She called her attendants to help her dress, and when she was ready was helped into her litter. Through the streets her litter was carried, while the Duke of Guise walked beside it.

Even Catherine, in all her years of danger, had never experienced anything quite like that walk from the Hôtel de Soissons to the Louvre. She laughed cynically to herself. Here was the woman the Parisians hated most, side by side with the man they loved and admired more than any other. Madame Serpent, the Italian Woman, Queen Jezebel! And with her as her friend and ally, Henry of Guise, Le Balafré, the most aristocratic and adored Prince in France.

She listened to the mingling jeers and cheers.

There she is. She dare not show her face. Murderess! Italian! Remember the Queen of Navarre! Remember the Dauphin Francis! That was a long time ago. That was the beginning. It went ill with us when we let Italians into France.’

But for Le Balafré they would have broken up her litter; they would have dragged her from it and torn her flesh from her body; they would have kicked her corpse through the streets. That was their mood. Before this they had hated sullenly; now they hated vociferously; before they had uttered insults; now they were ready to hurl stones and use knives. The mood of Paris had changed and the storm was rumbling louder.

But beside her, to protect her, was their hero. The cheers were for him; the insults for her.

‘How beautiful he is!’ they cried. ‘Ah, there he goes. A true King! Shall we tolerate these vipers . . . these Italians!’

They were illogical; they were fools. She wanted to shout: ‘My mother was French, my father Italian. This Duke’s father was French—or of Lorraine, if that is enough—but his mother was Italian!’

They would answer: ‘Ah, but you are the daughter of merchants; he is a Prince. You were brought up in Italy; he was brought up in France. He fights with the sword; you with your morceaux Italianizés, which you learned in your vile country how to use.’

Catherine lay back in her litter. She was stimulated rather than frightened. She felt better, riding in a litter with a murderous populace about her, than she had in bed surrounded by her attendants. Now her ailments were forgotten.

Her expression did not change when she heard the ominous shout in the crowd: ‘À Rheims! Monseigneur, when do you go to Rheims?’

They reached the Louvre, and they were received in grim silence. The Swiss Guard filled the corridors and staircases. The Duke walked through them with apparent unconcern, but surely even he must tremble. Catherine noticed with some satisfaction that his face had lost its healthy colour. It was like a man’s might be if he knew he was walking into a lion’s den. King Henry was waiting to receive them, his hands trembling, his eyes betraying his fear. One of his courtiers had, when he had heard that the Duke was on the way, offered to kill him as he came into the room. The King had hesitated. He wanted Guise out of the way, but he was not sure whether he dare give the order for the deed to be done.

He was in a state of terrible uncertainty when the Duke with Catherine came into the audience chamber, where he stood, surrounded by counsellors and guards, waiting to receive them. As soon as his eyes fell on the Duke his fury burst forth.

‘Why do you come here thus?’ he demanded. ‘You received my orders?’

The Duke did not say that he took orders from no one, but his haughty looks implied it. Catherine sent a warning glance at the Duke; and from him she turned to her son; her eyes pleaded with him to be calm, for she knew that he was so angry that he could be capable of any folly.

‘Did I command you not to come, or did I not?’ cried the King. ‘Did I command you to wait?’

Guise said coldly: ‘Sir, I was not given to understand that my coming would be disagreeable to you.’

‘Then it is!’ cried the King. ‘It is.’

‘Sir, there are matters of which we must speak.’

‘I shall be judge of that.’ The King looked about him for the man who had offered to kill Guise, but Catherine had intercepted that look and understood its meaning.

‘My lord,’ she said quickly, ‘I must speak with you. Come with me.’ She did not lead him from the room, but to the window. About the Louvre the crowd had gathered. They carried sticks and knives. They were crying: ‘Vive Guise! Hurrah for our great Prince!’

Catherine murmured: ‘My son, you dare not. This is not the time. This is not the way. You have your guards, but he has Paris.’

