Honoré Balzac - Catherine De Medici

“Now listen to me,” said La Renaudie. “I will not give you the papers until you reach Beaugency; for they must not be risked during the whole of your journey. You will find me waiting for you there on the wharf; my face, voice, and clothes will be so changed you cannot recognize me, but I shall say to you, ‘Are you a guepin ?’ and you will answer, ‘Ready to serve.’ As to the performance of your mission, these are the means: You will find a horse at the ‘Pinte Fleurie,’ close to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. You will there ask for Jean le Breton, who will take you to the stable and give you one of my ponies which is known to do thirty leagues in eight hours. Leave by the gate of Bussy. Breton has a pass for me; use it yourself, and make your way by skirting the towns. You can thus reach Orleans by daybreak.”

“But the horse?” said young Lecamus.

“He will not give out till you reach Orleans,” replied La Renaudie. “Leave him at the entrance of the faubourg Bannier; for the gates are well guarded, and you must not excite suspicion. It is for you, friend, to play your part intelligently. You must invent whatever fable seems to you best to reach the third house to the left on entering Orleans; it belongs to a certain Tourillon, glove-maker. Strike three blows on the door, and call out: ‘On service from Messieurs de Guise!’ The man will appear to be a rabid Guisist; no one knows but our four selves that he is one of us. He will give you a faithful boatman, – another Guisist of his own cut. Go down at once to the wharf, and embark in a boat painted green and edged with white. You will doubtless land at Beaugency to-morrow about mid-day. There I will arrange to find you a boat which will take you to Blois without running any risk. Our enemies the Guises do not watch the rivers, only the landings. Thus you will be able to see the queen-mother to-morrow or the day after.”

“Your words are written there,” said Christophe, touching his forehead.

Chaudieu embraced his child with singular religious effusion; he was proud of him.

“God keep thee!” he said, pointing to the ruddy light of the sinking sun, which was touching the old roofs covered with shingles and sending its gleams slantwise through the forest of piles among which the water was rippling.

“You belong to the race of the Jacques Bonhomme,” said La Renaudie, pressing Christophe’s hand.

“We shall meet again, monsieur ,” said the prince, with a gesture of infinite grace, in which there was something that seemed almost friendship.

With a stroke of his oars La Renaudie put the boat at the lower step of the stairway which led to the house. Christophe landed, and the boat disappeared instantly beneath the arches of the pont au Change.

Christophe shook the iron railing which closed the stairway on the river, and called. His mother heard him, opened one of the windows of the back shop, and asked what he was doing there. Christophe answered that he was cold and wanted to get in.

“Ha! my master,” said the Burgundian maid, “you went out by the street-door, and you return by the water-gate. Your father will be fine and angry.”

Christophe, bewildered by a confidence which had just brought him into communication with the Prince de Conde, La Renaudie, and Chaudieu, and still more moved at the prospect of impending civil war, made no answer; he ran hastily up from the kitchen to the back shop; but his mother, a rabid Catholic, could not control her anger.

“I’ll wager those three men I saw you talking with are Ref – ”

“Hold your tongue, wife!” said the cautious old man with white hair who was turning over a thick ledger. “You dawdling fellows,” he went on, addressing three journeymen, who had long finished their suppers, “why don’t you go to bed? It is eight o’clock, and you have to be up at five; besides, you must carry home to-night President de Thou’s cap and mantle. All three of you had better go, and take your sticks and rapiers; and then, if you meet scamps like yourselves, at least you’ll be in force.”

“Are we going to take the ermine surcoat the young queen has ordered to be sent to the hotel des Soissons? there’s an express going from there to Blois for the queen-mother,” said one of the clerks.

“No,” said his master, “the queen-mother’s bill amounts to three thousand crowns; it is time to get the money, and I am going to Blois myself very soon.”

“Father, I do not think it right at your age and in these dangerous times to expose yourself on the high-roads. I am twenty-two years old, and you ought to employ me on such errands,” said Christophe, eyeing the box which he supposed contained the surcoat.

“Are you glued to your seats?” cried the old man to his apprentices, who at once jumped up and seized their rapiers, cloaks, and Monsieur de Thou’s furs.

The next day the Parliament was to receive in state, as its president, this illustrious judge, who, after signing the death warrant of Councillor du Bourg, was destined before the close of the year to sit in judgment on the Prince de Conde!

“Here!” said the old man, calling to the maid, “go and ask friend Lallier if he will come and sup with us and bring the wine; we’ll furnish the victuals. Tell him, above all, to bring his daughter.”

Lecamus, the syndic of the guild of furriers, was a handsome old man of sixty, with white hair, and a broad, open brow. As court furrier for the last forty years, he had witnessed all the revolutions of the reign of Francois I. He had seen the arrival at the French court of the young girl Catherine de’ Medici, then scarcely fifteen years of age. He had observed her giving way before the Duchesse d’Etampes, her father-in-law’s mistress; giving way before the Duchesse de Valentinois, the mistress of her husband the late king. But the furrier had brought himself safely through all the chances and changes by which court merchants were often involved in the disgrace and overthrow of mistresses. His caution led to his good luck. He maintained an attitude of extreme humility. Pride had never caught him in its toils. He made himself so small, so gentle, so compliant, of so little account at court and before the queens and princesses and favorites, that this modesty, combined with good-humor, had kept the royal sign above his door.

Such a policy was, of course, indicative of a shrewd and perspicacious mind. Humble as Lecamus seemed to the outer world, he was despotic in his own home; there he was an autocrat. Most respected and honored by his brother craftsmen, he owed to his long possession of the first place in the trade much of the consideration that was shown to him. He was, besides, very willing to do kindnesses to others, and among the many services he had rendered, none was more striking than the assistance he had long given to the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth century, Ambroise Pare, who owed to him the possibility of studying for his profession. In all the difficulties which came up among the merchants Lecamus was always conciliating. Thus a general good opinion of him consolidated his position among his equals; while his borrowed characteristics kept him steadily in favor with the court.

Not only this, but having intrigued for the honor of being on the vestry of his parish church, he did what was necessary to bring him into the odor of sanctity with the rector of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs, who looked upon him as one of the men most devoted to the Catholic religion in Paris. Consequently, at the time of the convocation of the States-General he was unanimously elected to represent the tiers etat through the influence of the clergy of Paris, – an influence which at that period was immense. This old man was, in short, one of those secretly ambitious souls who will bend for fifty years before all the world, gliding from office to office, no one exactly knowing how it came about that he was found securely and peacefully seated at last where no man, even the boldest, would have had the ambition at the beginning of life to fancy himself; so great was the distance, so many the gulfs and the precipices to cross! Lecamus, who had immense concealed wealth, would not run any risks, and was silently preparing a brilliant future for his son. Instead of having the personal ambition which sacrifices the future to the present, he had family ambition, – a lost sentiment in our time, a sentiment suppressed by the folly of our laws of inheritance. Lecamus saw himself first president of the Parliament of Paris in the person of his grandson.