ILLUSTRIOUS DAMES OF THE COURT OF THE VALOIS KINGS !;'■ ^ : i V \ liiiifiait : liiHi.-. ',ifi;!«i!!ll>i;!l) KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY TRANSLATOR \MmmMmmMm\m\m ■^ h' •v^'^ III/'' ^ ^ ^^ ^ t-^^: Illustrious Dames of tke Court of Tke Valois Kings by PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE and C.-A. SAINT-BEUVE 5^' I 5 - Literally Translated by KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY Illustrated with Photogravure* from the Original Paintings NF.W YORK The Lamb Publishing Co. MCMXII Copyright 1912 by THE LAMB PUBLISHING COMPANY All Tiithti Rettrvtd FOREWORD About twelve years ago this translation of the personal recollections and records of the Abb6 de Brantome, who has been called the ' ' Valet de Chambre' ' of history, by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, was issued in a most elaborate and ex- pensive style. The cost of translation and reproduction was considerable and the work was sold at a correspondingly high price, which practically placed it beyond the reach of the ordinary reader. The present issue, complete in every respect, with all the illustrations of the costly original edition, is now pub- lished to meet the demand for a less expensive form of this realistic and intimate chronicle of the illustrious women of the most luxurious European court at the most brilliant epoch of its existence. The Abbe left a priceless and artlessly written chronicle of the Valois women who were largely responsible for the ruin- ous extravagance and the colossal crimes of the period. He introduces us to the crafty Florentine, Catharine de Medici ; her beautiful daughters, Marguerite de Valois and Elizabeth of Spain ; Diane de Poitiers, the woman of perennial youth and beauty ; Jeanne d' Albert, mother of Henry IV, who was poisoned by the revengeful Catharine ; and others more or less prominent, with their attending satellites. It was a time when were sown the earUest seeds which two centuries later blossomed into the Terrors of the French Revolution. January 1912. G. E. C. CONTENTS. Paob INTRODUCTION 1 DISCOUESE I. Anne de Bretagne, Queen of France .... 25 Sainte-Beuve's remarks upon her 40 DISCOURSE II. Catherine de' Medici, Queen, and mother of our last kings 44 Sainte-Beuve's remarks upon her 86 DISCOURSE III. Marie Stuart, Queen of Scotland, formerly Queen of our France 89 Sainte-Beuve's essay on her 121 DISCOURSE IV. :6lisabeth of France, Queen of Spain ... 138 DISCOURSE V. Marguerite, Queen of France and of Navarre, sole daughter now remaining of the Noble House of France 152 Sainte-Beuve's essay on her 193 DISCOURSE VI. Mesdames, the Daughters of the Noble House of France : Madame Yoland 214 Madame Jeanne 215 Madame Anne 216 Madame Claude 219 Madame Rene'e 220 Mesdames Charlotte, Louise, Magdelaine, Marguerite .... 223 Mesdames Elisabeth, Claude, and Marguerite 229 Madame Diane 231 Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre 234 Sainte-Beuve's essay on the latter 243 iv CONTENTS. DISCOUKSE VII. Of Various Illusteiotts Ladies: Paoe Isabelle d'Autriche, wife of Charles IX 262 Jeanne d'Autriche, wife of the Infante of Portugal 270 Marie d'Autriche, wife of the King of Hungary 273 Louise de Lorraine, wife of Henri III 280 Marguerite de Lorraine, wife of the Due de Joyeuse 282 Christine of Denmark, wife of the Due de Lorraine 283 Marie d'Autriche, wife of the Emperor Maximilian II. .... 291 Blanche de Montferrat, Duchesse de Savoie 293 Catherine de Cleves, wife of Henri I. de Lorraine, Due de Guise 297 Madame de Bourdeille 297 APPENDIX 299 INDEX 306 LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS. Coronation of Marie de' Medici Frontispiece With Portraits, by Rubens (Peter Paul) ; in the Louvre. See de- scription in Note to the Discourse. FACINa PAGK Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France 44 School of the sixteenth century ; in the Louvre. Ball at the Court of Henri III 81 With Portraits, attributed to Frangois Clouet ; in the Louvre. See description in Note to Discourse VIL Marie Stuart 120 School of the sixteenth century ; Versailles. Elisabeth de France, Queen of Spain 185 By Rubens ; in the Louvre. Diane de France, Duchesse d'Angouleme 233 School of the sixteenth century; in the Louvre. Isabelle d'Autriche, Wife op Charles IX 262 By Franjois Clouet; in the Louvre. Louise de Lorraine, Wife of Henri HI 280 School of the sixteenth century ; in the Louvre. INTRODUCTION.* The title, " Vie des Dames lUustres," given habitually to one volume of Brantome's Works, is not that which was chosen by its author. It was given by his first editor fifty years after his death; Brantome himself having called his work "The Book of the Ladies." One of his earliest commentators, Castelnaud, almost a cotemporary, says of him in his Memoirs : — "Pierre de Bourdeille, Abb^ de Brantome, author of vol- umes of which I have availed myself in various parts of this history, used his quality as one of those warrior abb^s who were called Ablates Milites under the second race of our kings ; never ceasing for all that to follow arms and the Court, where his services won him the Collar of the Order and the dignity of gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King. " He frequented, with unusual esteem for his courage and intelligence, the principal Courts of Europe, such as Spain, Portugal (where the king honoured him with his Order), Scotland, and those of the Princes of Italy. He went to Malta, seeking an occasion to distinguish himself, and after that lost none in our wars of France. But, although he managed perfectly all the great captains of his time and belonged to them by alliance of friendship, fortune was ever contrary to 1 Taken chiefly from the Essays preceding the yarious editions of Brantome's works published in tlie 18th and 19th centuries ; some of wliich are anonymous ; the more recent being those of M. H. Vignaud and M. Henri Moland. — Tr. ^ 2 INTRODUCTION. him ; so that he never obtained a position worthy, not of his merits only, but of a name so illustrious as his. " It was this that made him of a rather bad humour in his retreat at Brantome, where he set himself to compose his books in different frames of mind, according as the persons who recurred to his memory stirred his bile or touched his heart. It is to be wished that lie had written a discourse on himself alone, like other seigneurs of his time. He would then have shown us much, if nothing were omitted in it ; but perhaps he abstained from doing this in order not to declare his inclinations for the House of Lorraine at the very moment of the ruin of all its schemes ; for he was greatly attached to that house, and it appears in various places that he had more respect than affection for the House of Bourbon. It was this that made him take part against the Salic law, in behalf of Queen Marguerite, whom he esteemed infinitely, and whom he saw, with regret, deprived of the Crown of France. " In many other matters he gives out sentiments which have more of the courtier than the abb^ ; indeed to be a courtier was his principal profession, as it still is with the greater part of the abb(?s of the present day ; and in view of this quality we must pardon various little liberties which would be less pardonable in a sworn historian. " I do not speak of the volume of the ' Dames Galantes ' in order not to condemn the memory of a nobleman whose other Works have rendered him worthy of so much esteem; I attribute the crime of that book to the dissolute habits of the Court of his time, about which more terrible tales could be told than those he relates. " There is something to complain of in the method with which he writes; but perhaps the name of 'Notes' may cover this defect. However that may be, we can gather from INTRODUCTION. 3 him much and very important knowledge on our History ; and France is so indebted to him for this labour that I do not hesitate to say that the services of his sword must yield in value to those of his pen. He had much wit and was well read in Letters. In youth he was very pleasing ; but I have heard those who knew him intimately say that the griefs of his old age lay heavier upon him than his arms, and were more displeasing than the toils and fatigues of war by sea or land. He regretted his past days, the loss of friends, and he saw nothing that could equal the Court of the Valois, in which he was born and bred. . . ." " The family of Bourdeille is not only illustrious in tem- poral prosperities, but it is remarkable throughout antiquity for the valour of its ancestors. King Charlemagne held it in great esteem,, which he showed by choosing, when the splendid abbey of Brantome was founded in Pdrigord, that the Seigneur de Bourdeille should be associated in that pious work and be, with him, the founder of the Monastery. He therefore made him its patron, and obliged his posterity to defend it against all who might molest the monks and hinder them in the enjoyment of their property. " If we may rely on ancient deeds [pancartes'] still in pos- session of this family, we must accord it a first rank among those which claim to be descended from kings, inasmuch as they carry back its origin to Marcomir, King of France, and Tiloa Boardelia, daughter of a king of England. "The same old deeds relate that Nicanor, son of this Mar- comir, being appealed to by the people of Aquitaine to assist them in throwing off the Roman yoke, and having come with an army very near to Bordeaux, was compelled to withdraw by the violence of the Eomans, who were stronger than he, and also by a tempest that arose in the sea. Nicanor cast anchor at an island, uninhabited on account of the wild be£,itj 4 INTRODUCTION. that peopled it, and especially certain griffins, animals with four feet, and heads and wings like eagles. " He had no sooner set foot on land with his men than he was forced to fight these monsters, and after battling with them a long time, not without loss of soldiers, he succeeded in vanquishing them. With his own hand he killed the largest and fiercest of them all, and cut off' his paws. This victory greatly rejoiced all the neighbouring countries, which had suffered much damage from these beasts. " On account of this affair, Nicanor was ever after surnamed ' The Griffin ' and honoured by every one, like Hercules when he killed the Stymphalides in Arcadia, those birds of prey that feed on human flesh. This is the origin of the arms which the Seigneurs de Brantome bear to this day, to wit: Or, two griffins' paws gules, onglde azure, counter barred." Pierre de Bourdeille, third son of Francois, Vicomte de Bourdeille and Anne de Vivonne de la Chataignerie, was born in the P^rigord in 1537, under the reign of Frangois I. The family of Bourdeille is one of the most ancient and respected in the P^rigord, which province borders on Gas- cony and echoes, if we may say so, the caustic tongue and rambling, restless temperaments that flourish on the banks of the Garonne. " Not to boast of myself," says Brantome, " I can assert that none of my race have ever been home-keeping ; they have spent as much time in travels and wars as any, no matter who they be, in France." As for his father, Brantome gives an amusing account of him as a true Gascon seigneur. He began Hfe by running away from home to go to the wars in Italy, and roam the world as an adventurer. He was, says Brantome, " a jovial fellow, who could say his word and talk familiarly to the INTRODUCTION. 5 greatest personages.** Pope Julius II. took a fancy to him. " One day they were playing cards together and the pope won from my father three hundred crowns and his horses, which were very fine, and all his equipments. After he had lost all, he said : ' Chadieu henit ! ' (that was his oath when he was angry ; when he was good-natured he swore : * Char- don henit ! ') — ' Chadieu henit ! pope, play me five hundred crowns against one of my ears, redeemable in eight days. If I don't redeem it I '11 give you leave to cut it off, and eat it if you Hke.' The pope took him at his word ; and confessed afterwards that if my father had not redeemed his ear, he would not have cut it off, but he would have forced him to keep him company. They began to play again, and fortune willed that my father won back everything except a fine courser, a pretty httle Spanish horse, and a handsome mule. The pope cut short the game and would not play any more. My father said to him : ' Hey ! Chadieu ! pope, leave me my horse for money * (for he was very fond of him) ' and keep the courser, who will throw you and break your neck, for he is too rough for you ; and keep the mule too, and may she rear and break your leg ! ' The pope laughed so he could not stop himself. At last, getting his breath, he cried out : * I '11 do better ; I '11 give you back your two horses, but not the mule, and I '11 give you two other fine ones if you wiU keep me company as far as Eome and stay with me there two months ; we '11 pass the time well, and it shall not cost you anything.' My father answered: ' Chadieu! pope, if you gave me your mitre and your cap, too, I would not do it ; I would n't quit my general and my companions just for your pleasure. Good-bye to you, rascal.' The pope laughed, while all the great captains, French and Italians, who always spoke so rev- erently to his Holiness, were amazed and laughed too at such liberty of language. When the pope was on the point of 6 INTRODUCTION. leaving, he said to him, ' Ask what you want of me and you shall have it,' thinking my father would ask for his horses ; but my father did not ask anything, except for a hcense and dispensation to eat butter in Lent, for his stomach could never get accustomed to olive and nut oiL The pope gave it him readily, and sent him a bull, which was long to be seen in the archives of our house." The young Pierre de Bourdeille spent the first years of his existence at the Court of Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francois I., to whom his mother was lady-in-waiting. After the death of that princess in 1549 he came to Paris to begin his studies, which he ended at Poitiers about the year 1556. Being the youngest of the family he was destined if not for the Church at least for church benefices, which he never lacked through life. An elder brother. Captain de Bourdeille, a valiant soldier, having been killed at the siege of Hesdin by a cannon-ball which took off his head and the arm that held a glass of water he was drinking on the breach, King Henri II. desired, in recognition of so glorious a death, to do some favour to the Bourdeille family ; and the abbey of Brantome falling vacant at this very time, he gave it to the young Pierre de BourdeiUe, then sixteen years old, who henceforth bore the name of Seigneur and Abbd de Brantome, abbreviated after a while to Brantome, by which name he is known to posterity. In a few legal deeds of the period, especially family documents, he is mentioned as " the rever- end father in God, the Abb^ de Brantome." Brantome had possessed his abbey about a year when he began to dream of going to the wars in Italy ; this was the high-road to glory for the young French nobles, ever since Charles A^III. had shown them the way. Brantome obtained from Francois I. permission to cut timber in the forest of Saint-Trieix ; this cut brought him in five hundred golden INTRODUCTION. 7 crowns, with which he departed in 1558, "bearing," he says, " a matchlock arquebuse, a fine powder-horn from Milan, and mounted on a hackney worth a hundred crowns, fol- lowed by six or seven gentlemen, soldiers themselves, well set-up, armed and mounted the same, but on good stout nags." He went first to Geneva, and there he saw the Calvinist emigration; continuing his way he stayed at Milan and Ferrara, reaching Rome soon after the death of Paul IV. There he was welcomed by the Grand-Prior of France, FrauQois de Guise, who had brought his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, to assist in the election of a new pontifif. This was the epoch of the Renaissance, — that epoch when the knightly king made all Europe resound with the fame of his amorous and warlike prowess ; when Titian and Primaticcio were leaving on the walls of palaces their im- mortal handiwork; when Jean Goujon was carving his figures on the fountains and the facades of the Louvre; when Rabelais was inciting that mighty roar of laughter which, in itself, is a whole human comedy ; when the Mar- guerite of Marguerites was teUing in her "Heptameron" those charming tales of love. Francois L dies ; his son suc- ceeds him ; Protestantism makes serious progress. Mont- gomery kills Henri II., and Frangois II. ascends the throne only to hve a year ; and then it is that Marie Stuart leaves France, the tears in her eyes, sadly singing as the beloved shores over which she had reigned so short a while re- cede from sight: "FareweU, my pleasant land of France, farewell ! " Returning to France without any warrior fame but closely attached by this time to the Guises, Brantome took to a Court life. He assisted in a tournament between the grand- prior, Frangois de Guise, disguised as an Egyptian woman, 8 INTRODUCTION. " having on her arm a little monkey swaddled as an infant, which kept its baby face there is no telling how," and M. de Nemours, dressed as a bourgeoise housekeeper wearing at her belt more than a hundred keys attached to a thick silver chain. He witnessed the terrible scene of the execution of the Huguenot nobles at Amboise (March, 1560); was at Orleans when the Prince de Cond^ was arrested, and at Poissy for the reception of the Knights of Saint-Michel. In short, he was no more " home-keeping " in France than in foreign parts. Charles IX., then about ten years old, succeeded his brother Frangois II. in December, 1560. The following year Due FranQois de Guise was commissioned to escort his niece, Marie Stuart, to Scotland. Brantome went with them, saw the threatening reception given to the queen by her sullen subjects, and then returned with the duke by way of Eng- land. In London, Queen Elizabeth greeted them most graciously, deigning to dance more than once with Due FranQois, to whom she said : " Monsieur mon prieur " (that was how she called him) " I like you very much, but not your brother, who tore my town of Calais from me." Brantome returned to France at the moment when the edict of Saint-Germain granting to Protestants the exercise of their religion was promulgated, and he was struck by the change of aspect presented by the Court and the whole nation. The two armed parties were face to face ; the Cal- vinists, scarcely escaped from persecution, seemed certain of approaching triumph ; the Prince de Cond6, with four hun- dred gentlemen, escorted the preachers to Charenton through the midst of a quivering population. " Death to papists ! " — the very cry Brantome had first heard on landing in Scot- land., where it sounded so ill to his ears — was beginnincr to be heard in France, to which the cry of " Death to the INTRODUCTION. 9 Huguenots!" responded in the breasts of an irritated popu- lace. Brantome did not hesitate as to the side he should take, — he was abb6, and attached to the Guises ; he fought through the war with them, took part in the sieges of Blois, Bourges, and Eouen, was present at the battle of Dreux, where he lost his protector the grand-prior, and attached himself henceforth to FranQois de Guise, the elder, whom he followed to the siege of Orldans in 1563, where the duke was assassinated by Poltrot de Mer^ under circumstances which Brantome has vividly described in his chapter on that great captain. In 1564 BrantSme entered the household of the Due d'Anjou (afterwards Henri III.) as gentleman-in-waiting to tlie prince, on a salary of six hundred livres a year. But, being seized again by his passion for distant expeditions, he engaged during the same year in an enterprise conducted by Spaniards agamst the Emperor of Morocco, and went with the troops of Don Garcia of Toledo to besiege and take the towns on the Barbary coast. He returned by way of Lisbon, pleased the king of Portugal, Sebastiano, who con- ferred upon him his Order of the Christ, and went from there to Madrid, where Queen Elisabeth gave him the cordial welcome on which he plumes himself in his Discourse upon that princess. He was commissioned by her to carry to her mother, Catherine de' Medici, the desire she felt to have an interview with her; which interview took place at Bayonne, Brantome not failing to be present. In that same year, 1565, Sultan Suleiman attacked the island of Malta. The grand-master of the Knights of Saint- John, Parisot de La Valette, calle'd for the help of all Chris- tian powers. The French government had treaties with the Ottoman Porte which did not allow it to come openly to the assistance of the Knights ; but many gentlemen, both 10 INTRODUCTION. Catholic and Protestant, took part as volunteers. Among them went Brantome, naturally. " We were," he says, " about three hundred gentlemen and eight hundred soldiers. ]VL de Strozzi and M. de Bussac were with us, and to them we deferred our own wills. It was only a little troop, but as active and vaUant as ever left France to fight the Infidel." While at Malta he seems to have had a fancy to enter the Order of the Knights of Saint-John, but Philippe Strozzi dissuaded him. " He gave me to understand," says Bran- tome, " that I should do WTong to abandon the fine fortune that awaited me in France, whether from the hand of my king, or from that of a beautiful, virtuous lady, and rich, to whom I was just then servant and welcome guest, so that I had hope of marrying her." He left Malta on a galley of the Order, intending to go to Naples, according to a promise he had made to the " beau- tiful and virtuous lady," the Marchesa del Vasto. But a contrary wind defeated his project, which he did not re- nounce without regret. In after years he considered this mischance a strong feature in his unfortunate destiny. " It was possible," he says, " that by means of Mme. la marquise I might have encountered good luck, either by marriage or otherwise, for she did me the kindness to love me. But I believe that my unhappy fate was resolved to bring me back to France, where never did fortune smile upon me ; I have always been duped by vain expectations ; I have received much honour and esteem, but of property and rank, none at all. Companions of mine who would have been proud had I deigned to speak to them at Court or in the chamber of the king or queen, have long been advanced before me ; I see them round as pumpkins and highly exalted, though I will not, for all that, defer to them to the length of my thumb-naiL That proverb, ' Xo one is a prophet in his INTRODUCTION. 11 own country/ was made for me. If I had served foreign sovereigns as I have my own I should now be as loaded with wealth and dignities as I am with sorrows and years. Patience ! if Fate has thus woven my days, I curse her ! If my princes have done it, I send them aU to the devil, if they are not there already." But when he started from Malta Brantome was still young, being then only twenty-eight years of age. " Jog- ging, meandering, vagabondizing," as he says, he reached Venice ; there he thought of going into Hungary in search of the Turks, whom he had not been able to meet in Malta. But the death of Sultan Suleiman stopped the invasion for one year at least, and Brantome reluctantly decided to return to France, passing through Piedmont, where he gave a proof of his disinterestedness, which he relates in his sketch of Marguerite, Duchesse de Savoie. Beaching his own land he found the war he had been so far to seek without encountering it ; whereupon he recruited a company of foot-soldiers, and took part in the third civil war with the title of commander of two companies, though in fact there was but one. Shortly after this he resigned his command to serve upon the staff of Monsieur, com- mander-in-chief of the royal army. After the battle of Jarnac (March 15, 1569), being sick of an intermittent fever, he retired to his abbey, where his presence throughout the troubles was far from useless. But always more eager for distant expeditions than for the dulness of civil war, Bran- tome let himself be tempted by a grand project of Mardchal Strozzi, who dreamed of nothmg less than a descent on South America and the conquest of Peru. Brantome was commissioned in 1571 to go to the port of Brouage and direct the preparations for the armament. It was this en- terprise that prevented him from being present at the battle 12 INTRODUCTION. of Lepanto (October 7, 1571). "I should have gone there resolutely, as did that brave M. de Grillon," he says, " if it had not been for M. de Strozzi, who amused me a whole year with that fine embarkation at Brouage, which ended in nothing but the ruin of our purses, — to those of us at least who owned the vessels." But if the duties which kept him at Brouage robbed him of the glory of being present at the greatest battle of the age, it also saved him from being a witness of the Saint Bartholomew. The treaty of June 24, 1573, put an end to the siege of Eochelle and the fourth civil war. Charles IX. died on May 30, 1574. Monsieur, elected the year before to the throne of Poland, was in that distant country when the death of his brother made him king of France. He has- tened to return. BrantOme went to meet him at Lyons and was one of the gentlemen of his Bedchamber from 1575 to 1583. During the years just passed Brantome, besides the principal events already named in which he participated, took part in various little or great events in the daily hfe of the Court, such as : the quarrel of Sussy and Saint-Fal, the splendid disgrace of Bussy d'Amboise, the death and obsequies of Charles IX., the coronation of Henri III., etc. Throughout them all he played the part of interested spectator, of active supernumerary without importance 5 discontented at times and sulky, but always unable to make himself feared. The years went by in this sterile round. He was now thirty-five years old. The hope of a great fortune was realized no more on the side of his king than on that of his beautiful, virtuous, and rich lady. He is, no doubt, " liked, known, and made welcome by the kings, his masters, by his queens and his princesses, and all the great seigneurs, who held him in such esteem that the name of Brantome had great INTRODUCTION. 13 reno-wn." But lie is not satisfied with the Court small- change in which his services are paid. He is vexed that his own lightheartedness is taken at its word ; he would be very glad indeed if that love of liberty with which he decked himself were put to greater trials. Philosopher in spite of himself, he finds his disappointments all the more painful because of his own opinion of his merits. He sees men to whom he believes himself superior, preferred before him. " His companions, not equal to him," he says in the epitaph he composed for himself, " surpassed him in benefits received, in promotions and ranks, but never in virtue or in merit." And he adds, with posthumous resignation: " God be praised nevertheless for all, and for his sacred mercy ! " Meantime, perchance a queen, Catherine de' Medici or Marguerite de Valois, deigns to drop into his ear some trifling word which he relishes with delight. Henri de Guise \le Balafrd], who was ten years younger than himself, called him " my son ; " and the Baron de Montesquieu, the one that killed the Prince de Cond^ at Jarnac and was very much older than Brantome, who had pulled him out of the water during certain aquatic games on the Seine, called him "father." Such were the familiarities with which he was treated. He was, it is true, chevalier of the Order of Saint-Michel, but that was not enough to console his ambition. He com- plained that they degraded that honour, no longer reserved to the nobility of the sword. He thinks it bad, for instance, that it was granted to his neighbour, Michel de Montaigne. " We have seen," he says, " counsellors coming from the courts of parliament, abandoning robes and the square cap to drag a sword behmd them, and at once the king decks them with the collar, without any pretext of their going to war. 14 INTRODUCTION. This is what was given to the Sieur de Montaigne, who would have done much better to continue to write his Essays instead of changing his pen into a sword, which does not suit him. The Marquis de Trans obtained the Order very easily from the king for one of his neighbours, no doubt in derision, for he is a great joker." Brantome always speaks very slightingly of Montaigne because the latter was of lesser nobility than his own ; but that does not prevent the Sieur de Montaigne from being to our eyes a much greater man than the Seigneur de Brantome. Brantome continued to follow the Court. He accompanied the queen-mother when she went in 1576 to Poitou to bring back the Due d'Alengon, who was dabbling in plots. He accompanied her again when she conducted in 1578 her daughter Marguerite to Navarre ; and at their solemn entry into Bordeaux he had the honour of being near them on the " scaffold," or, as we should say in the present day, the plat- form. He had also the luck to hear at Saint-Germain-en- Laye King Henri III. make during his dinner, in presence of the Due de Joyeuse (on whose nuptials the fluent monarch was destined to spend a million), a discourse worthy of Cato against luxury and extravagance. In 1582, his elder brother, Andre de Bourdeille, seneschal and governor of the Perigord, died. He left a son scarcely nine years old. Brantome had obtained from King Henri III. a promise that he should hold those offices until the majority of his nephew, on condition of transmitting them at that time. The king confirmed this promise on several occasions during the last illness of Andrd de Bourdeille. But at the latter's death it was discovered that he had bound himself in his daughter's marriage contract to resign those offices to his son-in-law. The king considered that he ought to respect this family arrangement. Brantome was keenly hurt. " On INTRODUCTION. 15 the second day of the year," he says, " as the king was returning from his ceremony of the Saint-Esprit, I made my complaint to him, more in anger than to implore him, as he well understood. He made me excuses, although he was my king. Among other reasons he said plainly that he could not refuse that resignation when presented to him, or he should be unjust. I made him no reply, except : ' Well, sire, I ought not to have put faith in you ; a good reason never to serve you again as I have served you.' On which I went away much vexed. I met several of my companions, to whom I related everything. I protested and swore that if I had a thousand lives not one would I employ for a King of France. I cursed my luck, I cursed life, I loathed the king's favour, I despised with a curling lip those beggarly fellows loaded with royal favours who were in no wise as worthy of them as I. Hanging to my belt was the gilt key to the king's bedroom ; I unfastened it and flung it from the Quai des Augustins, where I stood, into the river below. I never again entered the king's room ; I abhorred it, and I swore never to set foot in it any more. I did not, however, cease to frequent the Court and to show myself in the room of the queen, who did me the honour to like me, and in those of her ladies and maids of honour and of the princesses, seigneurs, and princes, my good friends. I talked aloud about my displeasure, so that the king, hearing of what I said, sent me a few words by M. du Halde, his head valet de chamhre. I contented myself with answering that I was the king's most obedient, and said no more." Monsieur (the Due d'Alengon) took notice of Brantome, and made him his chamberlain. About this time it was that he began to compose for this prince the " Discourses " after- wards made into a book and called " Vies des Dames Galantes," which he dedicated to the Due d'Alengon. The 16 INTRODUCTION. latter died in 1584, — a loss that dashed once more the hopes of Brantome and of others who, like him, had pinned their faith upon that prince. After all, BrantOme had some reason to complain of his evil star. Then it was that Brantome meditated vast and even criminal projects, which he himself has revealed to us : "I resolved to sell the little property I possessed in France and go off and serve that great King of Spain, very illustrious and noble remunerator of services rendered to him, not com- pelling his servitors to importune him, but done of his own free will and wise opinion, and out of just consideration. Wliereupon I reflected and ruminated within myself that I was able to serve him well ; for there is not a harbour nor a seaport from Picardy to Bayonne that I do not know per- fectly, except those of Bretagne which I have not seen ; and I know equally well all the weak spots on the coast of Lan- guedoc from Grasse to Provence. To make myself sure of my facts, I had recently made a new tour to several of the towns, pretending to wish to arm a ship and send it on a voyage, or go myself. In fact, I had played my game so well that I had discovered half a dozen towns on these coasts easy to capture on their weak sides, which I knew then and which I still know, I therefore thought I could serve the King of Spain in these directions so well that I might count on obtaining the reward of great wealth and dignities. But before I banished myself from France T proposed to sell my estates and put the money in a bank of Spain or Italy. I also proposed, and I discoursed of it to the Comte de La Rochefoucauld, to ask leave of absence from the king that I might not be called a deserter, and to be relieved of my oath as a subject in order to go wherever I should find myself better off tlian in his kingdom. I be- lieve he could not have refused my retj^uest ; because every- INTRODUCTION. 17 one is free to change his country and choose another. But however that might be, if he had refused me I should have gone all the same, neither more nor less like a valet who is angry with his master and wants to leave him ; if the latter will not give him leave to go, it is not reprehensible to take it and attach himself to another master." Thus reasoned BrantOme. He returns on several occa- sions to these lawless opinions; he argues, apropos of the Conn^table de Bourbon and La Noue, against the scruples of those who are willing to leave their country, but not to take up arms against her. " I'faith ! " he cries, " here are fine, scrupulous philosophers ! Their quartan fevers ! While I hold shyly back, pray who will feed me ? Whereas if I bare my sword to the wind it will give me food and magnify my fame." Such ideas were current in those days among the nobles, in whom the patriotic sentiment, long subordinated to that of caste, was only developed later. These projects of treachery should therefore not be judged altogether with the severity of modern ideas. Besides, BrantOme is working himself up ; it does not belong to every one to produce such grand disasters as these he meditates. Moreover, thought is far from action; events may intervene. People call them fate or chance, but chance will often simply aid the secret im- pulses of conscience, and bind our will to that it chooses. " Fine Imman schemes I made ! " Brantome resumes. " On the very point o£ their accomplishment the war of the League broke out and turmoiled things in such a way that no one would buy lands, for every man had trouble enough to keep what he owned, neither would he strip himself of money. Those who had promised to buy my property ex- cused themselves. To go to foreign parts without resources was madness, — it would only have exposed me to all sorts 2 18 INTRODUCTION. of misery ; I had too much experience to commit that folly. To complete the destruction of my designs, one day, at the height of my vigor and jollity, a miserable horse, whose white skin might have warned me of nothing good, reared and fell over upon me breaking and crushing my loins, so that for four years I lay in my bed, maimed, impotent in every limb, unable to turn or move without torture and all the agony in the world ; and since then my health has never been what it once was. Thus man proposes, and God dis- poses. God does all things for the best ! It is possible that if I had reaUzed my plans I should have done more harm to my country than the renegade of Algiers did to his ; and because of it, I might have been perpetually cursed of God and man." Consequently, this great scheme remained a dream; no one need ever have known anything about it if Brantome himself had not taken pains to inform us of it with much complacency. The cruel fall which stopped his guilty projects must nave occurred in 1585. At the end of three years and a half of suffering he met, he tells us, " with a very great personage and operator, called M. Saint-Christophe, whom God raised up for my good and cure, who succeeded in relieving me after many other doctors had failed." As soon as he was nearly well he began once more to travel. It does not appear that he frequented the Court after the death of Catherine de' Medici, which took place in January, 1589 ; but he was present, in that year, at the baptism of the posthumous son of Henri de Guise, whom the Parisians adopted after the father's murder at Blois, and named Paris. Agrippa dAu- bignd, in his caricature of the Procession of the League, gives Brantome a small place as bearer of bells. But was he really there? It seems doubtful ; he makes somewhere the judicious INTRODUCTION. 1& reflection that : " One may well be surprised that so many French nobles put themselves on the side of the League, for if it had got the upper hand it is very certain that the clergy would have deprived them of church property and wiped their lips forever of it, which result would have cut the wings of their extravagance for a very long while." The secular Abb^ de Brantome had therefore as good reasons for not being a Leaguer as for not being a Huguenot. In 1590 he went to make his obeisance to Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, then confined in the Chateau d'Usson in Auvergne. He presented to her his " discourse " on " Spanish Ehodomontades," perhaps also a first copy of the life of that princess (which appears in this volume), and he also showed her the titles of the other books he had composed. He was so enchanted with the greeting Queen Marguerite, la Eeine Margot, gave him, " the sole remainiag daughter of the noble house of France, the most beautiful, most noble, grandest, most generous, most magnanimous, and most accomplished princess in the world" (when Brantome praises he does not do it by halves), that he promised to dedicate to her the entire collection of his works, — a promise he faithfully fulfilled. His health, now decidedly affected, confined more and more to his own home this indefatigable rover, who had, as he said, " the nature of a minstrel who prefers the house of others to his own." Condemned to a sedentary life, he used his activity as he could. He caused to be built the noble castle of Eichemont, with much pains and at great expense. He grew quarrelsome and litigious ; brought suits against his relations, against his neighbours, against his monks, whom he accused of ingratitude. By his will he bequeathed his lawsuits to his heirs, and forbade each and all to compromise them. 20 INTRODUCTION. Difficult to live with, soured, dissatisfied with the world, he was not, it would seem, in easy circumstances. He did not spare posterity the recital of his plaints : " Favours, gran- deurs, boasts, and vanities, all the pleasant things of the good old days are gone like the wind. Nothing remains to me but to have been all that; sometimes that memory pleases me, and sometimes it vexes me. Nearing a decrepit old age, the worst of all woes, nearing, too, a poverty which cannot be cured as in our flourishing years when nought is impossible, repenting me a hundred thousand times for the fine extrava- gances I committed in other days, and regretting I did not save enough then to support me now in feeble age, when I lack all of which I once possessed too much, — I see, with a bursting heart, an infinite number of paltry fellows raised to rank and riches, while Fortune, treacherous and blind that she is, feeds me on air and then deserts and mocks me. If she would only put me quickly into the hands of death I would still forgive her the wrongs she has done me. But there is the worst of it ; we can neither hve nor die as we wish. Therefore, let destiny do as it will, never shall I cease to curse it from heart and lip. And worst of all do I detest old age weighed down by poverty. As the queen-mother said to me one day when I had the honour to speak to her on this subject about another person, * Old age brings us inconveniences enough without the additional burden of poverty ; the two united are the height of misery, against which there is one only sovereign cure, and that is death. Happy he who finds it when he reaches fifty-six, for after that our life is but labour and sorrow, and we eat but the bread of ashes, as saith the prophet.'" He continued, however, to write, retracing all that he had seen and garnered either while making his campaigns with the great captains of his time, or in gossiping with idle gen- INTRODUCTION. 21 tlemen in the halls of the Louvre. It was thus he composed his biographical and anecdotical volumes, which he retouched and rewrote at intervals, making several successive copies. That he had the future of his writings much at heart, in spite of a scornful air of indifference which he sometimes assumed, appears very plainly from the following clause in his will : " I will," he says, " and I expressly charge my heirs to cause to be printed my Books, which I have composed from my mind and invention with great toil and trouble, written by my hand, and transcribed clearly by that of Mataud, my hired secretary; the which will be found in five volumes covered with velvet, black, tan, green, blue, and a large vol- ume, which is that of ' The Ladies,' covered with green velvet, and another covered with vellum and gilded thereon, which is that of 'The Ehodomontades.' They will be found in one of my wicker trunks, carefully protected. Fine things will be found in them, such as tales, discourses, histories, and witti- cisms ; which no one can disdain, it seems to me, if once they are placed under his nose and eyes. In ordfer to have them printed according to my fancy, I charge with that purpose Madame la Comtesse de Duretal, my dear niece, or some other person she may choose. And to do this I order that enough be taken from my whole property to pay the costs of the said printing, and my heirs are not to divide or use my property until this printing is provided for. It is not probable that it will cost much ; for the printers, when they cast their eyes upon the books, would pay to print them instead of exacting money ; for they do print many gratis that are not worth as much as mine. I can boast of this; for I have shown them, at least in part, to several among that trade, who offered to print them for nothing. But I do not choose that they be printed during my life. Above all, I will that the said printing be in fine, large letters, in a great volume to 22 iN-moDucTioN. make tlie better show, with license from the king, who will give it readily ; or without license, if that can be. Care must also be taken that the printer does not put on another name than mine ; otherwise I shall be frustrated of all my trouble and of the fame that is my due. I also will that tlie first book that issues from the press shall be given as a gift, well bound and covered in velvet, to Queen Marguerite, my very illustrious mistress, who did me the honour to read some of my writings, and who thought them fine and esteemed them." This will was made about the year 1609. On the 15th of July, 1614, Brantome died, after living his last years in com- plete oblivion ; he was buried, according to his wishes, in the chapel of his chateau of Eichemont. In spite of his ex- press directions, neither the Comtesse de Duretal nor any other of his heirs executed the clause in his will relating to the publication of his works. Possibly they feared it might create some scandal, or it may be that they could not obtain the royal license. The manuscripts remained in the chateau of Eichemont. Little by little, as time went on, they at- tracted attention ; copies were made which found their way to the cabinets and libraries of collectors. They were finally printed in Holland; and the first volume, which appeared in Leyden from the press of Jean Sambix the younger, sold by r. Foppons, Brussels, 1665, was that which here follows: " The Book of the Ladies," called by the publisher, not by Brantome, " Lives of Illustrious Dames." It is not easy to distinguish the exact periods at which Brantome wrote his works. " The Book of the Ladies," first and second parts, — Dames Illustres and Dames Galantes, — were evidently the first written ; then followed " The Lives of Great and Illustrious French Captains," " Lives of Great Foreign Captains," " Anecdotes concerning Duels," " The INTRODUCTION. 