The Chaplet of Pearls

CHAPTER XXVII. THE DYING KING

      Die in terror of thy guiltiness,

  Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death, Fainting, despair,despairing yield thy breath

A few days later, when Berenger had sent out Philip, under the keeping of the secretaries, to see the Queen-mother represent Royalty in one of the grand processions of Rogation-tide, the gentle knock came to his door that always announced the arrival of his good surgeon.

‘You look stronger, M. le Baron; have you yet left your room?’

‘I have walked round the gallery above the hall,’ said Berenger. ‘I have not gone down-stairs; that is for to-morrow.’

‘What would M. le Baron say if his chirurgeon took him not merely down-stairs, but up on flight at the Louvre?’

‘Ha!’ cried Berenger; ‘to the King?’

‘It is well-nigh the last chance, Monsieur; the Queen-mother and all her suite are occupied with services and sermons this week; and next week private access to the King will be far more difficult. I have waited as long as I could that you might gain strength to support the fatigue.’

‘Hope cancels fatigue,’ said Berenger, already at the other end of the room searching for his long-disused cloak, sword, gloves, hat, and mask.

‘Not the sword,’ said Pare, ‘so please you. M. le Baron must condescend to obtain entrance as my assistant—the plain black doublet—yes, that is admirable; but I did not know that Monsieur was so tall,’ he added, in some consternation, as, for the first time, he saw his patient standing up at his full height—unusual even in England, and more so in France. Indeed, Berenger had grown during his year of illness, and being, of course, extremely thin, looked all the taller, so as to be a very inconvenient subject to smuggle into to palace unobserved.

However, Ambroise had made up his mind to the risk, and merely assisted Berenger in assuming his few equipments, then gave him his arm to go down the stairs. Meeting Guibert on the way, Berenger left word with him that he was going out to take the air with Maitre Pare; and on the man’s offering to attend him, refused the proposal.

Pare carriage waited in the court, and Berenger, seated in its depths, rolled unseen through the streets, till he found himself at the little postern of the Louvre, the very door whence he was to have led off his poor Eustacie. Here Ambroise made him take off his small black mask, in spite of all danger of his scars being remarked, since masks were not etiquette in the palace, and, putting into his arms a small brass-bound case of instruments, asked his pardon for preceding him, and alighted from the carriage.

This was Ambroise’s usual entrance, and it was merely guarded by a Scottish archer, who probably observed nothing. They then mounted the stone stair, the same where Osbert had dragged down his insensible master; and as, at the summit, the window appeared where Berenger had waited those weary hours, and heard the first notes of the bell of St.-Germain-l’Auxerrois, his breath came in such hurried sobs, that Pare would fain have given him time to recover himself, but he gasped, ‘Not here—not here;’ and Pare, seeing that he could still move on, turned, not to the corridor leading to the King’s old apartments, now too full of dreadful associations for poor Charles, but towards those of the young Queen. Avoiding the ante-room, where no doubt waited pages, users, and attendants, Pare presently knocked at a small door, so hidden in the wain-scoting of the passage that only a habitue could have found it without strict search. It was at once opened, and the withered, motherly face of an old woman, with keen black eyes under a formal tight white cap, looked out.

‘Eh! Maitre Pare,’ she said, ‘you have brought the poor young gentleman? On my faith, he looks scarcely able to walk! Come in, sir, and rest a while in my chamber while Maitre Ambroise goes on to announce you to the King. He is more at ease to-day, the poor child, and will relish some fresh talk.

Berenger knew this to be Philippe, the old Huguenot nurse, whom Charles IX. loved most fondly, and in whom he found his greatest comfort. He was very glad to sink into the seat she placed for him, the only one is her small, bare room and recover breath there while Pare passed on to the King, and she talked as one delighted to have a hearer.

‘Ah, yes, rest yourself—stay; I will give you a few spoonfuls of the cordial potage I have here for the King; it will comfort your heart. Ah! you have been cruelly mauled—but he would have saved you if he could.

‘Yes, good mother, I know that; the King has been my very good lord.

‘Ah! blessings on you if you say so from your heart, Monsieur; you know me for one of your poor Reformed. And I tell you—I who saw him born, who nursed him from his birth—that, suffer as you may, you can never suffer as he does. Maitre Ambroise may talk of his illness coming from blowing too much on his horn; I know better. But, ah! to be here at night would make a stone shed tears of blood. The Queen and I know it; but we say nothing, we only pray.

