CHAPTER II
HOW A NOBLE PRINCE PRACTISED THE GENTLE
ART OF PROCRASTINATION
Now, all that which I have related occurred during the month of February in the year 1578—three years and more ago.
After which I come to my story.
We will leave the subject of Messire Gilles' dream, an it please you; we will even leave that gallant if somewhat out-at-elbows gentleman in the tap-room of the only hostelry of which the little town of La Fère could boast, where he must needs wait for the good pleasure of no less a personage than François Hercule, Duke of Alençon and of Anjou—usually styled 'Monsieur'—who was own brother to His Very Christian Majesty, King Henry III of France, and whom Gilles de Crohin, Sire de Froidmont, was serving for the nonce.
M. le Duc d'Alençon and d'Anjou was closeted upstairs with the Queen of Navarre, that faithful and adoring sister who had already committed many follies for his sake, and who was ready to commit as many more. What she saw to adore and worship in this degenerate and indolent scion of the princely house of Valois, in this foppish profligate devoid alike of morals and of valour, no historian has ever been able to fathom. That he had some hidden qualities that were as noble as they have remained unknown to tradition, we must assume from the very fact that Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, one of the most brilliant women of that or any epoch and the wife of one of the most dazzling and fascinating men of his day, lavished the resources of her intellect and of her sisterly love upon that graceless coxcomb.
Picture her now—that beautiful, clever woman—full of energy, of vitality and of burning ambition, pacing the narrow room in the humble hostelry of a second-rate city, up and down like some caged and exquisite wild animal, the while that same fondly-adored brother sat there silent and surly, his long legs, encased in breeches of delicate green satin, stretched out before him, his not unattractive face, framed in by an over-elaborate ruffle, bent in moody contemplation of his velvet shoes, the while his perfumed and slender hands fidgeted uneasily with the folds of his mantle or with the slashings of his doublet.
On the table before him lay a letter, all crumpled and partly torn, which Marguerite had just thrown down in an access of angry impatience.
'By all the saints, François,' she said tartly, 'you would provoke an angel into exasperation. In Heaven's name, tell me what you mean to do.'
Monsieur did not reply immediately. He stretched out his legs still further before him; he shook his mantle into place; he smoothed down the creases of his satin breeches; then he contemplated his highly polished nails. Marguerite of Navarre, with flaming cheeks and blazing eyes, stood by, looking down on him with ever-growing irritability not unmixed with contempt.
'François!' she exclaimed once more, evidently at the end of her patience.
'Gently, my dear Margot; gently!' said Monsieur, with the peevishness of a spoilt child. 'Holy Virgin, how you do fume! Believe me, choler is bad for the stomach and worse for the complexion. And, after all, where is the hurry? One must have time to think.'
'Think! Think!' she retorted. ''Tis two days since M. d'Inchy's letter came and he sends anon for his answer.'
'Which means,' he argued complacently, 'that there is no cause to come to a decision for at least half an hour.'
An angry exclamation broke from Marguerite's full lips.
'My dear Margot,' said the Duke fretfully, 'marriage is a very serious thing, and——'
He paused, frowning, for his sister had burst into ironical laughter. 'I am well aware,' he resumed dryly, 'that you, my dear, look upon it as a cause for levity, and that poor Navarre, your husband——'
'I pray you, dear brother,' she broke in coldly, 'do not let the pot call the kettle black. 'Tis neither in good taste nor yet opportune. M. d'Inchy will send for his answer anon. You must make up your mind now, whether you mean to accept his proposal or not.'
Again Monsieur remained silent for awhile. Procrastination was as the breath of his body to him. Even now he drew the letter—every word of which he probably knew already by heart—towards him and fell to re-reading it for the twentieth time.
Marguerite of Navarre, biting her lips and almost crying with vexation, went up to the deep window embrasure and, throwing open the casement, she rested her elbow on the sill and leaned her cheek against her hand.