23 Ehodomontades," and " Spanish Oaths." Brantome did not write his Memoirs, properly so-called ; his biographical facts and incidents are scattered throughout the above-named volumes. The following translation of the " Book of the Ladies " does not pretend to imitate Brantome's style. To do so would seem an affectation in English, and attract attention to itself which it is always desirable to avoid in translating. Wherever a few of BrantSme's quaint turns of phrase are given, it is only as they fall naturally into English. THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. DISCOUESE I ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. Inasmuch as I must speak of ladies, I do not choose to speak of former dames, of whom the histories are full ; that would be blotting paper in vain, for enough has been written about them, and even the great Boccaccio has made a fine book solely on that subject [De claris muUerihus]. I shall begin therefore with our queen, Anne de Bretagne, the most worthy and honourable queen that has ever been since Queen Blanche, mother of the King Saint-Louis, and very sage and virtuous. This Queen Anne was the rich heiress of the duchy of Bretagne, which was held to be one of the finest of Christen- dom, and for that reason she was sought in marriage by the greatest persons. M. le Due d'Orldans, afterwards King Louis XII., in his young days courted her, and did for her sake his fine feats of arms in Bretagne, and even at the battle of Saint Aubin, where he was taken prisoner fighting on foot at the head of his infantry. I have heard say that this capture was the reason why he did not espouse her then ; for thereon intervened Maximilian, Duke of Austria, since emperor, who married her by the proxy of his uncle the Prince of Orange in the great church at Nantes. But King Charles VITL, having advised with his council that it was 26 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. not good to have so powerful a seigneur encroach and gefc a footing in his kingdom, broke off a marriage that had been settled between himself and Marguerite of Flanders, took the said Anne from Maximilian, her affianced, and wedded her himself; so that every one conjectured thereon that a marriage thus made would be luckless in issue. Now if Anne was desired for her property, she was as much so for her virtues and merits ; for she was beautiful and agreeable ; as I have heard say by elderly persons who knew her, and according to her portrait, which I have seen from life ; resembling in face the beautiful Demoiselle de ChSteauneuf, who has been so renowned at the Court for her beauty ; and that is sufficient to tell the beauty of Queen Anne as I have heard it portrayed to the queen mother [Catherine de' Medici]. Her figure was fine and of medium height. It is true that one foot was shorter than the other the least in the world ; but this was little perceived, and hardly to be noticed, so that her beauty was not at all spoilt by it ; for I myself have seen very handsome women with that defect who yet were ex- treme in beauty, like Mme. la Princesse de Conde, of the house of Longueville. So much for the beauty of the body of this queen. That of her mind was no less, because she was very virtuous, wise, honourable, pleasant of speech, and very charming and sub- tile in wit. She had been taught and trained by Mme. de Laval, an able and accomplished lady, appointed her gov- erness by her father. Due rran§ois. For the rest, she was very kind, very merciful, and very charitable, as I have heard my own folks say. True it is, however, that she was quick in vengeance and seldom pardoned whoever offended her maliciously ; as she showed to the Mardchal de Gi^ for the affront he put upon her when the king, her lord and husband, ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 27 lay ill at Blois and was held to be dying. She. wishing to provide for her wants in case she became a widow, caused three or four boats to be laden on the Kiver Loire with all her precious articles, furniture, jewels, rings and money, — and sent them to her city and chateau of Nantes. The said marshal, meeting these boats between Saumur and Nantes, ordered them stopped and seized, being much too wishful to play the good officer and servant of the Crown. But fortune willed that the king, through the prayers of his people, to whom he was indeed a true father, escaped with his life. The queen, in spite of this luck, did not abstain from her vengeance, and having well brewed it, she caused the said marshal to be driven from Court. It was then that having finished a fine house at La Verger, he retired there, saying that the rain had come just in time to let him get under shelter in the beautiful house so recently built. But this banishment from Court was not all ; through great researches which she caused to be made wherever he had been in com- mand, it was discovered he had committed great wrongs, extortions and pillages, to which all governors are given ; so that the marshal, having appealed to the courts of parliament, was summoned before that of Toulouse, which had long been very just and equitable, and not corrupt. There, his suit being viewed, he was convicted. But the queen did not wish his death, because, she said, death is a cure for all pains and woes, and being dead he would be too happy ; she wished him to live as degraded and low as he had been great ; so that he might, from the grandeur and height where he had been, live miserably in troubles, pains, and sadness, which would do him a hundred-fold more harm than death, for death lasted only a day, and mayhap only an hour, whereas his languishing would make him die daily. Such was the vengeance of this brave queen. One day she 28 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. was so angry against M. d'OrMans that she could not for a long time be appeased. It was in this wise : the death of her son, M. le dauphin, having happened, King Charles, her hus- band, and she were in such despair that the doctors, fearing the debility and feeble constitution of the king, were alarmed lest such grief should do injury to his health; so they coun- selled the king to amuse himself, and the princes of the Court to invent new pastimes, games, dances, and mum- meries in order to give pleasure to the king and queen ; the which M. d'Orldans having undertaken, he gave at the Chateau d'Amboise a masquerade and dance, at which he did such follies and danced so gayly, as was told and read, that the queen, believing he felt this glee because, the dauphin being dead, he knew himself nearer to be King of France, was extremely angered, and showed him such displeasure that he was forced to escape from Amboise, where the Court then was, and go to his chateau of Blois. Nothing can be blamed in this queen except the sin of vengeance, — if vengeance is a sin, — because otherwise she was beautiful and gentle, and had many very laudable sides. When the king, her husband, went to the kingdom of Naples [1494], and so long as he was there, she knew very well how to govern the kingdom of France with those whom the king had given to assist her; but she always kept her rank, her grandeur, and supremacy, and insisted, young as she was, on being trusted ; and she made herself trusted, so that nothing was ever found to say against her. She felt great regret for the death of King Charles [in 1498], as much for the friendship she bore him as for seeing herself henceforth but half a queen, having no children. And when her most intimate ladies, as I have been told on good authority, pitied her for being the widow of so great a king, and imable to return to her high estate, — for King ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 29 Louis [the Due d'Orl^ans, her first lover] was then married to Jeanne de France, — she replied she would " rather be the widow of a king all her life than debase herself to a less than he ; but still, she was not so despairing of happiness that she did not think of again being Queen of France, as she had been, if she chose." Her old love made her say so ; she meant to relight it in the bosom of him in whom it was yet warm. And so it happened ; for King Louis [XII.], having repudi- ated Jeanne, his wife, and never having lost his early love, took her in marriage, as we have seen and read. So here was her prophecy accomplished; she having founded it on the nature of King Louis, who could not keep himself from lov- ing her, all married as she was, but looked with a tender eye upon her, being stiU Due d' Orleans; for it is difficult to quench a great fire when once it has seized the souL He was a handsome prince and very amiable, and she did not hate him for that. Having taken her, he honoured her much, leaving her to enjoy her property and her duchy with- out touching it himself or taking a single louis ; but she employed it well, for she was very liberal And because the king made immense gifts, to meet which he must have levied on his people, which he shunned like the plague, she supplied his deficiencies ; and there were no great captains of the kingdom to whom she did not give pensions, or make extraordinary presents of money or of thick gold chains when they went upon a journey ; and she even made little presents according to quality ; everybody ran to her, and few came away discontented. Above all, she had the reputa- tion of loving her domestic servants, and to them she did great good. She was the first queen to hold a great Court of ladies, such as we have seen from her time to the present day. Her suite was very large of ladies and young girls, for she 30 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. refused none ; she even inquired of the noblemen of her Court whether they had daughters, and what they were, and asked to have them brought to her. I had an aunt de Bourdeille who had the honour of being brought up by her [Louise de Bourdeille, maid of honour to Queen Anne in 1494] ; but she died at Court, aged fifteen years, and was buried behind the great altar of the church of the Fran- ciscans in Paris. I saw the tomb and its inscription before that church was burned [in 1580.] Queen Anne's Court was a noble school for ladies ; she had them taught and brought up wisely; and all, taking pattern by her, made themselves wise and virtuous. Be- cause her heart was great and lofty she wanted guards, and so formed a second band of a hundred gentlemen, — for hitherto there was only one; and the greater part of the said new guard were Bretons, who never failed, when she left her room to go to mass or to promenade, to await her on that little terrace at Blois, still called the Breton perch, "La Perche aux Bretons," she herself having named it so by saying when she saw them : " Here are my Bretons on their perch, awaiting me." You may be sure that she did not lay by her money, but employed it well on all high things. She it was, who built, out of great superbness, that fine vessel and mass of wood, called " La Cordelifere," which at- tacked so furiously in mid-ocean the " Regent of England," grappling to her so closely that both were burned and noth- ing escaped, — not the people, nor anything else that was in them, so that no news was ever heard of them on land ; which troubled the queen very much.^ The king honoured her so much that one day, it being reported to him that the law clerks at the Palais [de Justice] 1 See Ai)pen(lix. ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 31 and the students also were playing games in which there was talk of the king, his Court, and all the great people, he took no other notice than to say they needed a pastime, and he would let them talk of him and his Court, though not licentiously ; but as for the queen, his wife, they should not speak of her in any way whatsoever ; if they did he would have them hanged. Such was the honour he bore her. Moreover, there never came to his Court a foreign prince or an ambassador that, after having seen and listened to them, he did not send them to pay their reverence to the queen ; wishing the same respect to be shown to her as to him ; and also, because he recognized in her a great faculty for entertaining and pleasing great personages, as, indeed, she knew well how to do ; taking much pleasure in it her- self ; for she had very good and fine grace and majesty in greeting them, and beautiful eloquence in talking with them. Sometimes, amid her French speech, she would, to make herself more admired, mingle a few foreign words, which she had learned from M. de Grignaux, her chevalier of honour, who was a very gallant man who had seen the world, and was accomplished and knew foreign languages, being thereby very pleasant good company, and agree- able to meet. Thus it was that one day. Queen Anne having asked him to teach her a few words of Spanish to say to the Spanish ambassador, he taught her in joke a little indecency, which she quickly learned. The next day, while awaiting the ambassador, M. de Grignaux told the story to the king, who thought it good, understanding his gay and lively humour. Nevertheless he went to the queen, and told her all, warning her to be careful not to use those words. She was in such great anger, though the king only laughed, that she wanted to dismiss M. de Grignaux, and 32 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. showed him her displeasure for several days. But M. de Grignaux made her such humble excuses, telling her that he only did it to make the king laugh and pass his time merrily, and that he was not so ill-advised as to fail to warn the king in time that he might, as he really did, warn her before the arrival of the ambassador ; so that on these ex- cuses and the entreaties of the king she was pacified. Now, if the king loved and honoured her living, we may believe that, she being dead, he did the same. And to mani- fest the mourning that he felt, the superb and honourable funeral and obsequies that he ordered for her are proof ; the which I have read of in an old " History of France " that I found lying about in a closet in our house, nobody caring for it ; and having gathered it up, I looked at it. Now as this is a matter that should be noted, I shall put it here, word for word as the book says, without changing anything ; for though it is old, the language is not very bad ; and as for the truth of the book, it has been confirmed to me by my grandmother, Mme. la Seneschale de Poitou, of the family du Lude, who was then at the Court. The book re- lates it thus : — " This queen was an honourable and virtuous queen, and very wise, the true mother of the poor, the support of gentle- men, the haven of ladies, damoiselles, and honest girls, and the refuge of learned men ; so that all the people of France cannot surfeit themselves enough in deploring and regretting her. "She died at the castle of Blois on the twenty-first of January, in the year 1513, after the accomplishment of a thing she had most desired, namely : the union of the king, her lord, with the pope and the Roman Church, abhorring as she did schism and divisions. For that reason she had never ceased urging the king to this step, for which she wag \s ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 33 much loved and greatly revered by the Catholic princes and prelates as the king had been hated. " I have seen at Saint-Denis a grand church cope, all cov- ered with pearls embroidered, which she had ordered to be made expressly to send as a present to the pope, but death prevented. After her decease her body remained for three days in her room, the face uncovered, and nowise changed by hideous death, but as beautiful and agreeable as when living. " Friday, the twenty-seventh of the month of January, her body was taken from the castle, very honourably accompanied by all the priests and monks of the town, borne by persons wearing mourning, with hoods over their heads, accompanied by twenty-four torches larger than the other torches borne by twenty-four officers of the household of the said lady, on each of which were two rich armorial escutcheons bear- ing the arms emblazoned of the said lady. After these torches came the reverend seigneurs and prelates, bishops, abb&, and M. le Cardinal de Luxembourg to read the office ; and thus was removed the body of the said lady from the Chateau de Blois. . . . " Septuagesima Sunday, twelfth of February, they arrived at the church of ISTotre-Dame des Champs in the suburbs of Paris, and there the body was guarded two nights with great quantities of lights ; and on the following Tuesday, the devout services having been read, there marched before the body processions with the crosses of all the churches and all the monasteries of Paris, the whole University in a body, the presidents and counsellors of the sovereign court of Parlia- ment, and generally of all other courts and jurisdictions, officers and advocates, merchants and citizens, and other lesser officers of the town. All these accompanied the said body reverentially, with the very noble seigneurs and ladies aforenamed, just as they started from Blois, all keeping fine 34 THE BOOK OF THE -SADIES. order among themselves according to their several ranks. . . . And thus was borne through Paris, in the order and manner above, the body of the queen to be sepulchred in the pious church of Saint-Denis of France ; preceded by these pro- cessions to a cross which is not far beyond the place where the fair of Landit is held. "And to the spot where stands the cross the reverend father in God, the abb^ and the venerable monks, with the priests of the churches and parishes of Saint-Denis, vestured in their great copes, with their crosses, came in procession, together with the peasants and the inhabitants of the said town, to receive the body of the late queen, which was then borne to the door of the church of Saint-Denis, still accom- panied honourably by all the above-named very noble princes and princesses, seigneurs, dames, and damoiselles, and their train as already stated. . . . "And all being duly accomplished, the body of the said lady, Madame Anne, in her lifetime very noble Queen of France, Duchesse of Bretagne, and Comtesse d'fitampes, was honourably interred and sepulchred in the tomb for her prepared. " After this, the herald-at-arms for Bretagne summoned all the princes and officers of the said lady, to wit : the chevalier of honour, the grand-master of the household, and others, each and all, to fulfil their duty towards the said body, which they did most piteously, shedding tears from their eyes. And, this done, the aforenamed king-at-arms cried three times aloud in a most piteous voice : * The very Christian Queen of France, Duchesse de Bretagne, our Sovereign Lady, is dead ! ' And then all departed. The body remained entombed. " During her life and after her death she was honoured by the titles I have before given : true mother of the poor ; the comfort of noble gentlemen ; the haven of ladies and damoi- ANNE DE BRlfrAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 35 selles and honest girls ; the refuge of learned men and those of good lives ; so that speaking of her dead is only renewing the grief and regrets of all such persons, and also that of her domestic servants, whom she loved singularly. She was veiy rehgious and devout. It was she who made the foundation of the * Bons-Hommes ' [monastery of the order of Saint- Frangois de Paule at Chaillot], otherwise called the Minimes ; and she began to build the church of the said * Bons-Hommes ' near Paris, and afterwards that in Eome which is so beautiful and noble, and where, as I saw myself, they receive no monks but Frenchmen." There, word for word, are the splendid obsequies of this queen, without changing a word of the original, for fear of doing worse, — for I could not do better. They were just like those of our kings that I have heard and read of, and those of King Charles IX., at which I was present, and which the queen, his mother, desired to make so fine and magnificent, though the finances of France were then too short to spend much, because of the departure of the King of Poland, who with his suite had squandered and carried off a great deal [1574]. Certainly I find these two interments much alike, save for three things: one, that the burial of Queen Anne w^as the most superb ; second, that all went so weU in order and so discreetly that there was no contention of ranks, as occurred at the burial of King Charles ; for his body, being about to start for Notre-Dame, the court of parliament had some pique of precedence with the nobility and tlie Church, claim- ing to stand in the place of the king and to represent him when absent, he being then out of the kingdom. [Henri III. was then King of Poland]. On which a great princess, as the world goes, who was very near to him, whom I know but will not name, went about argumg and saying : " It was 36 • THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. no wonder if, during the lifetime of the king, seditions and troubles had been in vogue, ^seeing that, dead as he was, he was still able to stir up strife." Alas ! he never did it, poor prince ! either dead or living. We know well who were the authors of the seditions and of our civil wars. That princess who said those words has since found reason to regret them. The third thing is that the body of King Charles was quitted, at the church of Saint-Lazare, by the whole pro- cession, princes, seigneurs, courts of parliament, the Church, and the citizens, and was followed and accompanied from there by none but poor M. de Strozzi, de Fumel, and myself, with two gentlemen of the bedchamber, for we were not willing to abandon our master as long as he was above ground. There were also a few archers of the guard, quite XJitiable to see, in the fields. So at eight in the evening in the month of July, we started with the body and its effigy thus badly accompanied. Eeaching the cross, we found all the monks of Saint- Denis awaiting us, and the body of the king was honourably escorted, with the ceremonies of the Church, to Saint-Denis, where the great Cardinal de Lorraine received it most honour- ably and devoutly, as he knew well how to do. The queen-mother was very angry that the procession did not continue to the end as she intended — save for Monsieur her son, and the King of Navarre, whom she held a prisoner. The next day, however, the latter arrived in a coach, with a very good guard, and captains of the guard with him, to be present at the solemn high service, attended by the whole procession and company as at first, — a sight very sad to see. After dinner the court of parliament sent to tell and to command the grand almoner Aniyot to go and say grace ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 37 after meat for them as if for the king. To which he made answer that he should do nothing of the kind, for it was not before them he was bound to do it. They sent him two consecutive and threatening commands ; which he still refused, and went and hid himself that he might answer no more. Then they swore they would not leave the table till he came ; but not being able to find him, they were constrained to say grace themselves and to rise, which they did with great threats, foully abusing the said almoner, even to calling him scoundrel, and son of a butcher. I saw the whole affair; and I know what Monsieur commanded me to go and tell to M. le cardinal, asking him to pacify the mat- ter, because they had sent commands to Monsieur to send to them, as representatives of the king, the grand almoner if he could be found. M. le cardinal went to speak to them, but he gained nothing ; they standing firm on their opinion of their royal majesty and authority. I know what M. le cardinal said to me about them, telling me not to say it, — that they were perfect fools. The chief president, de Thou, was then at their head ; a great senator certainly, but he had a temper. So here was another disturbance to make that princess say again that King Charles, either living or dead, on earth or under it, that body of his stirred up the world and threw it into sedition. Alas ! that he could not do. I have told this little incident, possibly more at length than I should, and I may be blamed ; but I reply that I have told and put it here as it came into my fancy and memory ; also that it comes in b, propos ; and that I cannot forget it, for it seems to me a thing that is rather remarkable. Now, to return to our Queen Anne : we see from this fine last duty of her obsequies how beloved she was of earth and heaven ; far otherwise than that proiid, pompous queen, Isa- bella of Bavaria, wife of the late King Charles VI., who 38 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. having died in Paris, her body was so despised it was put out of her palace into a little boat on the river Seine, with- out form of ceremony or pomp, being carried through a little postern so narrow it could hardly go through, and thus was taken to Saint-Denis to her tomb like a simple damoiselle, neither more nor less. There was also a differ- ence between her actions and those of Queen Anne : for she brought the English into France and Paris, threw the king- dom into flames and divisions, and impoverished and rumed every one ; whereas Queen Anne kept France in peace, en- larged and enriched it w4th her beautiful duchy and the fine property she brought with her. So one need not wonder that the king regretted her and felt such mourning that he came nigh dying in the forest of Vincennes, and clothed himself and all his Court so long in black ; and those who came otherwise clothed he had them driven away ; neither would he see any ambassador, no matter who he was, unless he were dressed in black. And, moreover, that old History which I have quoted, says : " When he gave his daughter to M. dAngoul>5me, afterwards King Francois, mourning was not left off by him or his Court ; and the day of the espousals in the church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the bridegroom and bride were vestured and clothed " — so this History says — " in black cloth, honestly cut in mourning shape, for the death of the said queen, Madame Anne de Bretagne, mother of the bride, in presence of the king, her father, accompanied by the princes of the blood and noble seigneurs and prel- ates, princesses, dames, and damoiselles, all clothed in, black cloth made in mourning shape." That is what the book says. It was a strange austerity of mourning which should be noted, that not even on the day of the wedding was it dispensed with, to be renewed on the following day. From this we may know how beloved, and worthy to be ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 39 beloved this princess was by the king, her husband, who sometimes in liis merry moods and gayety would caU her "his Breton." If she had lived longer she would never have consented to that marriage of her daughter ; it was very repugnant to her and she said so to the king, her husband, for she mor- tally hated Madame d'Angouleme, afterwards Eegent, their tempers being quite unlike and not agreeing together ; be- sides which, she had wished to unite her said daughter to Charles of Austria, then young, the greatest seigneur of Christendom, who was afterwards emperor. And this she wished in spite of ISL d'Angouleme coming very near the Crown ; but she never thought of that, or would not think of it, trusting to have more children herself, she being only thirty-seven years old when she died. In her lifetime and reign, reigned also that great and wise queen, Isabella of Castile, very accordant in manners and morals with our Queen Anne. For which reason they loved each other much and visited one another often by embassies, letters, and presents; 'tis thus that virtue ever seeks out virtue. King Louis was afterwards pleased to marry for the third time Marie, sister of the King of England, a very beautiful princess, young, and too young for him, so that evil came of it. But he married more from policy, to make peace with the English and to put his own kingdom at rest, than for any other reason, never being able to forget his Queen Anne. He commanded at his death that they should both be covered by the same tomb, just as we now see it in Saint-Denis, all in white marble, as beautiful and superb as never was. Now, here I pause in my discourse and go no farther; referring the rest to books that are written of this queen better than I could write ; only to content my own self have I made this discourse. 40 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. I will say one other little thing ; that she was the first of our queens or prince 3ses to form the usage of putting a belt round their arms and escutcheons, which until then were borne not inclosed, but quite loose ; and the said queen was the first to put the belt. I say no more, not having been of her time ; although I protest having told only truth, having learned it, as I have said, from a book, and also from Mme. la Seneschale, my grandmother, and from Mme. de Dampierre, my aunt, a true Court register, and as clever, wise, and virtuous a lady as ever entered a Court these hundred years, and who knew well how to discourse on old things. From eight years of age she was brought up at Court, and forgot nothing ; it was good to hear her talk ; and I have seen our kings and queens take a singu- lar pleasure in listening to her, for she knew all, — her own time and past times ; so that people took word from her as from an oracle. King Henri Til. made her lady of honour to the queen, his wife. I have here used recollections and lessons that I obtained from her, and I hope to use many more in the course of these books. I have read the epitaph of the said queen, thus made : — " Here lies Anne, who was wife to two great kings, Great a hundred-fold herself, as queen two times I Never queen like her enriched all France ; That is what it is to make a grand alliance." Gui Patin, satirist and jovial spirit of his time [he was born in 1601], attracted to Saint-Denis because a fair was held there, visits the abbey, the treasury, " where " he says, " there was plenty of silly stuff and rubbish," and lastly the tombs of the kings, " where I could not keep myself from weeping to see so many monuments to the vanity of humaa ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 41 life ; tears escaped me also before the tomb of the great and good king, Frangois I., who founded our College of Professors of the King. I must own my weakness ; I kissed it, and also that of his father-in-law, Louis XII., who was the Father of his People, and the best king we have ever had in France." Happy age ! still neighbour to beliefs, when those reputed the greatest satirists had these touching naivetes, these wholly patriotic and antique sensibilities. Mezeray [born ten years later], in his natural, sincere and expressive diction, his clear and full narration, into which he has the art to bring speaking circumstances which animate the tale, says in relation to Louis XII. [in his " History of France "] : " When he rode through the country the good folk ran from all parts and for many days to see him, strewing the roads with flowers and foliage, and striving, as though he were a visible God, to touch his saddle with their handker- chiefs and keep them as precious relics." And two centuries later, Comte Eoederer, in his Memoir on Polite Society and the Hotel de Eambouillet, printed in 1835, tells us how in his youth his mind was already busy with Louis XII., and, returning to the same interest in after years, he made him his hero of predilection and his king. In studying the history of France he thought he discov- ered, he says, that at the close of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth what has since been called the " French Eevolution " was already consummated ; that liberty rested on a free Constitution; and that Louis XII., the Father of his People, was he who had accomplished it. Bonhomie and goodness have never been denied to Louis XII., but Eoederer claims more, he claims ability and skill. The Italian wars, considered generally to have been mistakes, he excuses and justifies by showing them in the king's mind as a means of useful national policy ; he needed to obtain from 42 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Pope Alexander VI. the dissolution of his marriage with Jeanne de France, in order that he might marry Anne de Bretagne and so unite the duchy with the kingdom. Eoederer makes King Louis a type of perfection ; seeming to have searched in regions far from those that are historically bril- liant, far from spheres of fame and glory, into " the depths obscure," as he says himself, " of useful government for a hero of a new species." More than that : he thinks he sees in the cherished wife of Louis XIL, in Anne de Bretagne, the foundress of a school of polite manners and perfection for her sex. " She was," Brantome had said, " the most worthy and honourable queen that had ever been since Queen Blanche, mother of the King Saint-Louis. . . . Her Court was a noble school for ladies ; she had them taught and brought up wisely ; and all, taking pattern by her, made themselves wise and virtuous." Eoederer takes these words of Brantome and, giving them their strict meaning, draws therefrom a series of conse- quences : just as Frangois I. had, in many respects, over- thrown the political state of things estabhshed by Louis XIL, so, he believes, had the women beloved of Frangois over- turned that honourable condition of society established by Anne de Bretagne. Starting from that epoch he sees, as it were, a constant struggle between two sorts of rival and incompatible societies: between the decent and ingenuous society of which Anne de Bretagne had given the idea, and the licentious society of which the mistresses of the king, women like the Duchesse d'Etampes and Diane de Poitiers, procured the triumph. These two societies, to his mind, never ceased to co-exist during the sixteenth century ; on the one hand was an emulation of virtue and merit on the part of the noble heiresses, alas, too eclipsed, of Anne de Bretagne, on the other an emulation with high bidding of ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. 43 gallantry, by the giddy pupils of the school of Frangois I. To Eoederer the Hotel de Eambouillet, that perfected salon, founded towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, is only a tardy return to the traditions of Anne de Bretagne, the triumph of merit, virtue, and polite manners over the license to which all the kings, from rran9ois I., including Henri IV., had paid tribute. Eeaching thus the Hotel de Eambouillet and holding henceforth an unbroken thread in hand, Eoederer divides and subdivides at pleasure. He marks the divers periods and the divers shades of transition, the growth and the decline that he discerns. The first years of Louis XIV.'s youth cause him some distress ; a return is being made to the ways of Frangois L, to the brilliant mistresses. Ecederer, not con- cerning himself with the displeasure he wiU cause the classi- cists, lays a little of the blame for this return on the four great poets, Molifere, La Fontaine, Eacine, and Boileau himself, all accomplices, more or less, in the laudation of victor and lover. However, age comes on ; Louis XIV. grows temperate in turn, and a woman, issuing from the very purest centre of Mme. de Eambouillet's society, and who was morally its heiress, a woman accomplished in tone, in cultivation of mind, in precision of language, and in the sentiment of pro- priety, — Mme. de Maintenon, — knows so well how to seize the opportunity that she seats upon the throne, in a modest half-light, all the styles of mind and merit which made the perfection of French society in its better days. The triumph of Mme. de Maintenon is that of polite society itself ; Anne de Bretagne has found her pendant at the other extremity of the chain after the lapse of two centuries. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, Vol. VIII. DISCOUESE 11. CATHEEINE DE' MEDICI, QUEEN, AND MOTHER OE OUR LAST KINGS. I HAVE wondered and been astonished a liundred times that, so many good writers as we have had in our day in France, none of them has been inquisitive enough to make some fine selection of the life and deeds of the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, inasmuch as she has furnished ample matter, and cut out much fine work, if ever a queen did — as said the Emperor Charles to Paolo Giovio [Italian histo- rian] when, on his return from his triumphant voyage in the " Goulette " intending to make war upon King Francois, he gave him a provision of ink and paper, saying he would cut him out plenty of work. So it is true that this queen cut out so much that a good and zealous writer might make an Iliad of it ; but they have all been lazy, — or ungrateful, for she was never niggardly to learned men ; I could name several who have derived good benefits from this queen, from which, in consequence, I accuse them of ingratitude. There is one, however, who did concern himself to write of her, and made a little book which he entitled " The Life of Catherine ; " ^ but it is an imposture and not worthy of belief, as she herself said when she saw it; such falsities being apparent to every one, and easy to note and reject. He that wrote it wished her mortal harm, and was an enemy to her name, her condition, her life, her honour, and nature ; and that is why he should be rejected. As for me, I would 1 See Appendix, CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 45 I knew how to speak well, or that I had a good pen, well mended, at my command, that I might exalt and praise her as she deserves. At any rate, such as my pen is, I shall now employ it at all hazards. This queen is extracted, on the father's side, from the race of the Medici, one of the noblest and most illustrious fami- nes, not only in Italy, but in Christendom. Whatever may be said, she was a foreigner to these shores because the alliances of kings cannot commonly be chosen in their king- dom ; for it is not best to do so ; foreign marriages being as useful and more so than near ones. The House of the Medici has always been allied and confederated with the crown of France, which still bears the Jleur-de-li/s that King Louis XI. gave that house in sign of alliance and perpetual confederation [the Jleur de Louis, which then became the Florentine lily]. On the mother's side she issued originally from one of the noblest families of France ; and so was truly French in race, heart, and affection through that great house of Boulogne and county of Auvergne ; thus it is hard to tell or judge in which of her two families there was most grandeur and memorable deeds. Here is what was said of them by the Archbishop of Bourges, of the house of Beaune, as great a learned man and worthy prelate as there is in Christendom (though some say a trifle unsteady in belief, and little good in the scales of M. Saint-Michel, who weighs good Christians for the day of judgment, or so they say) : it is given in the funeral oration which the archbishop made upon the said queen at Blois : — " In the days when Brennus, that great captain of the Gauls, led his army throughout all Italy and Greece, there were with him in his troop two French nobles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono, who, seeing the wicked 46 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. design of Brennus, after liis fine conquests, to invade the temple of Delphos and soil himself and his army with the sacrilege of that temple, withdrew, both of them, and passed into Asia with their vessels and men, advancing so far that they entered the sea of the Medes, which is near to Lydia and Persia. Thence, having made great conquests and ob- tained great victories, they were returning through Italy, hoping to reach France, when Felsinus stopped at a place where Florence now stands beside the river Arno, which he saw to be fine and delectable, and situated much as another which had pleased him much in the country of the Medes. There he built a city which to-day is Florence ; and his com- panion. Bono, built another and named it Bononia, now called Bologna, the which are neighbouring cities. Henceforth, in consequence of the victories and conquests of Felsinus among the Medes, he was called Medicus among his friends, a name that remained to the family ; just as we read of Paulus sumamed Macedonicus for having conquered Macedonia from Perseus, and Scipio called Africanus for doing the same in Africa." I do not know where M. de Beaune may have taken this history ; but it is very probable that before the king and such an assembly, there convened for the funeral of the queen, he would not have alleged the fact without good authority. This descent is very far from the modern story invented and attributed without grounds to the family of jMedici, according to that lying book which I have men- tioned on the life of the said queen. After this the said Sieur de Beaune says further, he has read in the chronicles that one named Everard de' Medici, Sieur of Florence, went, with many of his subjects, to the assistance of the voyage and expedition made by Charlemagne against Desiderius, King of the Lombards ; and having very bravely succoured CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 47 and assisted him, was confirmed and invested with the lordship of Florence. Many years after, one Anemond de* Medici, also Sieur of Florence, went, accompanied by many of his subjects, to the Holy Land, with Godefroy de Bouillon, where he died at the siege of Nicaea in Asia. Such greatness always continued in that family until Florence was reduced to a republic by the intestine wars in Italy between the em- perors and the peoples, the illustrious members of it mani- festing their valour and grandeur from time to time ; as we saw in the latter days Cosmo de' Medici, who, with his arms, his navy, and vessels, terrified the Turks in the Mediterra- nean Sea and in the distant East ; so that none since his time, however great he may be, has surpassed him in strength and valour and wealth, as Ptaffaelle Volaterano has written. The temples and sacred shrines by him built, the hospitals by him founded, even in Jerusalem, are ample proof of his piety and magnanimity. There were also Lorenzo de' Medici, surnamed the Great for his virtuous deeds, and two great popes, Leo and Clement, also many cardinals and grand personages of the name; besides the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo de' Medici, a wise and wary man, if ever there was one. He succeeded in maintaining himself in his duchy, which he found invaded and much disturbed when he came to it. In short, nothing can rob this house of the Medici of its lustre, very noble and grand as it is in every way. As for the house of Boulogne and Auvergne, who will say that it is not great, having issued originally from that noble Eustache de Boulogne, whose brother, Godefroy de Bouillon, bore arms and escutcheons with so vast a number of princes, seigneurs, chevaliers, and Christian soldiers, even to Jerusalem and the Sepulchre of our Saviour ; and would have made himself, by his sword and the favour of God, king, not 48 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. only of Jerusalem but of the greater part of the East, to the confusion of Mahomet., the Saracens, and the Mahometans, amazing all the rest of the world and replanting Christianity in Asia, where it had fallen to the lowest ? For the rest, this house has ever been sought in alliance by all the monarchies of Christendom and the great families ; such as France, England, Scotland, Hungary, and Portugal, which latter kingdom belonged to it of right, as I have heard President de Thou say, and as the queen herself did me the honour to tell me at Bordeaux when she heard of the death of King Sebastian [in Morocco, 1578], the Medici being received to argue the justice of their rights at the last Assembly of States before the decease of King Henry [in 1580]. This was why she armed M. de Strozzi to make an invasion, the King of Spain having usurped the kingdom ; she was arrested in so fine a course only by reasons which 1 will explain at another time. I leave you to suppose, therefore, whether this house of Boulogne was great ; yes, so great that I once heard Pope Pius IV. say, sitting at table at a dinner he gave after his election to the Cardinals of Ferrara and Guise, his creations, that the house of Boulogne was so great and noble he knew none in France, whatever it was, that could surpass it in antiquity, valour, and grandeur. All this is much against those malicious detractors who have said that this queen was a Florentine of low birth. Moreover, she was not so poor but what she brought to France in marriage estates which are worth to-day twenty -six thousand lirres, — such as the counties of Auvergne and Laura- gais, the seigneuries of Leverons, iJonzenac, Boussac, Gorr^ges, Hondecourt and other lands, — all an inheritance from her mother. Besides which, her dowry was of more than two hundred thousand ducats, which are worth to-day over four CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 49 hundred thousand ; with great quantities of furniture, precious stones, jewels, and other riches, such as the finest and largest pearls ever seen in so great a number, which she afterwards gave to her daughter-in-law, the Queen of Scotland [Mary Stuart], whom I have seen wearing them. Besides all this, many estates, houses, deeds, and claims in Italy. But more than all else, through her marriage the affairs of France, which had been so shaken by the imprisonment of the king and his losses at Milan and Naples, began to get firmer. King Frangois was very willing to say that the mar- riage had served his interests. Therefore there was given to this queen for her device a rainbow, which she bore as long as she was married, with these words in Greek ^w? ^ipec T/Se yaXijvTjv. Which is the same as saying that just as this fire and bow in the sky brings and signifies good weather after rain, so this queen was a true sign of clearness, serenity, and the tranquillity of peace. The Greek is thus translated : Lucem fert et serenitatem — • " She brings light and serenity." After that, the emperor [Charles V.] dared push no longer his ambitious motto : " Ever farther." For, although there was truce between himself and King Francois, he was nurs- ing his ambition with the design of gaining always from France whatever he could ; and he was much astonished at this alliance with the pope [Clement VII.], regarding the lat- ter as able, courageous, and vindictive for his imprisonment by the imperial forces at the sack of Eome [1527]. Such a marriage displeased him so much that I have heard a truthful lady of the Court say that if he had not been married to the empress, he would have seized an alliance with the pope him- self and espoused his niece [Catherine de' Medici], as much for the support of so strong a party as because he feared the pope would assist in making him lose Naples, Milan, and 4 50 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Genoa; for the pope had promised King Francois, in an authentic document, when he delivered to him the money of his niece's dowry and her rings and jewels, to make the dowry worthy of such a marriage by the addition of three pearls of inestimable value, of the excessive splendour of which all the greatest kings were envious and covetous ; the which were Naples, Milan, and Genoa. And it is not to be doubted that if the said pope had lived out his natural life he would have sold the emperor well, and made him pay dear for that im- prisonment, in order to aggrandize his niece and the kingdom to which she was joined. But Clement VII. died young, and all this profit came to nought. So now our queen, having lost her mother, Magdelaine de Boulogne, and Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, her father, in early life, was married by her good uncle the pope to France, whither she was brought by sea to Marseille in great triumph ; and her wedding was pompously performed, at the age of fourteen. She made herself so beloved by the king, her father-in-law, and by King Henri, her husband [not king till the death of Francois I.], that on remaining ten years without producing issue, and many persons endeavouring to persuade the king and the dauphin, her husband, to repu- diate her because there was such need of an heir to France, neither the one nor the other would consent because they loved her so much. But after ten years, in accordance with the natural habit of the women of the race of Medici, who are tardy in conceiving, she began by producing the little King Francois II. After that, was born the Queen of Spain, and then, consecutively, that fine and illustrious progeny w^hom we have all seen, and also others no sooner born than dead, by great misfortune and fatality. All this caused the king, her husband, to love her more and more, and in such a way that he, who was of an amorous tempera- CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 51 ment, and greatly liked to make love and to change his loves, said often that of all the women in the world there was none like his wife for that, and he did not know her equal. He had reason to say so, for she was truly a beautiful and most amiable princess. She was of rich and very fine presence ; of great majesty, but very gentle when need was; of noble appearance and good grace, her face handsome and agreeable, her bosom very beautiful, white and full ; her body also very white, the flesh beautiful, the skin smooth, as I have heard from several of her ladies ; of a fine plumpness also, the leg and thigh very beautiful (as I have heard, too, from the same ladies) ; and she took great pleasure in being well shod and in having her stockings well and tightly drawn up. Besides all this, the most beautiful hand that was ever seen, as I believe. Once upon a time the poets praised Aurora for her fine hands and beautiful fingers ; but I think our queen would etface her in that, and she guarded and maintained that beauty all her life. The king, her son, Henri III., inherited much of this beauty of the hand. She always clothed herself well and superbly, often with some pretty and new invention. In short, she had many charms in herself to make her beloved. I remember that one day at Lyons she went to see a painter named Corneille, who had painted in a large room all the great seigneurs, princes, cavaliers, queens, princesses, ladies of the Court, and damoiselles. Being in the said room of these portraits we saw there our queen, painted very well in all her beauty and perfection, apparelled ^ la Frangaise in a cap and her great pearls, and a gown with wide sleeves of silver tissue furred with lynx, — the whole so well represented to the life that only speech was lacking ; her three fine daughters were beside her. She took great pleasure at the sight, and all the 52 THE BOOK OF THE L^ADIES. company there present did the same, praising and admiring her beauty above all. She herself was so ravished by the contemplation that she could not take her eyes from the picture until M. de Nemours came to her and said : " Madame, I think you are there so well portrayed that nothing more can be said ; and it seems to me that your daughters do you proper honour, for they do not go before you or surpass you." To this she answered : " My cousin, I think you can re- member the time, the age, and the dress of this picture ; so that you can judge better than any of this company, for you saw me like that, whether I was estimated such as you say, and whether I ever was as I there appear." There was not one in the company that did not praise and estimate that beauty highly, and say that the mother was worthy of the daughters, and the daughters of the mother. And such beauty lasted her, married and widowed, almost to her death ; not that she was as fresh as in her more blooming years, but always well preserved, very desirable and agreeable. For the rest, she was very good company and of gay humour ; loving all honourable exercises, such as dancing, in which she had great grace and majesty. She also loved hunting ; about which I heard a lady of the Court tell this tale : King Francois, having chosen and made a company which was called " the little band of tlie Court ladies," the handsomest, daintiest, and most favoured, often escaped from the Court and went to other houses to hunt the stag and pass his time, sometimes staying thus withdrawn eight days, ten days, sometimes more and some- times less, as the humour took him. Our queen (who was then only Mme. la dauphine) seeing such parties made with- out her, and that even Mesdames her sisters-in-law were there while she stayed at home, made prayer to the king, to take her always with him, and to do her the honour to permit that she should never budfje without him. CATHERINE DE' MEDICL 53 It was said that she, being very shrewd and clever, did this as much or more to see the king's actions and get his secrets and hear and know all things, as from liking for the hunt. King Francois was pleased with this request, for it showed the good-will