himself, we have already shown; and it was further evinced when he declared to those who interceded for the doomed man, that had his personal interests alone been threatened by the treason of the criminal, he should have found it easy to pardon the wrong that had been done him; but that, when he looked into the future, and remembered that the safety of the kingdom which had been confided to him, and of the son who was to succeed him upon the throne, must both be compromised by sparing one who had already proved that his loyalty could not be purchased by mercy, he held himself bound to secure both against an evil for which there was no other safeguard than the infliction of the utmost penalty of the law.
Many argued that, having spared the lives of the Ducs d'Epernon, de Bouillon, and de Mayenne,[205] all of whom had at different times been in arms against him, Henry might equally have shown mercy to Biron; but while they urged this argument, they omitted to remember that the political crime of these three nobles had not been aggravated, like that of the Maréchal, by private wrong; and that they had not, by an unyielding obstinacy, and an ungrateful pertinacity in rebellion, exhausted the forbearance of an indulgent monarch. Moreover, Biron, in grasping at sovereignty, had not hesitated to invite the intrusion of foreign and hostile troops into French territory, or to betray the exigencies and difficulties of the army under his own command to his dangerous allies; thus weakening for the moment, and imperilling for the future, the resources of a frank and trusting master; two formidable facts, which justified the severity alike of his King and of his judges.
The lesson was a salutary one for the French nobility, who had, from long impunity, learnt to regard their personal relations with foreign princes as matters beyond the authority of the sovereign, and which could involve neither their safety nor their honour; for it taught them that the highest head in the realm might fall under an accusation of treason; and that, powerful as each might be in his own province or his own government, he was still responsible to the monarch for the manner in which he used that power, and answerable to the laws of his country should he be rash enough to abuse it.
That Henry felt and understood that such must necessarily be the effect produced by the fate of the Maréchal there can be little doubt, as well as that he was still further induced to impress so wholesome a conviction upon the minds of his haughty aristocracy by the probability of a minority, during which the disorders incident to so many conflicting and imaginary claims could not fail to convulse the kingdom and to endanger the stability of the throne; while it is no less evident that, once having forced upon their reason a conviction of his own ability to compel obedience where his authority was resisted, and to assert his sovereign privilege where he felt it to be essential to the preservation of the realm, he evinced no desire to extend his severity beyond its just limits. Thus, as we have seen, with the exception of the Baron de Fontenelles, who had drawn down upon himself the terrible expiation of a cruel death, rather by a long succession of crime than by his association in the conspiracy of Biron, all the other criminals already judged had escaped the due punishment of their treason; while the Comte d'Auvergne, after having been detained during a couple of months in the Bastille, was restored to liberty at the intercession of his sister, Madame de Verneuil, who pledged herself to the monarch that he was guilty only in so far as he had been faithful to the trust reposed in him by the Maréchal, and had forborne to betray his secret, while he had never actively participated in the conspiracy. She moreover assured Henry, who was only anxious to find an opportunity of pardoning the Count--an anxiety which the tears and supplications of the Marquise, as well as his own respect for the blood of the Valois inherited by D'Auvergne from his royal father, tended naturally to increase--that the prisoner was prepared, since the death of Biron had freed him from all further necessity for silence, to communicate to his Majesty every particular of which he was cognizant. The concession was accepted; the Count made the promised revelations; and his liberation was promptly followed by a renewal of the King's favour.
Towards the close of the year, intelligence having reached Henry that the Prince de Joinville, who was serving in the army of the Archduke, had, in his turn, suffered himself to be seduced from his allegiance by the Spaniards, he gave instant orders for his arrest; but the Prince no sooner found himself a prisoner than he declared his readiness to confess everything, provided he were permitted to do so to the King in person and in the presence of Sully. His terms were complied with; and, as both Henry and his minister had anticipated from the frivolous and inconsequent character of their new captive, it at once became apparent that no idea of treason had been blent with the follies of which he had been guilty, but that they had merely owed their origin to his idle love of notoriety. A correspondence with Spain had become, as we have shown, the fashion at the French Court; and Joinville had accordingly, in order to increase his importance, resolved to effect in his turn an understanding with that country. During his audience of the King he so thoroughly betrayed the utter puerility of his proceedings that the monarch at once resolved to treat him as a silly and headstrong youth, towards whom any extreme measure of severity would be alike unnecessary and undignified; and he had consequently no sooner heard Joinville's narration to an end than he desired the presence of his mother the Duchesse de Guise and his brother the Duke,[206] and as they entered the royal closet, somewhat startled by so sudden a summons, he said, directing their attention to the delinquent: "There stands the prodigal son in person; he has filled his head with follies; but I shall treat him as a child and forgive him for your sakes, although only on condition that you reprimand him seriously; and that you, my nephew," addressing himself particularly to the Duke, "become his guarantee for the future. I place him in your charge, in order that you may teach him wisdom if it be possible."
In obedience to this command M. de Guise, who was well aware with how rash and intemperate a spirit he was called upon to contend, at once, with the royal sanction, reconducted Joinville to his prison, where during several months the young Prince exhausted himself in threats, murmurs, and every species of verbal extravagance, until wearied by the monotony of confinement he finally subsided into repentance, and was, upon his earnest promise of amendment, permitted to exchange his chamber in the Bastille for a less stringent captivity in the Château de Dampierre.[207] Such was the lenient punishment of the last of the conspirators; and it was assuredly a clever stroke of policy in the monarch thus to cast a shade of ridicule over the close of the cabal, which, having commenced with a tragedy, had by his contemptuous forbearance almost terminated in an epigram.
The Court, after having passed a portion of the summer at St. Germain, removed in the commencement of August to Fontainebleau, the advanced pregnancy of the Queen having rendered her anxious to return to that palace. But any gratification which she might have promised herself, in this her favourite place of residence, was cruelly blighted by the legitimation of the son of Madame de Verneuil, which was formally registered at this period. Nor was this the only vexation to which she was exposed, the notoriety of the King's intrigues becoming every day more trying alike to her temper and to her health; while the new concession which had been made to the vanity--or, as the Marquise herself deemed it, to the honour--of the favourite, induced the latter to commit the most indecent excesses, and to increase, if possible, the almost regal magnificence of her attire and her establishment, at the same time that her deportment towards the Queen was marked by an insolent disrespect which involved the whole Court in perpetual misunderstandings.
As it had already become only too evident that the unfortunate Marie de Medicis possessed but little influence over the affections of her husband, however he might be compelled to respect the perfect propriety and dignity of her character, the cabal of the favourite daily increased in importance; and the measure of the Queen's mortification overflowed, when, soon after the royal visit to Fontainebleau, Henry took leave of her in order to visit Calais, and she ascertained that he had on his way stopped at the Château de Verneuil, whither he had been accompanied by the Marquise. It was in vain that M. de Sully--to whom the King had given strict charge to endeavour by every method in his power to reconcile the Queen to his absence, and to provide for her amusement every diversion of which she was in a condition to partake--exerted himself to obey the command of the monarch; Marie was too deeply wounded to derive any consolation from such puerile sources, nor was it until the return of her royal consort, when his evident anxiety and increased tenderness once more led her to believe that she might finally wean him from his excesses and attach him to herself, that she once more became calm.
On the 11th of November the anticipated