The open courtyard of the hostelry was at her feet, and beyond it the market-place of the sleepy little town with its quaint, narrow houses and tall crow's foot gables and curious signs, rudely painted, swinging on iron brackets in the breeze. It was early afternoon of a mild day in February, and in the courtyard of the hostelry there was the usual bustle attendant upon the presence of a high and mighty personage and of his numerous suite.
Men-at-arms passed to and fro; burghers from the tiny city, in dark cloth clothes and sombre caps, came to pay their respects; peasants from the country-side brought produce for sale; serving-men in drab linen and maids in gaily-coloured kerchiefs flitted in and out of the hostelry and across the yard with trays of refreshments for the retinue of M. le Duc d'Anjou and of Madame la Reynede Navarre, own brother and sister of the King of France. Indeed, it was not often that so great a prince and so exalted a lady had graced La Fère with their presence, and the hostelry had been hard put to it to do honour to two such noble guests. Mine host and his wife and buxom daughters were already wellnigh sick with worry, for though Madame la Reyne de Navarre and M. le Duc, her brother, were very exacting and their gentlemen both hungry and thirsty, not one among these, from Monsieur downwards, cared to pay for what he had. And while the little town seethed with soldiery and with loud-voiced gentlemen, the unfortunate burghers who housed them and the poor merchants and peasants who had to feed them, almost sighed for the Spanish garrisons who, at any rate, were always well-paid and paying.
Down below in the courtyard there was constant jingling of spurs and rattle of sabres, loud language and ribald laughter; but when the casement flew open and the Queen of Navarre's face appeared at the window, the latter, at any rate, was at once suppressed. In the shade and across a narrow wooden bench on which they sat astride, a couple of gentlemen-at-arms were throwing dice, surrounded by a mixed and gaping crowd—soldiers, servants, maids and peasants—who exchanged pleasantries while watching the game.
Marguerite looked down on them for a moment or two, and an impatient frown appeared between her brows. She did not like the look of her brother's 'gentlemen,' for they were of a truth very much out-at-elbows, free of speech and curt of manner. The fact that they were never paid and often left in the lurch, if not actually sold to their enemies by Monsieur, accounted, no doubt, for all the laxity, and Marguerite swore to herself even then, that if ever her favourite brother reached the ambitious goal for which she was scheming on his behalf, one of his first acts of sovereignty should be to dismiss such down-at-heel, out-at-elbows swashbucklers as were, for instance, Messire Gilles de Crohin and many others. After which vow Marguerite de Navarre once more turned to her brother, trying to assume self-control and calmness which she was far from feeling. He appeared still absorbed in the contemplation of the letter, and as he looked up lazily and encountered her blazing eyes, he yawned ostentatiously.
'François!' she burst out angrily.
'Well, my dear?' he retorted.
'M. le Baron d'Inchy,' she continued more quietly, 'hath taken possession of Cambray and the Cambrésis and driven the pro-Spanish Archbishop into exile. He offers to deliver up the Cambrésis and to open the gates of Cambray to you immediately, whilst M. le Comte de Lalain will hand you over, equally readily, the provinces of Hainault, of Flanders and of Artois.'
'I know all that,' he muttered.
'You might be Duke of Hainault and Artois,' she went on with passionate enthusiasm. 'You might found a new kingdom of the Netherlands, with yourself as its first sovereign lord—and you hesitate!!! Holy Joseph! Holy Legions of Angels!' she added, with a bitter sigh of pent-up exasperation. 'What have I done that I should be plagued with such a nincompoop for a brother?'
François d'Alençon and d'Anjou laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
'The provinces are worth considering,' he said coolly. 'Cambray is attractive, and I would not object to the Duchies of Artois and Hainault, or even to a Kingdom of the Netherlands. But...!'
'Well?' she broke in testily. 'What is the "but"?'
He sighed and made a sour grimace. 'There is a bitter pill to swallow with all that sugar,' he replied. 'You appear to be forgetting that, my very impetuous sister!'
It was Marguerite's turn to shrug her pretty shoulders.
