“I said, Sire, that I would start with my honesty and integrity, so please consider the words that follow.”
Louis XIII gave a formal nod.
“I have, from my estate,” the cardinal continued, “some twenty-five thousand livres a year in rents. The king gave me six abbeys that generate another one hundred twenty-five thousand livres. So my annuities bring me one hundred and fifty thousand livres.”
“I know all that,” said the king.
“Your Majesty no doubt also knows that, as your minister, I was surrounded by threats and plots, to the point where I had to have guards and a captain to defend myself.”
“I know that as well.”
“Then, Sire, I refused sixty thousand livres in pensions that you offered me after taking La Rochelle.”
“I remember.”
“I turned down the salary that came with the Admiralty, worth forty thousand livres. I refused the grant that came with the Admiralty, one hundred thousand livres—or rather, I donated it to the State. Finally, I refused a million that the bankers offered me to save them from being investigated. But they were investigated, and I forced them to disgorge ten million in fines into the king’s coffers.”
“No one could dispute any of this, Your Eminence,” the king said, raising his hat. “You are the most honest man in my kingdom.”
The cardinal bowed, and continued, “But that’s not what is said by my enemies in Your Majesty’s Court—even by those closest to Your Majesty. Who is it who libels me across France, and slanders me in the eyes of all Europe? Those who should be the first to honor me as you do, Sire: His Royal Highness Monseigneur Gaston, Her Majesty Queen Anne, and Her Majesty the Queen Mother.”
The king sighed. The cardinal had touched the wound. Richelieu continued, “His Royal Highness Monsieur has always hated me. How have I responded to this hatred? The Chalais affair was nothing less than an attempt to murder me. Confessions from everyone involved, Monsieur included, made that clear. And what was my revenge? I made him marry Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the richest heiress in the kingdom, and persuaded Your Majesty to give him the honors and title of Duc d’Orléans. Monseigneur Gaston has, as a result, an annual income of a million and a half livres.”
“In other words, Monsieur, he’s even richer than I am.”
“The king doesn’t need to be rich, he’s the king; if he needs a million, he asks for a million, and it is found.”
“That’s true,” said the king. “The day before yesterday, you gave me four million, followed by another half million yesterday.”
“Must I remind Your Majesty also how much resentment Queen Anne of Austria holds against me? And what, in her eyes, is my crime? Respect must silence me on that score.”
“No, speak, Monsieur le Cardinal. I shall, I must, I want to hear everything.”
“Sire, the great misfortune of princes, and the calamity of states, is the marriage of a king with a foreign princess. Queens who come from Austria, from Italy, or from Spain, at some point become enemies of the State. How many queens, to the benefit of their father or brothers, have stolen the sword of France from under the king’s pillow? And what happens then? Despite such treason, the real culprit goes unprosecuted, and it is always lower heads that fall. After conspiring with England, Queen Anne, who hates me because she sees me as the champion of France, now conspires with Spain and Austria.”
“I know it—oh, I know it,” said the king in a hushed voice. “But Queen Anne has no power over me.”
“That’s true. But what about Marie, the queen mother, Sire? Queen Marie, the cruelest of all my enemies, because it was to her I was most devoted—and so from her I’ve suffered the most.”
“Forgive me, Monsieur le Cardinal.”
“No, Sire, I cannot forgive you.”
“Even if I beg?”
“Even if you command me. When you sought me out here, I told Your Majesty he shall have the entire truth.”
The king sighed, and said, voice trembling, “Do you think I don’t know the entire truth?”
“Not all of it. And this time, you shall hear it. Your mother, Sire, is the arch-nemesis of France. Your mother, Sire . . . it’s terrible to say this to a son, but your mother . . .”
“What about my mother?” said the king, glaring at the cardinal.
This glare from the king, which would have silenced a man less determined than the cardinal, instead seemed to loosen his tongue. “Your mother, Sire,” he said, “was unfaithful to her husband. Before her marriage, your mother, during her time in Marseilles . . .”