The sight of a Huguenot was so great a treat to the old woman in her isolated life, that her tongue ran thus freely while Berenger sat, scarce daring to speak or breathe in the strange boding atmosphere of the palace, where the nurse and surgeon moved as tolerated, privileged persons, in virtue of the necessity of the one to the King—of the other to all the world. After all brief interval Pare returned and beckoned to Berenger, who followed him across a large state-bedroom to a much smaller one, which he entered from under a heavy blue velvet curtain, and found himself in an atmosphere heavy with warmth and perfume, and strangely oppressed besides. On one side of the large fire sat the young Queen, faded, wan, and with all animation or energy departed, only gazing with a silent, wistful intentness at her husband. He was opposite to her in a pillowed chair, his feet on a stool, with a deadly white, padded, puffy cheek, and his great black eyes, always prominent, now with a glassy look, and strained wide, as though always gazing after some horrible sight. ‘Madame la Comtesse stood in her old, wooden, automaton fashion behind the Queen; otherwise, no one was present save Pare, who, as he held up the curtain, stood back to let M. de Ribaumont advance. He stood still, however, merely bowing low, awaiting an invitation to come forward, and trying to repress the startled tear called up by the very shock of pity at the mournful aspect of the young King and Queen.

Elisabeth, absorbed in her husband, and indifferent to all besides, did not even turn her head as he entered; but Charles signed to him to approach, holding out a yellow, dropsical-looking hand; and as he dropped on one knew and kissed it fervently, the King said, ‘Here he is, Madame, the Baron de Ribaumont, the same whose little pleasure-boat was sucked down in our whirlpool.

All Elisabeth’s memories seemed to have been blotted out in that whirlpool, for she only bowed her head formally, and gave no look of recognition, though she, too, allowed Berenger to salute her listless, dejected hand. ‘One would hardly have known him again, continued the King, in a low husky voice; ‘but I hope, sir, I see you recovering.

‘Thanks, Sire, to Heaven’s goodness, and to your goodness in sparing to me the services of Maitre Pare.

‘Ah! there is none like Pare for curing a wound OUTSIDE,’ said Charles, then leant back silent; and Berenger, still kneeling, was considering whether he ought to proffer his petition, when the King continued, ‘How fares your friend Sidney, M. le Baron?

‘Right well, Sire. The Queen has made him one of her gentlemen.

‘Not after this fashion,’ said Charles, as with his finger he traced the long scar on Berenger’s face. ‘Our sister of England has different badges of merit from ours for her good subjects. Ha! what say they of us in England, Baron?

‘I have lain sick at home, Sire, and have neither seen nor heard, said Berenger.

‘Ah! one day more at Montpipeau had served your turn,’ said the King; ‘but you are one who has floated up again. One—one at least whose blood is not on my head.

The Queen looked up uneasy and imploring, as Charles continued: ‘Would that more of you would come in this way! They have scored you deep, but know you what is gashed deeper still? Your King’s heart! Ah! you will not come, as Coligny does, from his gibbet, with his two bleeding hands. My father was haunted to his dying day by the face of one Huguenot tailor. Why, I see a score, night by night! You are solid; let me feel you, man.

‘M. Pare,’ exclaimed the poor Queen, ‘take him away.

‘No, Madame,’ said the King, holding tight in his hot grasp Berenger’s hand, which was as pale as his own, long, thin, and wasted, but cold from strong emotion; ‘take not away the only welcome sight I have seen for well-nigh two years.’ He coughed, and the handkerchief he put to his lips had blood on it; but he did not quit his hold of his visitor, and presently said in a feeble whisper, ‘Tell me, how did you escape?

Pare, over the King’s head, signed to him to make his narrative take time; and indeed his speech was of necessity so slow, that by the time he had related how Osbert had brought him safely to England, the King had recovered himself so as to say, ‘See what it is to have a faithful servant. Which of those they have left me would do as much for me? And now, being once away with your life, what brings you back to this realm of ours, after your last welcome?

‘I left my wife here, Sire.

‘Ha! and the cousin would have married her—obtained permission to call himself Nid de Merle—but she slipped through his clumsy fingers; did she not? Did you know anything of her, Madame?

‘No,’ said the Queen, looking up. ‘She wrote to me once from her convent; but I knew I could do nothing for her but bring her enemies’ notice on her; so I made no answer.

Berenger could hardly conceal his start of indignation—less at the absolute omission, than at the weary indifference of the Queen’s confession. Perhaps the King saw it, for he added, ‘So it is, Ribaumont; the kindest service we can do our friends is to let them alone; and, after all, it was not the worse for her. She did evade her enemies?

