第43章 THE COURT(4)

The agitation which, in a royal castle, always attends the hour of the king's rising, was beginning to show itself. The great lords, whose horses, pages, or grooms remained in the outer courtyard,--for no one, except the king and the queens, had the right to enter the inner courtyard on horseback,--were mounting by groups the magnificent staircase, and filling by degrees the vast hall, the beams of which are now stripped of the decorations that then adorned them. Miserable little red tiles have replaced the ingenious mosaics of the floors;and the thick walls, then draped with the crown tapestries and glowing with all the arts of that unique period of the splendors of humanity, are now denuded and whitewashed! Reformers and Catholics were pressing in to hear the news and to watch faces, quite as much as to pay their duty to the king. Francois II.'s excessive love for Mary Stuart, to which neither the queen-mother nor the Guises made any opposition, and the politic compliance of Mary Stuart herself, deprived the king of all regal power. At seventeen years of age he knew nothing of royalty but its pleasures, or of marriage beyond the indulgence of first passion. As a matter of fact, all present paid their court to Queen Mary and to her uncles, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, rather than to the king.

This stir took place before Christophe, who watched the arrival of each new personage with natural eagerness. A magnificent portiere, on either side of which stood two pages and two soldiers of the Scotch guard, then on duty, showed him the entrance to the royal chamber,--the chamber so fatal to the son of the present Duc de Guise, the second Balafre, who fell at the foot of the bed now occupied by Mary Stuart and Francois II. The queen's maids of honor surrounded the fireplace opposite to that where Christophe was being "talked with" by the captain of the guard. This second fireplace was considered the /chimney of honor/. It was built in the thick wall of the Salle de Conseil, between the door of the royal chamber and that of the council-hall, so that the maids of honor and the lords in waiting who had the right to be there were on the direct passage of the king and queen. The courtiers were certain on this occasion of seeing Catherine, for her maids of honor, dressed like the rest of the court ladies, in black, came up the staircase from the queen-mother's apartment, and took their places, marshalled by the Comtesse de Fiesque, on the side toward the council-hall and opposite to the maids of honor of the young queen, led by the Duchesse de Guise, who occupied the other side of the fireplace on the side of the royal bedroom. The courtiers left an open space between the ranks of these young ladies (who all belonged to the first families of the kingdom), which none but the greatest lords had the right to enter. The Comtesse de Fiesque and the Duchesse de Guise were, in virtue of their office, seated in the midst of these noble maids, who were all standing.

The first gentleman who approached the dangerous ranks was the Duc d'Orleans, the king's brother, who had come down from his apartment on the third floor, accompanied by Monsieur de Cypierre, his governor.

This young prince, destined before the end of the year to reign under the title of Charles IX., was only ten years old and extremely timid.

The Duc d'Anjou and the Duc d'Alencon, his younger brothers, also the Princesse Marguerite, afterwards the wife of Henri IV. (la Reine Margot), were too young to come to court, and were therefore kept by their mother in her own apartments. The Duc d'Orleans, richly dressed after the fashion of the times, in silken trunk-hose, a close-fitting jacket of cloth of gold embroidered with black flowers, and a little mantle of embroidered velvet, all black, for he still wore mourning for his father, bowed to the two ladies of honor and took his place beside his mother's maids. Already full of antipathy for the adherents of the house of Guise, he replied coldly to the remarks of the duchess and leaned his arm on the back of the chair of the Comtesse de Fiesque. His governor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the noblest characters of that day, stood beside him like a shield. Amyot (afterwards Bishop of Auxerre and translator of Plutarch), in the simple soutane of an abbe, also accompanied the young prince, being his tutor, as he was of the two other princes, whose affection became so profitable to him.

Between the "chimney of honor" and the other chimney at the end of the hall, around which were grouped the guards, their captain, a few courtiers, and Christophe carrying his box of furs, the Chancellor Olivier, protector and predecessor of l'Hopital, in the robes which the chancellors of France have always worn, was walking up and down with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had recently returned from Rome. The pair were exchanging a few whispered sentences in the midst of great attention from the lords of the court, massed against the wall which separated the /salle des gardes/ from the royal bedroom, like a living tapestry backed by the rich tapestry of art crowded by a thousand personages. In spite of the present grave events, the court presented the appearance of all courts in all lands, at all epochs, and in the midst of the greatest dangers. The courtiers talked of trivial matters, thinking of serious ones; they jested as they studied faces, and apparently concerned themselves about love and the marriage of rich heiresses amid the bloodiest catastrophes.

"What did you think of yesterday's fete?" asked Bourdeilles, seigneur of Brantome, approaching Mademoiselle de Piennes, one of the queen-mother's maids of honor.

"Messieurs du Baif et du Bellay were inspired with delightful ideas,"she replied, indicating the organizers of the fete, who were standing near. "I thought it all in the worst taste," she added in a low voice.

"You had no part to play in it, I think?" remarked Mademoiselle de Lewiston from the opposite ranks of Queen Mary's maids.