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Updated: May 15, 2025
Seated at the upper end of a long table covered with blue velvet, which stood in the middle of the room, the king, near to whom the young queen was seated in an arm-chair, waited for his mother. Robertet, the secretary, was mending pens.
The bronze David was intended for the French statesman, Pierre de Rohan, Maréchal de Gié, as a present from the Florentine Republic, but before it was finished the Maréchal fell into disgrace and could be of no further use to the Florentines. The Signory therefore determined to send the bronze to Florimond Robertet, Secretary of Finance to the French King.
Finding that they contained information which their spies, and Monsieur Braguelonne, the lieutenant of the Chatelet, had not obtained, they were inclined to believe in the sincerity of Catherine de' Medici. Robertet came and received certain secret orders relative to Christophe.
The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and the other persons present. The chief physician held the king's head, and Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The duke and the cardinal watched the proceeding attentively. Robertet and Monsieur de Maille stood motionless. Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine, glided unperceived from the room.
At home Francis I. maintained at his council the principal and most tried servants of his predecessor, amongst others the finance-minister, Florimond Robertet; and he raised to four the number of the marshals of France, in order to confer that dignity on Bayard's valiant friend, James of Chabannes, Lord of La Palice, who even under Louis XII. had been entitled by the Spaniards "the great marshal of France."
The two marshals, Robertet, and the chancellor went nearer to the door; for not only was the life of the king in question, but, as the whole court knew well, the chancellor, the queen-mother, and her adherents were in the utmost danger. A deep silence fell on the whole assembly.
The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, without venturing to further communicate their thoughts; but Robertet expressed them, for he thought it necessary to show more devotion to the Guises than these great personages, inasmuch as he was smaller than they.
Robertet, the secretary of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre, and the keeper of the seals, were collected in a group before the chancellor. The courtiers present were not precisely jesting; but their talk was malicious, especially among those who were not for the Guises. Presently voices were heard to rise in the king's chamber.
"One thing you may be certain of," said Louis's finance-minister Robertet to the ambassador from Florence, "that the king's character is not an easy one to deal with; he is not readily brought round to what is not his own opinion, which is not always a correct one; he is irritated against the pope; and the cardinal, to whom that causes great displeasure, does not always succeed, in spite of all influence, in getting him to do as he would like.
"Monseigneur," said Robertet, rushing hastily up the stairs, "the Chancelier de l'Hopital is at the gate and asks to enter; are we to let him in?" "Yes, open the gate," answered the cardinal. "Connetable and chancelier together would be dangerous; we must separate them. We have been boldly tricked by the queen-mother into choosing l'Hopital as chancellor."
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