Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BOOK OF VISIONS: HENRY III, by PAUL FORT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BOOK OF VISIONS: HENRY III, by                    
First Line: The chairs and tables sleep. The tapestries are drawn. At times the
Last Line: Saint-germain-l'auxerrois sonorous midnight beats.
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; Henry Iii, King Of France (1551-1589); Royal Court Life; Royalty; Kings; Queens


The chairs and tables sleep. The tapestries are drawn. At times the royal bed
gives forth a mournful groan. It is the wood. The soul of the old oak doth
complain. Listen . . . Indeed, it groans scarcely at all. -- Again! Listen . . .
The hearth obscure with new life trembles. Three blue wisps of dancing flame are
flickering weirdly blue. Waving adieu to walls marked with the fleurdelys.

All fades. Obscurity puts the four walls to flight.

A bright flare from the hearth recalls them to the eye. The bed, all shivering,
utters a human sigh; and Philip of Valois emerges from a wall. Opens a chest,
leaps in, and lets the cover fall.

Dissembling Louis XI slips forth with prudent stealth. On his sombre hood there
whirls a white mouse. One perceives, the arms of Brittany embroidered on their
sleeves, each gaze devouring each, Charles VIII and Louis XII. Into the chest
they leap and let the cover fall.

The impish Francis II to puke in the hearth has gone. With sheets upraised, the
bed is like a ghost, indeed. In the chamber of the Kings how reigns to reigns
succeed! Regard that cavernous chest. Did you not see it yawn?

All fades. Obscurity puts the four walls to flight.

From the hearth a sudden spurt resummons them, and now Francis I with limping
gait Henry II doth precede. Of Diane de Poitiers they dream with drooping brow.
Then both together dive and close the oaken lid.

This time 'tis Charles the Fifth whose sceptre shoves it back, the Wise King.
Faggots' flare tints him with crimson dyes. He leaps. What checks his leap? The
purple he has donned. Purple-enwound he leaps and drops his jewelled wand.
Swiftly from lock to lock the hand of Justice flies turning the keys (cric!
crac!).

For here is John the Good.

Stoop-shouldered, decked with chains that chime sad threnodies, the tortured
smile of Christ and Christ's blue eyes he has. The madman Charles the Sixth
lilies of France upheaves, scourging him well therewith from morion to greaves.
Snapped petals fall. Charles Sixth, the drunkard, gathers them, and to his pious
lips has pressed the ravaged stem. But ominously he reels. He has drunk too
much, 'tis plain. 'Neath three sepulchral falls the chest resounds again.

The line of Valois kings in strange commotion move. The great bed shakes. The
eleven Valois kings summon another. There, and in the mirrors, see, the oaken
coffer gapes. In metamorphoses does Death his talents prove? At each yawning,
horns of satyrs raise the lid, then instantly are hid.

A silence dead ensues.

Till out of murky shades there mounts a pallid face as the full moon doth rise.
And the bed sees approach Charles IX with sombre eyes. Houp! The chest gulps him
down. All disappears. One hears the nibbling of a mouse through infinite depths
of space.

II.

The chairs and tables sleep. The tapestries are drawn. At times the royal bed
gives forth a mournful groan. It is the wood. The soul of the old oak doth
complain. The yawning hearth obscure with new life trembles. Three blue wisps of
dancing flame their flickering light prolong to reap the crop of walls marked
with the fleurdelys. The ceiling, in that glow, attains new height, the bed
sinks in the shadows dread beneath its canopy.

In the fluctuant gloom the room to phantoms is a prey.

A last revealing ray strikes on the chest the round that, from its gulfs
profound, 'neath the half-closed lid escapes.

On the flanks of the chest a ray illumes the round of shapes that in a tumult
turn upon its ancient wood.

The mirrors isolate and make jut forth the round of a dozen satyrs huge who,
with lascivious bound, with capering limbs surround a goat half-dead with
fright. And, mirrored thirty times in crystal facets bright, a Hercules of
bronze whirls his gnarled cudgel's mass.

The smile of him of Bearn, one-half grimace, he has. He himself! The very image!

The gloom is warm. A cry doth brood . . .