'Bah!' she said contemptuously. 'A wife! You call that a bitter pill! Jacqueline de——what is her name?'
Monsieur referred to the letter.
'Jacqueline de Broyart,' he said dryly.
'Well! Jacqueline de Broyart,' she continued, more composedly, 'is said to be attractive. M. d'Inchy says so.'
'A merchant must praise the goods which he offers for sale,' remarked Monsieur.
'And even if she be ill-favoured,' retorted Marguerite dryly, 'she brings the richest duchies in the Netherlands and the influence of her name and family as her marriage portion. Surely a kingdom is worth a wife.'
'Sometimes.'
'In this case, François,' urged Marguerite impatiently. Then, with one of those sudden changes of mood which were one of her main charms, she added with a kind of gentle and solemn earnestness: 'You in your turn appear to forget, my exasperating brother, that 'tis I who have worked for you, just as I always have done heretofore, I who made friends for you with these loutish, ill-mannered Flemings, and who prepared the way which has led to such a brilliant goal. Whilst you wasted your substance in riotous living in our beloved Paris, I was half-killing myself with ennui in this abominable Flemish climate, I was drinking the poisonous waters of Spa so as to remain in touch with the governors of all these disaffected provinces and insidiously turning their minds towards looking for a prince of the house of France to be their deliverer and their ruler. Now my labours are bearing fruit. Don John of Austria is more hated throughout the Netherlands than he was before my coming hither, the provinces are more wearied of the Spanish yoke—they are more ready to accept a foreign ruler, even though he be a Catholic to boot. You have now but to stretch a hand, and all the golden harvest prepared by me will fall into it without another effort on your part save that of a prompt decision. So let me tell you, once and for all, Monsieur my brother, that if you refuse that golden harvest now, if you do not accept the Baron d'Inchy's offer, never as long as I live will I raise another finger to help you or to advance your welfare. And this I hereby do swear most solemnly and pray to the Virgin to register my vow!'
The Duke, unaccustomed to his charming sister's earnestness, had listened to her without departing from his sullen mood. When she had finished her tirade he shrugged his shoulders and yawned.
'How you do talk, my dear Margot!' he said coolly. 'To hear you one would imagine that I was an incorrigible rogue, an immoral profligate and a do-nothing.'
'Well, what else are you?' she retorted.
'A much maligned, overworked prince.'
She laughed, and despite her choler a look of genuine affection crept into her eyes as she met the reproachful glance of the brother whom she loved so dearly, and whose faults she was always ready to condone.
'By the Mass!' quoth he. 'You talk of having worked and slaved for me—and so you have, I'll own—but, far from leading a dissipated life in Paris the while, I toiled and slaved, intrigued and conspired, too—aye, and risked my life a hundred times so that I might fall in with your schemes.'
'Oh!' she broke in with a good-natured laugh. 'Let us be just, Monsieur my brother. You allowed others to toil and slave and intrigue and conspire, and to risk their life in your cause——'
''Tis you are unjust, Margot,' he retorted hotly. 'Why, think you then, that I was arrested by order of my brother the King, and thrown into the dungeon of Vincennes——?'
'You would not have been arrested, my dear,' said Marguerite dryly, 'if you had not chosen to be arrested.'
'The King, our brother, does not approve of your schemes, my Margot.'
'He is the dog in the manger,' she replied. 'Though Flanders and Hainault and the Netherlands are not for him, he does not wish to see you a more powerful prince than he.'
'So, you see——'
'But you knew,' she broke in quickly, 'you knew four and twenty hours before the order of your arrest was issued that the King had already decided on signing it. You had ample time for leaving Paris and joining me at Spa. Six precious months would not have been wasted——'
'Well! I escaped out of Vincennes as soon as I could.'
'Yes!' she retorted, once more fuming and raging, and once more pacing up and down the room like a fretful animal in a cage. 'Procrastination! Time wasted! Shelving of important decisions!...'
He pointed leisurely to the letter.
'There's no time lost,' he said.