“Silence, Monsieur!” said the king. “The walls listen, they say, and sometimes they hear . . . what they should not hear. Nobody needs to know, beyond you and me, why I hesitate to give an heir to the crown, when everyone presses me on it, most of all you. And what I say is so true, Monsieur,” the king said, rising and grasping the cardinal’s hand, “that if I thought my brother the true son of King Henri IV, in other words, the only blood that has the right to rule France, then as God and you hear me, Monsieur, I already would have abdicated in his favor and retired to a monastery, to pray for my mother and for France. Now, do you have anything else to tell me? If so, after all that, then tell me now.”
“Well, Sire, yes—I do have more to tell you,” the cardinal said, surprised in spite of himself, “for I begin to understand that the instinctive respect I hold for Your Majesty has been justified, and my admiration is only deepened by this sharing of secrets. Oh, Sire! What worlds of sadness are revealed by your lifting of this veil! As God is my witness, if I didn’t believe that the future of France depends on what else I need to tell you, I’d stop now and seal my lips forever. But, Sire . . . have you ever thought about the death of King Henri IV?”
“Alas! I think of it every day, Monsieur!”
“But, in thinking of his death, have you tried to unravel the terrible mystery of the Fourteenth of May?”
“Yes, and I have done so.”
“So, you know who the real assassins are, Sire?”
“The assassination of Concini, le Maréchal d’Ancre, which I would approve again tomorrow if need be, proves that I know at least one of them—though I do not know the other.”
“But I, Sire, I—who didn’t have the same reasons as Your Majesty to look away—I’ve seen to the bottom of this mystery, and I can name all the assassins.”
The king groaned.
“You remember, Sire, that there was a religious woman, a holy creature who, knowing that the crime was afoot, swore it would not be completed. Do you know the reward for her loyalty?”
“She was buried alive in a tomb at the Daughters of Repentance, the door walled up to keep her in, where she stayed for years on end, exposed to the scorching rays of the summer and the icy gales of the winter. Her name was Coëtman, and she died there ten or twelve days ago.”
“And knowing this, Sire, Your Majesty still suffered such an injustice to occur?”
“The person of a king is sacred, Monsieur le Cardinal,” replied Louis XIII, who believed in the cult of absolute monarchy—that terrible cult that, under Louis XIV, would become idolatry. “Woe to those who learn a king’s secrets.”
“Well, Sire, this is a secret known by someone other than you and me.”
The king was suddenly alert, and fixed a clear eye on the cardinal. “You may have heard,” Richelieu continued, “that on the scaffold, Ravaillac asked to be confessed.”
“Yes,” said Louis XIII, turning pale.
“You may even have heard that the clerk there listened while the condemned, already half dead, spoke the names of the culprits?”
“Yes,” said Louis XIII, “which were written down on a sheet kept out of the record.”
To the cardinal’s eyes, he seemed even more pallid than before. “Then you may have heard that this sheet was kept and guarded very carefully by the clerk, Joly de Fleury?”
“I’ve heard all of this, Your Eminence. What else? What else?”
“Well, I tried to recover this sheet from the children of Monsieur Joly de Fleury.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“To give it to Your Majesty, in the event that you wanted it destroyed.”
“Well?”
“Well, Sire, this sheet is no longer in the possession of Monsieur de Fleury’s children. Two unidentified men, one a young man of sixteen, the other a man of twenty-six, came one day to try to persuade the clerk to give up the sheet. And they were successful.”
“And Your Eminence, who knows everything, doesn’t know the names of these two men?” the king asked.
“No, Sire,” the cardinal replied.
“Then I will tell you!” the king said, grabbing the cardinal by the arm. “The elder of the two men was Monsieur de Luynes, and the younger—was me.”
“You, Sire!” the cardinal cried, recoiling.
The king reached into his lapel and pulled out of an inside pocket a yellowed and crumpled paper, the process verbal Ravaillac had dictated on the scaffold, the sheet that named the culprits, and said, “Here it is.”