In silence, at the gallop, by the storm of Ages and Ages and Ages driven amain,
in silence, at the gallop of his steed of iron, lo, the emperor Charlemagne
hurtles across the room. Henri of Guise on his great black horse to that vision
doth succeed. Having missed the way, a mirror ends his chase. Catherine de
Medici's great and lovely face swims through the darkness -- horrible to see!

'Tis then that Henri III draws from his lethargy a cry such as at night from
depths of plains doth start, the cry of solitudes that shrills despairingly to
numb the drowsing blood in the lone traveller's heart, and, on the instant,
caught in the swaying curtain wide, at a window toward the west, illumed with
sunset's glow, a halberd's glistening head the velvet sweeps aside. Without, the
day falls, red, with drifting flakes of snow.

III.

With raiment all of black the king has leaped from bed, and in the mirrors'
depths his face interrogates, recoils from that pale mask, and, trembling, coifs
his head. The black hat, sombre-plumed, his paleness isolates. "Will you come to
rouse from sleep a blood that stupefies, O thou liqueur?" he cries. The cup
falls at his feet. Softly opening the door he harks to the antechamber, lighted
with burnished swords, with clinking steel brimmed o'er.

The gloves. The ebony cane. And forth he fares once more.

"The King, gentlemen! The King!" -- The halberds ring. Voices, whispering,
scraping of chairs pushed to and fro. The sputtering twilight glow underlines
the gilded beams. Confused is the antechamber, with vassal shadows filled, bent
towards a passageway where a white point draws near.

Behind, the royal bed crouched 'neath its canopy, at the end of a passageway,
where a white point draws near.

"The King!" -- Second echo. -- The halberds ring.

What oval whiteness now at the height of a human face is shaking two long pearls
like the full moon's glistening tears. Pale visage and long pearls, Henri the
Third appears. And the vassal shadows, all the vassal shadows bow.

Has a flight of withered leaves been tossed here by the blast? . .

"-- You, who risk an eye regard: does the dusk still underline the gilded roof-
tree high?
"-- Yes, but the King?
"-- The King, my son? . . . He has passed by.
"-- Quelus, my good friend, this smacks of prodigy.
"-- Maugiron, Saint-Megrin, hear a strange history. Tonight the Shade of the
King whirls through the palace, masked with the light of the moon, two tear-
drops in its ears.
"-- Does it go, among her clouds, Catherine to find once more? Look where it
mounts the stair!
"-- 'Tis at the second floor!"

The halberds ring. Voices, whispering, scraping of chairs pushed to and fro.
Without the day falls, red, with drifting flakes of snow.

IV.

While the hurrying King runs up the empty stair, swinging his lantern's flare,
who enters but Chicot? They surround the Fool who laughs and slips away and
reappears below. His lantern's orange ray like a censer lifts and sways at the
bottom of the stair.

"Continue, Gentlemen, I seek a King," he says.

The anteroom is dark with great pale corners there where already torches glow,
kindled by many hands. One of them throws a flame of carmine and of snow. The
swift hands separate. -- One sees the hall entire. -- Light at the ends of arms,
swords flash in streaks of fire that, two by two, unite, peopling with sparks
the air. Some blades there are that hum, others that click and clash. 'Neath
shades of lunging forms the wall protrudes and sags. The quick feet of
Mignons rustle along the flags.

-- "Chicot," Quelus cries, "the Ghost of the King doth roam. What are you doing
there, Chicot, do you wish to roam? Armed with your candle, you will see the
thing ascend."
-- "No, I see it coming down."
-- Who then?
-- Henri of Guise.
-- The deuce! He is in Spain. (To you, Monsieur, a hit!)
-- Excuse me, my dear Sir, he descends the stairway now.
-- Take care of your words, Chicot! . . . It's quite true, gentlemen. I saw him
with these eyes."

On the flagstones fall the swords.

Meanwhile the hurrying King up the empty stairway flees to his mother Catherine
there, in her clouds, and does not feel the limpid steel cuirass of Monseigneur
de Guise who, at the landing's jog, draws back to let him pass. Still he's flesh
and blood, this Duke, there's not a doubt of that! His heart with vigour throbs.
Yet not enough to rouse a clinking in the chill metal that Monseigneur, as he
profoundly bows, conceals beneath his hat.

At the bottom of the stair, all flames. The Duke descends. Step by step
descends, like a phantom circumspect. They crowd, they look at him. The Duke has
come from Spain like a phantom circumspect and takes his road direct from the
chamber of the Queen.