that she had for his company ; and he granted it heartily ; so that besides loving her naturally he now loved her more, and delighted in giving her pleasure in the hunt, at which she never left his side, but followed him at full speed. She was very good on horseback and bold; sitting with ease, and being the first to put the leg around a pommel ; which was far more graceful and becoming than sitting with the feet upon a plank. Till she was sixty years of age and over she liked to ride on horseback, and after her weakness prevented her she pined for it. It was one of her greatest pleasures to ride far and fast, though she fell many times with damage to her body, breaking her leg once, and wounding her head, which had to be trepanned. After she was widowed and had charge of the king and the kingdom, she took the king always with her, and her other children ; but while her husband, King Henri, lived, she usually went with him to the meet of the stag and the other hunts. If he played at pall-mall she watched him play, and played herself. She was very fond of shooting with a cross-bow ct jalct [ball of stone], and she shot right well; so that always when she went to ride her cross-bow was taken with her, and if she saw any game, she shot it. She was ever inventing some new dance or beautiful ballet when the weather was bad. Also she invented games and passed her time with one and another intimately ; but always appearing very grave and austere when necessary. She was fond of seeing comedies and tragedies ; but after 54 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. " Sophonisbe," a tragedy composed by M. de Saint-Gdlais. was very well represented by her daughters and other ladies and damoiselles and gentlemen of her Court, at Blois for the marriages of M. du Cypi^re and the Marquis d'Elboeuf, she took an opinion that it was harmful to the affairs of the king- dom, and woiild never have tragedies played again. But she listened readily to comedies and tragi-comedies, and even those of " Zaui " and " Pantaloon," taking great pleasure in them, and laughing with all her heart like any other ; for she liked laughter, and her natural self was jovial, loving a witty word and ready with it, knowing well when to cast her speech and her stone, and when to withhold them. She passed her time in the afternoons at work on her silk embroideries, in which she was as perfect as possible. In short, this queen liked and gave herself up to all honourable exercises ; and there was not one that was worthy of herself and her sex that she did not wish to know and practise. There is what I can say, speaking briefly and avoiding pro- lixity, about the beauty of her body and her occupations. When she called any one " my friend " it was either that she thought him a fool, or she was angry with him. This was so well known that she had a serving gentleman named M. de Bois-Fevrier, who made reply when she called him " my friend " : " Ha ! madame, I would rather you called me your enemy; for to call me your friend is as good as saying I am a fool, or that you are in anger against me ; for I know your nature this long time." As for lier mind, it was very great and very admirable, as was shown in so many fine and signal acts by which her life has been made illustrious forever. The king, her husband, and his council esteemed her so much that when the king went his journey to Germany, out of liis kingdom, he estab- lished and ordered her as regent and ":uvernor throughout CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 55 his dominions during his absence, by a declaration solemnly made before a full parliament in Paris. And in this office she behaved so wisely that there was no disturbance, change, or alteration in the State by reason of the king's absence ; but, on the contrary, she looked so carefully to business that she assisted the king with money, means, and men, and other kinds of succour ; which helped him much for his return, and even for the conquest which he made of cities in the duchy of Luxembourg, such as Yvoy, Montmedy, Dampvilliers, Chimay, and others. I leave you to think how he who wrote that fine life I spoke of detracted from her in saying that never did the king, her husband, allow her to put her nose into matters of State. Was not making her regent in his absence giving her ample occasion to have full knowledge of them ? And it was thus she did during all the journeys that he made yearly in going to his armies. What did she after the battle of Saint-Laurens, when the State was shaken and the king had gone to Compifegne to raise a new army? She so espoused affairs that she roused and excited the gentlemen of Paris to give prompt succour to their king, which came most apropos, both in money and in other things very necessary in war. Also, when the king was wounded, those who were of that time and saw it cannot be ignorant of the great care she took for Ms cure : the watches she made beside him without ever sleeping ; the prayers with which, time after time, she im- portuned God ; the processions and visitation of churches which she made ; and the posts which she sent about every- where inquiring for doctors and surgeons. But his hour had come ; and when he passed from this world into the other, she made such lamentations and shed such tears that never did she stanch them ; and in memory of him, whenever he was 56 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. spoken of as long as she lived, they gushed from the depths of her eyes ; so that she took a device proper and suitable to her tears and her mourning, namely : a mound of quicklime, on which the drops of heaven fell abundantly, with these words writ in Latin: Adorem extincta testantur vivere Jlamma ; the drops of water, like her tears, showing ardour, though the flame was extinct. This device takes its allegory from the nature of quicklime, which, being watered, burns strangely and shows its fire though flame is not there. Thus did our queen show her ardour and her affection by her tears, though flame, which was her husband, was now ex- tinct ; and this was as much as to say that, dead as he was, she made it appear by her tears that she could never forget him, but should love him always. A like device was borne in former days by Madame Valen- tine de Milan, Duchesse d'Orleans, after the death of her husband, killed in Paris, for which she had such great re- gret that for all comfort and solace in her moaning, she took a watering-pot for her device, on the top of which was an S, in sign, so they say, of seule, souvenir, soucis, soujpirer, and around the said watering-pot were written these words : Hien ne m'est jplus ; plus ne m'est rien — " Nought is more to me ; more is to me nothing." This device can still be seen in her chapel in the church of the Franciscans at Blois. The good King Een^ of Sicily, having lost liis wife Isabel, Duchesse de Lorraine, suffered such great grief that never did he truly rejoice again; and when his intimate friends and favourites urged him to consolation he led them to his cabinet and showed them, painted by his own hand (for he was an excellent painter), a Turkish bow with its string un- strung, beneath which was written : Arco per lentare jnaga nonsana — "The bow although unstrung heals not the wound." Then he said to them : " My friends, with this picture CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 57 I answer all your reasons: by unstringing a bow or breaking its string, the harm thus done by the arrow may quickly be mended, but, the life of my dear spouse being by death extinct and broken, the wound of the loyal love — the which, her living, filled my heart — cannot be cured." And in various places in Angers we see these Turkish bows with broken strings and beneath them the same words, Arco -per lentare piaga non sana ; even at the Franciscan church, in the chapel of Saint-Bernardin which he caused to be deco- rated. This device he took after the death of his wife ; for in her lifetime he bore another. Our queen, around her device which I have told of, placed many trophies: broken mirrors and fans, crushed plumes, and pearls, jewels scattered to earth, and chains in pieces ; the whole in sign of quitting worldly pomp, her husband being dead, for whom her mourning never was remitted. And, without the grace of God and the fortitude with which he had endowed her, she would surely have suc- cumbed to such great sadness and distress. Besides, she saw that her young children and France had need of her, as we have since seen by experience; for, like a Semiramis, or second Athalie, she foiled, saved, guarded, and preserved her said young children from many enterprises planned against them in their early years ; and this with so much industry and prudence that everybody thought her wonderful She, being regent of the kingdom after the death of her son King Francois during the minority of our king by the ordering of the Estates of Orleans, imposed her will upon the King of Navarre, who, as premier prince of the blood, wished to be regent in her place and govern all things ; but she gained so well and so dexterously the said Estates that if the said King of Navarre had not gone elsewhere she would have caused him to be attainted of the crime of lese-inajcste. 58 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. And possibly she would still have done so for the actions which, it was said, he made the Prince de Conde do about those Estates, but for Mme. de Montpeusier, who governed her much. So the said king was forced to content himself to be under her. Now there is one of the shrewd and subtle deeds she did in her beginning. Afterwards she knew how to maintain her rank and au- thority so imperiously that no one dared gainsay it, however grand and disturbing he was, for a period of three months when, the Court being at Fontainebleau, the said King of Navarre, wishing to show his feelings, took offence because M. de Guise ordered the keys of the king's house brought to him every evening, and kept them all night in his room like a grand-master (for that is one of his offices), so that no one could go out without his permission. This angered the King of Navarre, who wished to keep the keys himself ; but, being refused, he grew spiteful and mutinied in such a way that one morning suddenly he came to take leave of the king and queen, intending to depart from the Court, taking with him all the princes of the blood whom he had won over, together with M. le Conn^table de Montmorency and his children and nephew. The queen, who did not in any way expect this step, was at first much astonished, and tried all she could to ward off the blow, giving good hope to the King of Navarre that if he were patient he would some day be satisfied. But fine words gained her nothing with the said king, who was set on departing. WTiereupon the queen bethought her of this subtle point : she sent and gave commandment to M. le conn^table, as the principal, first, and oldest officer of the crown, to stay near the king, his master, as his duty and office demanded, and not to leave him. M. le conndtable, wise and judicious as he was, being very zealous for his CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 59 master and careful of his grandeur and honour, after reflect- ing on his duty and the command sent to him, went to see the king and present himself as ready to fulfil his office ; which greatly astonished the King of Navarre, who was on the point of mounting his horse expecting M. le conndtable, who came instead to represent his duty and office and to persuade him not to budge himself nor to de- part ; and did this so well that the King of Navarre went to see the king and queen at the instigation of the connd- table, and having conferred with their Majesties, his journey was given up and his mules were countermanded, they having then arrived at Melun. So all was pacified to the great content of the King of Navarre. Not that M. de Guise diminished in any way his office, or yielded one atom of his honour, for he kept his pre-eminence and all that belonged to him, with- out being shaken in the least, although he was not the stronger ; but he was a man of the world in such things, who was never bewildered, but knew very well how to brave all and hold his rank and keep what he had. It is not to be doubted, as all the world knows, that, if the queen had not bethought her of this ruse regarding M. le conndtable, all that party would have gone to Paris and stirred up things to our injury ; for which reason great praise should be given to the queen for this shift. I know, for I was there, that many persons said it was not of her invention, but that of Cardinal de Tournon, a wise and judicious prelate ; but that is false, for, old stager though he was, i' faith the queen knew more of wiles than he, or all the council of the king together; for very often, when he was at fault, she would help him and put him on the traces of what he ought to know, of which I might produce a number of examples ; but it will be enough to give this instance, which is fresh, and which she herself did me the honour to disclose to me. It is as follows : — 60 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. When she went to Guyenne, and lately to Coignac, to recon- cile the princes of the Eeligion and those of the League, and so put the kingdom in peace, for she saw it would soon be ruined by such divisions, she determined to proclaim a truce in order to treat of this peace ; at which the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde were very discontent and mutinous, — all the more, they said, because this proclamation did them great harm on account of their foreigners, who, having heard of it, might repent of their coming, or delay it; and they accused the said queen of having made it with that intention. So they said and resolved not to see the queen, and not to treat with her unless the said truce were rescinded. Xow finding her council, whom she had with her, though com- posed of good heads, very ridiculous and little to be honoured because they thought it impossible to find means to rescind the said truce, the queen said to them : " Truly, you are very stupid as to the remedy. Know you not better ? There is but one means for that. You have at Maillezais the regiment of Neufvy and de Sorlu, Huguenots ; send me from here, from Niort, all the arquebusiers that you can, and cut them to pieces, and there you have the truce rescinded and undone without further trouble." As she commanded so it was executed ; the arquebusiers started, led by the Capitaine I'Estelle, and forced their fort and their barricades so well that there they were quite defeated, Sorlu killed, who was a valiant man, Neufvy taken prisoner with many others, and all their ban- ners captured and brought to Niort to the queen ; who, using her accustomed turn of clemency, pardoned all and sent them away with their ensigns and even with their flags, which, as regards the flags, is a very rare thing. But she chose to do this stroke, rare or not, so she told me, to the princes ; who now knew they had to do with a very able princess, and that it was not to her they sliould address such mockery as to CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 61 make her rescind a truce by the very heralds who had pro- claimed it ; for while they were thinking to make her receive that insult, she had fallen upon them, and now sent them word by the prisoners that it was not for them to affront her by asking unseemly and unreasonable things, because it was in her power to do them both good and evil. That is how this queen knew how to give and teach a les- son to her council. I might tell of many such things, but I have now to treat of other points : the first of which must be to answer those whom I have often heard say that she was the first to rouse to arms, and so was cause of our civil wars. Whoso will look to the source of the matter will not believe that ; for the triumvirate having been created, she, seeing the proceedings which were preparing and the change made by the King of Navarre, — who from being formerly Huguenot and very reformed had made himself Catholic, — and knowing that through that change she had reason to fear for the king, the kingdom, and her own person that he would move against them, reflected and puzzled her mind to discover to what such proceedings, meetings, and colloquies held in secret tended. Not being able, as they say, to come at the bottom of the pot, she bethought her one day, when the secret council was in session in the room of the King of Navarre, to go into the room above his, and by means of a tube which she had caused to be slipped surreptitiously under the tapestry she listened unperceived to their discourse. Among other things she heard one thing that was very terrible and bitter to her. The Mardchal de Saint-Andr^, one of the triumvirate, gave it as his opinion that the queen should be put in a sack and flung into the river, for that otherwise they could never suc- ceed in their plans. But the late M. de Guise, who was very good and generous, said that must not be; for it were too unjust to make the wife and mother of our kings perish thus 62 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. miserably, and he opposed it all. For this the said queen has always loved him, and proved it to his children after his death by giving them his estates. I leave you to suppose what this sentence was to the queen, having heard it thus with her own ears, and whether she had no occasion for fear, although she was thus defended by M. de Guise. From what I have heard tell by one of her most intimate ladies, she feared they would strike the blow without the knowledge of M. de Guise, as indeed she had reason to do ; for in deeds so detestable an upright man should always be distrusted, and the act not communicated to him. She was thus compelled to consider her safety, and employ those she saw already under arms [the Prince de Condd and other Protestant leaders], begging them to have pity for a mother and her children. That is the whole cause, just as it was, of the civil war. She would never go to Orleans with the others, nor give them the king and her children, as she could have done ; and she was very glad that in the hurly-burly of arms she and the king her son and her other children were in safety, as was reasonable. Moreover, she requested and held the promise of the others that whenever she should summon them to lay down their arms they would do so ; which, nevertheless, they would not do when the time came, no matter what appeals she made to them, and what pains she took, and the great heat she endured at Talsy, to induce them to listen to the peace she could have made good and secured for all France had they then listened to her ; and this great fire and others we have since seen lighted from this first brand would have been forever extinguished in France if they would then have trusted her. I know what I myself have heard her say, with the tears in her eyes, and with what zeal she endeavoured to do it. CATHERINE DE' MEDICL G'^) This is why they cannot charge her with the first spark of the civil war, nor yet with the second, which was the day of Meaux ; for at that time she was thinking only of a hunt, and of giving pleasure to the king in her beautiful house at Monceaux. The warning came that M. le Prince and others of the Eeligion were in arms and advancing to surprise and seize the king under colour of presenting a request. God knows who was the cause of this new disturbance, and with- out the six thousand Swiss then lately raised, who knows what might have happened ? This levy of Swiss was only the pretext of their taking up arms, and of saying and publishing that it was done to force them to war. In fact it was they, themselves, as I know from being at Court, who requested that levy of the king and queen, on the passage of the Duke of Alba and his army, fearing that under colour of reaching Flanders he might descend upon the frontiers of France ; and they urged that it was the custom to arm the frontiers whenever a neighbouring State was arming. No one can be ignorant how urgent for this they were to the king and queen by letters and embassies, — even M. le Prince himself and M. I'amiral [Coligny] coming to see the king on this subject at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where I saw them. I would also like to ask (for all that I write here I saw myself) who it was who took up arms on Shrove Tuesday, and who suborned and solicited ]\Ionsieur the king's brother, and the King of Navarre, to give ear to the enterprises for which Mole and Coconas were executed in Paris. It was not the queen, for it was by her prudence that she prevented them from uprising, — by keeping Monsieur and the King of Navarre so locked in to the forest of Vincennes that they could not get out; and on the death of King Charles she held them so tightly in Paris and the Louvre, barring their windows one morning, — at any rate those of the King of 64 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Xavarre, who was lodged on the lower floor (the King of Navarre, told me this himself with tears in his eyes), — that they could not escape as they intended, which would greatly have embroiled the State and prevented the return of Poland to the King, which was what they were after. I know all this from having been invited to the fricassee, which was one of the finest strokes ever made by the queen. Starting from Paris she conducted them to Lyons to meet the king so dex- terously that no one who saw them would ever have sup- posed them prisoners ; they went in the same coach with her, and she presented them herself to the king, who, on his side, pardoned them soon after. Also, who was it that enticed Monsieur the king's brother to leave Paris one fine night and the company of his brother who loved him well, and whose affection he cast off to go and take up arms and embroil all France ? M. de La None knows well, and also the secret plots that began at the siege of Eochelle, and what I said to him about them. It was not the queen-mother, for she felt such grief at seeing one brother banded against another brother and his king, that she swore she would die of it, or else replace and reunite them as before — which she did ; for I heard her say at Blois, in conversation with Monsieur, that she prayed for nothing so much as that God would grant her the favour of that re- union, after which he might send her death and she would accept it with all her heart ; or else she would gladly retire to her houses of Monceaux and Chenonceaux, and never mix further in the affairs of France, wishing to end her days in tranquillity. In fact, she truly wished to do the latter ; but the king implored her to abstain, for he and his kingdom had great need of her. I am assured that if she had not made this peace at that time, all was over with France, for there were in the country fifty thousand foreigners, from CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 65 one region or another, who would have aided in humbling and destroying her. It was, therefore, not the queen who called to arms at this time to satisfy the State-Assembly at Blois, the which, want- ing but one religion and proposing to abolish that which was contrary to their own, demanded, if the spiritual blade did not suffice to abolish it, that recourse should be had to the temporal. Some have said that the. queen had bribed them ; that is false. I do not say that she did not bribe them later, which was a fine stroke of policy and intelligence; but it was not she who called together the said Assembly ; so far from that, she blamed them for all, and also because tliey lessened greatly the king's authority and her own. It was the party of the Eeligion wdiich had long demanded that Assembly, and required by the terms of the last peace that it should be called together and assembled ; to which the queen objected strongly, foreseeing abuses. However, to content them because they clamoured for it so much, they had it, to their own confusion and damage, and not to their profit and contentment as they expected, so that finally they took up arms. Thus it was still not the queen who did so. IsTeither was it she who caused them to be taken up when Mont-de-Marsan, La F^.re in Picardy, and Cahors were taken. I remember what the king said to M. de Miossans, who came to him on behalf of the King of Navarre ; he rebuffed him harshly, and told him that while those princes were cloying him with line words they were calling to arms and taking cities. Now that is how this queen was the instigator of all our wars and civil fires, the which, while she never lighted them, she spent her pains and labour in striving to extinguish, abhorring to see so many of the nobles and men of honour die. And without that, and without her commiseration, they 5 66 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. who have hated her with mortal hatred would have been ill-off, and their party underground and not flourishing as it now is ; which must be imputed to her kindness, of which we now have sore need, for, as every one says and the poor people cry, " We have no longer the queen-mother to make peace for us." It was not her fault that peace was not made when she went to Guyenne lately to treat of it with the King of Navarre and the Prince de Cond^. They have tried to accuse her also of being an accomplice in the wars of the League. Why, then, should she have brought about the peace of which I speak if she were that ? Why should she have pacified the riot of the barricades in Paris ? Wliy should she have reconciled the king and the Due de Guise only to destroy the latter and kill him ? Well, let them launch into such foul abuse against her all they will, never shall we have another queen in France so good for peace. They have accused her of that massacre in Paris [the Saint-Bartholomew] ; all that is a sealed book to me, for at that time I was preparing to embark at Brouage ; but I have often heard it said that she was not the chief actress in it. There were three or four others, whom I might name, who were more ardent in it than she and pushed her on, making her believe, from the threats uttered on the wounding of M. I'amiral, that the king was to be killed, and she with all her children and the whole Court, or else that the country would be in arms much worse than ever. Certainly the party of Pieligion did very wrong to make the threats it is said they made ; for they brought on the fate of poor M. I'amiral, and procured his death. If they had kept them- selves quiet, said no word, and let M. I'amiral's wound heal, he could have left Paris at his ease, and nothing further would have come of it. ]\I. de La Xoue was of that opinion. CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 67 He and M. Strozzi and I have often spoken of it, he not approving of such bravados, audacities, and threats as were made at the very Court of the king in his city of Paris ; and he greatly blamed M. de Theligny, his brother-in-law, who was one of the hottest, calling him and his companions per- fect fools and most incapable. M. I'amiral never used such language as I have heard from others, at least not aloud. I do not say that in secret and private with his intimate friends he never spoke it. That was the cause of the death of M. I'amiral and the massacres of his people, and not the queen ; as I have heard say by those who know well, although there are many from whose heads you could never oust the opinion that this train was long laid and the plot long in hatching. It is all false. The least passionate think as I have said; the more passionate and obstinate believe the other way ; and very often we give credit for the ordering of events to kings and great princes, and say after those events have happened how prudent and provident they were, and how well they knew how to dissimulate, when all the while they knew no more about them than a plum. To return again to our queen ; her enemies have put it about that she was not a good Frenchwoman. God knows with what ardour I saw her urge that the English might be driven from France at Havre de Grace, and what she said of it to M. le Prince, and how she made him go with many gentlemen of his party, and the crown-companies of M. d'Andelot, and other Huguenots, and how she herself led the army, mounted usually on a horse, like a second beautiful Queen Marfisa, exposing herself to the arquebusades and the cannonades as if she were one of her captains, looking to the making of the batteries, and saying she should never be at ease until she had taken that town and driven the English out of France ; hating worse than poison those who had sold 68 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. it to them. And thus she did so much that finally she made the country French. When Eouen was besieged, I saw her in the greatest anger when she beheld supplies entering the town by means of a French galley captured the year before, she fearing that the place, failing to be taken by us, would come under the domin- ion of the English. For this reason she pushed hard at the wheel, as they say, to take it, and never failed every day to come to the fort Sain te- Catherine to hold council and see the firing. I have often seen her passing along the covered way of Sainte-Catherine, the cannonades and arquebusades raining roimd her, and she caring nothing for them. Those who were there saw her as I did; there are still many ladies, her maids of honour who accompanied her, to whom the firing was not too pleasant ; I knew this for I saw them there ; but when M. le connetable and j\I. de Guise remonstrated with her, telling her some misfortune would come of it, she only laughed and said : Why should she spare herself more than they, inasmuch as she had as good courage as they had, though not their strength, which her sex denied her ? As for fatigue, she endured that well, whether on foot or on horseback, I think that for long there had never been a queen or a princess better on horse- back, sitting with such grace, — not appearing, for all that, like a masculine dame, in form and style a fantastic amazon, but a comely princess, beautiful, agreeable, and gentle. They said of her that she was very Spanish. Certainly as long as her good daughter lived [Elisabeth, wife of Philip II.] she loved Spain ; but after her daughter died we knew, at least some of us, whether she had reason to love it, either country or nation. True it is that she was always so prudent that she chose to treat the King of Spain as her good son-in-law, in order that he in turn should CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 69 treat better her good and beautiful daughter, as is the cu»tom of good mothers ; so that he never came to trouble France, nor to bring war there, according to his brave heart and natural ambition. Others have also said that she did not like the nobility of France and desired much to shed its blood. I refer for that to the many times that she made peace and spared that blood; besides which, attention should be paid to this, namely : that while she was regent, and her children minors, there were not known at Court so many quarrels and combats as we have seen there since ; she would not allow them, and forbade expressly all duelling and punished those who transgressed that order. I have seen her at Court, when the king went away to stay some days and she was left absolute and alone, at a time when quarrels had begun again and were becoming common, also duelling, which she never would permit, — I have known her, I say, give a sudden order to the captain of the guards to make arrests, and to the marshals and captains to pacify the quarrel ; so that, to tell the truth, she was more feared than the king ; for she knew how to talk to the disobedient and the dissolute, and rebuke them terribly. I remember that once, the king having gone to the baths of Bourbon, my late cousin La Chastaignerie had a quarrel with Pardailhan. She had him searched for, in order to forbid him, on his hfe, to fight a duel ; but not being able to find him for two whole days, she had him tracked so well that on a Sunday morning, he being on the island of Louviers awaiting his enemy, the grand provost arrived to arrest him, and took him prisoner to the Bastille by order of the queen. But he stayed there only one ^ight ; for she sent for him and gave him a reprimand, partly sharp and partly gentle, because she was really kind, and was harsh only when 70 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. she chose to be. I know very well what she said to me also when I was for seconding my said cousin, namely : that as the older I ought to have been the wiser. The year that the king returned to Poland a quarrel arose between Messieurs de Grillon and d'Entraigues, two brave and valiant gentlemen, who being called out and ready to fight, the king forbade them through M. de Rambouillet, one of his captains of the guard then in quarters, and he ordered M. de Nevers and the Mar^chal de Retz to make up the quarrel, which they failed in doing. That evening the queen sent for them both into her room ; and as their quarrel was about two great ladies of her household, she commanded them with great sternness, and then besought them both in all gentleness, to leave to her the settlement of their differences ; inasmuch as, having done them the honour to meddle in it, and the princes, marshals, and cap- tains having failed in making them agree, it was now a point of honour with her to have the glory of doing so : by which she made them friends, and they embraced with- out other forms, taking all from her ; so that by her prudence the subject of the quarrel, which was delicate, and rather touched the honour of the two ladies, was never known publicly. That was the true kindness of a princess ! And then to say she did not like the nobility ! Ha ! the truth was, she noticed and esteemed it too much. I think there was not a great family in the kingdom with whom she was not acquainted ; she used to say she had learned from King Francois the genealogies of the great families of his king- dom ; and as for the king, her husband, he had this faculty, that when he had once peen a nobleman he knew him always, in face, in deeds, and in reputation. I have seen the queen, often and ordinarily, while the king, her son, was a minor, take the trouble to present to him her- CATHERINE DE' MEDICL 71 self the gentlemen of his kingdom, and put them in his memory thus : " Such a one did service to the king your grandfather, at such and such times and places ; and this one served your father ; " and so on, — commanding him to remem- ber all this, and to love them and do well by them, and rec- ognize them at other times ; which he knew very well how to do, for, through such instruction, this king recognized readily all men of character and race and honour throughout his kingdom. Detractors have also said that she did not like her people. What appears ? Were there ever so many tallies, subsidies, imposts, and other taxes while she was governing during the minority of her children as have since been drawn in a single year ? Was it proved that she had all that hidden money in the banks of Italy, as people said ? Far from that, it was found after her death that she had not a single sou ; and, as I have heard some of her financiers and some of her ladies say, she was indebted eight thousand crowns, the wages of her ladies, gentlemen, and household officers, due a year, and the revenue of the whole year spent ; so that some months before her death her financiers showed her these necessities • but she laughed and said one must praise God for all and find something to live on. That was her avarice and the great treasure she amassed, as people said ! She never amassed anything, for she had a heart wholly noble, liberal, and magnificent, like her great uncle. Pope Leo, and that magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici. She spent or gave away everything ; erecting buildings, spending in honourable mag- nificences, and taking pleasure in giving recreations to her people and her Court, such as festivals, balls, dances, tourna- ments and spearing the ring \couremens de hague], of which latter she held three that were very superb during her life- time : one at Fontainebleau on the Shrove Tuesday after the 72 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. first troubles; where there were tourneys and breakmg of lances and combats at the barrier, — in short, all sorts of feats of arms, with a comedy on the subject of the beautiful Genevra of Ariosto, which she caused to be represented by Mme. d'Angouleme and her most beautiful and virtuous princesses and the ladies and damoiselles of her Court, who certainly played it very well, and so that nothing finer was ever seen. The second was at Bayonne, at the interview between the queen and her good daughter Elisabeth, Queen of Spain, where the magnificence was such in all things that the Spanish, who are very disdainful of other countries than their own, swore they had never seen anything finer, and that their own king could not approach it ; and thus they returned to Spain much edified. I know that many in France blamed this expense as being superfluous ; but the queen said that she did it to show for- eigners that France was not so totally ruined and poverty- stricken because of the late wars as they thought ; and that if for such tourneys she was able to spend so much, for mat- ters of importance she could surely do better, and that France was all the more feared and esteemed, whether through the sight of such wealth and richness, or through that of the prowess of her gentlemen, so brave and adroit at arms ; as indeed there were many there very good to see and worthy to be admired. Moreover, it was very reasonable tliat for the greatest queen of Christendom, the most beautiful, the most virtuous, and the best, some great solemn festival above all others should be held. And I can assure you that if this liad not been done, the foreigners would have mocked us and gone back to Spain thinking and holding us all in France to be beggars. Therefore it was not without good and careful consideration that this wise and judicious c|ueen made this outlay. She CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 73 made another very fine one on the arrival of the Poles in Paris, whom she feasted most superbly in her Tuileries; after which, in a great hall built on pvirpose and surrounded by an infinite number of torches, she showed them the finest ballet that was ever seen on earth (I may indeed say so) ; the which was composed of sixteen of her best-taught ladies and. damoiselles, who appeared in a great rock [_roc, grotto ? ] all silvered, where they w^ere seated in niches, like vapours around it. These sixteen ladies represented the sixteen provinces of France, with the most melodious music ever heard ; and after having made, in this rock, the tour of the hall, like a parade in camp, and letting themselves be seen of every one, they descended from the rock and formed them- selves into a little battalion, fantastically imagined, with violins to the number of thirty sounding a warlike air ex- tremely pleasant ; and thus they marched to the air of the violins, with a fine cadence they never lost, and so approached, and stopped before their Majesties. After which they danced their ballet, most fantastically invented, with so many turns, counterturns, and gyrations, such twining and blending, such advancing and pausing (though no lady failed to find her place and rank), that all present were astonished to see how in such a maze order was not lost for a moment, and that all these ladies had their judgment clear and held it good, so well were they taught ! This fantastic ballet lasted at least one hour, the which being concluded, all these sixteen ladies, representing, as I have said, the sixteen provinces, advanced to the king, the queen, the King of Poland, Monsieur his brother, the King and Queen of Navarre, and other grandees of France and Poland, presenting to each a golden salver as large as the palm of the hand, finely enamelled and beauti- fully chased, on which were engraved the fruits and products of each province in which they were most fertile, such as 74 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. citrons and oranges in Provence, cereals in Champagne, wines in Burgundy, and in Guyenne warriors, — great honour that for Guyenne certainly ! And so on, through the other provinces. At Bayonne the like presents were made, and a combat fought, which I could represent very well, with the presents and the names of those who received them, but it would be too long. At Bayonne it was the men who gave to the ladies ; here, it was the ladies giving to the men. Take note that all these inventions came from no other devising and brain than that of the queen ; for she was mistress and in- ventress of everything ; she had such faculty that whatever magnificences were done at Court, hers surpassed all others. For which reason they used to say there was no one hke the queen-mother for doing fine things. If such outlays were costly, they gave great pleasure ; and people often said she wished to imitate the Eoman emperors, who studied to exhibit games to their people and give them pleasures, and so amuse them as not to leave them leisure to do harm. Besides the pleasure she took in giving pleasure to her people, she also gave them much to earn ; for she liked all sorts. of artisans and paid them well ; employing them each in his owTi art, so that they never wanted for work, es- pecially masons and builders, as is shown by her beautiful houses : the Tuileries (still unfinished), Saint-Maur, Mon- ceaux, and Chenonceaux. Also she liked learned men, and was pleased to read, and she made others read, the books they presented to her, or those that she knew they had written. AU were acceptable, even to the fine invectives which were published against her, about which she scoffed and laughed, without anger, calling those who wrote them gabblers and " givers of trash " — that was her use of the word CATHERINE DE' MEDICL - 75 She wished to know everything. On the voyage to Lor- raine, during the second troubles, the Huguenots had with them a fine culverin to which they gave the name of " the queen-mother." They were forced to bury it at Villenozze, not being able to drag it on account of its long shafts and bad harness and weight ; after which it never could be found again. The queen, hearing that they had given it her name, wanted to know why. A certain person, having been much urged by her to tell her, replied : " Because, madame, it has a cahbre [diameter] broader and bigger than that of others." The queen was the first to laugh at this reply. She spared no pains in reading anything that took her fancy. I saw her once, having embarked at Blaye to go and dine at Bourg, reading the whole way from a parchment, like any lawyer or notary, a proces-verhal made on Derbois, favourite secretary of the late M. le conndtable, as to cer- tain underhand dealings and correspondence of which he was accused and for which imprisoned at Bayonne. She never took her eyes off it until she had read it through ; and there were more than ten pages of parchment. When she was not hindered, she read herself all letters of impor- tance, and frequently with her own hand made' replies ; I saw her once, after dinner, write twenty long letters herself. She wrote and spoke French very well, although an Italian ; and even to persons of her own nation she usually spoke it, so much did she honour France and its language ; taking pains to exhibit its fine speech to foreigners, grandees, and ambassadors, who came to visit her after seeing the king. She always answered them very pertinently, with great grace and majesty ; as I have also seen and heard her do to the courts of parliament, both publicly and privately ; 76 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. often controlling the latter finely when they rambled in talk or were over-cautious, or would not comply with the edicts made in her privy council and the ordinances issued by the king and herself. You may be sure she spoke as a queen and made herself feared as one. I saw her once at Bordeaux when she took her daughter Marguerite to her husband, the King of Navarre. She had commanded that court of parlia- ment to come and be spoken to, — they not being willing to abolish a certain brotherhood, by them invented and main- tained, which she was determined to break up, foreseeing that it would bring some results in the end which might be prejudicial to the State. They came to meet her in the garden of the Bishop's house, where she was walking one Sunday morning. One among them spoke for all, and gave her to understand the fruitfulness of this brotherhood and the utility it was to the public. She, without being pre- pared, replied so well and with such apt words, and apparent and appropriate reasons to show it was ill-founded and odious, that there was no one present who did not admire the mind of the queen and remain confused and astonished when, as her last word, she said ; " No, I will, and the king my son wills that it be exterminated, and never heard of again, for secret reasons that I shall not tell you, besides those that I have told you ; and if not, I will make you feel what it is to disobey the king and me." So each and all went away and nothing more was said of it. She did these turns very often to the princes and the greatest people, when they had done some great wrong and made her so angry that she took her haughty air, — no one on earth being so superb and stately as she, when needful, sparing no truths to any one. I have seen the late M. de Savoie, who was intimate with the emperor, the King of Spain, and so many grandees, fear and respect her more than CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 77 if she had been his mother, and M. de Lorraine the same, — in short, all the great people of Christendom ; I could give many examples ; but another time, in due course, I will tell them ; just now it suffices to say what I have said. Among other perfections she was a good Christian and very devout ; always making her Easters, and never failing any day to attend divine service at mass and vespers ; which she rendered very agreeable to pious persons, by the good singers of her chapel, — she being careful to collect the most exquisite ; also she herself loved music by nature, and often gave pleasure with it in her apartment, wdiich was never closed to virtuous ladies and honourable men, she seeing all and every one, not restricting it as they do in Spain, and also in her own land of Italy; nor yet as our later queens, Isabella of Austria and Louise of Lorraine, have done ; but saying, like King Francois, her father-in-law (whom she greatly honoured, he having set her up and made her free), that she wished to keep her Court as a good Frenchwoman, and as the king, her husband, would have wished; so that her apartments were the pleasure of the Court. She had, ordinarily, very beautiful and virtuous maids of honour, who conversed with us daily in her antechamber, discoursing and chatting so wisely and modestly that none of us would have dared to do otherwise ; for the gentlemen who failed in this were banished and threatened, and in fear of worse until she pardoned and forgave them, she being kind in herself and very ready to do so. In short, her company and her Court were a true paradise in the world, and a school of all virtue and honour, the orna- ment of France, as the foreigners wdio came there knew well and said ; for they were all most politely received, and her ladies and maids of honour were commanded to adorn themselves at their coming like goddesses, and to entertain these visitors, 78 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. not amusing themselves elsewhere ; otherwise she taunted them well and reprimanded them. In fact, her Court was such that when she died the voices of all declared that the Court was no longer a Court, and that never again would France have a true queen-mother. What a Court it was ! such as, I believe, no Emperor of Eome in the olden time ever held for ladies, nor any of our Kings of Prance. Though it is true that the great Emperor Charle- magne, King of France, during his lifetime took great pleas- ure in making and maintaining a grand and full Court of peers, dukes, counts, palatines, barons, and knights of France ; also of ladies, their wives and daughters, with others of all countries, to pay court and lionour (as the old romances of that day have said) to the empress and queen, and to see the fine jousts, tournaments, and magnificences done there by knights-errant coming from all parts. But what of that ? These fine, grand assemblies came together not oftener than three or four times a year; at the end of each fete they departed and retired to their houses and estates until the next time. Besides, some have said that in his old age Charlemagne was much given over to women, though always of good company ; and that Louis le Debonnaire, on ascend- ing the throne, was obliged to banish his sisters to other places for the scandal of their lives with men ; and also that he drove from Court a number of ladies who belonged to the joyous band. Charlemagne's Courts were never of long dura- tion (I speak now of his great years), for he amused himself in those days with war, according to our old romances, and in his last years his Court was too dissolute, as I have already said. But the Court of our King Henri II. and the queen his wife, was held daily, whether in war or peace, and whether it resided in one place or another for months, or went to other castles and pleasure-houses of our kings. CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 79 who are not lacking in them, having more than the kings of other countries. This large and noble company, keeping always together, at least the greater part of them, came and went with its queen, so that usually her Court was filled by at least three hundred ladies and damoiselles. The intendants of the king's houses and the quartermasters affirmed that they occupied fully one-half of the rooms, as I myself have seen during the thirty-three years I lived at Court, except when at war or in foreign parts. Having returned, I was always there ; for the sojourn was to me most agreeable, not seeing elsewhere any- thing finer ; in fact I think, since the world was, nothing has ever been seen like it ; and as the noble names of these beau- tiful ladies who assisted our queen in adorning her Court should not be overlooked, I place them here, according as I remember them from the end of the queen's married life and throughout her widowhood, for before that time I was too young to know them. First, I place Mesdames the daughters of France. I place them first because they never lost their rank, and go before all others, so grand and noble is their house, to wit : — Madame Elisabeth de France, afterwards Queen of Spain. Madame Claude, afterwards Duchesse de Lorraine. Madame Marguerite, afterwards Queen of Navarre. Madame the king's sister, afterwards Duchesse de Savoie. The Queen of Scots, afterwards dauphine and Queen of France. The Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret. Madame Catherine, her daughter, to-day called Madame the king's [Henri IV.] sister. Madame Diane, natural daughter of the king [Henri II.], afterwards legitimatized, the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Madame d'Enghien, of the house of Estouteville. 