And from coronation and marriage in Rheims came Henry to his capital city, there to indulge in more orgies, more processions of the Battus through the streets.

The Parisians watched the antics of their King with sullen eyes. It seemed to them that nothing but evil could come from the domination of such a man as Henry the Third, who would rule them with the Italian Jezebel at his side.


* * *

The King continued his frivolous existence unaware of the storms which were rising all about him. Catherine watched him with apprehension and offered advice which he pretended to act upon and then allowed himself to forget. He had his special young men always about him; the people of Paris had begun to call them his mignons. There were four whom he seemed to favour more than any others: du Guast, Caylus and the Dukes of Joyeuse and Epernon. They scarcely ever left the King’s side; they enjoyed his confidence and shared his pleasures. Catherine often heard them laughing together as they planned some ludicrous amusement or discussed the new styles in clothes and jewels or told each other of the antics of their lap-dogs.

All over Paris the people were becoming restive. Two cold summers in succession had caused a famine in wheat. The Huguenots, as ready with their assurances that God was on their side as the Catholics were that He was on theirs, declared this to be a result of the massacre. One ill which could, without doubt, be attributed to the massacre was the plague of wolves which harassed the countryside; they had been attracted by so much carnage and looked for more. The Huguenots had been clever and industrious merchants and France was missing the prosperity they had created. Epidemics were raging through the land; lepers roamed the countryside, spreading their terrible afflictions; and still there was perpetual strife between the remaining Huguenots and the Catholics.

Moreover, the King needed money, and declared he must have it. He and his favourites had planned many amusing entertainments, but these would be expensive. The people were heavily taxed now; and in particular, the people of Paris murmured against the King; they were on the spot and they saw the extravagant processions; they glimpsed the expensively dressed guests, the lavish banquets that took place in the palace of the Louvre.

They had never hated any as they hated this King and his mother; but it was Catherine whom they blamed for the King’s misdeeds, as they would continue to blame her for all the ills which befell France. The King they despised; his mother they feared and loathed.

The people of Paris were hungry, and when they were hungry they were reckless. Lampoons were scrawled on walls; coarse jokes about the King and his mother, Alençon and Queen Margot, were circulated. France was simmering on the point of revolt, and this showed itself in small eruptions. Once the carriage in which Catherine and Margot were travelling was stopped by students, who ordered the two women to alight; realizing that it would have been dangerous not to obey, they did so, when obscene remarks were shouted at the Queen Mother, and some students thrust their hands into the bodice of Margot’s gown. Only the haughty demeanour of the two Queens prevented more rough handling; and displaying a dignity which eventually overawed the young rioters, they stepped calmly into their carriage: which was driven speedily away. On another occasion the King stopped to see the fair at Saint- Germain, and he found the place full of students burlesquing the mignons in long chemises with grotesque frills made of white paper. They minced through the town, calling each other ‘mignon’, stroking and petting each other. Those mignons who were with the King wept with anger, and the only way of pacifying them was to place the students under arrest. Catherine arranged that they should be quickly released; but she was alarmed by Henry’s irresponsibility.

The citizens shouted after the King when he appeared in the streets, and even when he rode in a procession. ‘Keeper of Four Beggars!’ was the favourite gibe, and this was used particularly when he was in the company of his four especial favourites.

The people jeered: ‘He dresses his wife’s hair. He chooses her clothes. Who is this Henry the Third? Is he a man or a woman?’

‘Concierge du Palais!’ yelled the children, imitating their elders.

The wits amused themselves by inventing stories of the King’s ridiculous behaviour; others talked continually of the Queen Mother’s villainy. The city was realizing that it hated the House of Valois, and no member was spared vilification. Alençon and Margot, it was said, were guilty of incest. Margot took new lovers as frequently as she took her meals. She had ‘a hundred different dresses in her wardrobe, all costing a fortune; and she kept special flaxen-haired footmen simply that she might use their hair for making wigs.

‘How long shall we allow these vipers to rule us?’ grumbled the people. ‘How long shall we allow them to make us poor with their extravagances?’

And so the rumble of coming disaster rose and died away to rise again. There was perpetual strife between Huguenots and Catholics, who hated each other almost as much as they hated the royal family.

August came, hot and stifling. The filth in the streets of the towns and the stench from the gutters kept people behind doors. Beggars grew in numbers; they lay sprawled on the cobbles, diseased and dying; and the pickpockets did good business in the market-places. Outside the town robbers abounded, and murders were committed for the sake of a few francs.

In. August came the anniversary of a day which would never be forgotten.

Every year—for years to come—Huguenots would lie awake on the night of the 23rd and listen for the sound of the tocsin, remembering those lost ones, trembling at the thought that they might be called upon to share the fate of those martyrs.

In Paris some Catholic joker had spread panic among the Huguenot population by chalking crosses on the doors of several well-known Huguenots’ houses. Men sharpened their swords and saw that their guns were in readiness. It was an unhealthy time of the year.

