La Reine Margot Streaming Australia

[Jenifer Griffard]

Theordinarily gloomy windows of the ancient royal residence werebrilliantly lighted, and the squares and streets adjacent, usually sosolitary after Saint Germain l'Auxerrois had struck the hour of nine,were crowded with people, although it was past midnight.

The vast, threatening, eager, turbulent throng resembled, in thedarkness, a black and tumbling sea, each billow of which makes a roaringbreaker; this sea, flowing through the Rue des Fosss Saint Germain andthe Rue de l'Astruce and covering the quay, surged against the base ofthe walls of the Louvre, and, in its refluent tide, against the Htel deBourbon, which faced it on the other side.

In spite of the royal festival, and perhaps even because of the royalfestival, there was something threatening in the appearance of thepeople, for no doubt was felt that this imposing ceremony which calledthem there as spectators, was only the prelude to another in which theywould participate a week later as invited guests and amuse themselveswith all their hearts.

The court was celebrating the marriage of Madame Marguerite de Valois,daughter of Henry II. and sister of King Charles IX., with Henry deBourbon, King of Navarre. In truth, that very morning, on a stageerected at the entrance to Notre-Dame, the Cardinal de Bourbon hadunited the young couple with the usual ceremonial observed at themarriages of the royal daughters of France.

This marriage had astonished every one, and occasioned much surmise tocertain persons who saw clearer than others. They found it difficult tounderstand the union of two parties who hated each other so thoroughlyas did, at this moment, the Protestant party and the Catholic party; andthey wondered how the young Prince de Cond could forgive the Ducd'Anjou, the King's brother, for the death of his father, assassinatedat Jarnac by Montesquiou. They asked how the young Duc de Guise couldpardon Admiral de Coligny for the death of his father, assassinated atOrlans by Poltrot de Mr.

Moreover, Jeanne de Navarre, the weak Antoine de Bourbon's courageouswife, who had conducted her son Henry to the royal marriage awaitinghim, had died scarcely two months before, and singular reports had beenspread abroad as to her sudden death. It was everywhere whispered, andin some places said aloud, that she had discovered some terrible secret;and that Catharine de Mdicis, fearing its disclosure, had poisoned herwith perfumed gloves, which had been made by a man named Rn, aFlorentine deeply skilled in such matters. This report was the morewidely spread and believed when, after this great queen's death, at herson's request, two celebrated physicians, one of whom was the famousAmbroise Par, were instructed to open and examine the body, but not theskull. As Jeanne de Navarre had been poisoned by a perfume, only thebrain could show any trace of the crime (the one part excluded fromdissection). We say crime, for no one doubted that a crime had beencommitted.

This was not all. King Charles in particular had, with a persistencyalmost approaching obstinacy, urged this marriage, which not onlyrestablished peace in his kingdom, but also attracted to Paris theprincipal Huguenots of France. As the two betrothed belonged one to theCatholic religion and the other to the reformed religion, they had beenobliged to obtain a dispensation from Gregory XIII., who then filled thepapal chair. The dispensation was slow in coming, and the delay hadcaused the late Queen of Navarre great uneasiness. She one day expressedto Charles IX. her fears lest the dispensation should not arrive; towhich the King replied:

"Have no anxiety, my dear aunt. I honor you more than I do the Pope,and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not a Huguenot, neitheram I a blockhead; and if the Pope makes a fool of himself, I will myselftake Margot by the hand, and have her married to your son in someProtestant meeting-house!"

This speech was soon spread from the Louvre through the city, and, whileit greatly rejoiced the Huguenots, had given the Catholics something tothink about; they asked one another, in a whisper, if the King wasreally betraying them or was only playing a comedy which some finemorning or evening might have an unexpected ending.

Charles IX.'s conduct toward Admiral de Coligny, who for five or sixyears had been so bitterly opposed to the King, appeared particularlyinexplicable; after having put on his head a price of a hundred andfifty thousand golden crowns, the King now swore by him, called him hisfather, and declared openly that he should in future confide the conductof the war to him alone. To such a pitch was this carried that Catharinede Mdicis herself, who until then had controlled the young prince'sactions, will, and even desires, seemed to be growing really uneasy, andnot without reason; for, in a moment of confidence, Charles IX. had saidto the admiral, in reference to the war in Flanders,

The Marchal de Montmorency was the only one who was missing among allhis brothers, for no promise could move him, no specious appearancesdeceive him, and he remained secluded in his chteau de l'Isle Adam,offering as his excuse for not appearing the grief which he still feltfor his father, the Constable Anne de Montmorency, who had been killedat the battle of Saint Denis by a pistol-shot fired by Robert Stuart.But as this had taken place more than three years before, and assensitiveness was a virtue little practised at that time, this undulyprotracted mourning was interpreted just as people cared to interpretit.