80 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Madame la Princesse de Condd, of the house of Roye. Madame de Nevers, of the house of Vendome. Madame de Guise, of tlie house of Ferrara. Madame Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois. Mesdames d'Aumale and de Bouillon, her daughters.^ Need I name more ? No, for my memory could not fur- nish them. There are so many other ladies and maids that I beg them to excuse me if I pass them by with my pen, — not that I do not greatly value and esteem them, but I should dream over them and amuse myself too much. To make an end, I must say that in all this company there was nothing to find fault with in their day ; beauty abounded, all majesty, all charm, all grace ; happy was he who could touch with love such ladies, and happy those who could tliat love eseapar. I swear to you that I have named only those ladies and damoiselles who were beautiful, agreeable, very accomplished, and well sufficient to set fire to the whole world. Indeed, in their best days they burned up a good part of it, as much us gentlemen of the Court as others who approached the flame ; to some of whom they were gentle, aimable, favourable, and courteous. I speak of none here, hoping to make good tales about them in this book before I finish it, and of others whose names are not comprised here ; but the whole told so discreetly, without scandal, that nothing will be known, for the curtain of silence will cover their names ; so that if by chance the}^ should any of them read tales of themselves they will not be annoyed. Besides, though the pleasures of love cannot last forever, by reason of many inconveniences, hindrances, and changes, the memories of the past are always pleasing. ^ Here follow the names of ninety-three larlics and sixty-six damoiselles ; amon^' the latter are "Mesdamoiselles Elaniniin (Fleming ?) Veton (Sea- ton ? ) Beton ( Beaton ? ) Leviston, cscossoises." The three first-named on the above list are the daughters of Henri TT. and Catherine de' Medici. — Tk. ^ ^- N >:: CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 81 [This refers to " Les Dames Galantes," and not to the present volume.] Now, to thoroughly consider how fine a sight was this troupe of beautiful ladies and damoiselles, creatures divine rather than human, we must imagine the entries into Paris and other cities, the sacred and superlative bridals of our kings of France, and their sisters, the daughters of France ; such as those of the dauphin, of King Charles, of King Henri III., of the Queen of Spain, of Madame de Lorraine, of the Queen of Navarre, not to speak of many other grand weddings of the princes and princesses, like that of M. de Joyeuse, which would have surpassed them all if the Queen of Navarre had been there. Also we must picture to our- selves the interview at Bayonne, the arrival of the Poles, and an infinite number of other and like magnificences, which I could never finish naming, where I saw these ladies appear, each more beautiful than the rest ; some more finely appointed and better dressed than others, because for such festivals, in addition to their great means, the king and queen would give tliem splendid liveries. In short, nothing was ever seen finer, more dazzling, dainty, superb ; the glory of Niqude never approached it [enchanted palace in " Amadis "J. All this shone in a ball- room of the Tuileries or the Louvre as the stars of heaven in the azure sky. The queen-mother wished and commanded her ladies always to appear in grand and superb apparel, though she herself during her widowhood never clothed herself in worldly silks, unless they were lugubrious, but always properly and so well-fitting that she looked the queen above all else. It is true that on the days of the weddings of her two sons Henri and Charles, she wore gowns of black velvet, wishing, she said, to solemnize the event by so signal an act. While she was married she always dressed 6 82 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. xery richly and superbly, and looked what she was. And it was fine to see and admire her in the general processions that were made, both in Paris and other cities, such as the Fete Dieu, that of the liameaux [Palm Sunday], bear- ing palms and branches with such grace, and on Candlemas Day, when the torches were borne by all the Court, the flames of which contended against their own brilhancy. At these three processions, which are most solemn, we certainly saw nothing but beauty, grace, a noble bearing, a fine gait and splendid apparel, all of which delighted the spectators. It was fine also to see the queen in her married life going through the country in her litter, being pregnant, or after- wards on horsel)ack attended by forty or fifty ladies and damoiselles mounted on handsome hackneys well caparisoned, and sitting their horses with such good grace that the men could not do better, either in equestrian style or apparel ; their hats adorned with plumes which floated in the air as if demanding either love or war. Virgil, who took upon himself to write of the apparel of Queen Dido when she went to the chase, says nothing that approaches the luxury of that of our queen with her ladies, may it not displease her, as I think I have said elsewhere. Tliis queen (made by the act of the great King Frangois), who introduced this beautiful pageantry, never forgot or let slip anything of the kind she had once learned, but always wanted to imitate or surpass it; I have heard her speak thiee or four times in my life on this subject. Those who have seen things as I did still feel their souls enchanted like mine, for what I say is true ; I know it having seen it. So there is the Court of our queen. Unhappy was tlie day when she died ! I have heard tell that our present king [Henri IV.], some eighteen months after he saw himself more in hope and prospect of becoming King of France, CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 83 began one day to discourse with the late M. le Mar^chal de Biron, on the plans and projects he would undertake to make his Court prosperous and line and in all things like that of our said queen, for at that time it was in its greatest lustre and splendour. j\I. le marechal answered : '■' It is not in your power, nor in that of any king who will ever reign, unless you can manage with God that he shall resuscitate the queen-mother, and bring her round to you." But that was not what the king wanted, for when she died there was no one whom he hated so much, but without grounds, as I could see, and as he should have known better than I. How luckless was the day on which such a queen died, at the very point when we had such great necessity for her, and still have ! She died at Blois of sadness caused by the massacre whicli there took place, and the melancholy tragedy there played, seeing that, without reflection, she had brought the princes to Blois thinking to do well ; whereas it was true, as M. le Cardinal de Bourbon said to her : " Alas ! madame, you have led us all to butchery without intending it." That so touched her heart, and also the death of those poor men, that she took to her bed, having previously felt ill, and never rose again. They say that when the king announced to her the murder of j\I. de Guise, saving that he was now absolutelv kincj, without equal, or master, she asked him if he had put the affairs of his kingdom in order before striking the blow. To which he answered yes. " God grant it, my son," she said. Very prudent that she was, she foresaw plainly what would happen to him, and to all the kingdom.^ Persons have spoken diversely as to her death, and even as 1 Henri III, convoked the States-General at Blois in 1588 ; the Due de Guise (Henri, le Balafre) was tliere assassinated, hy the king's order, December 23, 1588 ; his brotlier, Cardinal de Bourbon, the next day. — Tii. 84 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. to poison. Possibly it was so, possibly not; but she was held to have died of desperation, and she had reason to do so. She was placed on her state-bed, as one of her ladies told me, neither more nor less like Queen Anne of whom I have already spoken, clothed in the same royal garments that the said Queen Anne wore, they not having served since her death for any others ; and thus she was borne to the church of the castle, with the same pomp and solemnity as Queen Anne, where she lies and rests still. The king wished to take her to Chartres and thence to Saint-Denis, to put her with the king, her husband, in the same tomb which she had caused to be made, built, and constructed, so noble and superb, but the war which came on prevented it. This is what I can say at this time of this great queen, who has given assuredly such noble grounds to speak worthily of her that this short discourse is not enough for her praise. I know that well ; also that the quality of my speech does not suffice, for better speakers than I would be insufficient. At any rate, such as my discourse is, I lay it, in all humility and devotion, at her feet ; also I would avoid too great pro- lixity, for which indeed I feel myself too capable ; but I hope I shall not separate from her much, although in my discourses I shall be silent, and only speak of what her noble and incomparable virtues command me, giving me ample matter so to do, I having seen all that I have written of her ; and as fur what had happened before my time, I heard it from persons most illustrious ; and thus I shall do in all my books. This queen, who was of many kings the mother, Of queens also, belonging here to France, Died wlien we had most need of her support ; For none but she could give us true assistance. CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 85 M^zeray [in his "History of France"], who never thinks of the dramatic, nevertheless makes known to us at the start his principal personages ; he shows them more especially in action, without detaching them too much from the general sentiment and interests of which they are the leaders and representatives, while, at the same time, he leaves to each his individual physiognomy. The old Conn^table de Mont- morency, the Guises, Admiral de Coligny, the Chancellor de I'Hopital define themselves on his pages by their conduct and proceedings even more than by the judgment he awards them. Catherine de' Medici is painted there in all her dis- simulation and her network of artifices, in which she was often caught herself ; ambitious of sovereign power without possessing either the force or the genius of it; striving to obtain it by craft, and using for this purpose a continual sys- tem of what we should call to-day see-sawing ; " rousing and elevating for a time one faction, putting to sleep or lowering another ; uniting herself sometimes with the feeblest side out of caution, lest the stronger should crush her ; sometimes with the stronger from necessity ; at times standing neutral when she felt herself strong enough to command both sides, but without intention to extinguish either." Far from being always too CathoHc, there are moments when she seems to lean to the Eeformed religion and to wish to grant too much to that party ; and this with more sincerity, perhaps, than belonged to her naturally. The Catherine de' Medici, such as she presents herself and is developed in plain truth on the pages of M^zeray is well calculated to tempt a modem writer. As there is nothing new but that which is old, for often dis- coveries are nothing more than that which was once known and is forgotten, the day when a modern historian shall take up the Catherine de' Medici of M^zeray and give her some of the rather forced features which are to the taste of the S6 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. present day, there will come a great cry of astonishment and admiration, and the critics will register a new discovery.^ M. Xiel, librarian to the ministry of the Interior, an en- lightened amateur of the arts and of history, has been engaged since 1848 in publishing a series of Portraits or " Crayons " of the celebrated personages of the sixteenth century, hings, queens, mistresses of kings, etc., the whole forming already a folio volume. M. Xiel has applied him- self in this collection to reproduce none but authentic portraits and soLly from the original, and he has confined himself to a single form of portraiture, that which was drawn in crayons of divers colours by artists of the sixteenth century. " They designated in those days by the name of ' crayons,' " he observes, " certain portraits executed on paper in red chalk, in black lead, and in white chalk, shaded and touched in a way to present the effect of painting." These designs, faithfully reproduced, in which the red tone pre- dominates, are for the most part originally due to un- knovrn artists, who seem to have belonged to the true French lineage of art. They resemble the humble com- panions and followers of our chroniclers who simply sought in their rapid sketches to catch physiognomies, such as they saw them, with truth and candour; the likeness alone con- cerned them. FranQois I. leads the procession with his obscure wives, and one, at least, of his obscure mistresses, the Comtesse de Chateaubriant. Henri II. succeeds him, giving one hand to Catherine de' jMedici, the other to Diane de Poitiers. "We are shovrn a Marie Stuart, young, before and after her widow- 1 ITonore '1e BalzacV volume, in t?ie T'hilosophical Sprier of his " Com- edy of Huiiiiin Life," on Catlierine de' Medici, while called a romance, is really an admirable and carefully drawn historical portrait, iiiid might be read to profit in connection with Brantome's account of her. — Tr. CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 87 hood. In general, the men gain most from this rapid repro- duction of feature ; whereas with the women it needs an effort of tlie imagination to catch tlieir delicacy and the liower of their beauty. Charles IX. at twelve years of tige, and again at eighteen and twenty, is there to the life and caught from nature. Henri IV. is shown to us younger and fresher than as we are wont to see him, — a Henri de Navarre quite novel and before his beard grizzled. His first wife, Marguerite de Valois, is portrayed at her most beauteous age, but so masked by her costume and cramped in her ruff that we need to be aware of her charm to be certain that the doll-like figure had any. Gabrielle d'Estrdes, who stands aloof, stiffly imprisoned in her gorgeous clothes, also needs explanation and reflection before she appears what she really was. Tlie testimony of " Notices " aids these portraits ; for M. Niel accompanies his personages with remarks made with erudition and an inquiring mind. One of the brief writings of that period which make known clearly the person and nature of Henri IV. is the Memoir of the first president of Normandy, Claude Groulard, at all times faithful to the king, who has left us a naive account of his frequent journeys to that prince and the so- journs he made with him. Among many remarks which Groulard has collected from the lips of Henri IV. there is one that paints the king well in his sound good sense, his freedom from rancour, and his knowledge — always practical, never ideal — of human beings. Groulard is relating the approaching marriage of the king with a princess of Florence. When Henri IV. announced it to him the worthy president replied by an erudite comparison with the lance of Achilles, saying that the Florentine house would thus repair the wounds it had given to France in the person of Catherine de' Medici. " But I ask you," said Henri IV., speaking there- 88 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. upon of Catherine and excusing her, " I ask you what a poor woman could do, left by the death of her husband, with five little children on her arms, and two families in France who were thinking to grasp the crown, — ours and the Guises. Was she not compelled to play strange parts to deceive first one and then the other, in order to guard, as she has done, her sons, who have successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman ? I am surprised that she never did worse." Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi (1855). DISCOUESE III. MARIE STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND, FORMERLY QUEEN OF OUR FRANCE. Those who wish to write of this illustrious Queen of Scotland have two very ample subjects : one her life, the other her death ; both very ill accompanied by good fortune, as I shall show at certain points in this short Discourse in form of epitome, and not a long history, which I leave to be written by persons more learned and better given to writing than I. This queen had a father, King James, of worth and valour, and a very good Frenchman ; in which he was right. After he was widowed of Madame Magdelaine, daughter of France, he asked King Frangois for some honourable and virtuous princess of his kingdom with whom to re-marry, desiring nothing so much as to continue his alliance with France, King Frangois, not knowing whom to choose better to content the good prince, gave him the daughter of M. de Guise, Claude do Lorraine, then the widow of M. de Longue- ville, wise, virtuous, and honourable, of which King James was very glad and esteemed himself fortunate to take her ; and after he had taken and espoused her he found himself the same ; the kingdom of Scotland also, which she governed very wisely after she was widowed ; which event happened in a few years after her marriage, but not before she had pro- duced a fine issue, namely this most beautiful princess in the world, our queen, of whom I now speak, she being, as 90 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. one might say, scarcely born and still at the breast, when the English invaded Scotland. Her mother was then forced to hide her from place to place in Scotland from fear of that fury ; and, without the good succour King Henri sent her she would scarce have been saved ; and even so they had to put her on ves.^els and expose her to tlie waves, the storms and winds of the sea and convey her to France for greater security ; where certainly ill fortune, not being able to cross the seas with her or not daring to attack her in France, left her so alone that good fortune took her by the hand. And, as her youth grew on, we saw her great beauty and her great virtues grow likewise; so that, coming to her fifteenth year, her beauty shone like the light at mid-day, effacing the sun when it shines the brightest, so beauteous was her body. As for her soul, that was equal ; she had made herself learned in Latin, so that, being between thirteen and four- teen years of age, she declaimed before King Flenri, the queen, and all the Court, publicly in the hall of the Louvre, an harangue in Latin, which she had made Iierself, main- taining and defending, against common opinion, that it was well l;ecoming to women to know letters and the liberal arts. Think what a rare thing and admirable it wa=^, to see this wise and beautiful young queen thus orate in Latin, which she knew and understood right well, for I was tliere and saw her. Also she made Antoine Fochain, of Chauny in Yermandois, prepare for her a rhetoric in French, which still exists, that she might the better understand it, and make herself as eloquent in French as she had been in Latin, and better than if she had been born in France. It was good to see her speak to every one, whether to great or small. As long as she lived in France she always reser%-ed two hours daily to study and read ; so that there was no human MARIE STUART. 91 knowledge she could not talk upon. Above all, she loved poesy and poets, but especially M. de Eonsard, M. du Bellay, and M. de Maison-Fleur,^ who all made beautiful poems and elegies upon her, and also upon her departure from France, which I have often seen her reading to herself, in France and in Scotland, with tears in her eyes and sighs from her heart. She was a poet herself and composed verses, of which I have seen some that were fine and well done and in no wise resembling those they have laid to her account on her love for the Earl of Bothwell, which are too coarse and too ill- polished to have come from lier beautiful making. M. de Itonsard was of my opinion as to this one day when we were reading and discussing them. Those she composed were far more beautiful and dainty, and quickly done, for 1 have often seen her retire to her cabinet and soon return to show them to such of us good folk as were there present. More- over she wrote well in prose, especially letters, of which I have seen many that were very fine and eloquent and lofty. At all times when she tallied with others she used a most gentle, dainty, and agreeable style of speech, with kindly majesty, mingled, however, with discreet and modest reserve, and above all with beautiful grace ; so that even her native tongue, which in itself is very rustic, barbarous, ill-sounding, and uncouth, she spoke so gracefully, toning it in such a way, that she made it seem beautiful and agreeable in her, though never so in others. See what virtue there was in such beauty and grace that they could turn coarse barbarism into sweet civility and social grace. "SVe must not be surprised therefore that be- ing dressed (as I have seen her) in the barbarous costume of the uncivilized people of her country, she appeared, in ^ See Appendix. 92 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. mortal body and coarse ungainly clothing a true goddess. Those who have seen her thus dressed will admit this truth ; and those who did not see her can look at her portrait, in which she is thus attired. I have heard the queen-mother, and the king too, say that she looked more beautiful, more agreeable, more desirable in that picture than in any of the others. But how else could she look, whether in her beauti- ful rich jewels, in French or Spanish style, or wearing her Italian caps, or in her mourning garments ? — which latter made her most beautiful to see, for the whiteness of her face contended with the whiteness of her veil as to which should carry the day ; but the texture of her veil lost it ; the snow of her pure face dimmed the other, so that when she appeared at Court in her mourning the following song was made upon her : — " L'on voit, sous blanc atour En grand deuil et tristesse, Se pourmener mainct tour De beaute la deese, Tenant le trait en main De son fils inhumain ; " Et Amour, sans fronteau, Voletter autour d'elle, Desguisant son bandeau En un funebre voile, Oil sont ces mots ecrits : Mourir ou etre pris.''^ ^ That is how this princess appeared under all fashions of clothes, whether barbarous, worldly, or austere. She had also one other perfection with which to charm the world, — a voice most sweet and excellent ; for she sang well, attuning her voice to the lute, which she touched very prettily with that white hand and those beautiful fingers, perfectly made, ^ See Appendix. MARIE STUART. 93 yielding in nothing to those of Aurora. What more remains to tell of her beauty ? — if not this saying about her : that the sun of her Scotland was very unlike her, for on certain days of the year it shines but five hours, while she shone ever, so that her clear rays illumined her land and her people, who of all others needed light, being far estranged from the sun of heaven. Ah ! kingdom of Scotland, I think your days are shorter now than they ever were, and your nights the longer, since you have lost the princess who illumined you ! But you have been ungrateful ; you never recognized your duty of fidelity, as you should have done ; which I shall speak of presently. This lady and princess pleased France so much that King Henri was urged to give her in alliance to the dauphin, his beloved son, who, for his part, was madly in love with her. The marriage was therefore solemnly celebrated in the great church and tlie palace of Paris ; where we saw this queen appear more beauteous than a goddess from the skies, whether in the morning, going to her espousals in noble majesty, or leading, after dinner, at the ball, or advancing in the evening with modest steps to offer and perform her vows to Hymen ; so that the voice of all as one man resounded and proclaimed throughout the Court and the great city that happy a hundredfold was he, the prince, thus joined to such a princess ; and even if Scotland were a thing of price its queen out-valued it ; for had she neither crown nor sceptre, her person and her glorious beauty were worth a kingdom ; therefore, being a queen, she brought to Trance and to her husband a double fortune. This was what the world went saying of her ; and for this reason she was called queen-dauphine and her husband the king-dauphin, they living together in great love and pleasant concord. 94 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Next, King Henri dying, they came to be King and Queen of rrance, the king and queen of two great kingdoms, happy, and most happy in themselves, had death not seized the king and left her widowed in the sweet April of her finest youth, having enjoyed together of love and pleasure and felicity but four short years, — a felicity indeed of short duration, which evil fortune might well have spared ; but no, malignant as she is, she wished to miserably treat this princess, who made a song herself upon her sorrows in this wise : — En mon triste et doux chant, D'un ton fort lamentable, Je jette un deuil tranchant, De perte incomparable, Et en soupirs cuisans, Passe mes meilleurs ans. Fut-il uu tel mallieur De dure destinde, N'y si triste douleur De dame fortunde, Qui mon cceur et mon oeil Vois en bierre et cercueil, Qui en mon doux printemps Et fleur de ma jeunesse, Toutes les jjeiues sens D'une extresme tristesse, Et en rien n'ay plaisir Qu'en regret et desir ? Ce qui m'estoit plaisant Ores m'est peine dure; Le jour le plus luisant INl'est unit noire et obscure. Et n'est rien si cxquis Qui de moy soit requis. J'ay au ca'ur et k I'oeil Un portrait et image MARIE STUART. 95 Qui figure mon deuil Et mon pasle visage, De violettes teiut, Qui est I'amoureux teint. Pour mon mal estranger Je ne m'arreste en place ; Mais j'en ay beau clianger, Si ma douleur n'efface ; Car mon pis et mon mieux Sout les plus deserts lieux. Si en quelque sejour, Soit en bois ou en pree. Soit sur I'aube du jour, Ou soit sur la vespree, Sans cesse mon coeur sent Le regret d'un absent. Si parfois vers les cieux Tiens h dresser ma veue, Le doux traict de ses yeux Je vols en une nue ; Ou bien je le vols en I'eau, Comme dans un tombeau. Si je suis en repos Sommeillant sur ma couche, J'oy qu'il me tient propos, Je le sens qui me touche : En labeur, en recoy Tousjours est prfes de moy. Je ne vois autre object, Pour beau qu'il prdsente A qui que soit subject, Oncques mon coeur consente, Exempt de perfection A cetle affection. Mets, chanson, icy fln A si triste complainte, 96 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Dont sera le refrein : Amour vraye et non feinte Pour la separation N'aura diminution.^ Sucbi are the regrets which this sad queen went piteously singing, and manifesting even more by her pale face ; for, from the time she became a widow, I never saw her colour return during the time I had the honour to see her in France and in Scotland ; whither at the end of eighteen months she was forced to go, to her great regret, to pacify her kingdom, much divided on account of religion. Alas ! she had neither wish nor will to go. I have often heard her say she dreaded that journey like death ; and preferred a hundredfold to stay in France a simple dowager, and would content herself with Touraine and Poitou for her dowry, rather than go to reign in her savage country ; but messieurs her imcles, at least some of them, but not all, advised her, indeed they urged her (I will not tell the occasions), for which they have since repented sorely. As to this, there is no doubt that if, at her departure King Charles, her husband's brother, had been of age to marry, and not so small and young (though much in love with her, as I have seen), he would never have let her go, but resolutely would have wedded her ; for I have seen him so in love that never did he look upon her portrait that his eyes were not fixed and ravished, as though he could not take them from it nor yet be satisfied. And often have I heard him call her the most beauteous princess ever born into the world, and say how he thought the king, his brother, too happy to have enjoyed the love of such a princess, and that he ought in no wise to regret his death in the tomb since he had possessed in this world such beauty and pleasure for ^ See Appendix. MARIE STUART. 97 the little time he stayed here ; and also that such happiness was worth a kingdom. So that had she remained in Trance he would surely have wedded her ; he was resolved upon it, although she was his sister-in-law, but the pope would never have refused the dispensation, seeing that he had already in like case granted one to his own subject, M. de Love, and also to the Marquis d'Aguilar in Spain, and many others in that country, where they make no difficulty in maintaining their estates and do not waste and dissipate them, as we do in France. Much discourse on this subject have I heard from him, and from many, which I shall omit, not to wander from the topic of our queen, wlio was at last persuaded, as I have said, to return to her kingdom of Scotland ; but her voyage being postponed till the spring she did so much to delay it from month to month that she did not depart until the end of the month of August. I must mention that this spring, in which she thought to leave, came so tardily, and was so cold and grievous, that in the month of April it gave no sign of donning its beautiful green robe or its lovely flowers. On which the gallants of the Court augured and proclaimed that the spring had changed its pleasant season for a hard and grievous winter, and would not wear its beauteous colours or its verdure because it mourned the departure of this sweet queen, who was its lustre. M. de Maison-Fleur, a charming knight for letters and for arms, made on that theme a most fine elegy. The beginning of the autumn having come, the queen, after thus delaying, was forced to abandon France ; and having travelled by land to Calais, accompanied by aU her uncles, M. de Nemours, most of the great and honourable of the Court, together with the ladies, like Mme. de Guise and others, all regretting and weeping hot tears for the loss 7 98 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. of such a queen, she found in port two galleys : one that of M. de Mevillon, the other that of Captain Albise, with two convoying vessels for sole armament. After six days' rest at Calais, having said her piteous farewells all full of sighs to the great company about her, from the greatest to the least, she embarked, having her uncles with her. Messieurs d'Aumale, the grand prior, and d'Elboeuf, and M. d'Amville (now M. le Conn^table), together with many of us, all nobles, on board the galley of M. de Mevillon, as being the best and handsomest. As the vessel began to leave the port, the anchor being up, we saw, in the open sea, a vessel sink before us and perish, and many of the sailors drown for not having taken the channel rightly ; on seeing which the queen cried out in- continently : " Ah, my God ! what an omen is this for my journey!" The galley being now out of port and a fresh wind rising, we began to make sail, and the convicts rested on their oars. The queen, without thinking of other action, leaned her two arms on the poop of the galley, beside the rudder, and burst into tears, casting her beauteous eyes to the port and land she had left, saying ever these sad words : " Adieu, France ! adieu, France ! " — repeating them again and again; and this sad exercise she did for nearly five hours, until the night began to fall, when they asked her if she would not come away from there and take some supper. On that, her tears redoublmg, she said these words ; " This is indeed the hour, my dear France, when I must lose you from sight, because the gloomy night, envious of my content in seeing you as long as I am able, hangs a black veil before mine eyes to rob me of that joy. Adieu, then, my dear France; I shall see you nevermore !" Then she retired, saying she had done the contrary of Dido, who looked to the sea when ^neas left her, while she MARIE STUARX 99 had looked to land. She wished to lie down without eating more than a salad, and as she would not descend into the cabin of the poop, they brought her bed and set it up on the deck of the poop, where she rested a little, but did not cease her sighs and tears. She commanded the steersman to wake her as soon as it was day if he saw or could even just perceive the coasts of France, and not to fear to call her. In this, fortune favoured her ; for the wind having ceased and the vessel having again had recourse to oars, but little way was made during the night, so that when day appeared the shores of France could still be seen ; and the steersman not having failed to obey her, she rose in her bed and gazed at France again, and as long as she could see it. But the galley now receding, her contentment receded too, and again she said those words : " Adieu, my France ; I think that I shall never see you more." Did she desire, this once, that an English armament (with which we were threatened) should appear and constrain her to give up her voyage and return to the port she had left ? But if so, God in that would not favour her wishes, for, with- out further hindrance of any kind we reached Petit-Lict [Leith]. Of the voyage I must tell a little incident : the first evening after we embarked, the Seigneur Chastellard (the same who was afterwards executed for presumption, not for crime, as I shall tell), being a charming cavalier, a man of good sword and good letters, said this pretty thing when he saw them lighting the binnacle lamp : " There is no need of that lamp or this torch to light us by sea, for the eyes of our queen are dazzling enough to flash their fine fires along the waves and illume them, if need be." I must note that the day before we amved at Scotland, being a Sunday, so great a fog arose that we could not see from the poop to the mast of the galley ; at which the pilot and tlio 100 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. overseers of the galley-slaves were much confounded, — so much so, that out of necessity we had to cast anchor in open sea, and take soundings to know where we were. The fog lasted all one day and all the night until eight o'clock on the following morning, when we found ourselves surrounded hy innumerable reefs ; so that had we gone forward, or even to one side, the ship would have struck and we should have perished. On which the queen said that, for her part, she should not have cared, wishing for nothing so much as death ; but that not for her whole kingdom of Scotland would she have wished it or willed it for others. Having now sighted and seen (for the fog had risen) the coast of Scotland, there were some among us who augured and predicted upon the said fog, that it boded we were now to land in a quarrel- some, mischief-making, unpleasant kingdom {pvyauriie hrou- ille, hrouillon, et mul plaiscint]. We entered and cast anchor at Petit-Lict, where the prin- cipal persons of that place and Islebourg [Edinburgh] were gathered to meet their queen ; and then, having sojourned at Petit-Lict only two hours, it was necessary to continue our way to Islebourg, which was barely a league farther. The queen went on horseback, and the ladies and seigneurs on nags of the country, such as they were, and saddled and bridled the same. On seeing which accoutrements the queen began to weep and say that these were not the pomps, tlie dignities, the magnificences, nor yet the superb horses of France, which she had enjoyed so long ; but since she must change her paradise for hell, she must needs take patience. And what is worse was that when she went to bed, being lodged on the lower floor of tlie abbey of Islebourg [Holy- rood], which is certainly a noble building and is not like the country, there came beneath her window some five or six hundred scoundrels of the town, who gave her a serenade MARIE STUAET. 101 with wretched violins and little rebecks (of which there is no lack in Scotland), to which they chanted psalms so badly sung and so out of tune that nothing could be worse. Ha 1 what music and what repose for her first night ! The next morning they would have killed her chaplain in front of her lodging; had he not escaped quickly into her chamber he was dead ; they would have done to him as they did later to her secretary David [Eiccio] whom, because he was clever, the queen liked for the management of her affairs ; but they killed him in her room, so close to her that the blood spurted upon her gown and he fell dead at her feet. What an indignity ! But they did many other indignities to her ; therefore must we not be astonished if they spoke ill of her. On this attempt being made against her chaplain she became so sad and vexed that she said : " This is a fine be- ginning of obedience and welcome from my subjects ! I know not what may be the end, but I foresee it will be bad." Thus the poor princess showed herself a second Cassandra in prophecy as she was in beauty. Being now there, she lived about three years very dis- creetly in her widowhood, and would have continued to do so, but the Parliament of her kingdom begged her and en- treated her to marry, in order that she might leave them a fine king conceived by her, like him of the present day [James I]. There are some who say that, during tlie first wars, the King of Navarre desired to marry her, repudiating the queen his wife, on account of the Religion ; but to this she would not consent, saying she had a soul, and would not lose it for all the grandeurs of the world, — making great scruple of espousing a married man. At last she wedded a young English lord, of a great house, but not her equal [Henry Darnley, Earl of Lennox, her cousin]. The marriage was not happy for either the one or 102 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. the other. I shall not here relate how the king her husband, having made her a very fine child, who reigns to-day, died, being killed by a fougade [small mine] exploded where he lodged. The history of that is written and printed, but not with truth as to the accusations raised against the queen of consenting to the deed. They are lies and insults ; for never was that queen cruel ; she was always kind and very gentle. Never in France did she any cruelty, nor would she take pleasure or have the heart to see poor criminals put to death by justice, like many grandees whom I have known ; and when she was in her galley never would she allow a single convict to be beaten, were it ever so little ; she bejrfjed her uncle, the grand-prior, as to this, and commanded it to the overseer herself, having great compassion for their misery, so that her heart was sick for it. To end this topic, never did cruelty lodge in the heart of such great and tender beauty ; they are liars who have said and written it ; among others M. Buchanan,-^ who ill returned the kindnesses the queen had done him both in France and Scotland in saving liis life and relieving him from banish- ment. It would have been better had he employed his most excellent knowledge in speaking better of her, and not about the amours of Bothwell ; even to transcribing sonnets she had made, which those who knew her poesy and her learning have always said vrere never written by her ; nor did they judge less falsely that amour, for Bothwell was a most ugly man, with as bad a grace as could be seen. But if this one [Buchanan] said no good, others have written a noble book upon her innocence, wliich I have seen, and which declared and proved it so that the poorest minds took hold of it and even her enemies paid heed ; but 1 George Buchanan, historian and Scotch poet, who wrote libels and calumnies against Marie Stuart in prison (French editor.) MARIE STUART 103 they, wishing to ruin her, as they did in the end, were obsti- nate, and never ceased to persecute her until she was put into a strong castle, which they say is that of Saint- Andrew in Scotland. There, having lived nearly one year miserably captive, she was delivered by means of a most honourable and brave gentleman of that land and of good family, named M. de Beton, wliom I knew and saw, and who related to me the whole story, as we were crossing the river before the Louvre, when he came to bring the news to the king. He was nephew to the Bishop of Glasco, ambassador to France, one of the most worthy men and prelates ever known, and who remained a faithful servant to his mistress to her last breath, and is so still, after her death. So then, the queen, being at liberty, did not stay idle; in less than no time she gathered an army of those whom she thought her most faithful adherents, leading it herself, — at its head, mounted on a good horse, dressed in a simple petticoat of white taffetas, with a coif of crepe on her head ; at which I have seen many persons wonder, even the queen- mother, that so tender a princess, and so dainty as she was and had been all her life, should accustom herself at once to the hardships of war. But what would one not endure to reign absolutely and revenge one's self upon a rebellious people, and reduce it to obedience ? Behold this queen, therefore, beautiful and generous, like a second Zenobia, at the head of her army, leading it on to face that of her enemies and to give battle. But alas ! what misfortune ! Just as she thought her side would engage the others, just as she was animating and exhorting them with her noble and valorous words, which might have moved the rocks, they raised their lances without fighting, and, first on one side and then upon another, threw down their arms, em- braced, and were friends ; and all, confederated and sworn 104 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. together, plotted to seize the queen, and make her prisonei and take her to England. M. Coste, the steward of her household, a gentleman of Auvergne, related this to the queen-mother, having come from there, and met her at Saint-Maur, where he told it also to many of us. After this she was taken to England, where she was lodged in a castle and so closely confined in captivity that she never left it for eighteen or tvventy years until her death ; to which she was sentenced too cruelly for the reasons, such as they were, that were given on her trial ; but the principal, as I hold on good authority, was that the Queen of England never liked her, Vjut was always and for a long time jealous of her beauty, which far surpassed her own. That is what jealousy is ! — and for religion too ! So it was that this princess, after her long imprisonment, was condemned to death and to have lier head cut off; this judgment was pronounced upon her two months before she was executed. Some say that she knew nothing of it until they went to execute her. Others declare that it was told to her two months earlier, as the queen-mother, who was greatly distressed, was informed at Coignac, where she then was ; and she was even told of this particular : no sooner was the judgment pronounced than Queen Marie's chamber and bed were hung with black. The queen-mother tiiereon praised the firmness of the Queen of Scotland and said she had never seen or heard tell of any queen more steadfast in adversity. I was present when she said this, but I never thought th-} Queen of England would let her die, — not esteeming her so cruel as all that. Of her own nature she was not (though she was in this). I also thought that M. de Bellievre, whom the king despatched to save her life, would have worked out something good ; nevertheless, he gained nothing. MARIE STUART. 105 But to come to this pitiful death, which no one can describe without great compassion. On the seventeenth of February of the year one thousand five hundred and eighty- seven, theie came to the place where the queen was prisoner, a castle called Fodringhaye, the commissioners of the Queen of England, sent by her (I shall not give their names, as it would serve no end) about two or three o'clock in the afternoon ; and in presence of Paulet, her guardian or jailer, read aloud their commission to the prisoner touching her execution, declaring to her that the next morning they should proceed to it, and admonishing her to be ready between seven and eight o'clock. She, without in any way being surprised, thanked them for their good news, saying that nothing could be better for her than to come to the end of her misery ; and that for long, ever since her detention in England, she had resolved and prepared herself to die ; entreating, nevertheless, the commissioners to grant her a little time and leisure to make her will and put her affairs in order, — inasmuch as all de- pended upon their will, as their commission said. To which the Comte de Cherusbery [Earl of Shrewsbury] replied rather roughly : " No, no, madame, you must die. Hold yourself ready between seven and eight to-morrow morning. We shall not prolong the delay by a moment." There was one, more courteous it seemed to her, who wished to use some demonstrations that might give her more firmness to endure such death. She answered him that she had no need of consolation, at least not as coming from him ; but tliat if he wished to do a good office to her conscience he would send for her almoner to confess her ; which would be an obligation that surpassed all others. As for her body, she said she did not think they would be so inhuman as to deny her the right of sepulture. To this he replied that 106 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. she must not expect it ; so that she was forced to write her confession, which was as follows : — " I have to-day been combated for my religion ard to make me receive the consolation of heretics. You will hear from Bourgoing and others that I have faithfully made protesta- tion of my faith, in which I choose to die. I requested to have you here, to make my confession and to receive my sacrament ; this has been cruelly refused to me, also the removal of my body, and the power to freely make my will, or to write aught, except through their hands. In default of that, I confess the grievousness of my sins in general, as I had expected to make to you in particulars ; entreating you, in God's name, to watch and pray with me this night for the forgiveness of my sins, and to send me absolution and pardon for all the offences which I have committed. I shall endeavour to see you in their presence, as they have granted me ; and if it is permitted I shall ask pardon of you before them all. Advise me of the proper prayers to use this night and to-morrow morning, for the time is short and I have no leisure to write ; I shall recommend you like the rest, and especially that your benefices may be preserved and secured to you, and I shall commend you to the king. I have no more leisure ; advise me in writing of all you think good for my salvation." That done, and having thus provided for the salvation of her soul before all things else, she lost no time, though little remained to her (yet long enough to have shaken the firmest constancy, but in her they saw no fear of death, only much content to leave these earthly miseries), in writing to our king, to tlie queen-mother, whom she honoured much, to Monsieur and Madame de Guise, and other private per- sons, letters truly very piteous, but all aiming to let them know that to her latest hour she had not lost memory of MARIE STUART. 