The Eve and the Day of St Bartholomew passed in uneasy quiet; but a few days later a few Huguenots who had held a prêche in one of their houses came out to find a group of Catholics about the door. One bold spirit had dared to put a white cross in his hat. They had only come to jeer, but the terrified Huguenots held their heads high while their lips moved in prayer as they passed along the street. Had they not prayed, all would have been well. Neither Catholics nor Huguenots could bear to see the other side appeal to God. God was their ally; they grew angry that any other sect should dare claim Him. Someone threw a stone and a riot started, which ended in tragedy for some of those concerned before it was quelled.

A deputation of Huguenots went to the palace to demand audience of the King. He kept them waiting, for he was playing at tilting with some of his young men; not the rough tilting at which his grandfather, Francis the First, had excelled, and at which his father, Henry the Second, had lost his life, but gentle tilting in the costumes of ladies. And when he had finished the game, he declared he was too tired to see the deputation.

The Huguenots murmured against him. ‘This is the city of Babylon!’ they cried. ‘Of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord will not rest content until he has destroyed this city.’

The poor huddled on the street corners, but when lights sprang up in the palace they would stand as close as they could and try to see what was going on inside. They saw something of the fantastic balls at which the King danced in a low-necked gown with pearls about his throat; they saw him at the banquet where all the men were attired as women, and the women were in men’s clothes. They knew that the silk for these garments had been especially acquired and that it had cost a hundred thousand francs. To pay for this Paris must be taxed.

There were many about the King who remonstrated with him: Catherine herself, the Guises, the Marshal Tavannes.

‘Only fools spend money on folly,’ said Tavannes daringly.

‘One cannot treat the people of Paris thus!’ said Guise.

‘My son, take care!’ begged Catherine. ‘If you must have these pleasures, take them in secret. Do not let the people see how you frolic while they starve. It is not possible to go on in this way.’

‘I am the King,’ said Henry. ‘With me all things are possible.’

Meanwhile a sullen, starving city watched the reckless extravagance of a King it hated.


* * *

Louis Bérenger du Guast was curling his master’s hair. He kept up a light chatter as he did so, but he was not really thinking of his master’s appearance. Du Guast was different from the other mignons in as much as he was a politically ambitious man; he wanted official position, and if it meant posing as an effeminate young man who doted on fine clothes, perfumes, lap-dogs and his master, he was ready to do what was required of him.

He had already succeeded in bringing about strife between the King and his sister Margot, for he recognized Margot as the ally of Alençon, who was the deadliest of all his foes. Du Guast had accused Margot, before the King and court, of the impropriety of visiting the bedchamber of one of the gentlemen in Alençon’s entourage. Margot had hotly denied this, but the King was more ready to believe his favourite than his sister; as Margot’s reputation was such that she might very well have committed the indiscretion, others believed du Guast to have been right, Since then Margot had allied herself more closely with Alençon, which meant that her friendship with her husband had grown.

The King was suffering from an affliction of the ear rather similar to that which had resulted in the death of his brother Francis, and it had occurred to du Guast that there might be some in the palace who were trying to bring the King’s life to an end. When poison was suspected, the thoughts of all jai. mediately flew to the Queen Mother, but no one would suspect Catherine of trying to remove her favourite son, who was, as everybody knew, her ‘All’ as she herself called him. Whom else then? Obviously Alençon would take the throne.

There was another fact which disturbed du Guast. He was deeply attracted to Madame de Sauves; nor was he, she had obligingly demonstrated, repulsive to her. She had continued to retain other lovers, among them Guise, Navarre and Alençon; and this angered du Guast, who liked to stand first, both with his mistress and his master. But of his rivals he most feared Alençon, for if the King died and Alençon took his place, then he, du Guast, would fall very low.

‘How is the ear today, dearest Sire?’ whispered du Guast. ‘Very painful,’ whimpered the King. ‘Is it swollen? Dress my hair over it to hide it.’

‘Dearest Sire, I wish to speak to you alone.’

Caylus and Epernon frowned.

‘It is of the utmost importance, Sire,’ urged du Guast.

Henry nodded. He was sometimes not so foolish as he appeared to be; and his neglect of his duties was in some measure due to physical weakness. Most of the virility which he had possessed in his teens had by now disappeared and physical exercise really did exhaust him. He had the frailty of body and the weakness of constitution which had shortened the lives of his two elder brothers; but his mind was more alert than theirs had been. Like all the Medici-Valois brood, he was possessed of a complex nature, and the traits inherited from his mother mingled uneasily with those of his Valois progenitors. He could be a foolish and extravagant pervert, yet, like his paternal grandfather, a lover of all that was artistic; he could, like his slow-minded yet statesmanlike father, try to grapple with matters of importance.

So he now dismissed his attendants and listened to what du Guast had to say.

‘Dearest Sire, I am afraid. Your ear . . . it perturbs me.’ ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your brother Francis died of an affliction of the ear, Sire, and some say that he was hastened to his end.’

‘My God!’ cried Henry. ‘You mean that someone is trying to get rid of me!’

‘It may well be so.’

‘But . . . my mother loves me.’

‘I did not think of your mother, Sire.’

‘Alençon?’ muttered the King.

‘Who else, Sire? He is your enemy.’

‘What can we do? We must act quickly. I shall call in my mother. She will know.’