The Poisoned Crown. Морис Дрюон

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СКАЧАТЬ At the moment, what he had to say was addressed to Clémence, whom the Cardinal never quitted with his eyes.

      ‘Moreover, Messire Comte, circumstances have some-what changed,’ he went on, ‘and we no longer perceive the shade of Monseigneur de Marigny behind you, and he held power for a long time and seemed always ready to practise defenestration. Is it true that he was proved to be so dishonest in his accountancy that your young King, of whose charity of soul we are all aware, was unable to save him from just punishment?’

      ‘You know that Messire de Marigny was my friend,’ replied Bouville courageously. ‘He began as a page in my household. I think that his agents, rather than himself, were dishonest. It was a grief to me to see a friend of so old a standing come to disaster through stubborn pride and a desire to control everything himself. I warned him ...’

      But Cardinal Duèze had not yet reached the end of his perfidious courtesies.

      ‘You see, Messire,’ he went on, ‘that there really was no need to press so hastily for your master’s annulment, about which you came to speak to me. Providence often comes to our rescue, provided one is prepared to assist it with a firm hand.’

      He never took his eyes off the Princess. Bouville hastened to change the subject and to lead the prelate aside.

      ‘Well, Monseigneur, how goes the Conclave?’ he asked.

      ‘It’s still in the same state, that is to say nothing has supervened. Monseigneur d’Auch, our revered Cardinal Camerlingo, has not succeeded, or does not wish to succeed, for reasons known only to himself, to bring us into assembly. Some of us are at Carpentras, others at Orange, we ourselves are here, and the Caetani are at Vienne.’

      Thereupon, he launched into a subtle but, neverthe less, ferocious indictment of Cardinal Francesco Caetani, the nephew of Boniface VIII and his most violent adversary.

      ‘It is so delightful to watch him display so much courage today in the defence of his uncle’s memory; nevertheless, we are unable to forget that, when your friend Nogaret came to Anagni with his cavalry to besiege Boniface, Monseigneur Francesco abandoned his devoted relation, to whom he owed his hat, and, dressed as a footman, took flight. He seems born to felony as others are to the priesthood,’ said Duèze.

      His eyes, alight with senile anger, seemed to shine from the depths of his withered, sunken face. To listen to him, one would have thought that Cardinal Caetani was capable of the most heinous crimes; the devil was clearly in him.

      ‘And, as you know, Satan may appear anywhere; and surely nothing could be more grateful to him than to establish himself within the College of Cardinals.’

      And, what’s more, to speak of the devil at that period was not merely a conversational image; his name was not mentioned lightly, since it might be a prelude to a ban of heresy, to torture and the scaffold.

      ‘I am well aware,’ Duèze added, ‘that the throne of Saint Peter cannot remain indefinitely vacant, and that this is bad for the whole world. But what can I do? I have offered myself, however little I may desire to accept so heavy a task; I have offered to accept the burden since it appears that agreement can be achieved only upon myself. If God, in selecting me, wishes to raise the least worthy to the highest place, I submit to the will of God. What more can I do, Messire de Bouville?’

      After which he presented Princess Clémence with a superb copy, richly illuminated, of his Elixir des Philosophes, a treatise on hermetic philosophy which had considerable renown among the specialists of the subject and of which it was extremely doubtful that the Princess would understand a single word. For Cardinal Duèze, a master of intrigue, possessed a universal mind, was versed in medicine, alchemy, and in all the humane sciences. His works were to stand for another two centuries.

      He departed, followed by his prelates, vicars, and pages; he was already living a Pope’s life and would deny, to the limits of his strength, election to anyone else.

      When, the following morning, Madame of Hungary’s cavalcade took the road for Valence, the Princess asked Bouville, ‘What did the Cardinal mean yesterday when he spoke of assisting Providence to accomplish our desires?’

      ‘I don’t know, Madam, I don’t very well remember,’ replied Bouville, embarrassed. ‘I think he was talking of Messire de Marigny, but I didn’t very well understand.’

      ‘It seemed to me that he was speaking rather of my future husband’s annulment, which was impossible of realization. Of what did Madame Marguerite of Burgundy die?’

      ‘Of a chill she caught in her prison, and of remorse for her sins without doubt.’

      And Bouville blew his nose to conceal his disquiet; he knew only too well the rumours which were current about the sudden death of the King’s first wife and had no wish to speak of them.

      Clémence accepted Bouville’s explanation, but it did not set her mind at rest.

      ‘I owe my future happiness,’ Clémence said to herself, ‘to the death of another.’

      She felt herself to be inexplicably allied to this queen whom she was to succeed and whose sins caused her as much horror as the punishment inspired her with pity.

      Is not true charity, so rarely felt by those who inculcate it, precisely the emotion which impels the individual, however unreasonably, to identify himself with the crime of the criminal as well as with the responsibility of the judge?

      ‘Her sins led to her death, and her death to my becoming queen,’ Clémence thought. She saw it as a sort of judgement upon herself and felt that she was surrounded with portents of disaster.

      The storm, the accident to the young Lombard, and the rain which was becoming calamitous, were all signs of ill omen.

      For the weather grew no better. The villages they passed through had an appearance of desolation. After a winter of famine, the harvest had promised well and the peasants had regained courage; a few days of mistral and terrible storms had shattered their expectations. And now apparently inexhaustible rain was rotting their crops.

      The Durance, the Drôme, and the Isère were in flood and the Rhône, along whose banks they were journeying, was dangerously swollen. From time to time they had to stop to free the road of a fallen tree.

      For Clémence, the contrast between Campania, where the sky was always blue and the people smiling, the orchards laden with golden fruit, and this ravaged valley, haunted by a wasted populace and depressed villages, half-depopulated by famine, was depressing.

      ‘And the farther north we go, doubtless the worse it will become. I have come to a hard land.’

      She wished to relieve all the misery she saw, and constantly halted her litter to distribute charity to anyone who seemed in need. Bouville was compelled to reason with her.

      ‘If you give at this rate, Madam, we shall not have enough left to reach Paris.’ It was when she arrived at Vienne, the home of her sister Beatrice, who was married to the ruling Prince of Dauphiné, that she learnt that King Louis X had just left to make war upon the Flemings.

      ‘Dear Lord,’ she murmured, ‘am I to be widowed before even setting eyes upon my husband? Have I arrived in France merely to witness disaster?’

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