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She had counted, too, with equal certainty upon exchanging it with our King, for the sovereignty of Touraine and the Amboise country; and had actually charged her faithful Aubigny to buy her some land near Amboise to build her there a vast palace, with courts and outbuildings; to furnish it with magnificence, to spare neither gilding nor paintings, and to surround the whole with the most beautiful gardens.
The Castle of Amboise stands high above the town, like another Acropolis above a smaller Athens; it rises upon the only height visible for some distance, and is in a commanding position for holding the level fields of Touraine around it, and securing the passage of the Loire between Tours and Chaumont, which is the next link in the chain that ends at Blois.
It is probable that the Huguenot plot which broke out in the March of 1560 in an attempt to surprise the French Court at Amboise was known beforehand by Cecil; and, though the conspiracy was ruthlessly suppressed, the Queen drew fresh courage from a sense that the Guises had henceforth work for their troops at home.
"Ay, before Edward of Lancaster was made my lord and brother," retorted Clarence, bitterly. "Hush!" said the earl, "and calm thy brow. Not thus didst thou speak at Amboise; either thou wert then less frank or more generous. But regrets are vain: we have raised the whirlwind, and must rule it."
"Frightened by his mad course, the family of the Marshal supplicated the king to intervene, and Charles VII,'sure, as he said, 'of the malgovernance of the Sire de Rais, forbade him, in grand council, by letters dated 'Amboise, 1436, to sell or make over any fortress, any château, any land. "This order simply hastened the ruin of the interdicted.
Cartier appealed to the saints; but they turned a deaf ear. Then he nailed against a tree an image of the Virgin, and on a Sunday summoned forth his woe-begone followers, who, haggard, reeling, bloated with their maladies, moved in procession to the spot, and, kneeling in the snow, sang litanies and psalms of David. That day died Philippe Rougemont, of Amboise, aged twenty-two years.
The lessons from Harding were a useful counter-stroke to the excessive and exaggerated Turnerism in which he had been indulging through his illness. The drawings of Amboise, the coast of Genoa, and the Glacier des Bois, though published later, were made before he had exchanged fancy for fact; and they bear, on the face of them, the obvious marks of an unhealthy state of mind.
By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation, the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his presence. As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was bound to obey the summons of his sovereign.
It sounds poetic and it looks picturesque, like a picture by Teniers or Jan Steen, but it is not a habit conducive to repose. As far as I can judge, after a month's experience, the one thing no inhabitant of Amboise ever does is to go to bed. At midnight the river front is alive with cheerful and strident voices.
But the outcome of the thought surprised and disappointed the watcher. "La Mothe?" "Sire, I vouch for La Mothe." "God's name, Philip, has the fool nothing to say for himself?" "I had forgotten. To-day's blessed relief drove it from my head. Can you blame me, Sire, if I forgot everything but my joy? Last night, as I left Amboise, he said, 'Pray Heaven the King still lives.
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