The ruse prevailed and on Monday, the 18th of August, on a high scaffold before the main portal of Notre Dame Cathedral the wedding over which such effort had been spent took place. Parisians impoverished by the long civil wars groaned at the sight of so much magnificence. The scaffold itself and the high wooden gallery leading to it from the episcopal palace were hung with cloth of gold. Along this gallery walked the wedding party: King Charles and his brothers, Anjou and Alengon, and the King of Navarre and his cousin, the young Prince of Conde, wearing as a sign of lasting friendship identical suits of yellow satin embroidered with pearls.
King Charles led his sister, the bride, followed by Catherine and little Claude, the Duchess of Lorraine, who for all her fragility looked happy and wholly contented in her own right. Marguerite, holding her beautiful head high under the weight of its heavy tiara of diamonds, pearls and rubies, was wearing a robe of violet velvet under a mantle of palest blue.
(How cleverly they combined exquisite color in that long-ago day!) It has been written that Catherine, watching Anjou's look of admiration as he watched his sister in her bridal finery, turned pale with jealous anger. Soon, soon, she comforted herself, Marguerite would be in Navarre! Then any admiration her favorite son might feel would be for her alone, his mother!
The marriage vows were exchanged and then, while Henry of Navarre and his suite retired, Marguerite entered the great Cathedral alone to hear Mass at the high altar. Surely this had all the earmarks of a mixed marriage successfully solemnized. It was followed by four days of such exotic revels, of balls and tourneys and masques, as Paris never before had seen.
As for the bride and groom? Marguerite, inconsistently delighting to romp and fraternize with any underlings who happened to please her, shrank from the lad with the broad Gascon drawl and the oafish manners. And Henry, self-conscious before the cool, self-contained princess who was hj. bride, found himself at a great disadvantage and longed to be back in his native mountain fastness. A wholesome love t| garlic, he thought bitterly, and a habit of scratching his bead when nervous, should not make a man distasteful to his bride. However, these two oddly assorted young people seemed to see in each other the basic faults and virtues that made them what they were and to accept them as inevitable, and so outwardly, for the time being at least, pardonable. Marguerite was Queen of Navarre. Her mother drew a deep breath of relief.
Through the centuries Catherine de Medici has been held by many historians guilty of the frightful carnage which followed closely on the heels of Marguerite's wedding festivities. So much, based on her own pronouncements, her own actions, pointed to her guilt. So much, on the other hand, never has been proved.
For years she had been wanting to rid herself and France of the Admiral, Coligny, He jeopardized, if, indeed, he had not already taken the place she held in the affections of her son, the King. This alone roused her to a fury. Again, he was succeeding quietly in negotiations with England which she had begun halfheartedly, then had abandoned when she found such negotiations irritated Philip of Spain whom she feared. And finally, he was still the great motivating spirit behind the Huguenots . . . the only strong leader they had.
It was an open secret at Court that Coligny's life was in daily jeopardy though Charles had sworn to protect him. But how protect when the most potent available weapons were often invisible? As one of Coligny's loyal retainers warned him, "Prithee, milord, parry the thrusts and bullets but watch, ah, watch the broth!"
Nor was Catherine his only enemy. The young generation of Guise, led by Henry, son of the murdered Francis, Duke of Guise, sincerely believed Coligny had shot his father. Nothing to the contrary had been proved and young Henry of Guise once had remarked in the hearing of members of the Court that if left alone with the Admiral with his
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sword unsheathed he would very quickly avenge his father's death. To the great embarrassment of both Guise and Co-ligny, King Charles arranged an official reconciliation between them just a few days before Marguerite s wedding and stood by, beaming, as they grimly, unwillingly, shook hands.
On Friday morning, August 22, Coligny watched a tennis match for a time on the courts of the Louvre. Charles, he noted absently, was playing an unusually fine game; the young Duke of Guise fumbled frequently and dropped the ball. The Admiral collected a sheaf of papers he had been reading, and with a small group of his followers, started for his house in the Rue des Poulies. The morning was oppressively hot and still; pigeons cooed and strutted about in what shade they could find high under the eaves; the air was aquiver with the electric tension preceding a storm.
Then two shots rang out as the Admiral stooped to adjust his shoe buckle. The gesture saved his life as one bullet severed the index finger of his left hand and the other was imbedded in his right upper arm. Retaining his presence of mind, he pointed to the shuttered window of a house nearby from which smoke was still curling, and shook his head, smiling ruefully.
"A touching reminder of our renewed friendship, Guise's and mine," he said before slumping into the arms of his companions. The house from which the shots