“Oh, Sire! Sire!” Richelieu said, realizing what the pale king must have suffered during their talk. “Forgive me for what I’ve said to you. I truly thought you didn’t know.”
“Then how did you account for my sadness, my isolation, my grief? Is it usual for the Kings of France to dress as I do? Among other sovereigns, the death of a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a parent, or another king, means wearing the purple. But for all men, whether kings or commoners, the death of happiness means wearing black.”
“Sire,” said the cardinal, “there’s no need to keep this paper. Burn it.”
“No, Monsieur. I may be weak, but fortunately I know myself. Despite everything, my mother is my mother, and sometimes she gets the better of me. But when I feel that her domination might push me to do something wrong, something unjust, I look at this paper, and it gives me strength. This paper, Monsieur le Cardinal,” the king said in a voice gloomy but resolute, “I give to you to keep as a pact between us, for on the day I must finally break with my mother—exile her from Paris, hound her from France—I will do it with this paper in my hand. On that day I will ask you to return it, and you—you may ask me for whatever you want.”
The cardinal hesitated. “Take it,” said the king. “I want you to. Take it.”
The cardinal bowed and took the sheet of yellowed paper. “As Your Majesty wishes,” he said.
“And now, put me no more to the question, Your Eminence. I place France, and myself, in your hands.”
The cardinal fell to his knees, took the king’s hands, kissed them, and said, “Sire, in return for this moment, I hope Your Majesty will accept the entire efforts of the rest of my life.”
“So I intend, Monsieur,” said the king, with that supreme majesty he could sometimes assume. “And now, my dear Cardinal, let’s forget all that has happened, set aside the wretched intrigues of my mother, my brother, and the queen, and occupy ourselves with the glory of our arms and the greatness of France!”
XLIX
In Which the Cardinal Audits
the King’s Accounts
The next day, at two in the afternoon, King Louis XIII, sitting in a great chair, his cane between his legs, his black hat with its black plumes resting on his cane, his brows somewhat less furrowed, his face less pale than formerly, watched the cardinal as Richelieu worked at his desk.
Both were in the cardinal’s office in the Place Royale, the same place we saw the king, during his three-day reign, pass such troubling hours.
The cardinal wrote, and the king waited. The cardinal looked up and said, “Sire, I’ve written to Spain, Mantua, Venice, and Rome, letters which Your Majesty has done me the honor to approve. Now I have just written, again at the approval of Your Majesty, to your cousin the King of Sweden. This response was more difficult than the others: His Majesty King Gustavus Adolphus isn’t yet allied to us, and he is a suspicious man, who makes decisions based on actions rather than words, reserving judgment until he’s had time to make up his mind.”
“Read your letter to me, Monsieur le Cardinal,” said Louis XIII. “I already know what was in the letter from my cousin Gustave.”
The cardinal bowed and read:
Sire,
The familiarity with which Your Majesty deigns to write to me is a great honor, but assuming such familiarity in return would show a lack of respect, and be unbefitting of the humility appropriate to one in my position, even bearing the title Prince of the Church by which Your Majesty has been good enough to address me.
Sire, I am not a great man! Sire, I am no genius! But I am, as you were good enough to note, an honest man. And it is this virtue that the king, my master, particularly appreciates, as he need only resort to himself when greatness or genius is required. I will speak candidly to Your Majesty, as requested, but as nothing more than a simple minister of the King of France.
Yes, Sire, I am sure of my king, more so than ever, as on this day he has confirmed my power over the direct opposition of Marie de Médicis, his mother, against Queen Anne, his wife, and against Monseigneur Gaston, his brother—he has given me proof that if sometimes his heart yields to filial piety, fraternal friendship, or conjugal affection, which are the happiness and glory of common men and which God has placed in every honest and well-born heart, reasons of state outweigh those noble impulses. Kings must sometimes override their feelings when matters call for discipline and rigor in the name of good government.