107 friends ; and also the contentment she received in seeins herself delivered from so many woes by which for one and twenty years she had been crushed ; also she sent presents to all, of a value and price in keeping with a poor, unfortu- nate, and captive queen. After this, she summoned her household, from the highest to the lowest, and opened her coffers to see how much money remained to her ; this she divided to each according to the service she had had from them ; and to her women she gave what remained to her of rings, arrows, headgear, and accoutrements ; telling them that it was with much regret she had no more with which to reward them, but assuring them that her son would make up for her deficiency ; and she begged her maitre d'hotel to say this to her said son ; to whom she sent her blessing, praying him not to avenge her death, leaving all to God to order according to His holy will. Then she bade them farewell without a tear ; on the contrary she consoled them, saying they must not weep to see her on the point of blessedness in exchange for all the sorrows she had had. After which she sent them from her chamber, except her women. It now being night, she retired to her oratory, where she prayed to God two hours on her bare knees upon the ground, for her women saw them ; then she returned to her room and said to them : " I think it would be best, my friends, if I ate something and went to bed, so that to-morrow I may do nothing unworthy of me, and that my heart may not fail me." What generosity and what courage I She did as she said ; and taking only some toast with wine she went to bed, where she slept little, but spent the night chiefly in prayers and orisons. She rose about two hours before dawn and dressed her- self as properly as she could, and better than usual ; taking 108 THE BOOK OF TIIE LADIES. a gown of black velvet, which she had reserved from her other accoutrements, saying to her women : " My friends, I would rather have left you this attire than that of yesterday, hut I think I ought to go to death a little honourably and have upon me something more than common. Here is a handkerchief, which I also reserved, to bind my eyes when I go there ; I give it to you, ma mie (speaking to one of her women), for I wish to receive that last office from you." After this, she retired to her oratory, having bid them adieu once more and kissed them, — giving them many par- ticulars to tell the king, the queen, and her relations ; not things that tended to vengeance, but the contrary. Then she took the sacrament by means of a consecrated wafer which the good Pope Pius V. had sent her to serve in some emergency, the which she had always most sacredly pre- served and guarded. Having said her prayers, which were very long, it now being fully morning she returned to her chamber, and sat beside the fire ; still talking to her women and comforting them, instead of their comforting her ; she said that the joys of the world were nothing ; that she ought to serve as a warninfT to the rrreatest of the earth as well as to the o o smallest, for she, having been cpeen of the kingdoms of France and Scotland, one by nature, the other by fortune, after triumphing in the midst of all honours and grandeurs, was reduced to the hands of an executioner ; innocent, how- ever, which consoled her. She told them their Ijcst pattern was that she died in the Catholic religion, holy and good, which she would never abandon to her latest brentli, having been baptized therein ; and that she wanted no faiiie after her death, except that they would publish her iiiinness througliout all Prance when tliey returned tlierc, as she be[i"ed of them ; and further, thou'ih she knew tbev would MARIE STUART. 109 have much heart-break to see her on the scaffold performing this tragedy, yet she wished them to witness her death ; knowing well that none would be so faithful in making the report of what was now to happen. As she ended these words some one knocked roughly on the door. Her women, knowing it was the hour they were coming to fetch her, wanted to make resistance ; but she said to them : " My friends, it will do no good ; open the door." First there entered a man with a white stick in his hand, who, without addressing any one, said twice over as he ad- vanced : " I have come — I have come." The queen, not doubting that he announced to her the moment of execu- tion, took a little ivory cross in her hand. Next came the above-named commissioners ; and when they had entered, the queen said to them : " Well, messieurs, you have come to fetch me. I am ready and well resolved to die ; and I think the queen, my good sister, does much for me ; and you likewise who are seeking me. Let us go." They, seeing such firmness accompanied by so extreme a beauty and great gentleness, were much astonished, for never had she seemed more beautiful, having a colour in her cheeks which embellished her. Thus Boccaccio wrote of Sophonisba in her adversity, after the taking of her husband and the town, speaking to Massi- nissa : " You would have said," he relates, " that her misfor- time made her more beauteous ; it assisted the sweetness of her face and made it more agreeable and desirable." The commissioners were greatly moved to some compas- sion. Still, as she left the room they would not let her women follow her, fearing that by their lamentations, sighs, and outcries they would disturb the execution. But the queen said to them : " What, gentlemen ! would you treat me with such rigour as not to allow my women to accom- 110 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. pany me to death ? Grant me at least this favour." "W^iich they did, on her pledging her word she would impose silence upon them when the time came to admit tliem. The place of execution was in the hall, where they had raised a broad scaffold, about twelve feet square and two high, covered with a shabby black cloth. She entered this hall without any change of countenance but with majesty and gi-ace, as though she were entering a ballroom, where in other days she had so excellently shone. As she neared the scaffold she called to her mattre d'hotel and said, " Help me to mount ; it is the last service I shall receive from you ; " and she repeated to him what she had already told him in her chamber he was to tell her sou. Then, being on the scaffold, she asked for her almoner, beg- ging the officers who were there to permit him to come to her, which they flatly refused, — the Earl of Kent saying to her that he pitied her greatly for thus clinging to super- stitions of a past age, and that she ought to bear the cross of Christ in her heart and not in her hand. To which she made answer that it w^as difficult to bear so beautiful an image in the hand without the heart being touched bv emotion and memory ; and that the most becoming thing in a Christian person was to carry a real sign of the redemption to the death before her. Then, seeing that she could not have her almoner, she asked that her women might come as they had promised her ; which was done. One of them, on entering the hall, seeing her mistress on the scaffold among her execu- tioners, could not keep from crying out and moaning and losing her control; but the queen instantly laying her finger on her lips, she restrained herself. Her Majesty then began to make her protestations, namely: that never had she plotted against the State, nor asainst the life of the queen, her good sister, — except in trying to regain MARIE STUART. Ill her liberty, as all captives may. But she saw plainly that the cause of her death was religion, and she esteemed herself very happy to finish her life for that cause. She begged the queen, her good sister, to have pity upon her poor ser- vants whom she held captive, because of the affection they had shown in seeking the liberty of their mistress, inasmuch as she was now to die for all. They then brought to her a minister to exhort her [the Dean of Peterborough], but she said to him in English, " Ah I my friend, give yourself patience ; " declaring that she would not hold converse with him nor hear any talk of his sect, for she had prepared herself to die without counsel, and that persons like him could not give her consolation or con- tentment of mind. Notwithstanding this, seeing that he continued his prayers in his jargon, she never ceased to say her own in Latin, raising her voice above that of the minister. After which she said again that she esteemed herself very happy to shed the last drop of her blood for her religion, rather than live longer and wait till nature had completed the full course of her life ; and that she hoped in Him whose cross she held in her hand, before whose feet she was prostrate, that this tem- poral death, borne for Him, would be for her the passage, the entrance to, and the beginning of life eternal with the angels and the blessed, who would receive her blood and present it before God, in abolition of her sins ; and them she prayed to be her intercessors for the obtaining of pardon and mercy. Such were her prayers, being on her knees on the scaffold, which she made with a fervent heart ; adding others for the pope, the kings of France, and even for the Queen of England, praying God to illuminate her with his Holy Spirit ; piaying also for her son and for tlie islands of Britain and Scotland that they might be converted. 112 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. That done, she called her women to help her to remove her black veil, her headdress, and other ornaments ; and as the executioner tried to touch her she said, " Ah ! my friend, do not touch me ! " But she could not prevent his doing so, for after they had lowered her robe to the waist, that villain pulled her roughly by the arm and took off her doublet [pourpoinf] and the body of her petticoat [corps de cotte] with its low collar, so that her neck and her beautiful bosom, more white than alabaster, were bare and uncovered. She arranged herself as quickly as she could, saying she was not accustomed to strip before others, especially so large a company (it is said there were four or five hundred persons present), nor to employ the services of such a valet. The executioner then knelt down and asked her pardon ; on which she said that she pardoned him, and all who were the authors of her death with as much good-will as she prayed that God would show in forgiving her sins. Then she told her woman to whom she had given the handkerchief to bring it to her. She wore a cross of gold, in which was a piece of the true cross, with the image of Our Saviour upon it ; this she wished to give to one of her ladies, but the executioner prevented her, although Her Majesty begged him, saying that the lady would pay him three times its value. Then, all being ready, she kissed her ladies, and bade them retire with her benediction, making the sign of the cross upon them. And seeing that one of them could not re?^ train her sobs she imposed silence, saying she was bound by a promise that they would cause no trouble by their tears and moans ; and she commanded them to withdraw quietly, and pray to God for her, and bear faithful testimony to her death in the ancient and sacred Catholic religion. One of the women having bandaged her eyes with the MARIE STUART. 113 handkerchief, she threw herself instantly on her knees with great courage and without the slightest demonstration or sign that she feared death. Her firmness was such that all present, even her enemies, were moved ; there were not four persons present who could keep from weeping ; they thought the sight amazing, and condemned themselves in their consciences for such injustice. And because the minister of Satan importuned her, trying to kill her soul as well as her body, and troubling her prayers, she raised her voice to surmount his, and said in Latin the psalm : In te, Domine, speravi ; non confundar in cctermtm ; which she recited throughout. Having ended it, she laid her head upon the block, and, as she repeated once more the words. In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, the executioner struck her a strong blow with the axe, that drove her headgear into her head, which did not fall until the third blow, — to make her martyrdom the greater and more glorious, though it is not the pain but the cause that makes the martyr. This done, he took the head in his hand, and showing it to all present said : " God save the queen, Elizabeth ! Thus perish the enemies of the gospel ! " So saying, he uncoifed her in derision to show her hair, now white ; which, however, she had never shrunk from showing, twisting and curling it as when her hair was beautiful, so fair and golden ; for it was not age had changed it at thirty-five years old (being now but forty) ; it was the griefs, the woes, the sadness she had borne in her kmgdom and in her prison. This hapless tragedy ended, her poor ladies, anxious for the honour of their mistress, addressed themselves to Paulet, her jailer, begging him that the executioner should not touch the body, but that they might be allowed to disrobe it after all the spectators had withdrawn, so that no indignity might 114 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. be done to it, promising to return all the clothing, and what- ever else he might ask or claim ; but that cursed man sent them roughly away and ordered them to leave the hall. Then the executioner unclothed her and handled her at his discretion, and when he had done what he wished the body was carried to a chamber adjoining that of her serving-men, and carefully locked in, for fear they should enter and en- deavour to perform any good and pious office. And to their grief and distress was added this : that they could see her through a hole, half covered by a piece of green drugget torn from her Ijilliard table. What brutal indifference ! What animosity and indignity ! — not even to have bought her a black cloth a little more worthy of her! The poor body was left there loug in that state until it be- gan to corrupt so that they were forced to salt and embalm it, — but slightly, to save cost ; after which they put it in a leaden coffin, where it was kept for seven months and then carried to profane ground around the temple of Petersbrouch [Peterborough Cathedral]. True it is that this church is dedi- cated to the name of Saint Peter, and that Queen Catherine of Spain is buried there as a Catholic ; but the place is now profane, as are all the churches in England in these days. There are some who have said and written, even the Eng- lish who have made a book on this death and its causes, that tlie spoils of the late queen were taken from the executioner by paying him the value in money of her clothes and her royal ornaments. The cloth with which the scaffold was covered, even the boards of it were partly burned and partly washed, for fear that in times to come they might serve superstition ; that is to say, for fear that any careful Catholic might some day buy and preserve them with respect, honour, and reverence (a fear which may possibly serve as a prophecy and augury), as the ancient Fathers had a practice of keep- MARIE STUART. 115 ing relics and of taking care with devotion of the monuments of martyrs. In these days heretics do nothing of the kind. Quia omnia quce martyt'um erant, cremabant, as Eusebius says, et cineres in Mhodanum s^argebant, ut cum corporibus interiret eorum quoque 7nemoria. Nevertheless, the memory of this queen, in spite of all things, will live forever in glory and in triumph. Here, then, is the tale of her death, which I hold from the report of two damoiselles there present, very honourable certainly, very faithful to their mistress, and obedient to her commands in thus bearing testimony to her firmness and to her religion. They returned to France after losing her, for they were French ; one was a daughter of Mme. de Eard, whom I knew in France as one of the ladies of the late queen. I think that these two honourable dpmoiselles would have caused the most barbarous of men to weep at hearing so piteous a tale ; which they made the more lamentable by tears, and by their tender, doleful, and noble language. I also learned much from a book which has been pub- lished, entitled " The Martyrdom of the Queen of Scotland, Dowager of France." Alas ! that being our queen did her no service. It seems to me that being such they ought to have feared our vengeance for putting her to death; and tliey would have thought a hundred times before they came to it, if our king had chosen to take the mitiative. But, because he hated the Messieurs de Guise, his cousins, he took no pains except as formal duty. Alas ! what could that poor innocent do ? This is what many asked. Others say that he made many formal appeals. It is true that he sent to the Queen of England M. de Bellievre, one of the greatest and wisest senators of France and the ablest, who did not fail to otl'er all his arguments, with the king's 116 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. prayers and threats, and do all else that he could; and among other things he declared that it did not belong to one king or sovereign to put to death another king or sovereign, over whom he had no power either from God or man. I have never known a generous person who did not say that the Queen of England w^ould have won immortal glory had she used mercy to the Scottish queen ; and also she would be exempt from the risk of vengeance, however tardy, which awaits her for the shedding of innocent blood that cries aloud for it. It is said that the English queen was well advised of this ; but not only did she pass over the advice of many of her kingdom, but also that of many great Protestant princes and lords both in France and Germany, — such as the Prince de Conde and Casimir, since dead, and the Prince of Orange and others, who had sub- scribed to this violent death while not expecting it, but afterwards felt their conscience burdened, inasmuch as it did not concern them and brought them no advantage, and they did it only to please the queen ; but, in truth, it did them inestimable detriment. They say, too, that Queen Elizabeth, when she sent to notify that poor Queen Marie of this melancholy sentence, assured her that it was done with great and sad regret on her part, under constraint of Parhament whicli urgi/d it on her. To which Queen Marie answered: "She has much more power than that to make them ol)edient to her will when it pleases her ; for she is the princess, or more truly the prince, who has made herself tlie most feared and reverenced." Xow, I rely on the truth of all things, whicli time will reveal. Queen Marie will live glorious in this world and in the other ; and the time will come in a few years when some MARIE STUART. 117 good pope will canonize her in memory of the martyrdom she suffered for the honour of God and of his Law. It is not to be doubted that if that great, valiant, and generous prince, the late M. de Guise, the last [Henri, le Balafr^, assassinated at Blois], was not dead, vengeance for so noble a queen and cousin thus murdered would not still be unborn. I have said enough on so pitiful a subject, which I end thus : — This queen, of a beauty so incomparable. Was, with too great injustice, put to death : To sustain that heart of faith inviolable Can it be there are none to avenge the wrong ? One there is who has written her epitaph in Latin verses, the substance of which is as follows : " Nature had produced this queen to be seen of all the world : with great admira- tion was she seen for her beauty and virtues so long as she lived : but England, envious, placed her on a scaffold to be seen in derision : yet was well deceived ; for the sight turned praise and admiration to her, and glory and thanksgiving to God." I must, before I finish, say a word here in reply to those whom I have heard speak ill of her for the death of Chastel- lard, whom the queen condemned to death in Scotland, — lay- ing upon her that she had justly suffered for making others suffer. L^pon that count there is no justice, and it should never have been made. Those who know the history will never blame our queen ; and, for that reason, I shall here relate it for her justification. Chastellard was a gentleman of Dauphin^, of good family and condition, for he was great-nephew on his mother's side of that brave M. de Bayard, whom they say he resembled in figure, which in him was medium, very beautiful and slender, 118 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. as they say M. de Bayard had also. He was very adroit at arms, and inclined in all ways to honourable exercises, such as firing at a mark, playing at tennis, leaping, and dancing. In short, he was a most accomplished gentleman ; and as for his soul, it was also very noble ; he spoke well, and "wrote of the best, even in rhyme, as well as any gentle- man in France, using a most sweet and lovely poesy, like a knight. He followed M. d'Amville, so-called then, now M. le Conndtable ; but when we v.'ere with M. le Grand Prieur, of the house of Lorraine, who conducted the queen [to Scotland] the said Chastellard was with us, and, in this company became known to the queen for his charming actions, above all for his rhymes ; among which he made some to please her in translation from Italian (which he spoke and knew well), beginning, Che giova posseder cittci e rcrjni ; which is a very well made sonnet, the substance of which is as follows : " AVhat serves her to possess so many kingdoms, cities, towns, and provinces, to command so many peoples, and be respected, feared, admired of all, if still to sleep a widow, lone and cold as ice ? " He made also other rhymes, most beautiful, which I have seen written by his hand, for they never were imprinted, that I know. The queen, therefore, who loved letters, and principally poems, for sometimes she made dainty ones herself, was pleased in seeing those of Chastellard, and even made re- sponse, and, for that reason, gave him good cheer and enter- tained him often. But he, in secrecy, was kindled by a flame too high, the which its object could not hinder, for who can shield herself from love ? In times gone by the most chaste goddesses and dames were loved, and still are loved ; indeed we love their marble statues ; but for that MARIE STUART. 119 no lady has been blamed unless she yielded to it. There- fore, kindle who will these sacred fires ! Chastellard returned with all our troop to France, much grieved and desperate in leaving so beautiful an object of his love. After one year the civil war broke out in France. He, who belonged to the Eeligion [Protestant], struggled within himself which side to take, whether to go to Orleans with the others, or stay with M. d'Amville, and make war against his faith. On the one hand, it seemed to him too bitter to go against his conscience ; on the other, to take up arms against his master displeased him hugely ; wherefore he re- solved to fight for neither the one nor yet the other, but to banish himself and go to Scotland, let fight who would, and pass the time away. He opened this project to M. d'Amville and told him his resolution, begging him to write letters in his favour to the queen ; which he obtained : then, taking leave of one and all. he went ; I saw him go ; he bade me adieu and told me in part his resolution, we being friends. He made his voyage, which ended happily, so that, having arrived in Scotland and discoursing of his intentions to the queen, she received him kindly and assured him he was wel- come. But he, abusing such good cheer and seeking to attack the sun, perished like Phaeton; for, driven by love and passion, he was presumptuous enough to hide beneath the bed of her Majesty, where he was discovered when she retired. The queen, not wishing to make a scandal, par- doned him ; availing herself of that good counsel which the lady of honour gives to her mistress in the " Xovels of the Queen of iSTavarre," when a seigneur of her brother's Court, slipping through a trap-door made by him in the alcove, seeking to win her, brought nothing back but shame and scratches : she wishing to punish his temerity and complain 120 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. of him to her brother, the lady of honour counselled her that, since the seigneur had won nought but shame and scratches, it was for her honour as a lady of such mark not to be talked of ; for the more it was contended over, the more it would go to the nose of the world and the mouth of gossips. Our Queen of Scotland, being wise and prudent; passed this scandal by ; but the said Chastellard, not content and more than ever mad with love, returned for the second time, forgetting both his former crime and pardon. Then the queen, for her honour, and not to give occasion to her women to think evil, and also to her people if it w^ere known, lost patience and gave him up to justice, which condemned him quickly to be beheaded, in view of the crime of such an act. The day having come, before he died he had in his hand the hymns of M. de Eonsard ; and, for his eternal consolation, he read from end to end the Hymn of Death (which is well done, and proper not to make death abhorrent), taking no help of other spiritual book, nor of minister or confessor. Having ended that reading wholly, he turned to the spot where he thought the queen must be, and cried in a loud voice : "Adieu, most beautiful, most cruel princess in all the world ! " then, firmly stretching his neck to the executioner, he let himself be killed very easily. Some have wished to discuss why it was that he called her cruel ; whether because she had no pity on his love, or on his life. But what should she have done ? If, after her first pardon she had granted him a second, she would on all sides have been slandered ; to save her honour it was needful that the law should take its course. That is the end of this history. MARIE STUART. 121 " Well, they may say what they will, many a true heart will be sad for Mary Stuart, e'en if all be true men say of her." That speech, which Walter Scott puts into the mouth of one of the personages in his novel of " The Abbot " at the moment when he is preparing the reader for an intro- duction to the beautiful queen, remains the last word of posterity as it was of contemporaries, — the conclusion of history as of poesy. Elizabeth living triumphed, and her policy after her lives and triumphs still, so that Protestantism and the British empire are one and the same thing. Marie Stuart suc- cumbed, in her person and in that of her descendants ; Charles I. under the axe, James II. in exile, each continued and added to his heritage of faults, imprudences, and calamities ; the whole race of the Stuarts was cut off, and seems to have deserved it. But, vanquished in the order of things and under the empire of fact, and even under that of inexorable reason, the beautiful queen has regained all in the world of imagination and of pity. She has found, from century to century, knights, lovers, and avengers. A few years ago, a Russian of distinction, Prince Alexander Labanoff, began, with incomparable zeal, a search through the archives, the collections, the libraries of Europe, for documents emanating directly from Marie Stuart, the most insignificant as well as the most important of her letters, in order to connect them and so make a nucleus of history, and also an authentic shrine, not doubting that interest, serious and tender interest, would rise, more powerful still, from the bosom of truth itself. On the appearance of this collection of Prince Labanoff, M. Mignet produced, from 1847 to 1850, a series of articles in the " Journal des Savants," in which, not content with appreciating the prince's docu- ments, he presented from himself new documents, hitherto 122 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. unpublished and affording new ligMs. Since then, leaving the form of criticism and dissertation, M. Mignard has taken this fine subject as a whole, and has written a complete narrative upon it, grave, compact, interesting, and definitive, which he is now publishing [1851]. In the meantime, about a year ago, there appeared a " History of Marie Stuart " by M. Dargaud, a writer of talent, whose book has been much praised and much read. M. Dargaud made, in his own way, various researches about the heroine of his choice ; he went expressly to England and Scotland, and visited as a pilgrim all the places and scenes of Marie Stuart's sojourns and captivities. While drawing abundantly from preceding writers, M, Dargaud does them justice with effusion and cordiality ; he sheds through every line of his history the sentiment of exalted pity and poesy inspired within him by the memory of that royal and Catholic victim ; he deserves the fine letter which Mme. Sand wrote him from Xohant, April 10, 1851, in which she congratu- lates him, almost without criticism, and speaks of Marie Stuart with charm and eloquence. If I do not dwell at greater length upon the work of M. Dargaud, it is, I must avow, becau-e I am not of that too emotional school which softens and enervates history. I think that history should not neces- sarily be dull and v/earisome, but still less do I think it sliould be impassioned, sentimental, and as if magnetic. Without wishing to depreciate the qualities of M. Dargaud, which are too much in the taste of the day not to be their own recommendation, I shall follow in preference a more severe historian, whose judgment and whose method of procedure inspire me with confidence. ]\rarie Stuart, born December 8, 1542, six days before the death of her father, who was then combating, like all the kings his predecessors, a turbulent nobility, began as an MARIE STUART. 123 orphan her fickle and unfortunate destiny. Storms assailed her in her cradle, — " As if, e'en then, inhuman Fortune Would suckle me with sadness and with pain," as an old poet, in I know not what tragedy, has made her say. Crowned at the age of nine months, disputed already in marriage between the French and English parties, eacli desiring to prevail in Scotland, she was early, through the influence of her mother, Marie de Guise (sister of the illus- trious Guises), bestowed upon the Dauphin of France, the son of King Henri 11. August 13, 1548, Marie Stuart, then rather less than six years old, landed at Brest. Betrothed to the young dauphin, who, on his father's death became Frangois XL, she was brought up among the children of Henri II, and Catherine de' Medici, and remained in France, first as dau- phine, then as queen, until the premature death of her husband. She lived there in every respect as a French princess. These twelve or thirteen years in France were her joy and her charm, and the source of her ruin. She grew up in the bosom of the most polished, most learned, most gallant Court of those times, shining there in her early bloom like a rare and most admired marvel, know- ing music and all the arts (divince Palladis artcs), learning the languages of antiquity, speaking themes in Latin, supe- rior in French rhetoric, enjoying an intercourse with poets, and being herself their rival with her poems. Scotland, during all this time, seemed to her a barbaric and savage land, which she earnestly hoped never to see again, or, at any rate, never to inhabit. Trained to a policy wholly of the Court and wholly personal, they made her sign at Fon- tainebleau at the time of her marriage (1558) a secret deed of gift of the kingdom of Scotland to the kings of France, at the same time that she publicly gave adherence to the 124 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. conditions which the commissioners from Scotland had attached to the marriage, conditions under which she pledged herself to maintain the integrity, the laws, and the liberties of her native land. It was at this very moment that she secretly made gift to the kings of France of her whole king- dom by an act of her own good- will and power. The Court of France prompted her to that imprudent treachery at the age of sixteen. Another very impolitic imprudence, which proclaimed itself more openly, was committed when Henri XL, on the death of Mary Tudor, made Marie Stuart, the dauphine, bear the arms of England beside those of Scotland, thus presenting her thenceforth as a declared rival and com- petitor of Elizabeth. When Marie Stuart suddenly lost her husband (December 5, 1560), and it was decided that she, a widow at eighteen, should, instead of remaining in her dowry of Touraine, re- turn to her kingdom of Scotland to bring order to the civil troubles there existing, universal mourning took place in the world of young French seigneurs, noble ladies, and poets. The latter consigned their regrets to many poems which pict- ure Marie Stuart to the life in this decisive liour, the first really sorrowful hour she had ever known. We see her refined, gracious, of a delicate, fair complexion, the form and bust of queen or goddess, — L'Hopital himself had said of her, after his fashion, in a grave epithalamium : — *' Adspectu veneranda, putes ut Numen inesse : Tantus in ore decor, majestas regia tanta est ! " — of a long hand, elegant and slender 'gracilis), an alabaster forehead dazzling beneath the crape, and with golden hair — which needs a brief remark. It is a poet (Eonsard) who speaks of " the gold of lier ringed and braided hair," and poets, as we know, employ their words a little vaguely. Mme. Sand, speaking of a portrait she had seen as a child MARIE STUART. 125 in the English Convent, says, without hesitation, " Marie was beautiful, but red-haired." M. Dargaud speaks of an- other portrait, " in which a sunray lightens," he says rather oddly, " the curls of her living and electric hair." But Walter Scott, reputed the most correct of historical romance- writers, in describing Marie Stuart a prisoner in Lochleven Castle, shows us, as though he had seen them, her thick tresses of " dark brown," which escaped now and then from her coif. Here we are far from the red or golden tints, and I see no other way of conciliating these differences than to rest on " that hair so beautiful, so blond and fair " [si blonds et cen- dres'l which Brantome, an ocular witness, admired, — -hair that captivity whitened, leaving the poor queen of forty-six " quite bald " in the hands of her executioner, as I'Estoile relates. But at nineteen, the moment of her departure from France, the young widow was in all the glory of her beauty, except for a brilliancy of colour, which she lost at the death of her first husband, giving place to a purer whiteness. Withal a lively, graceful, and sportive mind, and French raillery, an ardent soul, capable of passion, open to desire, a heart which knew not how to draw back when flame or fancy or enchantment stirred it. Such was the queen, ad- venturous and poetical, who tore herself from France in tears, sent by politic uncles to recover her authority amid the roughest and most savage of " Frondes." Scotland, since IMarie Stuart left it as a child, had under- gone great changes ; the principal was the Eeformed religion w^hich had taken root there and extended itself vigorously. The great reformer Knox preached the new doctrine, whicli found in Scotland stern, energetic souls ready made to receive it. The old strug;Q;le of the lords and barons asjainst the kings was complicated and redoubled now by that of cities and people against the brilliant beliefs of the Court and the 126 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Catholic hierarchy. The birth of modern society, of civil equality, of respect for the rights of all was painfully work- ing itself out through barbaric scenes, and by means of fanaticism itself. Alone and without counsel, contending with the lords and the nobility as her ancestors had done, Marie Stuart, quick, impulsive, subject to predilections and to antipathies, was already insufficient for the work ; what therefore could it be when she found herself face to face with a religious party, born and growing during recent years, face to face with an argumentative, gloomy party, moral and daring, discussing rationally, Bible in hand, the right of kings, and pushing logic even into prayer ? Coming from a literary and artificial Court, there was nothing in her that could comprehend these grand and voiceless movements of the people, either to retard them or turn them to her own profit by adapting herself to them. "She returned," says M. Mignet, " full of regrets and disgust, to the barren moun- tains and the uncultured inhabitants of Scotland. ]\Iore lovable than able, very ardent and in no way cautious, she returned with a grace that was out of keeping with her sur- roundings, a dangerous beauty, a keen but variable intellect, a generous but rash soul, a taste for the arts, a love of ad- venture, and all the passions of a woman joined to the exces- sive liberty of a widow." And to complicate the peril of this precarious situation she had for neighbour in England a rival queen, Elizabeth, whom slie had first offended by claiming her title, and next, and no less, by a feminine and proclaimed superiority of beauty and grace, — a rival queen capable, energetic, rigid, and dissimulating, representing the contrary religious opinion, and surrounded by able counsellors, firm, consistent, and committed to the same cause. The seven years that :\Iarie Stuart spent in Scotland after her return from Erance MARIE STUART. 127 (August 19, 1561) to her imprisonment (May 18, 1568) are filled with all the blunders and all the faults that could be committed by a young and thoughtless princess, impulsive, unreflecting, and without shrewdness or ability except in the line of her passion, never in view of a general political pur- pose. The policy of Mme. de Longueville, during the Fronde, seems to me of the same character. As to other faults, the moral faults of poor Marie Stuart, they are as well known and demonstrated to-day as faults of that kind can well be. Mme. Sand, always very indul- gent, regards as the three black spots upon her life the abandonment of Chastellard, her feigned caresses to the hapless Darnley, and her forgetfulness of Bothwell. Chastellard, as we know, was a gentleman of Dauphin^ musician and poet, in the train of the servitors and adorers of the queen, who at first was very agreeable to her, Chastel- lard was one of the troop who escorted Marie Stuart to Scotland, and sometime later, urged by his passion, he returned there. But not knowing how to restrain himself, or to keep, as became him, to poetic passion while waiting to inspire, if he could, a real one, he was twice discovered beneath the bed of the queen ; the second time she lost patience and turned him over to the law. Poor Chastellard was beheaded ; he died reciting, so they say, a hymn of Eousard's, and crying aloud : " cruel Lady ! " After so stern an act, to which she was driven in fear of scandal and to put her honour above all attainder and suspicion, Marie Stuart had, it would seem, but one course to pursue, namely : to remain the most severe and most virtuous of princesses. But her severity for Chastellard, though shown for effect, is merely a peccadillo in comparison with her conduct to Darnley, her second husband. By marrying this young- man (July 29, 1565), her vassal, but of the race of the 128 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Stuarts and her own family, Marie escaped the diverse political combinations which were striving to attract her to a second marriage; and it would have been, perhaps, a sensible thing to do, if she had not done it as an act of caprice and passion. But she fell in love with Darnley in a single day, and became disgusted in the next. This tall, weakly youth, timid and conceited by turns, with a heart " soft as wax," had nothing in him which subjugates a woman and makes her respect him. A woman such as Marie Stuart, changeable, ardent, easily swayed, with the sentiment of her weakness and of her impulsiveness, likes to find a master and at moments a tyrant in the man she loves, whereas she soon despises her slave and creature when he is nought but that ; she much prefers an arm of iron to an effeminate hand. Less than six months after her marriage Marie, wholly dis- gusted, consoled herself with an Italian, David Eiccio, a man thirty-two years of age, equally well fitted for business or pleasure, who advised her and served her as secretary, and was gifted with a musical talent well suited to commend him to women in other ways. The feeble Darnley confided his jealousy to the discontented lords and gentlemen, and they, in the interests of their faction, prodded his vengeance and offered to serve it with their sword. ^Ministers and Presbyterian pastors took part in the affair. The whole was plotted and managed with perfect unanimity as a chastise- ment of Heaven, and, what is more, by help of deeds and formal agreements which simulated legality. Tlie queen and her favourite, apparently before they had any suspicions, were taken in a net. David Eiccio was seized by the con- spirators while supping in ^Marie's cabinet (March 9, 1566), Darnley being present, and from there he was dragged into the next room and stabbed. Marie, at this date, was six MAEIE STUART. 129 months pregnant by her husband. On that day, outraged in honour and embittered in feeling, she conceived for Darnley a deeper contempt mingled with horror, and swore to avenge herself on the murderers. For this purpose she bided her time, she dissimulated ; for the first time in her life she con- trolled herself and restrained her actions. She became politic — as the nature is of passionate women — only in the interests of her passion and her vengeance. Here is the gravest and the most in-eparable incident of her life. Even after we have fully represented to ourselves what the average morahty of the sixteenth century, with all the treachery and atrocities it tolerated, was, we are scarcely prepared for this. JNIarie Stuart's first desire was to revenge herself on the lords and gentlemen who had lent their dag- gers to Darnley, rather than on her weak and timid husband. To reach her end she reconciled herself with the latter and detached him from the conspirators, his accomphces. She forced him to disavow them, thus degrading and sinking him in his own estimation. At this point she remained as long as a new passion was not added to her supreme contempt. Meantime her child was born (June 19), and she made Darnley the father of a son who resembled both parents on their worst sides, the future James I. of England, that soul of a casuist in a king. But by this time a new passion was budding in the open heart of Marie Stuart. He whom she now chose had neither Darnley's feebleness nor the salon graces of a Riccio ; he was the Earl of Bothwell, a man of thirty, ugly, but martial in aspect, brave, bold, violent, and capable of daring all things. To him it was that this flexible and tender will was henceforth to cling for its support. Marie Stuart has found her master ; and him she will obey in all things, without scruple, without remorse, as happens always in distracted passion. 130 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. But how rid herself of a husband henceforth odious ? How unite herself to the man she loves and whose ambition is not of a kind to stop half way ? Here again we need — not to excuse, but to explain Marie Stuart — we need to represent to our minds the morality of that day. A goodly number of the same lords who had taken part in Eiccio's murder, and who were leagued together by deeds and docu- ments, offered themselves to the queen, and, for the purpose of recovering favour, let her see the means of getting rid of a husband who was now so irksome. She answered this over- ture by merely speaking of a divorce and the difficulty of obtaining it. But these men, little scrupulous, said to her plainly, by the mouth of Lethington, the ablest and most poHtic of them all : " Madame, give yourself no anxiety ; we, the leaders of the nobility, and the heads of your Grace's Council, will find a way to deliver you from him without prejudice to your son ; and though my Lord Murray, here present (the illegitimate brother of Marie Stuart), is little less scrupulous as a Protestant than your Grace is as a Papist, 1 feel sure that he will look through his fingers, see us act, and say nothing." The word was spoken ; Marie had only to do as her brother did, " look tlirough her fingers," as the vulgar saymg was, and let things go on without taking part in them. She did take a part however ; she led into the trap, by a feigned return of tenderness, the unfortunate Darnley, then convalescing from the small-pox. She removed his suspicions without much trouble, and, recovering her empire over him, persuaded him to come in a litter from Glasgow to Kirk-of-Pield, at the gates of Edinburgh, where there was a species of parsonage, little suitable for the reception of a king and queen, but very convenient for the crime now to be committed. There Darnley perished, strangled with his page, during MARIE STUART. 131 the night of February 9, 1567. The house was blown up by means of a barrel of gunpowder, placed there to give the idea of an accident. During this time Marie had gone to a masked ball at Holyrood, not having quitted her husband until that evening, when all was prepared to its slightest detail. Both- well, who was present for a time at the ball, left Edinburgh after midnight and presided at the killing. These circum- stances are proved in an irrefragable manner by the testimony of witnesses, by the confessions of the actors, and by the let- ters of Marie Stuart, the authenticity of which M. Mignard, with decisive clearness, places beyond all doubt. She felt that in giving herself thus to Bothwell's projects she fur- nished him with weapons against herself and gave him grounds to distrust her in turn. He might say to himself, as the Duke of Norfolk said later, that " the pillow of such a woman was too hard " to sleep upon. During the preparation of this horrible trap she more than once showed her repug- nance to deceive the poor sick dupe who trusted her. "I shall never rejoice," she writes, " through deceiving him who trusts me. Nevertheless, command me in all things. But do not conceive an ill opinion of me ; because you yourself are the cause of this ; for I would never do anything against him for my own particular vengeance." And truly this role of Clytenmestra, or of Gertrude in Hamlet was not in accord- ance with her nature, and could only have been imposed upon her. But passion rendered her for this once insensible to pity, and made her heart (she herself avows it) " as hard as diamond." Marie Stuart soon put the climax to her ill- regulated passion and desires by marrying Both well ; thus revolting the mind of her whole people, whose morality, fanatical as it was, was never in the least depraved, and was far more upright than that of the nobles. The crime was echoed beyond the seas. L'Hopital, that 132 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES, representative of the human conscience in a dreadful era, heard, in his country retreat, of the misguided conduct of her whose early grace and first marriage he had celebrated in his stately epithalamium ; and he now recorded his indignation in another Latin poem, wherein he recounts the horrors of that funereal night, and does not shrink from calling the wife and the young mother " the murderess, alas ! of a father whose child was still at her breast." On the 15th of May, three months — only three months after the murder, at the first smile of spring, the marriage with the murderer was celebrated. Marie Stuart justified in all ways Shakespeare's saying : " Frailty, thy name is Woman." For none was ever more a woman than Marie Stuart. Here I am unable to admit the third reproach of Mme. Sand, that of Marie Stuart's forgetfulness of Bothwell. I see, on the contrary, through all the ol^stacles, all the perils immediately following this marriage, that Marie had no other idea than that of avoiding separation from her violent and domineering husband. She loved him so madly that she said to whosoever might hear her (April, 1567) tliat " she would quit France, England, and her own country, and follow him to the ends of the earth in nought but a white petticoat, rather than be parted from him." And soon after, forced by the lords to tear herself from Bothwell, she reproaches them bitterly, asking but one thing, " that both be put in a vessel and sent away where Fortune led them." It was only en- forced separation, final imprisonment, and the impossibility of communication, which compelled the rupture. It is true that Marie, a prisoner in England, solicited the Parliament of Scotland to annul her marriage witli Bothwell, in the hope she then had of marrying the Duke of Norfolk, who played the lover to herself and crown, thousrh she never saw him. MAKIE STUART. 