HENRY was seated in his closet playing at cards, with Bassompierre, the Comtes de Soissons, Coeuvres, and Monseigneur de Lorraine. It was late, and the game was almost concluded, when Monsieur d’EllÈne, a gentleman-in-waiting, entered hurriedly, and whispered something in the King’s ear. In an instant Henry’s face expressed the utmost consternation. He threw down his cards, clenched his fists with passion, and rose hastily; then, leaning over upon Bassompierre’s shoulder, who sat next to him, he said in a low voice—

“Marshal, I am lost. CondÉ has fled with his wife into the woods. God knows whether he means to murder her, or carry her out of France. Take care of my cards. Go on playing. I must learn more particulars. Do the same, and follow me as soon as you can.” And he left the room.

But the sudden change in the King’s face and manner had spread alarm in the circle. No one would play any more, and Bassompierre was assailed with eager questions. He was obliged to reply that he believed the Prince de CondÉ had left France. At this astounding news every tongue was let loose. Bassompierre then retired, and after having made himself master of every particular, joined the King, in order to inform him. Henry listened with horror to Bassompierre’s narrative. Meanwhile, late as it was (midnight), he commanded a council of state to be called. The ministers assembled as quickly as was possible. There were present the Chancellor, the President Jeannin, Villeroy, and the Comtes de Coeuvres and De Cremail. Henry hastily seated himself at the top of the table.

“Well, Chancellor, well,—you have heard this dreadful news,” said he, addressing him. “The poor young Princess! What is your advice? How can we save her?”

BelliÈvre, a grave lawyer, looked astounded at the King’s vehemence.

“Surely, Sire, you cannot apprehend any personal danger to the illustrious lady?” said he, with hesitation. “The Princesse de CondÉ is with her husband, he will doubtless act as is fitting.”

“Ventre Saint Gris!” cried the King, boiling with passion. “I want no comments—the remedy. What is the remedy? How can we rescue her?”

“Well, Sire, if you have reason to misdoubt the good faith of the Prince de CondÉ, if her highness be in any danger, you must issue edicts, proclaim fines, and denounce all persons who harbour and abet him; but I would advise your Majesty to pause.”

Henry turned away with a violent gesture.

“Now, Villeroy, speak. If the Princess is out of the kingdom, what is to be done?”

“Your Majesty can do nothing then but through your ambassadors. Representation must be made to the Court of the country whither the Prince has fled. You must demand the Prince’s restitution as a rebel.”

The King shrugged his shoulders with infinite disgust. Such slow measures little suited his impetuous humour.

“Now, President Jeannin,” said Henry, “let us hear your opinion. These other counsels are too lengthy. God knows what mischief may ere this have happened.”

“I advise your Majesty,” replied the President, “to send a trusty officer after the Prince and bring him back along with his wife, if within the realm. He is doubtless on his way to Flanders. If he has passed the frontier, the Archduke, who would not willingly offend your Majesty, will, doubtless, dismiss the Prince at your desire.”

Henry nodded his head approvingly, and turned quickly round to issue orders at once to follow this advice, which suited the urgency of the case; all at once he remembered that Sully was not present, and he hesitated.

“Where is Sully?” cried he.

“Monsieur de Praslin,” replied Bassompierre, who had just left him, “has been again despatched to fetch him from the Arsenal; but he is not yet arrived.”

At this moment the door opened, and Sully appeared. It was evident that he was in one of his surliest moods. Henry, preoccupied as he was, observed this, and, fearing some outburst, dismissed the Council and Bassompierre, and carefully shut the door.

“Sully, what am I to do? By the mass! that monster, my nephew, has fled, and carried off my dear Charlotte with him!”

This was not, as has been seen, the first time that the grave statesman Sully had been consulted in his master’s love affairs. He had passed very many hours in endeavouring to cajole Henriette d’Entragues to give up the fatal marriage contract signed by the King; he had all but quarrelled with his master in opposing his marriage with Gabrielle d’EstrÉes; and he had been called up in the dead of night to remonstrate with the Queen when, in consequence of a violent quarrel, she had sworn that she would leave the Louvre. Sully, like the King, had grown old, and was tired of acting adviser to a headstrong master, whose youthful follies never seemed to end. Now he gave a grunt of disapproval.

“I am not surprised, Sire. I told you the Prince would go. If he went himself, it was not likely he would leave his wife behind him—was it? That would have been too complaisant in his highness. If you wanted to secure him, you should have shut him up in the Bastille.”

“Sully, this raillery is ill-timed. I am distressed beyond all words. The Princess is in an awful predicament. LaperriÈre’s son brought the news. His father was their guide. He left them in the middle of a dismal forest. He shall be paid a mine of gold for his information.”

Sully shook his head and cast up his hands.

“God help us!” muttered he.