One of the great misfortunes of royalty, Sire, is that God has placed his representatives here on Earth so high that kings cannot really have friends, only favorites. But far from being influenced by his favorites, on the contrary, my master, who is called “the Jus,As I am the one who advisedt” is entirely capable of bowing to the demands of criminal justice when a favorite is accused of meddling with state business—as he proved in the affair of Monsieur de Chalais. My master’s eyes are so vigilant, his grip so firm, that no matter how deep the conspiracy, no matter how powerful the conspirators, they cannot escape the justice of this king, whose heart and soul are devoted to France. If, one day, I do fall from power, it won’t be because I was undermined from below.
So I say to you, Sire—as well as to my king, with whom I had the honor to share your letter, and from whom I have no secrets—yes, I am quite sure. If God gives me permission to stay in this world for another three years, and if the king gives me permission to remain as minister—and, in fact, Louis XIII gave Richelieu a nod—I can assure you in the king’s name and mine that we will be able to keep every one of our commitments to you, and I will deal with you as frankly as I do with my master.
As to calling Your Majesty “my friend Gustave,” I know of only two men in antiquity—Alexander and Caesar—and three men of our modern monarchy—Charlemagne, PhilippeAuguste, and Henri IV—who would have had the stature for such flattering familiarity. I, who am so unworthy, can only call myself Your Majesty’s most humble and obedient servant.
—Armand, Cardinal de Richelieu
PS. If it please Your Majesty, my king has appointed the Baron de Charnassé to deliver this letter, and to be responsible for negotiating with Your Majesty the great matter of the foundation of the Protestant League. He does so with the full powers of the king and, if you absolutely insist, with mine as well.
While the cardinal was reading this long letter, which was in part an apology to the king for the way Gustavus Adolphus had rather freely shown his disregard for Louis XIII, the king, though occasionally gnawing at his mustache, nodded his general approval. But when the letter had been read, he stood for a moment in thought, and then asked the cardinal, “Your Eminence, in your capacity as a theologian, can you assure me that this alliance with a heretic does not imperil the salvation of my soul?”
“As I am the one who advised Your Majesty to do so,” said the cardinal, “if there is any sin in it, I take it upon myself.” r />
“That reassures me somewhat,” said Louis XIII, “but having taken this path since you became my minister, and assuming I’ll continue to follow your advice in the future, do you really think, my dear Cardinal, that one of us can be damned without the other?”
“The question is too difficult for me to answer. All I can say to Your Majesty is that I pray to God never to let me stray from Him, either in this world or the next.”
“Ah!” said the king, breathing more easily. “Is our work done, my dear Cardinal?”
“Not quite, Sire,” said Richelieu. “I must beg Your Majesty to grant me a few moments to make sure our commitments are maintained and our promises are kept.”
“Are you talking about the sums requested by my brother, my mother, and my wife?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Traitors and disloyal deceivers! You, who preach about saving money, are you going to advise me to reward infidelity, lies, and betrayal?”
“No, Sire, but I will say to Your Majesty that a royal word is sacred, and once given, it must be upheld. Your Majesty promised one hundred and fifty thousand livres to his brother. . . .”
“If he would be lieutenant general, but since then he’s asked for more!”
“All the more reason to award him compensation.”
“He’s an impostor who pretended to fall in love with Princesse Marie de Gonzague just to cause trouble!”
“Trouble we are out of, I hope, since he himself says he’s given up on that love.”
“While demanding his price to renounce it.”
“If he has his price, Sire, you have to pay the bill at the rate that was set.”
“One hundred and fifty thousand livres?”
“It’s expensive, I know, but a king must keep his word.”
“In no time, he’ll take that one hundred and fifty thousand to Crete and bank it with King Minos, as he calls the Duc de Lorraine.”
“Then, Sire, that hundred and fifty thousand will have been well spent: for a hundred and fifty thousand livres will buy us the taking of Lorraine.”