However, everything seemed to show that the Marchal de Montmorency wasmistaken. The King, the Queen, the Duc d'Anjou, and the Duc d'Alenondid the honors of the royal festival with all courtesy and kindness.

The Duc d'Anjou received from the Huguenots themselves well-deservedcompliments on the two battles of Jarnac and Montcontour, which he hadgained before he was eighteen years of age, more precocious in that thaneither Csar or Alexander, to whom they compared him, of course placingthe conquerors of Pharsalia and the Issus as inferior to the livingprince. The Duc d'Alenon looked on, with his bland, false smile, whileQueen Catharine, radiant with joy and overflowing with honeyed phrases,congratulated Prince Henry de Cond on his recent marriage with Marie deClves; even the Messieurs de Guise themselves smiled on the formidableenemies of their house, and the Duc de Mayenne discoursed with M. deTavannes and the admiral on the impending war, which was now more thanever threatened against Philippe II.

From time to time a swift and gloomy cloud passed over his brow;unquestionably it was at the thought that scarce had two months elapsedsince his mother's death, and he, less than any one, doubted that shehad been poisoned. But the cloud was transitory, and disappeared like afleeting shadow, for they who spoke to him, they who congratulated him,they who elbowed him, were the very ones who had assassinated the braveJeanne d'Albret.

Some paces distant from the King of Navarre, almost as pensive, almostas gloomy as the king pretended to be joyous and open-hearted, was theyoung Duc de Guise, conversing with Tligny. More fortunate than theBarnais, at two-and-twenty he had almost attained the reputation of hisfather, Franois, the great Duc de Guise. He was an elegant gentleman,very tall, with a noble and haughty look, and gifted with that naturalmajesty which caused it to be said that in comparison with him otherprinces seemed to belong to the people. Young as he was, the Catholicslooked up to him as the chief of their party, as the Huguenots sawtheirs in Henry of Navarre, whose portrait we have just drawn. At firsthe had borne the title of Prince de Joinville, and at the siege ofOrlans had fought his first battle under his father, who died in hisarms, denouncing Admiral Coligny as his assassin. The young duke then,like Hannibal, took a solemn oath to avenge his father's death on theadmiral and his family, and to pursue the foes to his religion withouttruce or respite, promising God to be his destroying angel on earthuntil the last heretic should be exterminated. So with deep astonishmentthe people saw this prince, usually so faithful to his word, offeringhis hand to those whom he had sworn to hold as his eternal enemies, andtalking familiarly with the son-in-law of the man whose death he hadpromised to his dying father.

Indeed, an observer privileged to be present at this festival, endowedwith the knowledge of the future which is fortunately hidden from men,and with that power of reading men's hearts which unfortunately belongsonly to God, would have certainly enjoyed the strangest spectacle to befound in all the annals of the melancholy human comedy.

But this observer who was absent from the inner courts of the Louvre wasto be found in the streets gazing with flashing eyes and breaking outinto loud threats; this observer was the people, who, with itsmarvellous instinct made keener by hatred, watched from afar the shadowsof its implacable enemies and translated the impressions they made withas great clearness as an inquisitive person can do before the windows ofa hermetically sealed ball-room. The music intoxicates and governs thedancers, but the inquisitive person sees only the movement and laughs atthe puppet jumping about without reason, because the inquisitive personhears no music.

And meantime everything was still festive within, and a murmur softerand more flattering than ever was at this moment pervading the Louvre,for the youthful bride, having laid aside her toilet of ceremony, herlong mantle and flowing veil, had just returned to the ball-room,accompanied by the lovely Duchesse de Nevers, her most intimate friend,and led by her brother, Charles IX., who presented her to the principalguests.

The bride was the daughter of Henry II., was the pearl of the crown ofFrance, was Marguerite de Valois, whom in his familiar tenderness forher King Charles IX. always called "ma sœur Margot," "my sisterMargot."

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