‘Yes, Sire,’ said Berenger, commanding and steadying his voice with great difficulty, ‘she escaped in time to give birth to our child in the ruined loft of an old grange of the Templars, under the care of a Huguenot farmer, and a pastor who had known my father. Then she took refuge in La Sablerie, and wrote to my mother, deeming me dead. I was just well enough to go in quest of her. I came—ah! Sire, I found only charred ruins. Your Majesty knows how Huguenot bourgs are dealt with.

‘And she–?

Berenger answered but by a look.

‘Why did you come to tell me this?’ said the King, passionately. ‘Do you not know that they have killed me already? I thought you came because there was still some one I could aid.

‘There is, there is, Sire,’ said Berenger, for once interrupting royalty. ‘None save you can give me my child. It is almost certain that a good priest saved it; but it is in a convent, and only with a royal order can one of my religion either obtain it, or even have my questions answered.

‘Nor with one in Paris,’ said the King dryly; ‘but in the country the good mothers may still honour their King’s hand. Here, Ambroise, take pen and ink, and write the order. To whom?

‘To the Mother Prioress of the Ursulines at Lucon, so please our Majesty,’ said Berenger, ‘to let me have possession of my daughter.

‘Eh! is it only a little girl?

‘Yes, Sire; but my heart yearns for her all the more,’ said Berenger, with glistening eyes.

‘You are right,’ said the poor King. ‘Mine, too, is a little girl; and I bless God daily that she is no son—to be the most wretched thing the France. Let her come in, Madame. She is little older than my friend’s daughter. I would show her to him.

The Queen signed to Madame la Comtesse to fetch the child, and Berenger added, ‘Sire, you could do a further benefit to my poor little one. One more signature of yours would attest that ratification of my marriage which took place in your Majesty’s presence.

‘Ah! I remember,’ said Charles. ‘You may have any name of mine that can help you to oust that villain Narcisse; only wait to use it—spare me any more storms. It will serve your turn as well when I am beyond they, and you will make your claim good. What,’ seeing Berenger’s interrogative look, ‘do you not know that by the marriage-contract the lands of each were settled on the survivor?

‘No, Sire; I have never seen the marriage-contract.

‘Your kinsman knew it well,’ said Charles.

Just then, Madame la Comtesse returned, leading the little Princess by the long ribbons at her waist; Charles bent forward, calling, ‘Here, ma petite, come here. Here is one who loves thy father. Look well at him, that thou mayest know him.

The little Madame Elisabeth so far understood, that, with a certain lofty condescension, she extended her hand for the stranger to kiss, and thus drew from the King the first smile that Berenger had seen. She was more than half a year older than the Berangere on whom his hopes were set, and whom he trusted to find not such a pale, feeble, tottering little creature as this poor young daughter of France, whose round black eyes gazed wonderingly at his scar; but she was very precocious, and even already too much of a royal lady to indulge in any awkward personal observation.

By the time she had been rewarded for her good behaviour by one of the dried plums in her father’s comfit-box, the order had been written by Pare, and Berenger had prepared the certificate for the King’s signature, according to the form given him by his grandfather.

‘Your writing shakes nearly as much as mine,’ said the poor King, as he wrote his name to this latter. ‘Now, Madame, you had better sign it also; and tell this gentleman where to find Father Meinhard in Austria. He was a little too true for us, do you see—would not give thanks for shedding innocent blood. Ah!’—and with a gasp of mournful longing, the King sank back, while Elisabeth, at his bidding, added her name to the certificate, and murmured the name of a convent in Vienna, where her late confessor could be found.

‘I cannot thank you Majesty enough,’ said Berenger; ‘My child’s rights are now secure in England at least, and this’—as he held the other paper for the King—‘will give her to me.

‘Ah! take it for what it is worth,’ said the King, as he scrawled his ‘CHARLES’ upon it. ‘This order must be used promptly, or it will avail you nothing. Write to Ambroise how you speed; that is, if it will bring me one breath of good news.’ And as Berenger kissed his hand with tearful, inarticulate thanks, he proceeded, ‘Save for that cause, I would ask you to come to me again. It does me good. It is like a breath from Montpipeau—the last days of hope—before the frenzy—the misery.

‘Whenever your Majesty does me the honour–’ began Berenger, forgetting all except the dying man.

‘I am not so senseless,’ interrupted the King sharply; ‘it would be losing the only chance of undoing one wrong. Only, Ribaumont,’ he added fervently, ‘for once let me hear that one man has pardoned me.