133 But, Bothwell being a fugitive and ruined, can we reproach Marie Stuart for a project from which she hoped for restora- tion and deliverance ? Her passion for Bothwell had been a delirium, which drove her into connivance with crime. That fever calmed, Marie Stuart turned her mind to the resources which presented themselves, among which was the offer of her hand. Her wrong-doing does not lie there; amid so many infidelities and horrors, it would be pushing delicacy much too far to require eternity of sentiment for the re- mains of an unbridled and bloody passion. That which is due to such passions, when they leave no hatred behind them, that which becomes them best, is oblivion. Such conduct, and such deeds, crowned by her heedless flight into England and the imprudent abandonment of her person to Elizabeth, seem little calculated to make the touch- ing and pathetic heroine we are accustomed to admire and cherish in Marie Stuart. Yet she deserves all pity ; and we have but to follow her through the third and last portion of her life, through that long, unjust, and sorrowful captivity of nineteen years (May 18, 1568, to February 5, 1587) to render it unconsciously. Struggling without defence against a crafty and ambitious rival, liable to mistakes from friends outside, the victim of a grasping and tenacious policy which never let go its prey and took so long a time to torture before devouring it, she never for a single instant fails towards her- self ; she rises ever higher. That faculty of hope which so often had misled her becomes the grace of her condition and a virtue. She moves the whole world in the interest of her misfortunes; she stirs it with a charm all-powerful. Her cause transforms and magnifies itself. It is no longer that of a passionate and heedless woman punished for her frailties and her inconstancy ; it is that of the legitimate heiress of the crown of England, exposed in her dungeon to the eyes of 134 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. the world, a faithful, unshaken Catholic, who refuses to sac- rifice her faith to the interests of her ambition or even to the salvation of her life. The beauty and grandeur of such a role were fitted to stir the tender and naturally believing heart of Marie Stuart. She fills her soul with that role ; she substitutes it, from the first moment of her captivity, for all her former personal sentiments, which, little by little, subside and expire within her as the fugitive occasions which aroused them pass away. She seems to remember them no more than she does the waves and the foam of those brilliant lakes that she has crossed. For nineteen years the whole of Catholicity is disquieted and impassioned about her ; and she is there, half-heroine, half-martyr, making the signal and waving her banner beliiud the bars. Captive that she was, do not accuse her of conspiring against Elizabeth ; for with her ideas of right divine and of absolute kingship from sovereign to sovereign, it was not conspiring, she being a prisoner, to seek for the triumph of her cause ; it was simply pursuing the war. From the moment when Marie Stuart is a prisoner, when we see her crushed, deprived of all that comforts and con- soles, infirm, alas ! with whitened liair before her time, when we hear her, in the longest and most remarkable of her letters to Elizabeth (November 8, 1582), repeating for the twentieth time : " Your prison, without right, without just grounds, has already so destroyed my body that you will soon see an end if this lasts much longer ; so that my enemies have no great time to satisfy their cruelty against me ; nought remains to me but my soul, the which it is not in your power to render captive," — when we dwell on this mixture of pride and plaint, pity carries us along ; our lienrts speak ; the tender charm with which she was endowed, and which acted upon all who approached her, asserts its power and lays its spell upon us even at this distance. It is not MAKIE STUART. 135 by the text of a scribe, nor yet with the logic of a statesman that we judge her ; it is with the heart of a knight, or rather, let me say, with that of a man. Humanity, pity, religion, supreme poetic grace, all those invincible and immortal powers feel themselves concerned in her person and cry to us across the ages. " Bear these tidings," she said to her old Melvil at the moment of death : " that I die firm in my religion, a true Catholic, a true Scotchwoman, a true Frenchwoman." These behefs, these patriotisms and national- ities thus evoked by Marie Stuart have made that long echo that replies to her with tears and love. What reproach can we make to one who, after nineteen years of anguish and moral torture, searched, during the night that preceded her death, in the " Lives of the Saints " (which her ladies were accustomed to read to her nightly) for some great sinner whom God had pardoned. She stopped at the story of the penitent thief, which seemed to her the most reassuring example of human confidence and divine mercy ; and while Jean Kennedy, one of her ladies, read it to her, she said : " He was a great sinner, but not so great as I. I implore our Lord, in memory of His Passion, to remember and liave mercy upon me, as He had upon liim, in the hour of death." Tliose true and sincere feelings, that contrite humility in her last and sublime moments, this per- fect intelligence, and profound need of pardon, leave us with- out means of seeing any stain of the past upon her except through tears. It was thus that old Etienne Pasquier felt. Having to relate in his " Ptccherches " the death of ]\Iarie Stuart, he compares it with the tragic history of the Conn^table de Saint-Pol, and that of the Conndtable de Bourbon, which left him under a mixture of conflicting sentiments. "But in that of which I now discourse," he says, " methinks I see 136 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. only tears ; and is there, by chance, a man who, reading this, will not forgive his eyes ? " M. Mignet, who examines all things as an historian, and gives but short pages to emotion, has admirably distinguished and explained the different pliases of Marie Stuart's cap- tivity, and the secret springs which were set to work at various periods. He has, especially, cast a new light, aided by Spanish documents in the Archives of Simancas, on the slow preparations of the enterprise undertaken by Philip II., that fruitless and tardy crusade, delayed until after the death of Marie Stuart, which ended in the disastrous shij)- wreck of the invincible Armada. Issuing from this brilliant and stormy episode of the history of the sixteenth century, which has been so strongly and judi- ciously set before us by M. Mignet, full of these scenes of violence, treachery, and iniquity, and witliout having the inno- cence to believe that humanity has done forever with such deeds, we congratulate ourselves in spite of everything, and rejoice that we live in an age of softened and amehoratcd public morals. We exclaim with M. de Tavannes, when he relates in his " Memoirs " the life and death of Marie Stuart : " Happy he who lives in a safe State ; where good and e^■il are rewarded and punished according to their deserts." Happy the times and the communities where a certain general morality and human respect for opinion, where a penal ( 'ode, and especially the continual check of publicity, exist to interdict, even to the boldest, those criminal resolutions which every human heart, if left to itself, is ever tempted to engender. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Linidi (1851). DISCOUESE IV. :feLISABETH OF FRANCE, QUEEN OF SPAIN. I WKITE here of the Queen of Spain, Elisabeth of France, a true daughter of France in everything, a beautiful, wise, virtuous, spiritual, and good queen if ever there was one ; and I believe since Saint Elisabeth no one has borne that name who surpassed her in all sorts of virtues and per- fections, although that beautiful name of Elisabeth has been fateful of goodness, virtue, sanctity, and perfection to those who have borne it, as many believe.^ When she was born at Fontainebleau, the king her grand- father, and her father and mother made very great joy of it ; you would have said she was a lucky star bringing good hap to France ; for her baptism brought peace to us, as did her marriage. See how good fortunes are gathered in one person to be distributed on diverse occasions ; for then it was that peace was made with King Henry [VIII.] of Eng- land ; and to confirm and strengthen it our king made him her sponsor and gave to his goddaughter the beautiful name of Elisabeth ; at whose birth and baptism the rejoicings were as great as at those of the little King Francois the last. Child as she w^as, she jiromised to be some great thing at a future day; and when she came to be grown up she promised it more surely still ; for all virtue and goodness 1 She was the daughter of Henri II. and Catherine de' Medici, married to Philip II., King of Spain, after the death of Queen Mary of England. — Tr. 138 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. abounded in her, so that the whole Court admired her, and prognosticated a fine grandeur and great royalty to her in time. So they say that when King Henri married his second daughter, Madame Claude, to the Due de Lorraine, there were some who remonstrated against the wrong done to the elder in marrying the younger before her; but tlie king made this response : " My daughter Elisabeth is such that a duchy is not for her to marry. She must have a kingdom ; and even so, not one of the lesser but one of the greater kingdoms ; so great is she herself in all things ; which assures me that she can miss none, wherefore she can wait." You would have said he prophesied the future. He did not fail on his side to seek and procure one for her ; for when peace was made between the two kings at Cercan she was promised in marriage to Don Carlos, Prince of Spain, a brave and gallant prince and the image of his grandfather, the Emperor Charles, had he lived. But the King of Spain, his father, becoming a widower by the death of the Queen of England, his wife and cousin-german, and having seen the portrait of Madame Elisabeth and finding her very beautiful and much to his liking, cut the ground from under the feet of his son and did himself the charity of wedding her him- self. On which the French and Spaniards said with one voice that one would think she was conceived and born be- fore the world and reserved by God until his will had joined her with this great king, her husband ; for it must have been predestined that he, being so great, so powerful, and thus approaching in all grandeur to the skies, should marry no other princess than one so perfect and accom- plished. When the Duke of Alba came to see her and espouse her for the king, his master, he found her so ex- tremely agreeable and suited to the said master that he said Elisabeth of France. 139 she was a princess who would make the King of Spain very easily forget his grief for his last two wives, the English and the Portuguese. After this, as I have heard from a good quarter, the said prince, Don Carlos, having seen her, became so distractedly in love with her, and so full of jealousy, that he bore a great grudge against his father, and was so angry with him for having deprived him of so fine a prize that he never loved him more, but reproached him with the great wrong and insult he had done him in taking her who had been promised to him solemnly in the treaty of peace. They do say that this was, in part, the cause of his death, with other topics which I shall not speak of at this hour ; for he could not keep himself from loving her in his soul, honouring and reverinfT her, so charminsr and ag[raeable did she seem in his eyes, as certainly she was in everything. Her face was handsome, her hair and eyes so shaded her complexion and made it the more attractive that I have heard say in Spain that the courtiers dared not look upon her for fear of being taken in love and causing jealousy to the king, her husband, and, consequently, running risk of their lives. The Church people did the same from fear of temptation, they not having strength to command their flesh to look at her without being tempted. Although she had had the small-pox, after being grown-up and married, they had so well preserved her face with poultices of fresh eggs (a very proper thing for that purpose) that no marks appeared. I saw the queen, her mother, very much concerned to send her by many couriers many remedies ; but this of the egg- poultice was sovereign. Her figure was very fine, taller than that of her sisters, which made her much admired in Spain, where such tall women are rare, and for that the more esteemed. And with 140 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. this figure slie had a bearing, a majesty, a gesture, a gait and grace that intermingled the Frenchwoman with the Spaniard in sweetness and gravity ; so that, as I myself saw, when she passed through her Court, or went out to certain places, whether churches, or monasteries, or gardens, there was such great press to see her, and the crowd of persons was so tliick, there was no turning round in the mob ; and happy was he or she who could say in the evening, " I saw the queen." It was said, and I saw it myself, that no queen was ever loved in Spain like her (begging pardon of the Queen Isabella of Castile), and her subjects called her la reyna de la pa.z y de la hojidad, that is to say, " the queen of peace and kind- ness ; " but our Frenchmen called her " the olive-branch of peace." A year before she came to France to visit her mother at Bayonne, she fell ill to such extremity that the physicians gave her up. On which a little Italian doctor, who had no great vogue at Court, presenting himself to the king, declared that if he were allowed to act he would cure her ; which the king permitted, she being almost dead. The doctor under- took her and gave her a medicine, after which they suddenly saw the colour return miraculously to her face, her speech came back, and then, soon after, her convalescence began. Nevertheless the whole Court and all the people of Spain blocked the roads with processions and comings and goings to churches and hospitals for her health's sake, some in sliirts, others bare-footed and bare-headed, offering oblations, prayers, orisons, intercessions to God, with fasts, macerations of the body, and other good and saintly devotions for lier health ; so that every one believes firmly that these good prayers, tears, vows, and cries to God were the cause of her cure, rather than the medicine of that doctor. I arrived in Spain a month after this recovery of her ELISABETH OF FRANCE. 141 health ; but I saw so much devotion among the people in giving thanks to God, by fetes, rejoicings, magnificences, fire- works, that there was no doubting in any way how much they felt. I saw nothing else in Spain as I travelled through it, and reaching the Court just two days after she left her room, I saw her come out and get into her coach, sitting at the door of it, which was her usual place, because such beauty should not be hidden within, but displayed openly. She was dressed in a gown of white satin all covered with silver trimmings, her face uncovered. I think that nothing was ever seen more beautiful than this queen, as I had the boldness to tell her ; for she had given me a right good wel- come and cheer, coming as I did from France and the Court, and bringing her news of the king, her good brother, and the queen, her good mother ; for all her joy and pleasure was to know of them. It was not I alone who thought her beautiful, but all the Court and all the people of Madrid thought so likewise ; so that it might be said that even illness favoured her, for after doing her such cruel harm it embellished her skin, making it so delicate and polished that she was cer- tainly more beautiful than ever before. Leaving thus her chamber for the first time, to do the best and saintliest thing she could she went to the churches to give thanks to God for the favour of her health ; and this good work she continued for the space of fifteen days, not to speak of the vow she made to Our Lady of Guadalupe ; letting the whole people see her face uncovered (as was her usual fashion) till you might have thought they worshipped her, so to speak, rather than honoured or revered her. So when she died [1568], as I have heard the late M. de Lignerolles, who saw her die, relate, he having gone to carry to the King of Spain the news of the victory of Jarnac, never were a people so afflicted, so disconsolate ; none ever shed 142 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. SO many tears, being unable to recover themselves in any way, but mourning her with despair incessantly. She made a noble end [a^. 23], leaving this world with firm courage, and desiring much the other. Sinister things have been said of her death, as having been hastened. I have heard one of her ladies tell thot the first time she saw her husband she looked at him so fixedly that the king, not liking it, said to her : Que mirais ? Si tengo canas ? which means : " What are you gazing at ? Is my hair white ? " These words touched her so much to the heart that ever after her ladies augured ill for her. It is said that a Jesuit, a man of importance, speaking of her one day in a sermon, and praising her rare virtues, charities, and kindness, let fall the words that she had wickedly been made to die, innocent as she was; for which he was banished to the farthest depths of tlie Indies of Spain. This is very true, as I have been told. There are other conjectures so great that silence wm^i be kept about them ; but very true it is that this princess was the best of her time and loved by every one. So long as she lived in Spain never did she forget the affection she bore to France, and in that was not like Ger- maine de Foix, second wife of King Ferdinand, who when she saw herself raised to such high rank became so haugluy that she made no account of her own country, and disdained it so much that, when Louis XIL, her uncle, and Ferdinand came to Savonne, she, being with her husband, held herself so high that never would she notice a Frenchman, not eveii her brother Gaston de Foix, Due de Xemours, neither would she deign to speak or look at the greatest persons of France who were present ; for which she was much ridiculed. But after the death of her husband she suffered for this, having fallen from her high e-tate and being held in no great ac- Elisabeth of France. 143 count, whereat she was miserable. They say there are none so vainglorious as persons of low estate who rise to grandeur ; not that I mean to say that princess was of low estate, being of the house of Foix, a very illustrious and great house ; but from simple daughter of a count to be queen of so great a kingdom was a rise which gave occasion to feel much glory, but not to forget herself or abuse her station towards a King of France, her uncle, and her nearest relations and others of the land of her birth. In this she showed she lacked a great mind; or else that she was foolishly vainglorious. For surely there is a difference between the house of Foix and the house of France ; not that I mean to say the house of Foix is not great and very noble, but the house of France -hey! Our Queen Ehsabeth never did like that. She was born great in herself, great in mind and very able, so that a royal grandeur could not fail her. She had, if she had wished it, double cause over Germaine de Foix to be haughty and arrogant, for she was daughter of a great King of France, and married to the greatest king in tlie world, he being not the monarch of one kingdom, but of many, or, as one might say, of all the Spains, — Jerusalem, the Two Sicilies, Majorca, Minorca, Sardinia, and the Western Indies, which seem indeed a world, besides being lord of infinitely more lands and greater seigneuries than Ferdinand ever had. Therefore we should laud our princess for her gentleness, which is well becoming in a great personage towards each and ail ; and likew-ise for the affection she showed to Frenchmen, w^ho, on arriving in Spain, were welcomed by her with so benign a face, the least among them as well as the greatest, that none ever left her without feeling honoured and content. I can speak for myself, as to the honour she did me in talking to me often during the time I stayed 144 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. there ; asking me, at all hours, news of the king, the queen her mother, messieurs her brothers, and madame her sister, with others of the Court, not forgetting to name them., each and all, and to inquire about them ; so that I wondered much how she could remember these things as if she had just left the Court of France ; and I often asked her how it was possible she could keep such memories in the midst of her grandeur. When she came to Bayonne she showed herself just as famihar with the ladies and maids of honour, neither more nor less, as she was when a girl; and as for those who were absent or married since her departure, she inquired with great interest about them all. She did the same to the gentlemen of her acquaintance, and to those who were not, informing herself as to who the latter were, and say- ini,' : " Such and such were at Court in my dav, I knew them well ; but these were not, and I desire to know them." In short, she contented every one. When she made her entry into Bayonne she was mounted on an ambling horse, most superbly and richly caparisoned with pearl embroideries which had formerly been used by the deceased empress when she made her entries into her towns, and were thought to be worth one hundred tliousand crowns, and some say more. She had a noble grace on horse- back, and it was fine to see her ; slie showed herself so beautiful and so agreeable that every one was charmed with her. We all had commands to go to meet her, and accompany her on this entry, as indeed it was our duty to do ; and we were gratified when, having made her our reverence, she did us the honour to thank us ; and to me above all she gave good greeting, because it was scarcely four months since I had left her in Spain ; which touched me much, receiving I:lisabeth of france. 145 such favour above my companions and more honour than belonged to me. On my return from Portugal and from Pignon de Belis [Penon de Velez], a fortress which was taken in Barbary, she welcomed me very warmly, asking me news of the con- quest and of the army. She presented me to Don Carlos, who came into her room, together with the princess, and to Don Juan [of Austria, Philip II.'s brother, the conqueror of Lepanto]. I was two days without going to see her, on account of a toothache I had got upon the sea. She asked Eiberac, maid of honour, where I was and if I were ill, and having heard what my trouble was she sent me her apothe- cary, who brought me an herb very special for that ache, which, on merely being held in the palm of the hand, cures the pain suddenly, as it did very quickly for me. I can boast that I was the first to bring the queen-mother word of Queen Elisabeth's desire to come to France and see her, for which she thanked me much both then and later ; for the Queen of Spain was her good daughter, whom she loved above the others, and who returned her the like ; for Queen Elisabeth so honoured, respected, and feared her that I have heard her say she never received a letter from the queen, her mother, without trembling and dreading lest she was angry with her and had written some painful thing; though, God knows, she had never said one to her since she was married, nor been angry with her ; but the daughter feared the mother so much that she always had that apprehension. It was on this journey to Bayonne that Pompadour the elder having killed Chambret at Bordeaux, wrongfully as some say, the queen-mother was so angry that if she could have caught him she would have had him beheaded, and no one dared speak to her of mercy. 10 146 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. M. Strozzi, who was fond of the said Pompadour, be- thought him of employing his sister, Siguora Clarice Strozzi, Comtesse de Tenda, wliom the Queen of Spain loved from her earliest years, they having studied together. The said countess, who loved her brother, did not refuse him, but begged the Queen of Spain to intercede ; who answered that she would do anytliing for lier except that, because she dreaded to irritate and annoy the queen, her mother, and displease her. But the countess continuing to importune her, she employed a third person who sounded the ford privately, telling the queen-mother that the queen, her daugliter, would have asked this pardon to gratify the said countess had she not feared to displease her. To which the queen-mother replied that the thing must be wholly impos- sible to make her refuse it. On which the Queen of Spain made her little request, but still in fear ; and suddenly it was granted. Such w^as the kindness of this princess, and her virtue in honouring and fearuig the queen, her mother, she being herself so great. Alas ! the Christian proverb did not hold good in her case, namely : " He that would live long years must love and honour and fear his father and mother ; " for, in spite of doing all that, she died in the lovely and pleasant April of her days ; for now, at the time I write, [1591] she would have been, had she lived, forty-six years old. Alas ! that this fair sun disappeared so soon in a dark- some grave, when she might have lighted this fine world for twenty good years without even then being touclied by age ; for she was by nature and complexion fitted to keep her beauty long, and even had old age attacked her, her beauty was of a kind to be the stronger. Surely, if lier death was hard to Spaniards, it was still more b'ittiT to us Frenchmen, for as long as she lived France was never invaded by those quarrels which, since then, Elisabeth of France. 147 Spain has put upon us ; so well did she know how to win and persuade the king, her husband, for our good and our peace ; the which should make us ever mourn her. She left two daughters, the most honourable and virtuous infantas in Christendom. When they were large enough, that is to say, three or four years old, she begged her hus- band to leave the eldest wholly to her that she might bring her up in the French fashion. Which the king willingly granted. So she took her in hand, and gave her a fine and noble training in the style of her own country, so that to-day that iafanta is as French as her sister, the Duchesse de Savoie, is Spanish ; she loves and cherishes France as her mother taught her, and you may be sure that all the influence and power that she has with the king, her father, she employs for the help and succour of those poor Frenchmen whom she knows are suffering in Spanish hands. I have heard it said that after the rout of M. Strozzi, very many French soldiers and gentlemen having been put in the galleys, she went, when at Lisbon, to visit all the galleys that were then there ; and all the Frenchmen whom she found on the chain, to the number of six twenties, she caused to be released, giving them money to reach tlieir own land ; so that the captains of the galleys were obliged to hide those that remained. She was a very beautiful princess and very agreeable, of an extremely graceful mind, who knew all the affairs of the kingdom of the king, her father, and was well trained in them. I hope to speak of her hereafter by herself, for she deserves all honour for the love she bears to France ; she says she can never part with it, havhig good right to it ; and we, if we have obligation to this princess for loving us, how much more should we have to the queen, her mother, for having thus brought her up and taught her. 148 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Would to God I were a good enough petrarchizer to exalt as I desire this Elisabeth of France ! for, if the beauty of her body gives me most ample ruatter, that of her fine soul gives me still more, as these verses, which were made upon her at Court at the time she was married, will testify : Happy the prince whom Heaven ordains To Elisabeth's sweet acquaintance : IMore precious far than crown or sceptre The glad enjoyment of so great a treasure- Gifts most divine she had at birth, The proof and the effect of which we see; Her youthful years showed then- appearance, But now her virtues bear their perfect fruit. When this queen was put into the hands of the Due de rinfantado and the Cardinal de Burgos, who were com- missioned by their king to receive her at Eoncevaux in a great hall, after the said deputies had made their reverence, she rising ftom her chair to welcome them. Cardinal de Burgos harangued her; to whom she made response so honourably, and in such fine fashion and good grace that he was quite amazed ; for she spoke in the best manner, having been very well taught. After which the King of Navan'e, who was there as her principal conductor, and also leader of all the army which was with her, was summoned to deliver her, according to the order, which was shown to the Cardinal de Bourbon, to receive her. The king replied, for he spoke well, and said : " I place in your hands this princess, whom I have brought from the house of the greatest kins in the world to be placed in the hands of the most illustrious king on earth. Knowing you to be very sufficient and chosen by the king your master to receive her, I make no difficulty nor doubt that you will acquit yourselves worthily of this trust, which Elisabeth of fkance. 149 I now discharge upon you ; begging you to have peculiar care of her health and person, for she deserves it ; and I wish you to know that never did there enter Spain so great an ornament of all virtues and chastities, as in time you will know well by results." The Spaniards replied at once that already at first sight they had very ample knowledge of this from her manner and grave majesty ; and, in truth, her virtues were rare. She had great knowledge, because the queen her mother had made her study well under M. de Saint-Etienne, her preceptor, whom she always loved and respected until her death. She loved poesy, and to read it. She spoke well, in either French or Spanish, with a very noble air and much good grace. Her Spanish language was beautiful, as dainty and attractive as possible ; she learned it in three or four months after coming to Spain. To Frenchmen she always spoke French ; never being willing to discontinue it, but reading it daily in the fine books they sent from France, which she was very anxious to have brought to her. To Spaniards and all others she spoke Spanish and very well. In short, she was perfect in all things, and so magnificent and liberal that no one could be more so. She never wore her gowns a second time, but gave them to her ladies and maids ; and God knows what gowns they were, so rich and so superb that the least was reckoned at three or four hundred crowns ; for the king, her husband, kept her most superbly in such matters ; so that every day she had a new one, as I was told by her tailor, who from being a very poor man became so rich that nothing exceeded him, as I saw myself. She dressed well, and very pompously, and her habili- ments became her much ; among other things her sleeves were slashed, with scollops which they call in Spanish ^puri' 150 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES tas ; her head-dress the same, where nothing lacked. Those who see her thus in painting admire her ; I therefore leave you to think what pleasure they had who saw her face to face, with all her gestures and good graces. As for pearls and jewels in great quantity, she never lacked them, for the king, her husband, ordered a great estate for her and for lier household. Alas ! what served her that for such an end ? Her ladies and maids of honour felt it. Those who, being French, could not constrain them- selves to live in a foreign land, she caused, by a prayer which she made to the king, her husband, to receive each four thousand crowns on their marriage ; as was done to Mesdaraoiselles Eiberac, sisters, otherwise called Guitigniferes, de Fuinel, the two sisters de Thorigny, de Noyau, d'Arne, de La ]\Iotte au Groin, Montal, and several others. Those who were willing to remain were better off, like Mesdamoi- selles de Saint-Ana and de Saint-Legier, who had the honour to be governesses to Mesdames the infantas, and were mar- ried very richly to two great seigneurs ; they were the wisest, for better is it to be great in a foreign country than little in your own, — - as Jesus said : " No one is a prophet in his own land." Tliis is all, at this time, that I shall say of this good, wise and very virtuous queen, though later I may speak of her. But I give this sonnet which was written to her praise by an honourable gentleman, she being still Madame, though promised in marriage : — " Princess, to whom the skies give such advantage That, for the part you liave in Heaven's divinity, They grant you all the virtues of this eartli. And crown you with the gift of immortality : " And since it pleased them that in early years Your heavenly gifts of deity be seen, :fcLISABETH OF FRANCE. 151 So that you temper with a humble gravity The royal grandeur of your sacred heritage : " And also since it pleases them to favour you, And place in you the best of all their best, So that your name is cherished every^,vhere : " Methinks that name should undergo a change, And though we call you now Elisabeth of France, You should be named Elisabeth of Heaven." I know that I may be reproved for putting into this Dis- course and others preceding it too many little particulars which are quite superfluous. I think so myself ; but I know that if they displease some persons, they will please others. Methinks it is not enough when we laud persons to say that they are handsome, wise, virtuous, valorous, valiant, magnan- imous, liberal, splendid, and very perfect ; those are general descriptions and praises and commonplace sayings, borrowed from everybody. AVe should specify such things and describe particularly all perfections, so that one may, as it were, touch them with the finger. Such is my opinion, and it pleases me to retain and rejoice my memory with things that I have seen. Epitaph on the said Queen. " Beneath this stone lies Elisabeth of France : Who was Qu.een of Spain and queen of peace, Christian and Catholic. Iler lovely presence Was useful to us all. Now that her noble bones Are dry and crumbling, lying under ground, We have nought but ills and wars and troubles." DISCOURSE V. MARGUERITE, QUEEN OF FRANCE AND OF NAVARRE, SOLE DAUGHTER NOW REMAINING OF THE NOBLE HOUSE OF FRANCE.i When I consider the miseries and ill-adventures of that beautiful Queen of Scotland of whom I have heretofore spoken, and of other princesses and ladies whom I shall not name, fearing by such digression to impair my discourse on the Queen of Navarre, of whom I now speak, not being as yet Queen of France, I cannot think otherwise than that Fortune, omnipotent goddess of weal and woe, is the opposing enemy of human beauty ; for if ever there was in the world a being of perfect beauty it is the Queen of Navarre, and yet she has been little favoured by Fortune, so far ; so that one may indeed say that Fortune was so jealous of Nature for having made this princess beautiful that she wished to run counter in fate. However that may be, her beauty is sucli that the blows of said Fortune have no ascendency upon her, for the generous courage she drew at birth from so many brave and valorous kings, her father, grandfather, great- grandfather, and their ancestors, has enabled her hitherto to make a brave resistance. To speak now of the beauty of this rare princess : T think that all those who are, will be, or ever have l:)een Ijeside it are plain, and cannot have beauty; for the fire of licrs so burns the wings of others that they dare not hover, or even 1 Daughter of Ht'iiri II. and Catherine de' Medici, — "La Reine Margot." — Tk. MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 153 appear, around it. If there be any unbeliever so chary of faith as not to give credence to the miracles of God and Nature, let him contemplate her fine face, so nobly formed, and become converted, and say that Mother Nature, that perfect workwoman, has put all her rarest and subtlest w^its to the making of her. For whether she shows herself smil- ing or grave, the sight of her serves to enkindle every one ; so beauteous are her features, so well defined her lineaments, so transparent and agreeable her eyes that they pass descrip- tion ; and, what is more, that beautiful face rests on a body still more beautiful, superb, and rich, — of a port and majesty more like to a goddess of heaven than a princess of earth ; for it is believed, on the word of several, that no goddess was ever seen more beautiful ; so that, in order to duly proclaim her beauty, virtues, and merit, God must lengthen the earth and heighten the sky beyond where they now are, for space in the airs and on tlie land is lacking for the flight of her perfection and renown. Those are the beauties of body and mind in this fair prin- cess, which I at this time represent, like a good painter, after nature and without art. I speak of those to be seen externally ; for those that are secret and hidden beneath white linen and rich accoutrements cannot be here depicted or judged except as being very beautiful and rare ; but this must be by faith, presumption, and credence, for sight is interdicted. Great hardship truly to be forced to see so beautiful a picture, made by the hand of a divine workman, in the half only of its perfection ; but modesty and laudable shamefacedness thus ordain it — for they lodge among prin- cesses and great ladies as they do among commoner folk. To bring a few examples to show how the beauty of this queen was admired and held for rare : I remember that when the Polish ambassadors came to France, to announce to our 154 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. King Henri [then Due d'Anjou] his election to the kingdom of Poland, and to render him homage and obedience, alter they had made their reverence to King Charles, to the queen- mother, and to their king, they made it, very particularly, and for several days, to Monsieur, and to the King and Queen of Navarre ; but the day when they made it to the said Queen of Navarre she seemed to them so beautiful and so superbly and richly accoutred and adorned, and with such great majesty and grace that they were speechless at such beauty. Among others, there was Lasqui, the chief of the embassy, whom I heard say, as he retired, overcome by the sight : " No, never do I wish to see such beauty again. Will- ingly would I do as do the Turks, pilgrims to Mecca, where the sepulchre of their prophet Mahomet is, and where they stand speechless, ravished, and so transfixed at the sight of that superb mosque that they wish to see nothing more and burn their eyes out with hot irons till they lose their sight, so subtly is it done ; saying that nothing more could be seen as fine, and therefore would they see nothing." Thus said that Pole about the beauty of our princess. And if the Poles were won to admiration, so were others. I instance here Don Juan of Austria, who (as I have said elsewhere), pass- ing through Prance as stilly as he could, and reaching Paris, knowing that that night a solemn ball was given at the Louvre, went there disguised, as much to see Queen Mar- guerite of Navarre as for any other purpose. He there had means and leisure to see her at his ease, dancing, and led by the king, her brother, as was usual. He gazed upon lier long, admired her, and then proclaimed her high above the beauties of Spain and Italy (two regions, nevertheless, most fertile in beauty), saying these words in Spanish : " Thov?gh the beauty of that queen is more divine than human, she is made to damn and ruin men rather than to save them." MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 155 Shortly after, he saw her again as she went to the baths of Lifege, Don Juan being then at Namur, where she had to pass ; tlie which crowned all his hopes to enjoy so fine a sight, and he went to meet her with great and splendid Spanish magnificence, receiving her as though she were the Queen Elisabeth, her sister, in the latter's lifetime his queen, and Queen of Spain. And though he was most enchanted with the beauty of her body, he was the same with that of her mind, as I hope to show in its proper place. But it was not Don Juan alone who praised and delighted to praise her, but all his great and brave Spanish captains did the same, and even the very soldiers of those far-famed bands, who went about saying among themselves, in soldierly chorus, that " the conquest of such beauty was better than that of a kingdom, and happy would be the soldiers who, to serve her, would die beneath her banner." It is not surprising that such people, well-born and noble, should think this princess beautiful, but I have seen Turks coming on an embassy to the king her brother, barbarians that they were, lose themselves in gazing at her, and say that the pomp of their Grand Signior in going to his mosque or marching with his army was not so fine to see as the beauty of this queen. In short, I have seen an infinity of other strangers who have come to France and to the Court expressly to behold her whose fame had gone from end to end of Europe, so they said. I once saw a gallant ISTeapolitan knight, who, having come to Paris and the Court, and not finding the said queen, de- layed his return two months in order to see her, and having seen her he said these words : " In other days, the Princess of Salerno bore the like reputation for beauty in our city of Naples, so that a foreigner who had gone there and had not 156 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. seen her, when he returned and related his visit, and was asked had he seen that princess, and answered no, was told that in that case he had not seen Naples. Thus I, if on my return without seeing this beautiful princess I were asked had I seen Prance and the Court, could scarcely say I had, for she is its ornament and enrichment. But now, having seen and contemplated her so well, I can say that I have seen the greatest beauty in the world, and that our Princess of Salerno is as nothing to her. Now I am well content to go, having enjoyed so fine a sight. 