“So the King went to the Arsenal where the country’s weapons were stored and where the Duc de Sully had his apartments.” She was acting again; the same role for the King, but Bassompierre had been replaced by the Duc de Sully. “‘I don’t understand this, Monsieur le Duc, but I feel in my heart that the shadow of death is right over my head.’ ‘Why, Sire, you alarm me. How can this be? You are well. Nothing ails you.’ The Duc de Sully had had a special chair made for the King to sit in when he visited him. It was low and very regal. The King sat in it, and looking very grave, he said: ‘It has been prophesied that I shall die in Paris. The time is near. I can sense it.’”

“Did he really say that?” I asked. “Or are you making it up?”

“It is all true,” Mamie assured me.

“Then he must have been a very clever man to see into the future.”

“He was a very clever man, but this is apart from cleverness. It is the special gift of clairvoyance, and magicians and sorcerers had been saying that the King would meet his death in Paris, and if ever the Queen was crowned, then the blow would fall.”

“Then why did he allow my mother to be crowned?”

“Because she would give him no rest until he did; he felt guilty about the Princesse de Condé and he hated to deny a woman anything—even the Queen. He thought: Once I have given the Queen her coronation—which is what she wants more than anything—she will leave me to pursue my heart’s desire.”

“But if the prophecy was coming true how could he have his heart’s desire with the Princesse de Condé?”

“I can tell you no more than what happened. In fact, the Duc de Sully was so impressed that he declared he would stop the preparation for the Queen’s coronation as the thought of it so filled the King with foreboding. The King said: ‘Yes, break if off…for I have been told that I shall die in a carriage, and where could it be more easily done than at such a ceremony?’ The Duc de Sully gazed earnestly at the King. ‘This explains much,’ he said. ‘I have often seen you cowering in your carriage when you pass certain places, and yet I know that in battle, there is not a braver man in France.’”

“But they did not stop the coronation,” I pointed out, “for my mother was crowned Queen of France.”

Mamie continued with her narrative. “When the Queen heard that the coronation was to be canceled, she was furious.” Mamie did not attempt to imitate my mother. She would not dare go as far as that. But I could imagine my mother’s rage.

“For three whole days the matter was disputed. There will be a coronation. There will not be a coronation. And at last the King gave way in face of the Queen’s demands and the coronation was fixed for the thirteenth of May at St. Denis.”

“Thirteenth,” I said with a shiver. “That is unlucky.”

“Unlucky for some,” agreed Mamie portentously. “So she was crowned and it was arranged that on the sixteenth she should make her entry into Paris. Now…”

She paused and I watched her with rounded eyes for I had heard the story before and I knew that we were approaching the terrible climax.

“Now…on Friday the fourteenth the King said he would go to the Arsenal to see the Duc de Sully. He was not sure whether he wanted to go or not. He hesitated. First he would go and then he thought he would not…but in the end he made up his mind. It was just to be a short visit after dinner. ‘I shall soon be back,’ he said. When he was about to get into his carriage, Monsieur de Praslin, Captain of the Guard, who always attended him even on the shortest journeys, came forward. ‘No need,’ said the King. Mamie waved her hand imperiously. ‘I don’t want any attendance today. It is just to the Arsenal for a brief visit.’ Well, he got into the carriage and sat down with a few of his gentlemen. There were only six of them, not counting the Marquis de Mirabeau and the equerry who sat in the front of the carriage.

“Now comes the dramatic part. As the King’s carriage came into the Rue de Ferronnerie close to that of St.-Honoré, a cart came into the road, and because this blocked the way a little, the King’s carriage had to go near to an ironmonger’s shop on the St. Innocent side. As the carriage slowed down, a man rushed forward and hoisted himself onto the wheel and thrust a knife at the King. It entered right here….” She touched her left side. “It went between his ribs and severed an artery. The gentlemen in the carriage cried out in horror as the blood gushed forth. ‘It is nothing,’ said the King. Then he said that again so quietly that it could scarcely be heard. They took him with all speed to the Louvre. They laid him on his bed and sent for the doctors—but it was too late. To the sorrow of France, the King passed away.”

