The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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have come in. He bows to them with kingly grace, and passes through a door. Whip! whip! whip! whip! whip! Five strokes from as many poniards. Nine men have been standing concealed in the passage-way, and five of them have plunged their weapons into his body.
"God have mercy!" It is his only cry. There he lies, close by the king's bed, his blood flowing from five ghastly wounds.
The king comes from an inner chamber. "Is it done?"
"Yes."
The king bends over the body and kicks it. Who was he that stamped the heel of his boot into the face of the dead Coligny, sixteen years ago, on the night of St. Bartholomew? The Duke of Guise, now weltering in his gore, did not stop on that eventful night to ponder the words of Christ concerning retribution, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." But the retributive hour has come, and the words spoken by that Carpenter of Galilee are not fiction, but stern and irreversible fact. The time has been long, but the measure has come at last.
"I am king." Henry speaks the words, and goes to see his mother, Catherine, old and feeble now.
"How are you this morning?"
"Better," Catherine replies.
"So am I."
"You have had the duke put out of the way, I hear. I hope the cutting is all right; but now for the sewing." So the mother addresses the son. Thirteen days later, the grandniece of Leo X. — the woman who poisoned Jeanne d'Albret, who planned the massacre of St Bartholomew, who poisoned her own son Charles, who has been accessory to many other crimes — lies upon her bed, weak, helpless, with death staring her in the face. "Blood! blood! There is a river of blood!" she cries. "See! see! The devils are after me! they are dragging me down to hell."
She is a maniac. Death steals on apace. The withered hands move convulsively; the once fair face is haggard now; the lips quiver,and the breathing ceases. Death has come, and that is the end! Is it? If the good which men do lives after them, does the evil die when the pulse ceases its beatings? No. A legacy of blood and hate, of war and crime, is what Catherine de' Medici bequeaths to France.
Six months pass. The King of France and Henry of Navarre are at St Cloud, with their armies. The land is convulsed with civil war. Paris is in the hands of the Holy Leaguers, who fain would exterminate every Huguenot.
It is Tuesday, August 1st, that a monk appears at St Cloud; he has come from Paris, with a message for the king.
"You can't go in," says the guard.
"Let him come in," shouts the king from his tent The monk passes in, bows low before the king to present a paper. A poniard flashes in the air, and the monk drives it to the hilt into the king's abdomen.
"He has killed me!" The shout is heard by the guards, who rush in in season to see the king falling to the floor. Jacques Clement stands there, with his arms outstretched, as if to make a crucifix of himself in his fanatical hatred of the king. In a moment he is hacked to pieces.
Henry of Navarre and the Duke of Sully are with the army. A horseman rides up at a swift pace, bows to Henry, and whispers in his ear, and the three gallop to St, Cloud, The king is dying, but conscious,
"Navarre is your king; recognize him as the rightful King of France," are the words that fall from the lips of the wounded sovereign.
"We will."
"Swear it."
The noblemen who have gathered round fall upon their knees, and lift their hands to heaven in confirmation of their promise. The dead king is borne to his tomb; and the boy born and nurtured among the defiles of the Pyrenees, whose infant lips were wet with wine and chafed with garlic by a doting old grandfather, is King of France — Henry IV., the first of the house of Bourbon.
Though Henry IV. has come to the throne, the war is not yet ended. The Leaguers are in possession of Paris, and the Duke of Mayenne, youngest brother of the Duke of Guise, their leader. The war widens. Queen Elizabeth of England sends over six thousand men to aid Henry. On March 14th the two armies meet on the plain of Ivry, Henry with ten thousand, and the Duke of Mayenne with thirteen thousand men.
"My children," says the king, just as the battle is beginning, "if you lose sight of your colors, rally to my white plume: you will always find it in the path to honor and glory. the historian Macaulay tells us about the battle:
"The king is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;
He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
Down all our line, a deafening shout, 'God save our lord the king!'
'And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall fall well he may,
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,
Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre,'"
The Leaguers are utterly routed. Their commander is a fat man; he Reeks safety in flight, but is overtaken and captured. Henry treats him kindly.
"Spare the French," are his orders to his troops. He will not have a Frenchman put to death.
But how shall Henry govern? He is a Huguenot, while three-fourths of the people of France are Catholics. He cares very little for the forms of religion; but he believes that every man should be allowed to think for himself in religious matters. He sees that the country is torn by factions. He would have the people united; and, to bring about a union, decides to give in his adhesion to the Roman Church. Some of the bigoted Catholics say that he is a hypocrite, while many of the Huguenots accuse him of being a traitor. For the sake of peace, he acknowledges the Pope as the head of the Church. He marks out his course of action. There shall be freedom of conscience to every man, and there shall be no more burning or hanging of heretics.
The country has been drenched in blood since Bernard Palissy, the potter, and his friends began to think for themselves; but at last, after the weary years, the people may think for themselves, without fear of priest or Pope.
Henry publicly abjures the Huguenot faith, and ranks himself a Catholic; but on April 13th, 1598, in the old town of Nantes, he publishes an edict guaranteeing protection and toleration to all. So liberty, like a ship at sea, after breasting the storm and tempest, sails in calmer waters.
CHAPTER XXVIII
WILLIAM BREWSTER AND HIS FRIENDS
ALTHOUGH sixty years have rolled away since Cardinal Wolsey made the old manor-house at Scrooby his home, some of the old people living there can remember how he distributed alms to the poor on Sunday, how he fed the lame and the blind from his kitchen-table. It is the year 1590, and the occupant of the old house is the young man, William Brewster — Sir William Davison's secretary. He has seen the hollowness of court life, and is dissatisfied with it. He learns that men who will be great have no end of trouble. Elizabeth has made him one of her postmasters, and there he is, living a quiet and peaceful life, looking after the mail, and the post-riders, and the traveller who go by post from London up the great road to York.
Great changes are taking place in England. Men are beginning to be independent in thought and action. Robert Brown, a zealous minister, has been preaching to congregations in London. Richard Clifton — a man with a long white