'Time wasted is always lost,' she argued. 'The tone of M. le Baron d'Inchy is more peremptory this time than it was six months ago. There is a "take it or leave it" air about this letter. The provinces are waxing impatient. The Prince of Orange is rapidly becoming the idol of the Netherlands. What you reject he will no doubt accept. He is a man—a man of action, not a laggard——'
'But I am not rejecting anything!' exclaimed Monsieur irritably.
'Then, for God's sake, François——!'
Marguerite de Navarre paused, standing for a few seconds quite still, her whole attitude one of rigid expectancy. The next moment she had run back to the window. But now she leaned far out of the casement, heedless if the men below saw the Queen of Navarre and smiled over her eagerness. Her keen ears had caught the sound of an approaching troop of men; the clatter of horses' hoofs upon the hard road was already drawing perceptibly nearer.
'Messire Gilles!' she called out impatiently to one of the dice-throwers, who was continuing his game unperturbed.
In a moment the man was on his feet. He looked up and saw the Queen's pretty face framed in by the casement-window; and a pretty woman was the only thing on God's earth which commanded Gilles de Crohin's entire respect. Immediately he stood at attention, silhouetted against the sunlit market-place beyond—a tall, martial figure, with face weather-beaten and forehead scarred, the record of a hundred fights depicted in every line of the sinewy limbs, the powerful shoulders, the look of self-assurance in the deep-set eyes and the strong, square jaw.
There was nothing very handsome about Messire Gilles de Crohin. That portrait of him by Rembrandt—a mere sketch—done some years later, suggests a ruggedness of exterior which might have been even repulsive at times, when passion or choler distorted the irregular features. Only the eyes, grey and profound, and the full lips, ever ready to smile, may have been attractive. In a vague way he resembled the royal master whom he was serving now. The features were not unlike those of François, Duc d'Alençon et d'Anjou, but cast in a rougher, more powerful mould and fashioned of stouter clay. The resemblance is perhaps more striking in the picture than it could have been in the original, for the Duke's skin was almost as smooth as a woman's, his hair and sparse, pointed beard were always exquisitely brushed and oiled; whereas Gilles' skin was that of a man who has spent more nights in the open than in a downy bed, and his moustache—he did not wear the fashionable beard—was wont to bristle, each hair standing aloof from its neighbour, whenever Messire Gilles bridled with amusement or with rage.
Then, again, Gilles looked older than the Duke, even though he was, I think, the younger of the two by several years; but we may take it that neither his cradle nor his youth had been watched over with such tender care as those of the scion of the house of France, and though dissipation and a surfeit of pleasure had drawn many lines on the placid face of the one man, hard fighting and hard living had left deeper imprints still on that of the other. Still, the resemblance was there, and though Gilles' limbs indicated elasticity and power, whereas those of the Prince of Valois were more slender and loosely knit, the two men were much of a height and build, sufficiently so, at any rate, to cause several chroniclers—notably the Queen of Navarre herself—to aver that Gilles de Crohin's personality ofttimes shielded that of Monsieur, Duke of Anjou and of Alençon, and that Messire Gilles was ofttimes requisitioned to impersonate the master whom he served and resembled, especially when any danger at the hand of an outraged husband or father, or of a hired assassin lurked for the profligate prince behind a hedge or in the angle of a dark street. Nor was that resemblance to be altogether wondered at, seeing that the de Froidmonts claimed direct descent from the house of Valois and still quartered the Flower o' the Lily on ground azure upon their escutcheon, with the proud device: 'Roy ne suys, ne Duc, ne Prince, ne Comte; je suys Sire de Froide Monte.'[1] They had indeed played at one time an important part in the destinies of the princely house, until fickle Fortune took so resolutely to turning her back upon the last descendants of the noble race.