I had heard the story many times and it never failed to move me to tears. I knew how the Duc de Sully had made everyone swear allegiance to my brother and how the entire country mourned, and that the mad monk Ravaillac was caught and torn apart by four wild horses to whom his body had been attached before they were sent off in different directions.

I knew that my mother had become Regent of France because my brother was only nine years old and too young to govern.

Had my father survived the assassination everything would have been different. As it was, I, a baby in her nursery, was to live my early years in a country torn by strife.

I attended a great many ceremonies of which I was unaware. Mamie told me of these later. Sometimes I tried to delude myself that I remembered—but I could not have done so. I was far too young.

The whole of France was mourning my father and calling vengeance on the madman who had killed him. There must have been a certain relief that he was a madman and that no revolutionary coup was intended. France had been satisfied with her King while he lived and when he was murdered he became a near saint. That was good because it augured well for my brother who was such a boy at the time, and ministers are always afraid of boy Kings. They mean too many people near the throne jostling for power.

I was taken in the procession with my brothers and sisters. People wept, I was told, when they saw us. It was the impression the Duc de Sully wished to create. He was one of the greatest statesmen in the country and my father had recognized him as such. Now all his allegiance was for my brother who had slipped from the role of Dauphin to that of King.

How maddening it is that I cannot remember anything of what passed and had to rely on Mamie’s accounts. She made me see it clearly but I was never sure that she was absolutely accurate; but it is the custom for children, however young, to be present at their dead parents’ obsequies and naturally I, as one of the Children of France, must have been there. “You rode in the carriage in the arms of my mother,” Mamie told me; and I could imagine that child sitting there held firmly by a stern-faced Madame de Montglat and later being with her at the bier on which my dead father lay.

Madame de Montglat would have guided my hand while I sprinkled holy water on my dead father’s face. I hoped I performed the act with dignity, which must have been rather difficult in the arms of Madame de Montglat; but presumably I made no protest which was surely all that could have been expected of me.

My next public appearance was at my brother’s coronation, but as I was then only eleven months old I remember nothing of that either. The ceremony in the Cathedral of Rheims must have been very impressive. Louis was nine years old then and a boy King is always so appealing. I never really knew Louis well for he was no longer in our nursery after he became King. Even my elder sister Elizabeth was almost a stranger to me. Christine was with us for a while, but Gaston and I were closer than any of the others because we were near in age of course.

Mamie told me afterward that on the great occasion I was carried by the Princesse de Condé who, now that the King was dead, had been allowed by her husband to return to Court.

So these great happenings took place when I was too young to know what was going on. It was a little frustrating afterward to have known I was there and have no recollection of it.

But I was not going to remain a baby forever and I began to grow up in the nursery which I shared with Gaston and Christine, presided over by the stern Madame de Montglat and with Mamie there to bring laughter into our days.

My first real memory is of going to Bordeaux with a great cavalcade led by my mother to deliver my eldest sister Elizabeth to the King of Spain that she might marry his son and heir. At the same time she was to receive Anne of Austria, the daughter of the King of Spain, who was to marry our brother Louis. The importance of this occasion can be imagined, but at six years old this was just an exciting adventure to me. I did not know, of course, that the country was seething with discontent.

I loved ceremonies—all the pomp and glitter and the fine clothes, even though these were often uncomfortable to wear. I can remember Gaston often tore off his ruff and cried because it hurt his neck. He was severely beaten by Madame de Montglat who made him wear even stiffer ruffs to teach him a lesson. All people must be taught discipline, said Madame de Montglat, and none more so than royal children.

Poor Gaston! He was very rebellious in those days but I was even worse and gave way to my infantile furies by kicking, screaming, biting any hand that came near me, and lying on the floor and kicking.

“Disgraceful!” said Madame de Montglat. “What would the Queen say?”

Those words could always sober us. “I am afraid,” Madame de Montglat would warn, “that if your behavior does not improve I shall have to tell the Queen.”