1 leave you Prenchmen to think how happy you should be to see at your ease and daily her fine face ; and to approach that flame divine, which can w^arni and kindle frigid hearts from afar more than the beauty of our most beauteous dames near-by." Such were the words said to me one day by that charming Neapolitan knight. An honourable Prench gentleman, whom I could name, seeing her one evening, in her finest lustre and most stately majesty in a ball-room, said to me these words : " Ah ! if the Sieur des Essarts, who, in his books of ' Amadis ' forced himself with such pains to well ajid richly describe to the world the beautiful Nicquee and her glory, had seen this queen in his day he would not have needed to borrow so many rich and noble words to depict and set forth Nicqude's beauty ; 't would have sufficed him to declare she was the semblance and image of the Queen of Navarre, unique in this world ; and thus the beauteous Nicquee would have been better pictured than she has been, and without superfluity of words." Therefore, 'M. de Pionsard had good reason to compose that glorious elegy found among his works in honour of this beautiful Princess Marguerite of Prance, then not mar- ried, in which he has introduced the goddess Venus askin^r MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 157 her son whether in his rambles here below, seeing the ladies of the Court of France, he had found a beauty that sur- passed her own. " Yes, mother," Love replied, " I have found one on whom the glory of the finest sky is shed since ever she was born." Venus flushed red and would not credit it, but sent a messenger, one of her Charites, to earth to ex- amine that beauty and make a just report. On which Vv^e read in the elegy a rich and fine description of the charms of that accomplished princess, in the mouth of the Charite Pasithea, the reading of which cannot fail to please the world. But M. de Konsard, as a very honourable and able lady said to me, stopped short and lacked a little sometliing, in that he should have told how Pasithea returned to heaven, and there, discharging her commission, said to Venus that her son had only told the half ; the which so saddened and provolvcd the goddess into jealousy, making her blame Jupiter for the wrong he did to form on earth a beauty that shamed those of heaven (and principally hers, the rarest of them all), that henceforth she wore mourning and made ab- stinence from pleasures and delights ; for there is nothing so vexatious to a beautiful and perfect lady as to tell her she has her equal, or that another can surpass her. Now, we must note that if our queen was beauteous in herself and in her nature, also she knew well how to array herself; and so carefully and richly was she dressed, both for her body and her head, that nothing lacked to give her full perfection. To the Queen Isabella of Bavaria, wife of King Charles VI., belongs the praise of having brought to France the pomps and gorgeousness that henceforth clothed most splendidly and gorgeously the ladies ; ^ for in the old tapestries of that 1 Brantome's words are gnrgiasatcs and gorgiasment ; do they mark tlie introduction of ruffs around the neck, gorge ? — Tk. 158 JilE BOOK OF TIIE LADIES. period iu the houses of our kings we see portrayed the ladies attired as they then were, in nought but drolleries, slovenliness, and vulgarities, in place of the beautiful, superb fashions, dainty headgear, inventions, and ornaments of our queen ; from which the ladies of the Court and Trance take pattern, so that ever since, appearing in her modes, they are now great ladies instead of simple madams, and so a hundredfold more charming and desirable. It is to our Queen Marguerite that ladies owe this obligation. I remember (for I was there) that when the queen mother took this queen, her daughter, to the King of Xavarre, her husband, she passed through Coignac and made some st;.y. While they were there, came various grand and honouraljle ladies of the region to see them and do them reverence, who were all amazed at the beauty of the princess, and could not surfeit themselves in praising her to her mother, she being lost in joy. "Wherefore she begged her daughter to array herself one day most gorgeously in the fine and superb apparel that she wore at Court for great and magnificent pomps and festivals, in order to give pleasure to these worthy dames. "WTiich she did, to obey so good a mother ; appearing robed superbly in a gown of silver tissue and dove-colour, a la holonnoise [houillomice — with puffs?], and hanging sleeves, a rich head-dress with a white veil, neither too large nor yet too small ; the whole accompanied with so noble a majesty and good grace that she seemed more a goddess of lieaven than a queen of earth. The queen-mother said to her: "My daughter, you look well." To which she answered: " Madame, I begin early to wear and to wear out my gowns and the fashions I have brought from Court, because when I return I shall bring notliing with me only sci.sors and stuffs to dress me then according to current fashions." The queen-mother asked her : " What do you mean by that, my MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 159 daughter ? Is it not you yourself who invent and produce these iasliions of dress ? Wherever you go the Court will take them from you., not you from the Court." Which was true ; for after she returned she was always in advance of the Court, so well did she know how to invent in her dumty mind all sorts of charming things. But the Leauteous queen in whatsoever fashion she dressed, were it db la franmise with her tall head-dress, or in a simple coif, with her grand veil, or merely in a cap, could never prove which of these fasliions became her most and made her most beautiful, admirable, and lovable ; for she well knew how to adapt herself to every mode, adjusting each new device in a way not common and quite inimitable. So that if other ladies took her pattern to form it for them- selves they could not rival her, as I have noticed a hundred times. I have seen her dressed in a robe of white satin that shimmered much, a trifle of rose-colour minghug in it, with a veil of tan crfpe or Roman gauze flung carelessly round her head ; yet nothing was ever more beautiful ; and whatever may be said of the goddesses of the olden time and the em- presses as we see them on ancient coins, they look, though splendidly accoutred, like chambermaids beside her. I have often heard our courtiers dispute as to which attire became and embellished her the most, about wdiich each had his own opinion. For my part, the most becoming array in which I ever saw her was, as I think, and so did others, on the day when the queen-mother made a fete at the Tuileries for the Poles. She was robed in a velvet gown of Spanish rose, covered with spangles, with a cap of the same velvet, adorned with plumes and jewels of such splendour as never was. She looked so beautiful in this attire, as many told her, that she wore it orten and was painted in it ; so that among her various portraits this one carries the day over all 160 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. others, as the eyes of good judges will tell, for there are plenty of her pictures to judge by. When she appeared, thus dressed, at the Tuileries, I said to M. de lionsard, who stood next to me : " Tell the truth, monsieur, do you not think that beautiful queen thus appar- elled is like Aurora, as she comes at dawn with her fair white face surrounded with those rosy tints ? — for face and gown have much in sympathy and likeness." M. de Eonsard avowed that I was right ; and on this my comparison, think- ing it fine, he made a sonnet, which I would fain have now, to insert it here. I also saw this our great queen at the first States-general at Blois on the day the king, her brother, made his harangue. She was dressed in a robe of orange and black (the ground being black with many spangles) and her great veil of cere- mony ; and being seated according to her rank she appeared so beautiful and admirable that I heard more than tliree hundred persons in that assembly say tliey were better in- structed and delighted by the contemplation of such divine beauty than by listening to the grave and noble words of the king, her brother, though he spoke and harangued his be«t. I have also seen her dressed in her natural hair without any artifice or peruke ; and though her hair was very black (having derived that from her father, King Henri), slie knew so well how to curl and twist and arrange it after the fashion of her sister, the Queen of Spain, who wore none but her own hair, that such coiffure and adornment became her as well as, or better than, any other. That is what it is to have beauties by nature, which surpasses all artifice, no matter what it may be. And yet she did not Hke the fashion much and seldom used it, but preferred perukes most daintily fashioned. In short, I should never have done did I try to describe all her adornments and forms of attire in which she was ever MARGUERITE OE FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 161 more and more beauteous ; for she changed them often, and all were so becoming and appropriate, as though Nature and Art were striving to outdo each other in making her beautiful. But this is not all ; for her fine accoutrements and adornments never ventured to cover her beautiful throat or her lovely bosom, fearing to wrong the eyes of all the world that roved upon so fine an object ; for never was there seen the like in form and whiteness, and so full and plump that often the courtiers died with envy when they saw the ladies, as I have seen them, those who were her intimates, have license to kiss her with great delight. I remember that a worthy gentleman, newly arrived at Court, who had never seen her, when he beheld her said to me these words : " I am not surprised that all you gentlemen should like the Court; for if you had no other pleasure than daily to see that princess, you have as much as though you lived in a terrestrial paradise." Eoman emperors of the olden time, to please the people and give them pleasure, exhibited games and combats in their theatres ; but to give pleasure to the people of France and gain their friendship, it was enough to let them often see Queen Marguerite, and enjoy the contemplation of so divine a face, which she never hid behind a mask like other ladies of our Court, for nearly all the time she went uncovered ; and once, on a flowery Easter Day at Blois, still being Madame, sister of the king (although her marriage was then being treated of), I saw her appear in the procession more beautiful than ever, because, besides the beauty of her face and form, she was most superbly adorned and apparelled ; her pure white face, resembling the skies in their serenity, was adorned about the head with quantities of pearls and jewels, especially brilliant diamonds, worn in the form of stars, so that the calm of the face and the sparkling jewels made one 11 162 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. think of the heavens when starry. Her beautiful body with its full, tall form was robed in a gown of crinkled cloth of gold, the richest and most beautiful ever seen in France, This stuff was a gift made by the Grand Signior to M. de Grand-Champ, our ambassador, on his departure from Con- stantinople, — it being the Grand Siguier's custom to present to those who are sent to him a piece of the said stuff amounting to fifteen ells, which, so Grand-Champ told me, cost one hundred crowns the ell ; for it was indeed a master- piece. He, on coming to France and not knowing how to employ more worthily the gift of so rich a stuff, gave it to Madame, the sister of the king, who made a gown of it, and wore it first on the said occasion, when it became her well — for from one grandeur to another there is only a hand's breadth. She wore it all that day, although its weight was heavy ; but her beautiful, rich, strong figure supported it well and served it to advantage ; for had she been a little shrimp of a princess, or a dame only elbow-high (as I have seen some), she would surely have died of the weight, or else have been forced to change her gown and take another. That is not all : being in tlie procession and walking in her rank, her visage uncovered, not to deprive the people of so good a feast, she seemed more beautiful still by holding and bearing in her hand her palm (as our queens of all time have done) with royal majesty and a grace half proud half sweet, and a manner little common and so different from all the rest that whoso had seen her would have said: " Here is a princess who goes above the run of all things in the world." And we courtiers went about saying, with one voice boldly, that she did well to bear a palm in her hand, for she bore it away from others; surpassing them all in beauty, in grace, and in perfection. And I swear to you that in that procession we forgot our devotions, and did not MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 103 make tliem while contemplating and admiring that divine princess, who ravished lis more than divine service ; and yet we thought we committed no sin ; for whoso contemplates divinity on earth does not offend the divinity of heaven ; inasmuch as He made lier such. "When the queen, her mother, took her from Court to meet her hushand in Gascoigne, I saw how all the courtiers grieved at her departure as though a great calamity had fallen on their heads. Some said : " The Court is widowed of her beauty ; " others : " The Court is gloomy, it has lost its sun ; " others again : " How dark it is ; we have no torch." And some cried out : " Why should Gascoime come here jrascoiojninf:' to steal our beauty, destined to adorn all France and the Court, Fon- tainebleau, Saint-Germain, the hotel du Louvre, and all the other noble places of our kings, to lodge her at Pau and X^rac, places so unlike the others ? " But many said : " The deed is done ; the Court and France have lost the loveliest flower of their garland." In short, on all sides did we hear resound sucli little speeches upon this departure, — half in vexed anger, half in sadness, ■ — ■ although Queen Louise de Lorraine remained behind, who was a very handsome and wise princess, and virtuous (of whom I hope to speak more worthily in her place) ; but for so long the Court had been accustomed to that beauteous sight it could not keep from grieving and proffering such words. Some there were who would have liked to kill ]\I. de Duras, who came from his master the King of Navarre to obtain her; and this I know. Once there came news to Court that she was dead in An^'ergne some eight days. On which a person whom I met said to me : " That cannot be, for since that time the sky is clear and fine; if she were dead we should have 164 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. seen eclipse of sun, because of the great sympathy two suns must have, and nothing could be seen but gloom and clouds." Enough has now been said, methinks, upon the beauty of her body, though the subject is so ample that it deserves a decade. I hope to speak of it again, but at present I must say something of her noble soul, which is lodged so well in that noble body. If it was born thus noble within her she has known how to keep it and maintain it so ; for she loves letters much and reading. "While young, she was, for her age, quite perfect in them ; so that we could say of her : This princess is truly the most eloquent and best-speaking lady in the world, with the finest style of speech and the most agreeable to be found. "When the Poles, as I have said before, came to do her reverence they brought with them the Bishop of Cracovie, the chief and head of the embassy, who made the harangue in Latin, he being a learned and accomplished prelate. The queen replied so pertinently and eloquently without the help of an interpreter, having well understood and comprehended the harangue, that all were struck with admiration, calling her with one voice a second Minerva, goddess of eloquence. "When the queen her mother took her to the king her husband, as I have said, she made her entry to Bordeaux, as was proper, being daughter and sister of a king, and wife of the King of Xavarre, first prince of the blood, and gov- ernor of Guyenne. The queen her mother willed it so, for she loved and esteemed her much. This entry was fine ; not so much for the sumptuous magnificence there made and displayed, as for the triumph of this most beautiful and accomplished queen of the world, mounted on a fine wdiite horse superbly caparisoned ; she herself dressed all in orange and spangles, so sumptuously as never was ; so that MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 165 none could get their surfeit of looking at her, admiring and lauding her to the skies. Before she entered, the State assembly of the town came to do reverence and offer their means and powers, and to harangue her at the Chartreux, as is customary. M. de Bordeaux [tlie bishop] spoke for the clergy ; M. le Marechal de Biron, as mayor, wearing his robes of office, for the town, and for himself as lieutenant-general afterwards ; also M. Largebaston, chief president for the courts of law. She answered them all, one after the other (for I heard her, be- ing close beside her on the scaffold, by her command), so eloquently, so wisely and promptly and with such grace and majesty, even changing her words to each, without reiterating the first or the second, although upon the same subject (which is a thing to be remarked upon), that when I saw that evening the said president he said to me, and to others in the queen's chamber, that he had never in his life heard better speech from any one ; and that he imderstood such matters, having had the honour to hear the two queens. Marguerite and Jeanne, her predecessors, speak at the like ceremonies, — they having had in their day the most golden-speaking lips in France (those were the words he used to me) ; and yet they were but novices and apprentices compared to her, who truly was her mother's daughter. I repeated to the queen, her mother, this that the presi- dent had said to me, of which she was glad as never was ; and told me that he had reason to think and say so, for, though she was her daughter, she could call her, without falsehood, the most accomplished princess in the world, able to say exactly what she wished to say the best. And in like manner I have heard and seen ambassadors, and sreat for- eign seigneurs, after they had spoken with her, depart con* founded by her noble speech. 166 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. I have often heard her make such fine discourse, so grave and so sententious, that could I put it clearly and correctly here in writing I should delight and amaze the world ; but it is not possible ; nor could any one transcribe her words, so inimitable are they. But if she is grave, and full of majesty and eloquence in her high and serious discourses, she is just as full of charm- ing grace in gay and witty speech ; jesting so prettily, with give and take, that her company is most agreeable ; for, though she pricks and banters others, 'tis all so dt -propos and excellently said that no one can be vexed, but only glad of it. But further : if she knows how to speak, she knows also how to write ; and the beautiful letters we have seen from her attest it. They are the finest, the best couched, whether they be serious or familiar, and such that the greatest writers of the past and present may hide their heads and not pro- duce their own when hers appear ; for theirs are trifles near to hers. No one, having read them, would fail to laugh at Cicero with his familiar letters. And whoso would collect Queen Marguerite's letters, together with her discourses, would make a school and training for the world ; and no one should feel surprised at this, for, in herself, her mind is sound and quick, with great information, wise and solid. She is a queen in all things, and deserves to rule a mighty kingdom, even an empire, — about wliich T shall make the following digression, all the more because it has to do with the present subject. When her marriage was granted at Blois to the King of Navarre, difficulties were made by Queen Jeanne [d'Albret, Henri IV.'s mother], very different then from what she M^rote to my mother, who was her lady of honour, and at this time sick m her own house. I have read the letter, writ by her own hand, in the archives of our house ; it savs thus : — MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 167 " I write you this, my great friend, to rejoice and give you health with the good news my husband sends me. He hav- ing had the boldness to ask of the king Madame, his young daughter, for our son, the king has done him the honour to grant it ; for which I cannot tell you the happiness I have." There is much to be said thereon. At this time there was at our Court a lady whom I shall not name, as silly as she could be. Being with the queen-mother one evening at her coucher, the queen inquired of her ladies if they had seen her daughter, and whether she seemed joyful at the granting of her marriage. This silly lady, who did not yet know her Court, answered first and said : " How, madame, should she not be joyful at such a marriage, inasmuch as it will lead to the crown and make her some day Queen of France, when it falls to her future husband, as it well may do in time." The queen, hearing so strange a speech, replied : " 3Ia mie, you are a great fool. I would rather die a thousand deaths than see your foolish prophecy accomplished ; for I hope and wish long life and good prosperity to the king, my son, and all my other children." On which a very great lady, one of her intimates, inquired : " But, madame, in case that great mis- fortune — from which God keep us ! — happens, would you not be very glad to see your daughter Queen of France, inas- much as the crown would fall to her by right through that of her husband ? " To which the queen made answer : " Much as I love this daughter, I think, if that should hap- pen, we should see France much tried with evils and misfor- tunes. I would rather die (as she did in fact) than see her in that position ; for I do not believe that France would obey the King of Navarre as it does my sons, for many reasons which I do not tell." Behold two prophecies accomplished : one, that of the fool- ish lady, the other, but only till her death, that of the able 168 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. princess. The latter prophecy has failed to-day, by the grace which God has given our king [Henri IV.], and by the force of his good sword and the valour of his brave heart, which have made him so great, so victorious, so feared, and so absolute a king as he is to-day after too many toils and hindrances. May God preserve him by His holy grace in such prosperity, for we need him much, we his poor subjects. The queen said further : " If by the abohtion of the Sahc law, the kingdom should come to my daughter in her own right, as other kingdoms have fallen to the distaff, certainly my daughter is as capable of reigning, or more so, as most men and kmgs whom I have known ; and I think that her reign would be a fine one, equal to that of the king her grandfather and that of the king her father, for she has a great mind and great virtues for doing that thing." And thereupon she went on to say how great an abuse was the Salic law, and that she had heard M. le Cardinal de Lorraine say that when he arranged the peace between the two kings with the other deputies in the abbey of Cercan, a dispute came up on a point of the Salic law touching the succession of women to the kingdom of France ; and M. le Cardinal de Grandvelle, otherwise called d'Arras, rebuked the said Cardinal de Lorraine, declaring that the Salic law was a veritable abuse, which old dreamers and chroniclers had written down, with- out knowing why, and so made it accepted; although, in fact, it was never made or decreed in France, and was only a custom that Frenchmen had given each other from hand to hand, and so introduced ; whereas it was not just, and, conse- quently, was violable. Thus said the queen-mother. And, when all is said, it was Pharamond, as most people hold, who brought it from his own country and introduced it in France ; and we cer- tainly ought not to observe it, because he was a pagan ; and MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 169 to keep so strictly among us Christians the laws of a pagan is an offence against God. It is true that most of our laws come from pagan emperors ; but those which are holy, just, and equitable (and truly there are many), we ourselves have ruled by them. But the Salic law of Pharamond is unjust and contrary to the law of God, for it is written in the Old Testament, in the twenty-seventh chapter of Numbers : " If a man die and have no son ye shall cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter." This sacred law demands, therefore, that females shall inherit after males. Besides, if Scripture were taken at its word on this Salic law, there would be no such great harm done, as I have heard great personages say, for they .speak thus : " So long as there be males, females can neither inherit nor reign. Consequently, in default of males, females should do so. And, inasmuch as it is legal in Spain, Navarre, England, Scotland, Hungary, Naples, and Sicily that females should reign, why should it not be the same in France ? For what is right in one place is right everywhere and ill all places ; places do not make the justice of the law." In all the fiefs we have in France, duchies, counties, baronies, and other honourable lordships, which are nearly and even greatly royal in their rights and privileges, many women, married and unmarried, have succeeded; as in Bourbon, Vendome, Montpensier, Nevers, Rh(5tel, Flandres, Eu, Bourgogne, Artois, Zellande, Bretaigne ; and even like Mathilde, who was Duchesse de Normandie ; Eldonore, Duchesse de Guyenne, who enriched Henry II., King of England ; Beatrix, Comtesse de Provence, who brought that province to King Louis, her husband ; the only daughter of Raimond, Comtesse de Thoulouse, who brought Thoulouse to Alfonse, brother of Saint-Louis; also Anne, Duchesse de Bretaigne, and others. Why, therefore, should not the king- 170 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. dom of France call to itself in like manner the daughters of France ? Did not the beautiful Galatea rule in Gaul when Hercules married her after his conquest of Spain ? — from which mar- riage issued our brave, valiant, generous Gauls, who in the olden time made themselves laudable. Why should the daughters of dukes in this kingdom be more capable of governing a duchy or a county and ad- ministering justice (which is the duty of kings) than the daughters of kings to rule the kingdom of France ? As if the daughters of France were not as capable and fitted to command and reign as those of other kingdoms and fiefs that I have named ! For still greater proof of the iniquity of the Salic law it is enough to show that so many chroniclers, writers, and praters, who have all written about it, have never yet agreed among themselves as to its etymology and definition. Some, like Postel, consider that it takes its ancient name and origin from the Gauls, and is only called Salic instead of Gallic because of the proximity and likeness in old type between the letter S and the letter G. But Postel is as visionary in that (as a great personage said to me) as he is in other things. Jean Ceval, Bishop of Avranches, a great searcher into the antiquities of Gaul and France, tried to trace it to the word salle, because this law was ordained only for salles and royal palaces. Claude Seissel thinks, rather inappropriately, that it comes from the word sal in Latin, as a law full of salt, that of sapience, wisdom, a metaphor drawn from salt. A doctor of laws, named Ferrarius Montanus, will have it that Pharamond was otherwise called Salicq. Others derive it from Sallogast, one of the principal councillors of Pharamond. MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 171 Others again, wishing to be still more subtle, say that the derivation is taken from the frequent sections in the said law beginning with the words: si aliquis, si aliqua. But some say it comes from Frangois Saliens ; and it is so men- tioned in Marcellin.i So here are many puzzles and musings ; and it is not to be wondered at that the Bishop of Arras disputed the matter with the Cardinal de Lorraine : just as those of his nation in their jests and jugglings, supposing that this law was a new invention, called Phihppe de Valois le roi trouve, as if, by a new right never recognized before in France, he had made himself king. On which was founded that, the county of Flanders having fallen to a distaff. King Charles V. of France did not claim any right or title to it ; on the contrary, he portioned his brother Philippe with Bourgogne in order to make his marriage with the Countess of Flanders ; not wishing to take her for him- self, thinking her less beautiful, though far more rich, than her of Bourbon. Wliich is a great proof and assurance that the Salic law was not observed except as to the crown. And it cannot be doubted that women, could they come to the throne, beautiful, honourable, and virtuous as the one of whom I here speak, would draw to them the hearts of their subjects by their beauty and sweetness far more than men do by their strength. M. du Tillet says that Queen Clotilde made France accept the Christian religion, and since then no queen has ever wandered from it ; which is a great honour to queens, for it was not so with the kings after Clovis ; Chilperic I. was stained with Arian error, and was checked only by 1 The Salic law : so called from being derived from the laws of the ancient Salian Franks, — according to Storraonth, Littre, and Cassell's Cyclopaedia. — Tb. 172 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. the firm resistance of two prelates of the Galilean church, according to the statement of Grdgoire de Tours. Moreover, was not Catherine, daughter of Charles VI., ordained Queen of France by the king, her father, and his council [in 1420] ? Du Tillet further says that the daughters of France were held in such honour that although they were married to less than kings they nevertheless kept their royal titles and were called queens with their proper names ; an honour which was given them for life to demonstrate forever that they were daughters of the kings of France. This ancient custom shows dumbly that the daughters of France can be sovereigns as well as the sons. In the days of the King Saint-Louis it is recorded of a court of peers held by him that the Countess of Flanders was pres- ent, taking part with the peers. This shows how the Salic law was not kept, except as to the crown. Let us see still further what M. du Tillet says : — "By the Salic law, written for all subjects, where there were no sons the daughters inherited the patrimony ; and this should rule the crown also, so that ^lesdames the daughters of France, in default of sons, should take it ; nevertlieless, they are perpetually excluded by custom and the private law of the house of France, based on the arrogance of Frenchmen, who cannot endure to be governed by women." And else- where he says : " One cannot help being amazed at the long ignorance that has attributed this custom to the Salic law, which is quite the contrary of it." King Charles V., treating of the marriage of Queen INIarie of France, his daughter, with Guillaume, Count of Hainault, in the year 1374, stipulated for the renunciation by the said count of all right to the kingdom and to Dauphint^ ; which is a great point, for see the contradictions ! MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 173 Certainly if women could handle arms like men they could make themselves accredited; but by way of compensation, they have their beautiful faces ; which, however, are not recognized as they deserve ; for surely it is better to be gov- erned by beautiful, lovely, and honourable women than by tiresome, conceited, ugly, and sullen men such as I have seen in this France of ours. I would like to know if this kingdom has found itself any better for an infinitude of conceited, silly, tyrannical, foolish, do-nothing, idiotic, and crazy kings — not meaning to accuse our brave Pharamond, Clodion, Clovis, Pepin, Martel, Charles, Louis, Philippe, Jean, Francois, Henri, for they are all brave and magnanimous, those kings, and happy they w^ho were under them — than it would have been with an infinitude of the daughters of France, very able, very prudent, and very worthy to govern. I appeal to the regency of the mothers of kings to show this, to wit : — Fr^d^gonde, liow did she administer the affairs of France during the minority of King Clothaire, her son, if not so wisely and dexterously that he found himself before he died monarch of Gaul and of much of Germany ? The like did Mathilde, wife of Dagobert, as to Clovis II., her son ; and, long after, Blanche, mother of Saint-Louis, who behaved so wisely, as I have read, that, just as the Eoman emperors chose to call themselves " Augustus " in commemo- ration of the luck and prosperity of Augustus, the great emperor, so the former queen-mothers after the decease of the kings, their husbands, desired each to be called " Reine Blanche," in honourable memory of the government of that wise princess. Though M. du Tillet contradicts this a little, I have heard it from a very great senator. And, to come lower down, Isabeau of Bavaria had the regency of her husband, Charles VI. (who lost his good 174 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. sense), by the advice of the Council ; and so had Madame de Bourbon for little King Charles VIII. (hiring his minority ; Madame Louise de Savoie for King Francois I.; and our queen-mother for King Charles IX., her son. If, therefore, foreign ladies (except Madame de Bourbon, who was daughter of France) were capable of governing France so well, why should not our own ladies do as much, having good zeal and affection, they being born here and suckled here, and the matter touching them so closely ? I should like to know in what our last kings have sur- passed our last three daughters of France, Elisabeth, Claude, and Marguerite ; and whether if the latter had come to be queens of France they would not have governed it (I do not wish to accuse the regency, which was very great and very wise) as well as their brothers. I have heard many great personages, well-informed and far-seeing, say that possibly we should not have had the evils we did have, now liave, and shall have still ; adducing reasons too long to put liere. Bat the common and vulgar fool says : " Must observe tlie Salic law." Poor idiot that he is ! does he not know that tlie Germans, from whose stock we issued, were wont to call their women to affairs of State, as we learn from Tacitus ? From that, we can see how this Salic law has been corrupted. It is but mere custom ; and poor women, unable to enforce their rights by the point of the sword, men have excluded, and driven them from everything. Ah ! why have we no more brave and valiant paladins of France, — a lioland, a Renaud, an Ogier, a Deudon, an Olivier, a Graffon, an Yvon, and an infinity of other braves, whose glory and profession it was to succour ladies and support them in the troubles and adversities of their lives, their honour, and their fortunes ? Why are they here no longer to maintain the rights of our Queen Marguerite, daughter of France, who barely enjoys MAEGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 175 an inch of land in France, which she quitted in noble state, though to her, perhaps, the whole belongs by right divine and human ? Queen Marguerite, who does not even enjoy her county of Auvergne, which is hers by law and equity as the sole heiress of the queen, her mother, is now with- drawn into the castle of Usson, amid the deserts, rocks, and mountains of Auvergne, — a different habitation, verily, from the great city of Paris, where she ought now to be seated on her throne and place of justice, which belongs to her in her own right as well as by that of her husband. But the misfortune is that they are not there together. If both were again united in body and soul and friendship, as they once were, possibly all would go right once more, and together they would be feared, respected, and known for what they are. (Since tliis was written God has willed that they be recon- ciled, which is indeed great luck.) I heard M. de Pibrac say on one occasion that these Navarre marriages are fatal, because husband and wife are always at variance, — as was the case with Louis Hutin, King of Prance and of Navarre, and Marguerite de Bour- gogne, daughter of Due Eobert III. ; also Philippe le Long, King of France and Navarre, with Jeanne, daughter of Comte Othelin of Bourgogne, who, being found innocent, was vindi- cated well ; also Charles le Bel, King of France and of Navarre, with Blanche, daughter of Othelin, another Comte de Bour- gogne ; and further, King Henri d'Albret with ^Marguerite de Valois, who, as I have heard on good authority, treated her very ill, and would have done worse had not King Francois, her brother, spoken sternly to him and threatened him for honouring his sister so little, considering the rank she held. The last King Antoine of Navarre died also on ill terms with Queen Jeanne, his wife ; and our Queen Marguerite is 176 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. now in dispute and separation from her husband ; but God will some day happily unite them in spite of these evil times. I have heard a princess say that Queen Marguerite saved her husband's life on the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew ; for indubitably he was proscribed and his name written on the " red paper," as it was called, because it was necessary, they said, to tear up the roots, namely, the King of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, Amiral de Coligny, and other great personages ; but the said Queen Marguerite flung herself on her knees before King Charles, to implore him for the life of her husband and lord.^ King Charles would scarcely grant it to her, although she was his good sister. I relate this for what it is worth, as I know it only by hearsay. But she bore this massacre very impatiently and saved several, among them a Gascon gentleman (I think his name was Ldran), who, wounded as he was, took refuge beneath her bed, she being in it, and the murderers pursuing him to the door, from which she drove them ; for she was never cruel, but kind, like a daughter of France. They say that the quarrel between herself and her hus- band came more from the difference in their religion than from anything else ; for they each loved his and her own, and supported it strongly. The queen having gone to Pau, the chief town of B^arn, she caused the mass to be said there ; and a certain secretary of the king, her husband, named ]e Pin, who had formerly belonged to M. I'Amiral, not being able to stomach it, put several of the inhabitants of the town who had been present at the mass into prison. The queen was much displeased ; and he, wishing to remonstrate, spoke to her much louder than he should, and very indiscreetly, even ^ Marguerite was married to Henri, King of Navarre, six days before the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, August, 1572. MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 177 before the king, who gave him a good rebuke and dismissed him ; for King Henri knows well how to like and respect what he ought ; being as brave and generous as his fine and noble actions have always manifested ; of which I shall speak at length in his life. The said le Pin fell back upon the edict which is there made, and to be observed under penalty, namely, that mass shall not be said. The queen, feeling herself insulted, and God knows she was, vowed and declared she would never again set foot in that country because she chose to be free in the exercise of her religion ; whereupon she departed, and has ever since kept her oath very carefully. I have heard it said that nothing lay so heavily on her heart as tliis indignity of being deprived of the exercise of her religion ; for which reason she begged the queen, her good mother, to come and fetch her and take her to France to see the king and Monsieur, his brother, whom she hon- oured and loved much. Having arrived, she was not received and seen by the king, her brother, as she should have been. Seeing this great change since she had left France, and the rise of many persons she would never have thought of to grandeurs, it irked her much to be forced to pay court to them, as others, her equals, were now doing ; and far from doing so herself, she despised them openly, as I well saw, so high was her courage. Alas ! too high, certainly, for it caused her misfortunes : had she been willing to restrain herself and lower her courage the least in the world she would not have been thwarted and vexed as she has been. As to which I shall relate this story : when the king, her brother, went to Poland, he being there, she knew that M. du Gua, much favoured l)y her brother, had made some remarks to her disadvantage, enough to set brother and sister at variance or enmity. At the end of a certain time M. du 12 178 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Gua returned from Poland and arrived at Court, bearing let- ters from the king to his sister, which he went to her apart- ment to give her and kiss hands. This I saw myself. When she beheld him enter she was in great wrath, and as he came to her to present the letter she said to him, with an angry face : " Lucky for you, du Gua, that you come before me with this letter from my brother, which serves you as a safeguard, for I love him much and all who come from him are free from me ; but without it, I would teach you to speak about a princess like myself, the sister of your kings, your masters and sovereigns." M. du Gua answered very huml)ly : " I should never, madame, have presented myself before you, knowing that you wish me ill, without some good messa^je from the king, my master, who loves you, and whom you love also; or without feeling assured, madame, that for love of him, and because you are good and generous, you would hear me speak." And then, after making her his excuses and telling his reasons (as he knew well how to do), he denied very positively that he had ever spoken against the sister of his kings otherwise than very reverently. On which she dismissed him with an assurance that she would ever be his cruel enemy, — a promise which she kept until his death. After a while the king wrote to Mme. de Dampierre and begged her, for the sake of giving him pleasure, to iiuluce the Queen of Xavarre to pardon M. du Gua, which Mme. de Dampierre undertook with very great regret, knowing well the nature of the said queen ; but because the king loved her and trusted her, she took the errand and went one day to see the said queen in her room. Finding her in pretty good humour, she opened the matter and made the appeal, namely : that to keep the good graces, friendship, and favour of the king, her brother, who was now about to become MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 179 King of France, she ought to pardon M. dvi Gua, forget the past, and take him again into favour ; for the king loved and favoured him above his other friends ; and by thus taking M. du Gua as a friend she would gain through him many pleasures and good offices, inasmuch as he quietly governed the king, his master, and it was much better to have his help than to make him desperate and goad him against her, because he could surely do her much harm ; telling her how she had seen in her time during the reign of Frangois I., IMesdames Madeleine and Marguerite, one Queen of Scotland later, the other Duchesse de Savoie, her aunts, although their hearts were as high and lofty as her own, bring down their pride so low as to pay court to M. de Sourdis, who was only master of the wardrobe to the king, their father ; yet they even sought him, hoping by his means, to obtain the favour of the king ; and thus, taking example by her aunts, she ought to do the same herself in relation to M. du Gua. The Queen of Navarre, having listened very attentively to Mme. de Dampierre, answered her rather coldly, but with a smiling face, as her manner was : " Madame de Dampierre, what you say to me may be good for you ; you need favours, pleasures, and benefits, and were I you the words you say to me might be very suitable and proper to be received and put in practice ; but to me, who am the daughter of a king, the sister of kings, and the wife of a king, they have no mean- ing ; because with that high and noble rank I cannot, for my honour's sake, be a beggar of favours and benefits from the king, my brother ; and I hold him to be of too good a nature and too well acquainted with his duty to deny me anything unless I have the favour of a du Gua ; if otherwise, he will do great wrong to himself, his honour, and his royalty. And even if he be so unnatural as to forget himself and what he 180 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. owes to me, I prefer, for my honour's sake and as my courage tells me, to be deprived of his good graces, because I would not seek du Gua to gain his favours, or be even suspected of gaining them by such means and intercession ; and if the king, my brother, feels himself worthy to be king, and to be loved by me and by his people, I feel myself, as his sister, worthy to be queen and loved, not only by him but by all the world. And if my aunts, as you allege, degraded themselves as you say, let them do as they would if such was their humour, but their example is no law to me, nor will I imitate it, or form myself on any model if not my own." On that she was silent, and Mme. de Dampierre retired ; not that the queen was angry with her or showed her ill-will, for she loved her much. Another time, when M. d'Epernon went to Gascoigne after the death of Monsieur (a journey made for various purposes, so they said), he saw the King of Kavarre at Pamiers, and they made great cheer and caresses to each other. I speak thus because at that time M. d'Epernon was semi-king of France because of the dissolute favour he had with his master, the King of France. After having caressed and made good cheer together the King of Xavarre asked him to go and see him at N^rac when he had been to Toulouse and was on his way back ; which he promised to do. The King of Navarre having gone there first to make preparations to feast him well, the Queen of Xavarre, wdio was then at Nerac, and who felt a deadly hatred to ]\r. d'Epernon, said to the king, her husband, that she would leave the place so as not to disturb or hinder the fete, not being able to endure the sight of M. d'Epernon without some scandal or venom of anger which she might disgorge, and so give annoyance to the king, her husband. On which the king begged her, by all the pleasures that she could give MARGUEKITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 181 him, not to stir, but to help him to receive the said Sieur d'Epernon and to put her rancour against him underfoot for love of him, her husband, and all the more because it greatly concerned both of them and their grandeur. " Well, monsieur," replied the queen, " since you are pleased to command it, I will remain and give him good cheer out of respect to you and the obedience that I owe to you." After which she said to some of her ladies : " But I will answer for it that on the days that man is here I will dress in habiliments I never yet have worn, namely: dissimulation and hypocrisy ; I will so mask my face with shams that the king shall see there only good and honest welcome and all gentleness ; and likewise I will lay discre- tion on ray lips, so that externally I will make him think my heart internally is kind, which otherwise I would not answer for ; I do this being nowise in my own control, but wholly in his, — so lofty is he and full of frankness, unable to bear vileness or the venom of hypocrisy, or to abase himself in any way. Therefore, to content the king, her husband, for she honoured him much, as he did her, she disguised her feelings in such a way that, M. d'Epernon being brought to her apartment, she received him in the same manner the king had asked of her and she had promised ; so that all present, the chamber being full of persons eager to see the entrance and the interview, marvelled much, while the king and M. d'Epernon were quite content. But the most clear- sighted and those who knew the nature of the queen mis- doubted something hidden within ; and she herself said afterwards it was a comedy in which she played a part unwillingly. These are two tales by which to see the lofty courage of this queen, the which was such, as I have heard the queen, 182 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. her mother, say (discoursing of this topic), that she resembled in this her father ; and that she, the queen-mother, had no other child so like him, as much in ways, humours, linea- ments, and features of the face as in courage and generosity ; telling also how she had seen King Henri during King Franc^ois' lifetime unal:>le for a kingdom to pay his court and cringe to Cardinal de Tournon or to Amiral d'Annebault, the favourites of King Francois, even though he might often have had peace with Emperor Charles had he been willing so to do ; but his honour could not submit to such attentions. And so, like father, like daughter. Neverthe- less, all that injured her much. I remember an infinite number of annoyances and indignities she received at Court, which I shall not relate, they are too odious ; until at last she was sent away, with great affront and yet most innocent of what they put upon her ; the proofs of which were known to many, as I know myself; also the king, her husband, was convinced of it, so that he brought King Henri to account, which was very good of him, and henceforth there resulted between the two brothers [-in-law] a certain hatred and contention. The war of the League happened soon after ; and because the Queen of Xavarre feared some evil at Court, being a strong Catholic, she retired to Agen, which had been given to her with the region about it by her brothers, as nn ap- panage and gift for life. As the Catholic religion was con- cerned, which it was necessary to maintain, and also to exterminate the other, she wished to fortify her side as best she conld and repress the other side. But in this she was ill-served by means of ^Mme. de Duras, who governed her much, and made, in her name, great exactions and extor- tions. The people of the town were embittered, and covertly sought their freedom and a means to drive away their lady MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 183 and her bailiffs. On whicli disturbance the Mardchal de Matignon took occasion to make enterprise against the town, as the king, having learned the state of things, commanded him with great joy to do in order to aggravate his sister, whom he did not love, to more and more displeasure. This enterprise, which failed at first, was led the second time so dexterously by the said marshal and the inhabitants, that the town was taken by force with such rapidity and alarm that the poor queen, in spite of all she could do, was forced to mount in pillion behind a gentleman, and Mme. de Duras behind another, and escape as quickly as they could, riding a dozen leagues without stopping, and the next day as much more, to find safety in the strongest fortress of France, which is Carlat. Being there, and thinking herself in safety, she was, by the manoeuvres of the king, her brother (who was a very clever and very subtle king, if ever there was one), betrayed by persons of that country and the fortress, so that when she fled she became a prisoner in the hands of the Marquis de Canillac, governor of Auvergne, and was taken to the castle of Usson, a very strong fortress also, almost impregnable, which that good and sly fox Louis XI. had made such, in order to lodge his prisoners in a hundred- fold more security than at Loches, Bois de Yincennes, or Lusignan. Here, then, was this poor princess a prisoner, and treated not as a daughter of France or the great princess that she was. But, at any rate, if her body was captive, her brave heart was not, and it never failed her, but helped her well and did not let her yield to her affliction. See what a great heart can do, led by great beauty! For he who held her prisoner became her prisoner in time, brave and valiant though he was. Poor man ! what else could he expect ? Did he think to hold subject and captive in his prison one 184 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. whose eyes and beauteous face could subject the whole world to her bonds and chains like galley-slaves I So here was the marquis ravished and taken by her beauty ; but she, not dreaming of the delights of love, only of her honour and her liberty, played her game so shrewdly that slie soon became the stronger, seized the fort, and drove away the marquis, much dumfounded at such surprise and military tactics. There she has now been six or seven years,^ not, however, with all the pleasures of life, being despoiled of the county of Auvergne by M. le Grand Prieur de France, whom the king induced the queen-mother to institute count and heir in her wiU ; regretting much that she could not leave the queen, her good daughter, anything of her own, so great was the hatred that the king bore her. Alas ! what mutation was this from the time when, as I saw myself, they loved each other much, and were one in body, soul, and will ! Ah ! how often was it fine to see them discourse togethei ; for, whether they were grave or gay, nothing could be finer than to see and hear them, for both could say what they wished to say. Ah ' how changed the times are since we saw them in that great ball-room, dancing together in such beautiful accord oi dance and will ! The king always led her to the dance at the great balls. If one had a noble majesty the other had none the less ; the eyes of all were never surfeited or de- lighted enough by so agreeable a sight ; for the sets were so well danced, the steps so correctly periormed, the stops so finely made that we knew not which to admire most, their beautiful fashion of dancing or their majesty in pausing ; representing now a gay demeanour and next a noble, grave 1 Marguerite lived eighteen years in the castle of Usson, from 1587 to 1605. She died in Paris, March 27, 1G15, at the age of sixty-two, rathei less than one year after Brantonie. (French editor.) / v/y //■/•, J / / MAKGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 185 disdain ; for no one ever saw them in the dance that did not say they had seen no dance so fine with grace and majesty as this of the king-brother and the queen-sister. As for me, I am of that opinion; and yet I have seen the Queen of Spain and the Queen of Scotland dance most beautifully. Also I have seen them dance the Itahan pazzemeno [the minuet, menu 2^as], now advancing with grave port and majesty, doing their steps so gravely and so well ; next glid- ing only ; and anon making most fine and dainty and grave passages, that none, princes or others, could approach, nor ladies, because of the majesty that was not lacking. Where- fore this queen took infinite pleasure in these grave dances on account of her grace and dignity and majesty, which she displayed the better in these than in others like bransles, and volts, and courants. The latter she did not like, although she danced them well, because they were not worthy of her majesty, though very proper for the common graces of other ladies. I have seen her sometimes like to dance the hransle by torchlight. I remember that once, being at Lyon, on the return of the king from Poland, at the marriage of Besne (one of her maids of honour) she danced the hransle before many foreigners from Savoie, Piedmont, Italy, and elsewhere, who declared they had never seen anything so fine as this queen, a grave and noble lady, as indeed she is. One of them there was who went about declaring that she needed not, like other ladies, the torch she carried in her hand ; for the light within her eyes, which could not be extinguished like the other, was sufficient ; the which had other virtue than leading men to dance, for it inflamed all those about her, yet could not be put out like the one she had in hand, but lit the night amid the darkness and the day beneath the sun. 186 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. For this reason must we say that Fortune has been to us as great an enemy as to her, in that we see no longer that bright torch, or rather that fine sun which lighted us, now hidden among those hills and mountains of Auver'^me. If only that light had placed itself in some fine port or haven near the sea, where passing mariners might be guided, safe from wreck and peril, by its beacon, her dwelhng would be nobler, more profitable, more honourable for herself and us. Ah ! people of Provence, you ought to beg her to dwell upon your seacoasts or within your ports ; then would she make them more famous than they are, more inhabited and richer ; from all sides men in galleys, ships, and vessels would fiock to see this wonder of the world, as in old times to that of Ehodes, that they might see its glorious and far-shining pharos. Instead of which, begirt by barriers of mountains, she is hidden and unknown to all our eyes, except tlrnt we have still her lovely memory. Ah ! beautiful and ancient town of jMarseille, happy would you be if your port were honoured by the flame and beacon of her splendid eyes ! For the county of Provence belongs to her, as do several other provinces in France. Cursed be the unhappy obstinacy of this kingdom which does not seek to bring her hither with the king, her husband, to be received, honoured and wel- comed as they should be. (This I wrote at the very height of the AVars of the League.) '^^"e^e she a bad, malicious, miserly, or tyrannical princess (as there have been a plenty in times past in France, and will be, possibly, again), I should say nothiiig iu her favour; but slie is good, most splendid, liberal, giving all to others, keeping little for herself, most charitable, and giving freely to the poor. The great she mode ashamed with liberalities; for I have seen her make presents to all the Court on Xew Year's Day such as the kings, her brotliers, could not equal MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 187 On one occasion she gave Queen Louise de Lorraine a fan made of mother-of-pearl enriched with precious stones and pearls of price, so beautiful and rich that it was called a masterpiece and valued at more than fifteen thousand crowns. The other, to return the present, sent her sister those long airjuillettes which Spaniards call puntas, enriched with certain stones and pearls, that might have cost a hundred crowns ; and with these she paid for that fine New Year's gift, wiiich was, certainly, most dissimilar. In short, this queen is in all things royal and liberal, honourable and magnificent, and, let it not displease the empresses of long past days, their splendours described by Suetonius, Pliny, and others, do not approach her own in any way, either in Court or city, or in her journeys through the open country ; witness her gilded litters so superbly covered and painted with fine devices, her coaches and car- riages the same, and her horses so fine and so richly caparisoned. Those who have seen, as I have, these splendid appurte- nances know what I say. And must she now be deprived of all this, so that for seven years she has not stirred from that stern, unpleasant castle ? — in which, however, she takes patience ; such virtue has she of self-command, one of the greatest, as many wise philosophers have said ! To speak once more of her kindness : it is such, so noble, so frank, that, as I believe, it has done her harm ; for though she has had great grounds and great means to be revenged upon her enemies and injure them, she has often withheld her hand when, had she employed those means or caused them to be employed, and commanded others, who were ready enough, to chastise those enemies with her consent, they would have done so wisely and discreetly ; but she resigned all vengeances to God. 188 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. This is what M. du Gua said to her once when she threatened him : " Madame, you are so kind and generous that I never heard it said you did harm to any one ; and 1 do not think you will begin with me, who am your very humble servitor." And, in fact, although he greatly injured her, she never returned him the same in vengeance. It is true that when he was killed and they came to tell her, she merely said, being ill : "I am sorry I am not well enough to celebrate his death with joy." She had also this other kindness in her : that when others had humbled themselves and asked her pardon and favour, she forgave and pardoned, with the generosity of a lion which never does harm to those who are humble to him. I remember that when M. le Mardchal de Biron was lieutenant of the king in Guyenne, war having broken out around him (possibly with his knowledge and intent), he went one day before Nerac, where the King and Queen of Navarre were living at that time. The marshal prepared his arquebusiers to attack, beginning with a skirmish. The King of Navarre brought out his own in person, and, in a doublet like any captain of adventurers, he held his ground so well that, having the best marksmen, nothing could pre- vail against him. By way of bravado the marshal let fly some cannon against the town, so that the queen, who had gone upon the ramparts to see the pastime, came near hav- ing her share in it, for a ball flew right beside her ; which incensed her greatly, as much for the little respect Mardchal de Biron showed in braving her to her face, as because he had a special command from the king not to approach the war nearer than five hundred leagues to the Queen of Navarre, wherever she might be. The which command he did not observe on this occasion ; for which she felt resentment and revenge acfaiust the marshal MARGUERITE OF FRANCE A^D NAVARRE. 