“Faithful she was, and served him well, Bore him a son who had no name, And died: so then her lover’s flame Sought other kindling for a spell.
“Forsaken, hitherward her steps Strayed, and to God she tuned her lips For mercy, dying so: but earth
“Was closed against her. Ah, it’s bad-- No yard of all his lands and worth For her who gave him all she had!”
A touching and simple piece. It should have gone home to a man whose intentions were always better than his inclinations, yet always gave way to them. The end of him, sudden and shocking as it was, can have surprised nobody. He had enemies everywhere, and few friends. The Catholics had never believed in him, the Protestants had ceased to believe in him. The day before his last he had had Marie de Médicis crowned with all the forms, though unwillingly. L’Estoile was there, and observed two notable facts: “the first was that it had been thought proper, on account of the subject-matter, to change the gospel of the day, which is from Mark x--“_And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him._” That sounds to me a little too apt to be likely.
“The other was that at the _largesse_ of gold and silver coins, which is usual at coronations of kings and queens, there was never a cry _Vive le Roy_, nor yet a _Vive la Reine_--which, it was remarked, had never happened but at this coronation.” His next entry relates to the assassination:
“_Luctus ubique, pavor, et plurima mortis imago_,” is his conclusion of it all: “the shops are shut; everyone goes weeping or holding up his hands, great and small, young and old; women and maids pluck at their hair. The whole town is very quiet: instead of running for arms we run to our prayers, and make vows for the health and welfare of the new king. The fury of the people, contrary to the expectation and intent of the wicked, is turned upon the infamous parricide and his accomplices, seeking only to ensue vengeance and to have it.”
_De mortuis!_ That is always the way. And distrusting the Queen as he plainly did, and abhorring Concini, not the first, and not the best, of the implanted Italians, there is little wonder at the diarist’s dismay. He goes on, without circumlocution, to lay the crime at the door of the “Society of Judas,” as he calls a famous companionship, a society to whose new church the King’s heart had been promised, by whose means, he as good as says, it was now obtained. Not without scandal, it was presently conveyed there.