The King was shaken. Like his brother Charles, he was terrified of the people. He remembered that whenever he went into the streets, he was greeted by silence; or if any spoke it was not to wish him long life, but to fling at him some insulting epithet: ‘Concierge of the palace! His wife’s hairdresser! Keeper of beggars!’ Remarks which were thrown quickly and sullenly at him; and those who delivered them made off before they could be recognized, while the mob made way for the traitor and laughed behind their hands at their King.

How he hated that man, with his tall spare figure and that masculine beauty which appealed to the people! How dared they treat Guise as their King while they insulted their true ruler!

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you are right, Not yet . . . this is not the time,’

He returned to the Duke and after a brief discussion the meeting broke up.

‘I shall call again on you, sir,’ said the Duke, ‘when I shall hope to receive a satisfactory answer.’

When he had left, the King roared aloud in his fury. ‘Who is the King of this realm?’ he demanded. ‘The King of France or the King of Paris?’

Catherine looked on uneasily, asking herself what would happen next.


* * *

Guise had set up his headquarters in his hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He was not quite certain how to act. A great part of the army was with the King; and it was largely the mob on whom Guise must rely to support him: and when he stood at his window and looked at those people, cheering him madly, tears streaming down their grimy faces, it occurred to him that that hysterical adoration could quickly be turned to hatred. He was not of the people; he was an aristocrat of aristocrats; and he did not trust the people. He was almost at the summit of his ambition, but he was wise enough to know that the road grew more slippery towards the top.

He waited.

The next day he presented himself at the King’s Levee, but he did not go alone this time; he took four hundred armed men with him. The meeting was fruitless.

The King, in great terror, refused to take his mother’s advice to stay in the Louvre and ignore the state of the city while giving no sign of his fear; she had begged him to give no special instructions for his protection, and certainly to make no attempt to double his guard. But the King would not listen, and he sent for Epernon and the Swiss Guard whom the favourite had with him outside Paris.

The people watched the soldiers march in. They knew how to act then. By sending for the foreign soldiers, the King, they declared, was making war on them. Merchants ran into the streets with their apprentices; students, restaurateurs, fathers, mothers and their children came hurrying into the streets, to be joined by beggars and the homeless. The King had called in foreign soldiers against Paris, and Paris was ready. Arms were brought out from secret places; chains were placed across streets; the barricades went up all over the city. All churches and public places were boarded up. And the battle began.

The people killed fifty of the Swiss Guard before the rest surrendered, declaring to the enraged mob that they were good Catholics. The French guards gave up their arms, and the King was barricaded in the Louvre.

The streets were filled with shouting people.

Guise stood at his window watching the demonstration with feigned astonishment, as though it had nothing to do with him. Catherine, ill as she was, went bravely through the streets from the Hôtel de Soissons to the Hôtel de Guise. The people allowed her to pass in silence, as they knew whither she was bound.

Guise received her coolly. He was the master now. The King, he told her, should immediately appoint him Lieutenant-General of the country and carry out the demands of the League.

Catherine was desperate. ‘I am a weak woman,’ she said, ‘and a sick one. What can I do? I do not rule this realm. My dear Duke, where will this end? What are you urging these people to do? Assassinate their King and set up another in his place? You forget that death begets death. The people should not be taught that it is an easy matter to assassinate a King.’

After she had left, Guise thought of her words; indeed, he could not forget them. ‘Death begets death.’ She was right. Before he allowed himself to be set up as King he must make sure that he could hold the throne. It must be no brief triumph for him.

The people in the streets were growing impatient. The King was their prisoner; they were thirsty for his blood.

As the evening drew on Guise went into the streets; he was unarmed and he carried a white wand. The people clustered round him. ‘Vive Guise!Vive le Balafré!’ They thought that he would lead them to the Louvre, that under his guidance they would drag the shrinking King from his apartments, that he would order them to kill Henry of Valois as he had ordered them to kill Gaspard de Coligny.

To them it was all so simple. They wished one King out of the way and another to be crowned. They thought that that would mean an end of their troubles. This was the most important hour in the life of Henry of Guise, but it found him unsure, uncertain how to act.