“Never was anything more dreadful,” continued the King. “My beloved Charlotte was lured from Muret under the pretence of a hunting-party. She was to be carried to the rendezvous in a coach. The dear creature started before daylight, says LaperriÈre’s son, and as the morning broke, found herself in a strange part of the country—in a plain far from the forest. She stopped the coach, and called to Virrey, who rode by the door, and asked him whither they were going? Virrey, confused, said he would ride on and ask the Prince, who was in advance, leading the way, the cowardly scoundrel!” and Henry shook his fist in the air. “My nephew came up, and told her she was on her road to Breda, upon which the sweet soul screamed aloud, says LaperriÈre, and lamented, entreating to be allowed to return. But that ruffian, CondÉ, rode off and left her in the middle of the road, bidding the driver push forward. At last they came to CouÇy, where they changed horses. Just as they were about again to start the coach broke down.”

“Praised be God!” ejaculated Sully. “I hope no one was found to mend it.”

“Sully, I believe you are without heart or feeling,” cried the King, reproachfully.

“Not at all, Sire; but my heart and my feelings also are with your Majesty, not with the Princess. Proceed, Sire, with this touching narrative.”

“CondÉ then, says LaperriÈre, the night beginning to fall, purchased a pillion at CouÇy, and mounted his wife behind him on horseback.” Sully shook with laughter; but fearing to offend his master, suppressed it as well as he could. “Her two attendants mounted behind two of the suite, the guides being in advance. It rained heavily. Pardieu! I can hardly bear to speak of it. My dear Charlotte in such a condition! The night was dark; but CondÉ rode on like a devil incarnate to Castellin, the first village across the frontier. When she was taken down, Charlotte fainted.” The tears ran down Henry’s cheeks as he said this. “She fainted; and then LaperriÈre, convinced of some treason on the part of my nephew, despatched his son to tell me these particulars. Now, Sully,” and the King rose suddenly and seized his hand, shaking off the sorrow that had overcome him during the narrative, “now tell me, what am I to do? I would lose my Crown rather than not succour her.”

“Do nothing, Sire,” replied Sully quietly.

“How, Sully! Do nothing?”

“Yes, Sire; I advise you—I implore you, do nothing. If you leave CondÉ to himself he will be laughed at. Even his friends will ridicule his escapade. In three months he will be back again at Court with the Princess, ashamed of himself. Meantime Madame la Princesse will see foreign Courts, acquire the Spanish manner from the Archduchess, and return more fascinating than ever. On the other hand, if you pursue him, you will exalt him into a political victim; all your Majesty’s enemies will rally round him.”

Excellent advice, which the King was too infatuated to follow! Forgetting all decency, and even the law of nations, he insisted on punishing CondÉ as a rebel, and called on the Spanish Government formally to release the Princess. Spain refused; and this ridiculous passion may be said to have been the approximate cause of that formidable alliance against Spain in which, at the time of his death, Henry was about to engage.

The favour which Henry had shown his Protestant subjects had long rankled in the minds of the Catholics. He was held to be a renegade and a traitor. It was affirmed that his conversion was a sham, to which he lent himself only the more effectually to advance the interests of the reformed faith. While he gave himself up to amorous follies and prepared for foreign wars, a network of hate, treachery, and fanaticism was fast closing around him. Enemies and spies filled the Louvre, and dogged his every movement. Already the footsteps of the assassin approached.

After the birth of the Dauphin a strong political party had gathered round Marie de’ Medici. Her constant dissensions with the King, her bitter complaints, and the scandal of his private life, afforded sufficient grounds for elevating her into a kind of martyr.

The intrigues of Concini, whose easy manners, elegant person, and audacious counsels had raised him from a low hanger-on at Court into the principal adviser of his royal mistress, gradually contrived to identify her interests with those of the great feudal princes, still absolute sovereigns in their own territory. The maintenance of the Catholic Church against heresy, and the security of the throne for her son, were the ostensible motives of this coalition. But the bond between Marie and her chief supporters, the powerful Ducs de Bouillon and d’Epernon, was in reality a common hatred of Henry and a bitter jealousy of Sully, whose clear intellect and firm hand had directed with such extraordinary sagacity the helm of state throughout Henry’s long and stormy reign.

Evil influences, which displayed themselves in predictions, warnings, and prophesies, were abroad. The death of the King would at once raise Marie, as Regent for her son, to sovereign power, and throw the whole control of the State into the hands of her adherents. How far Marie was implicated in the events about to happen can never be known, and whether she listened to the dark hints of her Italian attendants, that by the King’s death alone she could find relief. But undoubtedly the barbarous cruelty with which Concini and his wife were afterwards murdered by Henry’s friends had regard to this suspicion. Whether the Duc d’Epernon knew beforehand of the conspiracy, and insured his master’s death by a final thrust when he had already been struck by the assassin, or whether Henriette d’Entragues, out of revenge for the King’s passion for the Princesse de CondÉ, herself instigated Ravaillac to the act, must ever remain a mystery.

Marie de’ Medici, urged by the Concini, and advised by her friend the Duc d’Epernon, was at this time unceasing in her entreaties to the King to consent to her coronation at Saint-Denis. According to her varying mood she either wept, raved and stamped about the room, or kissed, coaxed, and cajoled him. And there was cause for her pertinacity. Henry’s weak compliances with Henriette d’Entragues’ pretensions, her residence in the Louvre, and her boastings of that unhappy promise of marriage, had given occasion for questions to arise touching the legitimacy of the Dauphin. Those who were politically opposed to the King would be ready, at any moment after his death, to justify rebellion on the pretence of a prior contract invalidating his present marriage.

