murder of her husband. Ravaillac had suffered, as we have shown, and
that too in the most frightful manner, the consequences of his crime;
persisting to the last in his assertion that he had acted independently
and had no accomplices; but his testimony, although signed in blood and
torture, had failed to convince the nation which had been so suddenly
and cruelly bereft of its monarch; and among all classes sullen rumours
were rife which involved some of the highest and proudest in the
land.[54] Among these the Duc d'Epernon, as already stated, stood out so
prominently that he had been compelled to justify himself, while the
favour which he had so suddenly acquired turned the public attention
towards the Queen herself.

Suspicions of her complicity, however ill-founded, had, indeed, existed
even previously to this period, for Rambure, when speaking of the visit
of Sully to the Louvre on the day after the assassination, a visit in
which he professes to have accompanied him, says without any attempt at
disguise, "The Queen received us with great affability, and even mingled
her tears and sobs with ours, although we were both aware of the
satisfaction that she felt in being thus delivered from the King, _of
whose death she was not considered to be wholly guiltless_, and of
becoming her own absolute mistress.... She then addressed several other
observations to the Duke, during which time he wept bitterly, while she
occasionally shed a few tears of a very different description." [55]

These assertions, vague as they are, and utterly baseless as they must
be considered by all unprejudiced minds, nevertheless suffice to prove
that the finger of blame had already been pointed towards the
unfortunate Marie; an unhappy circumstance which doubled the
difficulties of her position, and should have tended to arouse her
caution; but the haughty and impetuous nature of the Tuscan Princess