truth, the resemblance was limited to the fact that the effigy was male and wore a crown, as well as earrings on both ears and pearls on each side of its face. The strange thing was that
the pearls were sewn directly into the cheeks, the ears having been omitted to simplify the labour.

  Hearing steps on the staircase, I barely had time to stuff my discovery in my breeches and put my mask back on, since I didn’t want La Cavalletta to be able to describe me to anyone if I ended up being unable to persuade her. But Fortune smiled on me on this occasion, for, as the door opened, I saw that she wasn’t alone: her favourite was following her, and I immediately recognized Venetianelli from Giacomi’s description. Seeing them both caught in our net and that the door was locked from within by the favourite, my Gascons and I emerged from our hiding places, whereupon, all six of us having surrounded them with daggers in hand, I said, with the greatest calm:

  “I would like you to remain silent. Any cry would be fatal for your throats.”

  At this, La Cavalletta, who certainly seemed to have earned this nickname of “grasshopper” given the length of her legs and arms, her long face and very bright eyes, said, without batting an eye:

  “What do you want? Money? There isn’t any.”

  “Fie, Madame,” I answered, “do I look like a bad boy, I who have to hunt them down? You don’t understand who you’re dealing with!”

  “Monsieur,” replied La Cavalletta very proudly, and no more discomfited than if our daggers had been made of paper, “I know that in any case I have no business with you!”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it!” I answered, surprised at her insolence. “The rope has plenty of business with the hanged and the executioner with witches! And I doubt that you’re incombustible, no matter how well placed your friends are, who would prefer to see you sacrificed if the practices in which you engage are seen to be criminal enough to compromise them! You cannot be unaware of the great care these lords take in their good reputations.”