Marguerite of Navarre was too thoroughly a woman not to appreciate the appearance of one who was so thoroughly a man. Gilles de Crohin may have been out-at-elbows, but even the rough leather jerkin which he wore and the faded kerseymere of his doublet could not altogether mar a curious air of breeding and of power which was not in accord with penury and a position of oft humiliating dependence. So, despite her impatience, she gazed on Gilles for a moment or two with quick satisfaction ere she said:
''Tis Monseigneur d'Inchy's messenger we hear, is it not, Messire?'
'I doubt not, your Majesty,' replied Gilles.
'Then I pray you,' she added, 'conduct him to my brother's presence directly he arrives.'
And even whilst the sound of approaching horsemen drew nearer and nearer still, and anon a great clatter upon the rough paving stones of the courtyard announced their arrival, Marguerite turned back into the room. She ran to her brother's chair and knelt down beside him. She put fond arms round his shoulders and forced him to look into her tear-filled eyes.
'François,' she pleaded, with the tenderness of a doting mother. 'Mon petit François! For my sake, if not for yours! You don't know how I have toiled and worked so that this should come to pass. I want you to be great and mighty and influential. I hate your being in the humiliating position of a younger brother beside Henri, who is so arrogant and dictatorial with us all. François, dear, I have worked for you because I love you. Let me have my reward!'
Monsieur sighed like the spoilt child he really was, and made his habitual sour grimace.
'You are too good to me, Margot,' he said somewhat churlishly. 'I would you had left the matter alone. Our brother Henri cannot live for ever, and his good wife has apparently no intention of presenting him with a son.'
'Our brother Henri,' she insisted, 'can live on until you are too old to enjoy the reversion of the throne of France, and Louise de Lorraine is still young—who knows? The Duchies of Artois and Hainault and the Sovereignty of the Netherlands to-day are worth more than the vague perspective of the throne of France mayhap ten or a dozen years hence——'
'And my marriage with Elizabeth of England?' he protested.
'Elizabeth of England will never marry you, François,' she replied earnestly. 'She is too fanatical a Protestant ever to look with favour on a Catholic prince. She will keep you dangling round her skirts and fool you to the top of her bent, but Milor of Leycester will see to it that you do not wed the Queen of England.'
'If I marry this Flemish wench I shall be burning my boats——'
'What matter?' she retorted hotly, 'if you enter so glorious a harbour?'
There was nothing in the world that suited Monsieur's temperament better than lengthy discussions over a decision, which could thereby be conveniently put off. Even now he would have talked and argued and worn his sister's patience down to breaking point if suddenly the corridor outside had not resounded with martial footsteps and the jingling of swords and spurs.
'François!' pleaded Marguerite for the last time.
And the Duke, still irresolute, still longing to procrastinate, gave a final sigh of sullen resignation.
'Very well!' he said. 'Since you wish it——'
'I do,' she replied solemnly. 'I do wish it most earnestly, most sincerely. You will accept, François?'
'Yes.'
'You promise?'
Again he hesitated. Then, as the footsteps halted outside the door and Marguerite almost squeezed the breath out of his body with the pressure of her young strong arms, he said reluctantly: 'I promise!' Then, immediately—for fear he should be held strictly to his word—he added quickly: 'On one condition.'
'What is that?' she asked.
'That I am not asked to plight my troth to the wench till after I have seen her; for I herewith do swear most solemnly that I would repudiate her at the eleventh hour—aye, at the very foot of the altar steps, if any engagement is entered into in my name to which I have not willingly subscribed.'
This time he spoke so solemnly and with such unwonted decision that Marguerite thought it best to give way. At the back of her over-quick mind she knew that by hook or by crook she would presently devise a plan which would reconcile his wishes to her own.
'Very well,' she said after an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation. 'It shall be as you say.'
And despite the half-hearted promise given by the arch-procrastinator, there was a look of triumph and of joy on Queen Marguerite's piquant features now. She rose to her feet and hastily dried her tears.
There was a rap at the door. Marguerite seated herself on a cushioned chair opposite her brother and called out serenely: 'Enter!’
[1] 'Am neither King, nor Duke, nor Prince, nor Count; am Sire de Froide Monte.'