第92章 THE SECRETS OF THE RUGGIERI(1)

Between eleven o'clock and midnight toward the end of October, 1573, two Italians, Florentines and brothers, Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz and marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, Grand-master of the robes of Charles IX., were sitting on the roof of a house in the rue Saint-Honore, at the edge of a gutter. This gutter was one of those stone channels which in former days were constructed below the roofs of houses to receive the rain-water, discharging it at regular intervals through those long gargoyles carved in the shape of fantastic animals with gaping mouths. In spite of the zeal with which our present general pulls down and demolishes venerable buildings, there still existed many of these projecting gutters until, quite recently, an ordinance of the police as to water-conduits compelled them to disappear. But even so, a few of these carved gargoyles still remain, chiefly in the /quartier/ Saint-Antoine, where low rents and values hinder the building of new storeys under the eaves of the roofs.

It certainly seems strange that two personages invested with such important offices should be playing the part of cats. But whosoever will burrow into the historic treasures of those days, when personal interests jostled and thwarted each other around the throne till the whole political centre of France was like a skein of tangled thread, will readily understand that the two Florentines were cats indeed, and very much in their places in a gutter. Their devotion to the person of the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici--who had brought them to the court of France and foisted them into their high offices--compelled them not to recoil before any of the consequences of their intrusion.

But to explain how and why these courtiers were thus perched, it is necessary to relate a scene which had taken place an hour earlier not far from this very gutter, in that beautiful brown room of the Louvre, all that now remains to us of the apartments of Henri II., in which after supper the courtiers had been paying court to the two queens, Catherine de' Medici and Elizabeth of Austria, and to their son and husband King Charles IX.

In those days the majority of the burghers and great lords supped at six, or at seven o'clock, but the more refined and elegant supped at eight or even nine. This repast was the dinner of to-day. Many persons erroneously believe that etiquette was invented by Louis XIV.; on the contrary it was introduced into France by Catherine de' Medici, who made it so severe that the Connetable de Montmorency had more difficulty in obtaining permission to enter the court of the Louvre on horseback than in winning his sword; moreover, that unheard-of distinction was granted to him only on account of his great age.

Etiquette, which was, it is true, slightly relaxed under the first two Bourbon kings, took an Oriental form under the Great Monarch, for it was introduced from the Eastern Empire, which derived it from Persia.

In 1573 few persons had the right to enter the courtyard of the Louvre with their servants and torches (under Louis XIV. the coaches of none but dukes and peers were allowed to pass under the peristyle);moreover, the cost of obtaining entrance after supper to the royal apartments was very heavy. The Marechal de Retz, whom we have just seen, perched on a gutter, offered on one occasion a thousand crowns of that day, six thousand francs of our present money, to the usher of the king's cabinet to be allowed to speak to Henri III. on a day when he was not on duty. To an historian who knows the truth, it is laughable to see the well-known picture of the courtyard at Blois, in which the artist has introduced a courtier on horseback!

On the present occasion, therefore, none but the most eminent personages in the kingdom were in the royal apartments. The queen, Elizabeth of Austria, and her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, were seated together on the left of the fireplace. On the other side sat the king, buried in an armchair, affecting a lethargy consequent on digestion,--for he had just supped like a prince returned from hunting; possibly he was seeking to avoid conversation in presence of so many persons who were spies upon his thoughts. The courtiers stood erect and uncovered at the end of the room. Some talked in a low voice; others watched the king, awaiting the bestowal of a look or a word. Occasionally one was called up by the queen-mother, who talked with him for a few moments; another risked saying a word to the king, who replied with either a nod or a brief sentence. A German nobleman, the Comte de Solern, stood at the corner of the fireplace behind the young queen, the granddaughter of Charles V., whom he had accompanied into France. Near to her on a stool sat her lady of honor, the Comtesse de Fiesque, a Strozzi, and a relation of Catherine de'