-- "It's unbelievable," says Maugiron.
-- "This Guise is shrewd," says Saint-Megrin.
-- "Pray let his Lordship pass!"

The limpid steel cuirass draws after it the rout of swords. All slips away, and
all is blotted out.

V.

Meanwhile Henry III, half-couched upon the rail, from the summit of the stair
has, this time, seen everything. From his throat he drags a sob like the sobbing
of a dove, then stands erect.

A wall gapes open for the King.

VI.

Here, nothing but a lamp illumining a hand.

All, save this single hand and save the parchment scroll o'er whose expanse that
hand, plump, oldish, stiff with starch, conducts the goose's plume, or seeks the
stand of ink, here all is plunged in gloom. At intervals the hand desists and
disappears, and this is what the flame, that round the characters like a martyr
writhes and twists, might them decipher there:

"To Madame my daughter, the Catholic Queen.

"My beloved daughter, my dear, my docile Isabelle, I have news of you from
Spain, brought by Monsieur de Guise. It would be beautiful indeed to see all
these wicked heretics flame up in a single torch (in France as you do there).
Alas, my darling, here there's nothing can be done. There is only perversion and
pain with us for your good mother. You know the pangs that it has pleased Heaven
to send me, the greatest it ever has sent to anyone. Burn the heretics! Ah, yes!
Charming bouquet of flames! A splendid bonfire, and a sacrifice acceptable in
the sight of God. But what of that, little daughter, naught can be done in
France. Here all's shadow, even to the Shadow on the throne. . . .

In the shadow of a face there hangs a lip, all pale. 'Neath a bonnet of black
tulle a forehead bendeth low, with moving wrinkles scored like a belfry bird-
befilled, and the more the forehead bends the higher doth it show. Catherine's
lashes wet are shot with silver glows. One sees in silhouette the stern and
delicate line of the long Italian nose, which the nostrils' fold doth pull as a
bowstring curves a bow.

It is the moment when Catherine, her lips apout, with a pacific pen the
impolitic phrase strikes out.

But another visage now has risen in the room. Behind her Catherine feels that a
pallor slowly moves. She has ceased to write, of naught but her beating heart
aware. Two small hands in gloves upon her shoulders fall, like a pair of bats
despatched by a single cudgel blow. And one little hand, circling towards her
heart, stiffly clenches there. . . .

With the end of her goose's quill Catherine pensively, softly, caresses it. And
both dream and the hour is full of indolence.

Trembling, the hand becomes less tense. . . . By one finger! See, the parchment
pointed at by but one finger now! "Here all's shadow even to the Shadow on the
throne."

Two hands have grasped the neck of Catherine, and the Queen, raising her
terrible brow, shrieks, "My King!" A sudden squeak of the parquetry betrays a
hasty flight, and soon Henry the Third descends the blankness of the stair.

VII.

He threads the anteroom, deserted and obscure, throws himself against a wall,
both arms extended wide, and seeks the passageway along the
empty wall.

Vacancy, naught beside.

The King reels, runs forward, reels; he runs to his open door and within would
make his way but, with hand on throat, he halts, all livid with dismay, before a
halberd tall that sleepily doth sway.

Henry catches at the leg of the guard and wakens him for -- O Stupor! -- there
behind the guard that he awakes, there in his bed reclined, someone or something
takes the image of himself (is perhaps himself, indeed), dim black and white, a
man, a King or some such thing. A King perhaps? Charles Ninth? Francis? A ghost,
outspread upon the royal couch, who sleeps as sleep the dead.

"Guard! Ho there, guard! Who lies on the couch of the King of France? Whose is
that pallid brow? Those rags belong to me! Did I go out just now? Is it myself I
see? What is that thing? -- "Alas!" says the man, his eyes astare, alas, my
worthy lord, but I . . . I do not know."

"Silence," says a voice. A voice says, "Silence. . . ." And the King,
close huddled, gapes and shakes like a frog in bitter cold. The bold halberdier
escapes letting his halberd fall.

"Sweet Sire, 'tis naught. Chicot reposes, that is all."

And Chicot decamps with speed dragging a pair of sheets.

VIII.

Midnight? . . .

Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois sonorous midnight beats.





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