‘Sire, Sire,’ sobbed Berenger, totally overcome, ‘how can I speak the word? How feel aught but love, loyalty, gratitude?

Charles half smiled again as he said in sad meditation—‘Ah! it was in me to have been a good king if they had let me. Think of me, bid your friend Sidney think of me, as I would have been—not as I have been—and pray, pray for me.’ Then hiding his face in his handkerchief, in a paroxysm of grief and horror, he murmured in a stifled tone, ‘Blood, blood, deliver me, good Lord!

In effect, there was so sudden a gush of blood from mouth and nose that Berenger sprang to his feet in dismay, and was bona fide performing the part of assistant to the surgeon, when, at the Queen’s cry, not only the nurse Philippe hurried in, but with her a very dark, keen-looking man, who at once began applying strong essences to the King’s face, as Berenger supported his head. In a few moments Pare looked up at Berenger, and setting him free, intimated to him, between sign and whisper, to go into Philippe’s room and wait there; and it was high time, for though the youth had felt nothing in the stress of the moment, he was almost swooning when he reached the little chamber, and lay back in the nurse’s chair, with closed eyes, scarcely conscious how time went, or even where he was, till he was partly aroused by hearing steps returning.

‘The poor young man,’ said Philippe’s kind voice, ‘he is fainting. Ah! no wonder it overcame any kind heart.

‘How is the King?’ Berenger tried to say, but his own voice still sounded unnatural and far away.

‘He is better for the time, and will sleep,’ said Pare, administering to his other patient some cordial drops as he spoke. ‘There, sir; you will soon be able to return to the carriage. This has been a sore trial to your strength.

‘But I have gained all—all I could hope,’ said Berenger, looking at his precious papers. ‘But, alas! the poor King!

‘You will never, never let a word of blame pass against him,’ cried Philippe earnestly. ‘It is well that one of our people should have seen how it really is with him. All I regret is that Maitre Rene thrust himself in and saw you.

‘Who?’ said Berenger, who had been too much engrossed to perceive any one.

‘Maitre Rene of Milan, the Queen-mother’s perfume. He came with some plea of bringing a pouncet-box from her, but I wager it was as a spy. I was doing my best to walk him gently off, when the Queen’s cry called me, and he must needs come in after me.

‘I saw him not,’ said Berenger; ‘perhaps he marked not me in the confusion.

‘I fear,’ said Pare gravely, ‘he was more likely to have his senses about him than you. M. le Baron; these bleedings of the King’s are not so new to us familiars to the palace. The best thing now to be done is to have you to the carriage, if you can move.

Berenger, now quite recovered, stood up, and gave his warm thanks to the old nurse for her kindness to him.

‘Ah! sir,’ she said, ‘you are one of us. Pray, pray that God will have mercy on my poor child! He has the truth in his heart. Pray that it may save him at the last.

Ambroise, knowing that she would never cease speaking while there was any one to hear her, almost dragged Berenger out at the little secret door, conveyed him safely down the stairs, and placed him again in the carriage. Neither spoke till the surgeon said, ‘You have seen a sad sight, Monsieur le Baron: I need not bid you be discreet.

‘There are some things that go too deep for speech,’ sighed the almost English Berenger; then, after a pause, ‘Is there no hope for him? Is he indeed dying?

‘Without a miracle, he cannot live a month. He is as truly slain by the St. Bartholomew as ever its martyrs were,’ said Pare, moved out of his usual cautious reserve towards one who had seen so much and felt so truly. ‘I tell you, sir, that his mother hath as truly slain her sons, as if she had sent Rene there to them with his drugs. According as they have consciences and hearts, so they pine and perish under her rule.

Berenger shuddered, and almost sobbed, ‘And hath he no better hope, no comforter?’ he asked.

‘None save good old Flipote. As you heard, the Queen-mother will not suffer his own Church to speak to him in her true voice. No confessor but one chosen by the Cardinal of Lorraine may come near him; and with him all is mere ceremony. But if at the last he opens his ear and heart to take in the true hope of salvation, it will be from the voice of poor old Philippe.

And so it was! It was Philippe, who heard him in the night sobbing over the piteous words, ‘My God, what horrors, what blood!’ and, as she took from his tear-drenched handkerchief, spoke to him of the Blood that speakth better things than the blood of Abel; and it was she who, in the final agony, heard and treasured these last words, ‘If the Lord Jesus will indeed receive me into the company of the blest!’ Surely, never was repentance deeper than that of Charles IX.—and these, his parting words, were such as to inspire the trust that it was not remorse.