Such an idea drove the Queen frantic. There was no peace for Henry until he consented to her coronation. Yet he was strangely reluctant to comply. An unaccountable presentiment of danger connected with that ceremony pursued him. He had never been the same since the loss of the Princesse de CondÉ. Now he was dull, absent, and indifferent, ate little and slept ill. Nothing interested or pleased him, save the details of his great campaign against Spain, which was about to convulse all Europe.

“Ah, my friend,” said he to Sully, “how this ceremony of the coronation distresses me. Whenever I think about it I cannot shake off sinister forebodings. Alas! I fear I shall never live to head my army. I shall die in this city of Paris. I shall never see the Princesse de CondÉ again. Ah, cursed coronation! I shall die while they are about it. Bassompierre tells me the maypole, which was set up in the court of the Louvre, has just fallen down. It is an evil omen.”

“Well, Sire,” returned Sully, “postpone the ceremony.”

“No, Sully, no; it shall not be said that Henry IV. trembled before an idle prophecy. For twenty years, Sully, I have heard of predictions of my death. After all, nothing will happen to me but what is ordained.”

“My God, Sire!” exclaimed Sully, “I never heard your Majesty speak so before. Countermand the coronation, I entreat you. Let the Queen not be crowned at all rather than lose your peace of mind. What does it matter? It is but a woman’s whim.”

“Ah, Sully, what will my wife say? I dare not approach her unless I keep my word;—her heart is so set upon being crowned.”

“Let her say what she pleases, Sire; never heed her. Allow me to persuade her Majesty to postpone the ceremony.”

“Try, Sully; try, if you please:—you will find what the Queen is. She will not consent to put it off.”

The King spoke truly. Marie de’ Medici flew into a violent rage, and positively refused to listen to any postponement whatever. The coronation was fixed to take place on Thursday, the 13th of May.

It is certain that the King was distinctly warned of his approaching death. The very day and hour were marked with a cross of blood in an almanack sent to him anonymously. A period of six hours on the 14th of May was marked as fatal to him. If he survived that time, on that day—a Friday—he was safe. The day named for his death was that preceding the public entry of the Queen into Paris, after her coronation at Saint-Denis. He rose at six o’clock in the morning on that day, Friday, the 14th of May. On his way down-stairs, he was met by the Duc de VendÔme, his son by Gabrielle d’EstrÉes. VendÔme held in his hand a paper, which he had found lying on his table. It was a horoscope, signed by an astrologer called La Brosse, warning the King that the constellation under which he was born threatened him with great danger on the 14th of May. “My father,” said VendÔme, standing in his path, “do not go abroad; spend this day at home.”

“La Brosse, my boy,” replied Henry, looking at the paper, “is an old fox. Do you not see that he wants money? You are a young fool to mind him. My life is in the hands of God, my son,—I shall live or die as he pleases,—let me pass.”

He heard mass early, and passed the day as usual. At a quarter to four o’clock in the afternoon he ordered his coach, to visit Sully at the Arsenal, who was ailing. The streets were much crowded. Paris was full of strangers, assembled for the coronation, and to see the spectacle of the Queen’s public entry. Stages and booths blocked up the thoroughfares. Henry was impatient for the arrival of his coach, and took his seat in it immediately it arrived. He signed to the Duc d’Epernon to seat himself at his right hand. De Liancourt and Mirabeau, his lords in waiting, placed themselves opposite to him. The Ducs de Lavardin, Roquelaure, and Montbazon, and the Marquis de la Force, took their places on either side. Besides these noblemen seated inside, a few guards accompanied him on horseback, but when he reached the hÔtel of the Duc de Longueville, the King stopped and dismissed all his attendants, save those lords in the coach with him. From the Rue Saint-HonorÉ, which was greatly crowded, they entered the Rue de la FerronniÈre, on the way to the Arsenal. This was a narrow street, and numbers of wooden stalls (such as are still seen on the boulevards in Paris) were ranged along a dead wall, on one of the sides. There was a block of carts about these booths, and the royal coach was obliged to draw up close against the dead wall. The running footmen went forward to clear the road; the coach halted close to the wall. Ravaillac now slipped between the wall and the coach, and jumping on one of the wheels, stabbed the King twice in the breast and ribs. The knife passed through a shirt of fine cambric, richly embroidered À jour. A third time the assassin raised his hand to strike, but only ripped up the sleeve of the Duc de Montbazon’s doublet, upon whom the King had fallen. “I am wounded,” gasped Henry, “but it is nothing—” Then the Duc d’Epernon raised his royal master in his arms. Henry made a convulsive effort to speak, he was choked by blood, and fell back lifeless. He was brought back dead to the Louvre. There he lay in state, clothed in his coronation robes, the crown upon his head.

The bloody almanack had told true. Henry had circled twenty times the magic chamber of life!