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The arrival of the Connetable de Montmorency and the Chancelier de l'Hopital were distinct indications of rebellion; the morning of the next day would therefore be decisive. On the morrow the queen-mother was the first to enter the king's chamber. She found no one there but Mary Stuart, pale and weary, who had passed the night in prayer beside the bed.
"It is a great misfortune that the house of Navarre, instead of abjuring the religion of its fathers, does not abjure the spirit of vengeance and rebellion which the Connetable de Bourbon breathed into it," he said aloud. "We shall see the quarrels of the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons revive in our day." "No," said Groslot, "there's another Louis XI. in the Cardinal de Lorraine."
Having to make head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine, the two Balafres, and the two Condes, against the queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking fire of the Calvinist press.
As for being connetable, I'd rather help prisoners free than hale them before the Royal Court. For somehow when you get at the bottom of most crimes the small ones leastways you find they weren't quite meant. I expect I expect," he added gravely, "that half the crimes oughtn't to be punished at all; for it's queer that things which hurt most can't be punished by law."
The approbation of the Connétable de Montmorency, who had originally declared his objection to so close a union between the two countries, was purchased by a promise that the hand of one of the Princesses of Mantua, niece to the Regent, should be conferred upon his son; and the brilliant promise of the one marriage caused him to overlook the probable perils of the other; while the Duc de Bouillon, although he occasionally declared in the Council that he seriously apprehended the result of so intimate a connection with Spain, never remonstrated with any energy against the measure, and was believed by those who knew him best to have already made his conditions with Philip.
The rendezvous-de-chasse was, in the old days, and is to-day on rare occasions, at the Rond Point, to which a dozen magnificent forest roads lead from all directions, that from the town being paved with Belgian blocks, the dread of automobilists, but delightful to ride over in muddy weather. The Route de Connetable, so called, is well-nigh ideal of its kind.
Supported by the House of Guise and the Duc d'Epernon, assured of the good faith of the Connétable and the Maréchaux de Bouillon and de Lesdiguières, as well as deeply incensed by the bearing of the two Princes in the Council; and, moreover, urged by her more immediate favourites to assert her dignity, and to display towards the malcontents a coldness and indifference as marked as that which they exhibited towards herself, she dismissed the subject from her thoughts as one of slight importance, and turned all her attention to the brilliant festivities by which the declaration of the royal marriages was to be celebrated.
"The Count d'Artois replied: 'In the first place, we should appoint the first consul Connetable of France, if that would be agreeable to him. "Is not that a beautiful and sublime idea?" exclaimed Josephine, joyfully, while the princess searchingly fixed her eyes on Bonaparte's face.
As he resumed his seat the Connétable de Montmorency and the Ducs de Nevers and d'Epernon warmly applauded his words; after which the Maréchaux de Bouillon and de Lesdiguières declared their approval of the alliance, simply expressing a hope that proper precautions would be taken to prevent the treaty with Spain from proving prejudicial to the interests of France in her more ancient alliances with other foreign powers; and finally it became the turn of M. de Condé to declare his sentiments.
There he told the Connetable de Montmorency of the peril of his nephew, the Prince de Conde, and the audacious hopes of the Guises. The Connetable, furious at the thought that the prince's life hung upon that of Francois II., started for Orleans at once with a hundred noblemen and fifteen hundred cavalry.
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