189 About a year and a half later she came to Court, where was the marshal, whom the king had recalled from Guyenne, fearing further disturbance ; for the King of Navarre had threatened to make trouble if he were not recalled. The Queen of Navarre, resentful to the said marshal, took no notice of him, but disdained him, speaking everywhere very ill of him and of the insult he had offered her. At last, the marshal, dreading the hatred of the daughter and sister of his masters, and knowing the nature of the princess, de- termined to seek her pardon by making excuses and humbling himself ; on which, generous as she was, she did not contra- dict him, but took him into favour and friendship and forgot the past. I knew a gentleman by acquaintance who came to Court about this time, and seeing the good cheer the queen bestowed upon the marshal was much as- tonished; and so, as he sometimes had the honour of being listened to by the queen, he said to her that he was much amazed at the change and at her good welcome, in which he could not have believed, in view of the affront and injury. To which she answered that as the marshal had owned his fault and made his excuses and sought her pardon humbly, she had granted it for that reason, and did not desire further talk about his bravado at N(drac. See how little vindictive this good princess is, — not imitating in this respect her grandmother. Queen Anne, towards the Marechal de Gi^, as I have heretofore related. I might give many other examples of her kindness in her reconciliations and forgivenesses. Eebours, one of her maids of honour, who died at Chenon- ceaux, displeased her on one occasion very much. She did not treat her harshly, but when she was very ill she went to see her, and as she was about to die admonished her, and then said : " This poor girl has done great harm, but she has 190 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. suffered much. May God pardon her as I have pardoned her." That was the vengeance and the harm she did her. Through her generosity she was slow to revenge, and in all things kind. Alfonso, the great King of Xaples, who was subtle in loving the beauties of women, used to say that beauty is the sign manual of kindness and gentle goodness, as the beautiful flower is tliat of a good fruit. As to that it cannot be doubted that if our queen had been ugly and not com- posed of her great beauty, she would have been very bad in view of the great causes to be so that were given her. Thus said the late Queen Isabella of Castile, that wise and virtuous and very Catholic princess: "The fruit of clem- ency in a (jueeu of great beauty and lofty heart, covetous of honour, is sweeter far than any vengeance v/hatever, even though it be undertaken for just claims and reason." This queen most sacredly observes that rule, striving to conform to tlie commandments of her God, whom she has always loved and feared and served devotedly. Now that the world has abandoned her and made war upon her, she takes her sole resource in God, whom she serves daily, as I am told by those who have seen her in her affliction ; for never does she miss a mass, taking the communion often and reading much in Holy Scripture, finding there her peace and consolation. She is most eager to obtain the fine new books that are composed, as much on sacred subjects as on human ; and when she undertakes to read a book, however large and long it be, she never stops or quits it until she sees the end, and often loses sleep and food in doing so. She herself composes, both in prose and verse. As to which no one can tliink otherwise than that her compositions are learned, beautiful, and jjleasing, for she knows the art ; and could we bring MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 191 tliem to the light, the world would draw great pleasure and great profit from them. Often she makes very beautiful verses and stanzas, that are sung to her by choir-boys whom she keeps, and which she sings herself (for her voice is beautiful and pleasant) to a lute, playing it charmingly. And thus she spends her time and wears away her luckless days, — offending none, and living that tranquil life she chooses as the best. She has done me the honour to write me often in her adversity, I being so presumptuous as to send for news of her. But is she not the daughter and sister of my kings, and must I not wish to know her health, and be glad and happy when I hear 't is good ? In her first letter she writes thus : — " By the remembrance you have of me, which is not less new than } leasant to me, I see that you have well preserved the affection you have always shown to our family and to the few now left of its sad wreck, so that I, in whatever state I be, shall ever be disposed to serve you ; feeling most happy that ill fortune has not effaced my name from the remembrance of my oldest friends, of whom you are, I know that you have chosen, like myself, a tranquil life ; and I count those happy who can maintain it, as God has given me the grace to do these five years, He having brought me to an ark of safety, where the storms of all these troubles cannot, I thank God, hurt me ; so that if there remain to me some means to serve my friends, and you particularly, you will find me wholly so disposed with right good will" Those are noble words ; and such was the state and resolu- tion of our beautiful princess. That is what it is to be born of a noble house, the greatest in the world, whence she drew her courage by inheritance from many brave and valiant kings, her father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and all their 192 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. ancestors. And be it, as she says, that from so great a ship- wreck she alone remains, not recognized and reverenced as she should be by her people, I believe this people of France has suffered much misery for that reason, and will suffer more for this war of the League. But to-day this is not so;i for by the valour and wisdom and fine government of our king never was France more flourishing, or more pacific, or better ruled ; w^hich is the greatest miracle ever seen, having issued from so vast an abyss of evils and corruptions ; by which it seems that God has loved our queen, — He being good and merciful Oh ! how ill-advised is he who trusts in the people of to-day ! Oh ! how differently did the Eomans recognize the posterity of Augustus Caesar, who gave them wealth and grandeurs, from the people of France, who received so much from their later kings these hundred years, and even from FranQois I. and Henri IL, so that without them France would have been tumbled topsy-turvy by her enemies watch- ing for that chance, and even by the Emperor Charles, that hungry and ambitious man. And thus it is they are so ungrateful, these people, toward Marguerite, sole and only remaining daughter and princess of France ! It is easy to foresee the wrath of God upon them, because nothing is to Him so odious as ingratitude, especially to kings and queens, who here below fulfil the place and state of God. And thou, disloyal Fortune, how plainly dost thou show that there are none, however loved by heaven and blessed by nature, who can be sure of thee and of thy favours a 1 It is noticeable in the course of this "Discourse" that Brantome wrote it at one period, namely, about 1593 or 1594, and reviewed it at an- other, -when Henri IV. -was in full possession of the kingdom, but before the end of the century and before the divorce. (French editor.) The passage to which the foregoing is a note is evidently an addition to the text. — Tr. MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVAKRE. 193 single day ! Art thou not dishonoured in thus so cruelly affronting her who is all beauty, sweetness, virtue, magna- nimity and kindness ? All this I wrote during those wars we had among us for ten years. To make an end, did I not speak elsewhere of this great queen in other discourses I would lengthen this still more and all I could, for on so excellent a subject the longest words are never wearisome ; but for a time I now postpone them. Live, princess, live in spite of Fortune ! Never can you be other than immortal upon earth and in heaven, whither your noble virtues bear you in their arms. If public voice and fame had not made common praise of your great merits, or if I were of those of noble speech, I would say further here ; for never did there come into the world a figure so celestial. This queen who should by good right order us By laws and edicts and above us reign, Till we behold a reign of pleasure under her, As in her father's days, a Star of France, Fortune hath hindered. Ha ! must rightful claim Be wrongly lost because of Fortune's spite ? Never did Nature make so fine a thing As this great unique princess of our France ! Yet Fortune chooses to undo her wholly. Behold how evil balances with good ! In the sixteenth century there were three Marguerites: one, sister of Frangois I. and Queen of Navarre, celebrated for her intellect, her Tales in the style of Boccaccio, and her verses, which are less interesting ; another, Marguerite, niece of the preceding, sister of Henri II., who became Duchesse de Savoie, very witty, also a writer of verses, and, in her youth, the patroness of the new poets at Court ; and lastly, the third Marguerite, niece and great-niece of the first two, 13 194 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. daughter of Henri II. and Catherine de' Medici, first wife of Henri IV., and sister of the last Valois. It is of her that I speak to-day as having left behind her most agreeable historical pages and opened in our literature that graceful series of women's Memoirs which henceforth never ceases, but is continued in later years and lively vein by Mesdames de La Fayette, de Caylus and others. All of these Memoirs are books made without intending it, and the better for that. The following is the reason why Queen Marguerite took the idea of writing those in which she describes herself with so lightsome a pen. Brantume, who was making a gallery of illustrious French and foreign ladies, after bringing Marie Stuart into it, be- thought him of placing Marguerite beside her as another example of the injustice and cruelty of Fortune. Marguerite, at the period when Brantome indited his impulsive, enthu- siastic portrait of her, flinging upon his paper that eulogy which may truly be called delirious, was confined at the castle of Usson in Auvergne (1593), where she was not so much a prisoner as mistress. Prisoner at first, she soon seduced the man who held her so and took possession of the place, where she passed the period of the League troubles, and beyond it, in an impenetrable haven. The castle of Usson had been fortified by Louis XL, well-versed in precautions, who wanted it as a sure place in which to lodge his prisoners. There Marguerite felt herself safe, not only from sudden attack, but also from the trial of a long siege and repeated assault. Writing to her husband, Henri IV., in October, 1594, she says to him, jokingly, that if he could see the fortress and the way in which she had protected herself within it he would see that God alone could reduce it, and she has good reason to believe that "this hermitage was built to be her ark of safety." MAKGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 195 The castle which she thus compares to ISToah's ark, and which some of her panegyrists, convinced that she who lived there was given to celestial contemplations, compare to Mount Tabor, was regarded as a Caprea and an abominable lair by enemies, who, from afar, plunged eyes of hatred into it. It is very certain, however, that Queen Marguerite lost nothing in that retreat of the delicate nicety of her mind, for it was there that she undertook to write her Memoirs in a few afternoons, in order to come to Brantome's assist- ance and correct him on certain points. We will follow her, using now and then some contemporary information, without relying too much upon either, but endeavouring to draw with simple truth a singular portrait in which there enters much that was enchanting and, towards the end, fantastic. Marguerite, born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, May 14, 1553, was six years old when her father, Henri 11., was killed at that fatal tournament which ruined the fortunes of the house of Valois. She tells us several anecdotes of herself and her childish repartees which prove a precocious mind. She takes great pains to call attention to a matter which in her is really a sign, a distinctive note through all ex- cesses, namely : that as a child and when it was the fashion at Court to be "Huguenot," and when all those who had intelligence, or wished to pass for having it, had withdrawn from what they called " bigotry," she resisted that influence. In vain did her brother, d'Anjou, aftervv-ard Henri III., fling her Hours into the fire and give her the Psalms and the Huguenot prayers in place of it; she held firm and pre- served herself from the mania of Huguenotism, which at that date (1561) was a fancy at Court, a French and mun- dane fashion, attractive for a time to even those who were soon to turn against it and repress it. Marguerite, in the 196 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. midst of a life that was little exemplary, will always be found to have kept with sincerity this corner of good Cath- olicism which she derived from her race, and which made her in this respect and to this degree more of an Italian than a Frenchwoman ; however, that which imports us to notice is that she had it. Still a child when the first religious wars began, she was sent to Amboise with her young brother, d'Aleugon. There she found herself in company with several of Brantome's female relations : Mme. de Dampien-e, his aunt, ]\Ime. de Eetz, his cousin ; and she began with the elder of tliese ladies a true friendship ; with the younger, the cousin, tlie affection came later. Marguerite gives the reason for this very prettily : — " At that time the advanced age of your aunt and my childish youthfulness had more agreement; for it is the nature of old people to love cliildren ; and those who are in tlie perfection of their age, like your cousin, despise and dislike their annoying simplicity." Childhood passed, and the first awakening to serious things was given to Marguerite about the time of the battle of Moncontour (1569). She was then sixteen. The Due d'Anjou, afterwards Henri III., aged eighteen, handsome, brave, and giving promise of a virtue and a prudence lie never justified, took his sister aside one day in one of the alleys of the park at Plessis-lez-Tours to tell lier of his de- sire, on starting for the army, to leave her as his confidant and support with their mother, Catherine de' Medici, during his absence at the wars. He made her a long speech, which she reports in full with some complacency : — " Sister, the nourishment we have taken together obliges us, not less than proximity, to love each other. . . . Until now we have naturally been guided to this without design MAEGUEEITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 197 and without tlie said union being of any utility beyond the pleasure we have had in conversing together. That was good for our childhood ; but now it is time to no longer live like children." He then points out to her the great and noble duties to which God calls him, in which the queen, their mother, brought him up, and which King Charles IX., their brother, lays upon him. He fears that this king, courageous as he is, may not always be satisfied with hunting, but will become ambitious to put himself at the head of the armies, the com- mand of wliich has been hitherto left to him. It is this that he wishes to prevent. " In this apprehension," he continues, " thinking of some means of remedy, I believe that it is necessary to leave some very faithful person behind me who will maintain my side with the queen, my mother. I know no one as suitable as you, whom I regard as a second myself. You have all the qualities that can be desired, — intelligence, judgment, and fidehty." The Due d'Anjou then proposes to his sister to change her manner of life, to be assiduous towards the queen, their mother, at all hours, at her lever, in her cabinet during the day, at her coucher, and so act that she be treated henceforth, not as a child, but as a person who represents him during his absence. " This language," she remarks, " was very new to me, having lived until then without purpose, thinking of nothing but dancing and hunting; and without much in- terest even in dressing and in appearing beautiful, not hav- ing yet reached the age of such ambitions." The fear she always felt for the queen, her mother, and the respectful silence she maintained in her presence, held her back still further. " I came very near," she says, " replying to him as Moses did to God in the vision of the bush: 'Who am I? 198 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Send, I pray thee, by him whom thou shoiildest send.' " Nevertheless, she felt within her at her brother's words a new courage, and powers hitherto unknown to her, and she soon consented to all, entering zealously into her brother's design. From that moment she felt herself " transformed." This fraternal and politic union thus created by the Due d'Anjou did not last. On his return from the victory of Moncontour she found him changed, distrustful, and ruled by a favourite, du Gua, who possessed him as so many others possessed him later. Henceforth his sister was out of favour with him, and it was with her younger brother, the Due d'Alen^on, that Marguerite renewed and continued as long as she could a union of the same kind, which gave room for all the feelings and all the ambitious activities of youth. Did she at that time give some ground for the coolness of her brother d'Anjou by her Haison with the young Due de Guise ? An historian who knew Marguerite well and was not hostile to her, says: " She had long loved Henri, Due de Guise, who was killed at Blois, and had so fixed the afl'ec- tions of her heart from her youth upon that prince of many attractions that she never loved the King of Xavarre, after- wards King of France of happy memory, but hated him from the beginning, and was married to him in spite of her- self, and against canonical law." ^ However this may be, the 1 The story goes that slie refused to answer at the marriage ceremony ; on wliich her brother, Charles IX., put his hand behind her head and made her nod, which was taken for consent. In after years, tlie ground given for her divorce was that of being married against her will. The marriage took place on a stage erected before the west front of the cathedral of Xotre- Dame; tlie King of Navarre being a Protestant, the service could not be performed in the church. It was liero, in view of tlie assembled multi- tude, that Marguerite's nod was forcibly given wlien she residutely re- fused to answer. Following Brantoiue's delight in describing fine clothes, the wedding gown shonld be mentioned here. It was cloth of gold, the body so closely covered with pearls as to look like a cuirass ; over this was a blue velvet mantle embroidered with ^/Jeurs-de-li/s, nearly five yards MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE, 199 Due d'Anjou seized the pretext of the Due de Guise to break with his sister, whose enemy he became insensibly, and he succeeded in ahenating her from her mother. Marguerite, in this flower of her youth, was, according to all testimony, enchantingly beautiful. Her beauty was not so much in the special features of her face as in the grace and charm of her whole person, with its mingling of seduc- tion and majesty. Her hair was dark, which was not thought a beauty in those days ; blond hair reigned. " I have seen her sometimes wearing her natural hair without any peruke artifice," Brautome tells us, " and though it was black (hav- ing inherited that colour from King Henri, her father), she knew so well how to twist and curl and arrange it, in imita- tion of her sister, the Queen of Spain, who never wore any hair but her own, that such arrangement and coiffure be- came her as well as, or better than, any other." Toward the end of her life Marguerite, becoming in her turn antiquated, with no brown hair to dress, made great display of blond perukes. " For them she kept great, fair-haired footmen, who were shaved from time to time ; " but in her youth, when she dared to be dark-haired as nature made her, it was not unbecoming to her; for she had a most dazzling complexion and her " beautiful fair face resembled the sky in its purest and greatest serenity " with its " noble forehead of whitening ivory." ISTor must we forget her art of adorn- ing and dressing herself to advantage, and the new inven- tions of that kind she gave to women, she being then the queen of the modes and fashion. As such she appeared on all solemn occasions, and notably on that day when, at the lonjT, which was borne by one hundred and twenty of the handsomest women in France. ITcr dark hair was loose and flowing, and was studded with diamond stars. The Due de Guise, le Balafrc, witli his family con- nections and all his retainers, left Paris that morning, unable to bear the spectacle of the marriage. — Tk, 200 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. Tuileries, the queen-motlier feted the Polish seigneurs who came to offer the crown of Poland to the Due d'Anjou. and Eonsard, who was present, confesses that the beautiful god- dess Aurora was vanquished ; but more notably still on that flowery Easter at Blois, when we see her in procession, her dark hair starred with diamonds and precious stones, wear- ing a gown of crinkled cloth of gold from Constantmople, the weight of which would have crushed any other w^oman, but which her beautiful, rich, strong figure supported firmly, bearing the palm in lier hand, her consecrated branch, " with regal majesty, and a grace half proud, half tender." Such was the Marguerite of the lovely years before the disasters and tlie flights, before tlie castle of Usson, where she aged and stiffened. This beauty, so real, so solid, which liad so little need of borrowed charms, had, like all her being, its fantasticalities and its superstition. I have said already that she frequently disguised her rich, brown hair, preferring a blond wig, " more or less charmingly fashioned."' Her beautiful face was pre- sented to view " all painted and stained." She took such care of her skin that she spoiled it with washes and recipes of many kinds, which gave her erysipelas and pimples. In fact, she w^as the model and eke the slave of the fashions of her time ; and as she survived tliose days she became in the end a species of preserved idol and curiosity, such as may be seen in a show-case. Tlie great Sully, when he one day reappeared at the Court of Louis XIII. with his ruff and his costume of the time of Henri IV., gave that crowd of young courtiers something to laugh at ; and so, when Queen Marguerite, having returned from Usson to Paris, showed herself at the remodelled Court of Henri lY. she produced the same effect on that young century, wliicli smiled at beholdinfr this solemn survival of the Valois. MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 201 Like all those Valois, a worthy granddaughter of Tran- 9ois I., she was learned. To the Poles who harangued in Latin she showed that she understood them by replying on the spot, eloquently and pertinently, without tlie help of an interpreter. She loved poetry and wrote it, and had it written for her by salaried poets whom she treated as friends. When she had once begun to read a book she could not leave it, or pause till she came to the end, " and very often she would lose both her eating and drinking." But let us not forestall the time. She herself tells us that this taste for study and reading came to her for the first time during a previous imprisonment in which Henri III. held her for several months in 1575, and we are still concerned with her cloudless years. She was maiTied, in spite of her objections as a good Catholic, to Llenri, King of Xavarre, six days before the Saint-Bartholomew (August, 1572). She relates with much naivete and in a simple tone the scenes of that night of horror, of which she was ignorant until the last moment. We see in her narrative that wounded and bleeding gentleman pursued through the corridors of the Louvre, and taking refuge in Marguerite's chamber, and flinging himself with the cry " Navarre ! Navarre ! " upon her ; shielding his own body from the murderers with that of his queen, she not know- ing whether she had to do with a madman or an assailant. When she did know what the danger was she saved the poor man, keeping him in bed and dressing his wounds in her cabinet until he was cured. Queen Marguerite, so little scrupulous in morality, is better than her brothers ; of the vanishing Valois she has all the good quahties and many of their defects, but not their cruelty. After this half-missed blow of the Saint-Bartholomew, which did not touch the princes of the blood, an attempt 202 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. was made to unmarry her from the King of Navarre. On a feast day when she was about to take the sacrament, her mother asked her to tell her under oath, truly, whether the king, her husband, had behaved to her as yet like a husband, a man, and whether there was not still time to break the union. To this Marguerite played the ingenue, so she asserts, apparently not comprehending. " I begged her," she says, " to believe that I knew nothing of what she was speaking. I could then say with truth as the lioman lady said, when her husband was angry because she had not warned him his breath was bad, ' that she had supposed all men were alike, never having been near to any one but him.' " Here Marguerite wishes to have it understood that she had never, so far, made comparison of any man with another man ; she plays the innocent, and by her quotation from the Ptoman lady she also plays the learned ; which is quite in the line of her intelligence. It would be a great error of literary judgment to consider these graceful Memoirs as a work of nature and simplicity ; it is rather one of discrimination and subtlety. Wit sparkles throughout ; but study and learning are perceptible. In the third line we come upon a Gr^ek word : " I would praise your work more," she writes to Brantome, " if you had praised me less ; not wishing that the praise I give should be attrib- uted to philautia TSiiher than to reason;" hy i^liilautia she means self-love. Marguerite (she will remind us of it if we forget it) is by education and taste of the school of Eonsard, and a little of that of Du Bartas. During her imprisonment in 1575, giving herself up, as she tells us, to reading and devotion, she shows us tlie study wliich led her back to religion; she talks to us of the "universal pape of Xature;" the " ladder of knowledge ; " the " cliain of Homer ; " and of " that agreeable Encyclopedia which, starting from God, MAKGUERITE OF TRANCE AND NAVARRE. 203 returns to God, the principle and the end of all things." All that is learned, and even transcendental She was called in her family Venus-Urania. She loved fine discourses on elevated topics of philosophy or sentiment. In her last years, during her dinners and suppers, she usually had four learned men beside her, to whom she propounded at the beginning of the meal some topic more or less sublime or subtile, and when each had spoken for or against it and given his reasons, she would intervene and renew the con- test, provoking and attracting to herself at will their contra- diction. Here Marguerite was essentially of her period, and she bears the seal of it on her style. The language of her Memoirs is not an exception to be counted against the man- nerism and taste of her time ; it is only a more happy em- ployment of it. She knows mythology and history; she cites readily Burrhus, Pyrrhus, Timon, the centaur Chiron, and the rest. Her language is by choice metaphorical and lively with poesy. "When Catherine de' ]\Iedici, going to see her son, the Due d'Anjou, travels from Paris to Tours in three days and a half (very rapid in those times, and the journey put that poor Cardinal de Bourbon, little accustomed to such discomfort, entirely out of breath), it is because the queen-mother is " borne," says Marguerite, " on the wings of desire and maternal affection." Marguerite likes and affects all comparisons borrowed from fabulous natural history, and she varies them with reminiscences of ancient history. When, in 1582, they recall her to the Court of France, taking her from her husband and from Xdrac, where she had then been three or four years, she perceives a project of her enemies to blow up a quarrel between herself and her husband during this ab- sence. " They hoped," she says, " that separation would be like the breaking of the ^Macedonian battalion." When tb* 204 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. famous Phalanx was once broken entrance was easy. This style, so ornate and figurative, usually delicate and graceful, has also its outspokenness and firmness of tone. Speaking of the expedition projected by her brother, the Due d' Alen- ^on, in Flanders, she explains it in terms of energetic beauty, representing to the king that "it is for the honour and aggrandizement of France; it will prove an invention to prevent civil war, all restless spirits desirous of novelty hav- ing means to pass into Flanders and blow off their smoke and surfeit themselves with war. This enterprise will also serve, like Piedmont, as a school for the nobility in the practice of arms ; we shall there revive the Montlucs and Brissacs, the Termes and the Bellegardes, and all those great marshals who, trained to war in Piedmont, have since then so gloriously and successfully served their king and their country." One of the most agreeable parts of these Memoirs is the journey in Flanders, Hainault, and the Lifege country which Marguerite made in 1577 ; a journey undertaken ostensibly to drink the waters of Spa, but in reality to gain partisans for her brother d'Alengon, in his project of wrenching the Low Countries from Spain. The details of her coquettish, and ceremonial magnificence, so dear to ladies, are not omitted : — " I went," says ]\Iarguerite, " in a litter with columns cov- ered with rose-coloured Spanish velvet, embroidered in gold and shaded silks with a device ; this litter was enclosed in glass, and each glass also bore a device, there being, whether on the velvet or on the glass, forty different devices about the sun and its effects, with the words in Spanish and Italian." Those forty devices and their explanation M'ere an ever fresh subject of gallant conversation in the towns through MARGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 205 which she passed. Amid it all, Marguerite, then in the full bloom of her twenty-fourth year, went her way, winning all hearts, seducing the governors of citadels, and persuad- ing them to useful treachery. On this journey she meets with charming Flemish scenes which she pictures delight- fully. Take, for example, the gala festival at Mons, where the beautiful Comtesse de Lalain (Marguerite, Princesse de Ligne), whose beauty and rich costume are described most particularly, has her child brought to her in swaddling- clothes and suckles it before the company ; " which," re- marks Marguerite, " would have been an incivility in any one else ; but she did it with such grace and simplicity, like all the rest of her actions, that she received as much praise as the company did pleasure." Leaving Namur, we have at Lifege a touching and pathetic story of a poor young girl. Mile, de Tournon, who dies of grief for being slighted and betrayed by her lover, to whom she was going in the utmost confidence ; and who himself, coming to a better mind too late, rushes to console her, and finds her coffin on arrival. We have here from Queen Mar- guerite's pen the finished sketch of a tale in the style of Mme. de La Fayette, just as above we had the drawing of a perfect little Flemish picture. On her return from this journey, the scenes Marguerite passes through at Dinant prove her coolness and presence of mind, and present us with another Flemish picture, but not so graceful as that of Mons and the beautiful nursing countess ; this time it is a scene of public drunkenness, grotesque burgher rioting, and burgomasters in their cups. A painter need only transfer and copy the very lines which ]\Iarguerite has so happily traced, to make a faithful picture. After these journeys, being now reunited at her house of La F^re in Picardy with her dear brother d'Alen^on, she 206 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. realizes there for nearly two months, " which were to us," she says, "like two short days," one of those terrestrial paradises which were at all times the desire of her imagi- nation and of her heart. She loved beyond all things those spheres of enchantment, those Fortunate Isles, alike of Urania and of Calypso, and she was ever seeking to repro- duce them in all places and under all forms, whether at her Court at N^rac or amid the rocks of Usson, or, at the last, in that beautiful garden on the banks of the Seine (which to-day is the Piue des Petits-Augustins) where she strove to cheat old age. ** my queen ! how good it is to be w^ith you ! " exclaims continually her brother d'Alengon, enchanted with the tliou- sand graceful imaginations with which she varied and em- bellished this sojourn at La Ffere. And she adds naively, mingling her Christian erudition with sentiment : " He would gladly have said with Saint Peter : * Let us make our tabernacle here,' if the regal courage he possessed and the generosity of his soul had not called him to greater things." As for her, we can conceive that she would gladly have re- mained there, prolonging without weariness tlie enchant- ment ; she would willingly have arranged her life like that beautiful garden at Xdrac of which she constantly speaks, " which has such charming alleys of laurel and cypress," or like the park she had made tliere, " with paths three thou- sand paces long beside the river;" the chapel being close at hand for morning mass, and the violins at her orders for the evening balL AVhatever ability and shrewdness Queen Marguerite may have shown in various political circumstances in tlie course of her life, we nevertheless perceive plainly that she was not a political woman ; she was too essentially of her sex for that. There are verv few women who, like the Princess MAKGUEKITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 207 Palatine [Anne de Gonzaga] or the illustrious Catherine of Russia, know how to be libertine yet sure of themselves ; able to establish an impenetrable partition between the alcove and the cabinet of public affairs. Nearly all the women who have mingled in the intrigues of politics have introduced and confused with them their intrigues of heart or senses. Consequently, whatever intelligence they may have, they elude or escape at a certain moment, and unless there be a man who holds the tiller and gives them with decision their course, we find them unfaithful, treacherous, not to be relied on, and capable at any moment of colloguing through a secret window with an emissary of the opposite side. Marguerite, with infinite intelligence and gTace, was one of those women. Distinguished but not superior, and wholly influenced by passions, she had wiles and artifices of a passing kind, but no views, and still less stability. One of the remarkable features of her Memoirs is that she does not tell all, nor even the half of all, and in the very midst of the odious and extravagant accusations made against her she sits, pen in hand, a delicate and most discreet woman. Nothing can be less like confession than her Memoirs. " We find there," says Baylo, " many sins of omission ; but could we expect that Queen Marguerite would acknowledge the things that would blast her ? Such avowals are reserved for tlie tribunal of confession; they are not meant for history." At the most, when enlightened by history and by the pam- phlets of the period, we can merely guess at certain feel- ings of which she presents to us only the superficial and specious side. "When she speaks of Bussy d'Amboise she scarcely restrains her admiration for that gallant cavalier, and we fancy we can see in the abundance of that praise that her heart overflows. Even the letters that we have from her say little more. 208 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. • Among them are love letters addressed to him whom at one time she loved the most, Harlay de Chanvalon. Here we find no longer the charming, moderately ornate, and naturally polished style of the Memoirs; this is all of the highest metaphysics and purest fustian, nearly unintelligible and most ridiculous. " Adieu, my beauteous sun ! adieu, my noble angel ! fine miracle of nature ! " those are tlie most commonplace and earthly of her expressions ; the rest mount ever higher till lost in the Empyrean. It would really seem, from reading these letters, as if Marguerite had never loved with heart-love, only with the head and the imagination ; and that, feeling truly no love but the physical, she felt herself bound to refine it in expression and to petrarchize in words, she, who was so practical in behaviour. She borrows from the false poetry of her day its tinsel in order to persuade herself that the fancy of the moment is an eternal worship. A practical observation is quoted of her which tells us better than her own letters the secret of her life. "Would you cease to love ? " she said, " possess the thing beloved." It is to escape this quick disenchantment, this sad and rapid awakening, that she is so prodigal of her figurative, myth- ological, impossible expressions ; she is trying to make her- self a veil ; the heart counts for nothing. She seems to be saying to love : " Thy base is so trivial, so passing a thing, let us try to support it by words, and so prolong its image and its play." Her life well deduced and well related would make the subject of a teeming and interesting volume. Having ob- tained, after the persecutions and troubles, permission to rejoin her husband in Gascogne (1578), she remained there three and a half years, enjoying her liberty and leaving him his. She counts these days at N(^rac, mingled, in spite of the re-beginning wars, with balls, excursions, and " aU sorts MAKGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 209 of virtuous pleasures," as an epoch of happiness. Henri's weaknesses and her own harmonized remarkably, and never clashed. But Henri soon crossed the limit of license, and she, on her side, equally. It is not for us to hold the balance or enter here into details which would soon become indelicate and shameful. Marguerite, who had gone to spend some time in Paris at her brother's Court (1582, 1583) did not return to her husband until after an odious scandal had made public her frailty. From that time forth her life did not retain its early, smiling joyfulness. She was now past thirty ; civil wars were lighted, never to be extinguished until after the des- perate struggles and total defeat of the League. Marguerite, becoming a queen-adventuress, changed her abode from time to time, until she found herself in the castle of Usson, that asylum of which I have spoken, where she passed no less than eighteen years (1587-1605). What happened there ? Doubtless many common frailties, but less odious than are told by bitter and dishonourable chroniclers, the only authorities for the tales they put forth. During this time Queen Marguerite did not entirely cease to correspond with her husband, now become King of France. If the conduct of the royal pair leaves much to be desired with regard to each other, and also with regard to the public, let us at least recognize that their correspondence is that of honourable persons, persons of good company, whose hearts are much better than their morals. When reasons of State determined Henri to unmarry himself, to break a union which was not only sterile but scandalous, ]\Iarguerite agreed without resistance, — seeming, however, to be fully conscious of what she was losing. To accomplish the formalities of divorce, the pope delegated certain bishops and cardinals to interrogate separately the husband and 14 210 THE BOOK or THE LADIES. wife. Marguerite expresses the desire, inasmuch as she must be questioned, that this may be done " by more private and familiar " persons, her courage not being able to endure publicly so great a diminution ; " fearing that my tears," she writes, " may make these cardinals think I am acting from force or constraint, which would injure the effect the king desires" (Oct. 21, 1599). King Henri was touched by the feelings she showed throughout this long negotiation. " I am very satisfied," he writes, " at the ingenuousness and candour of your procedure ; and I hope that God will bless the remainder of our days with fraternal affection, ac- companied by the public good, which will render them very happy." He calls her henceforth his sister ; and she herself says to him : " You are father, brother, and king to me." If their marriage was one of the least noble and the most bourgeois, their divorce, at any rate, was royal [Here Sainte-Beuve does not keep strictly to history. Henri lY. had long urged Marguerite to consent to a divorce ; but she, aware that he was taking steps to divorce Gabrielle d'Estr^es from her husband, in order to marr}^ her, and feeling the indignity of such a marriage, firmly refused, and continued to do so until the sudden death of Gabrielle in Paris during Holy Y^eek of 1599 ; on which Marguerite consented at once to the divorce, and Henri married Marie de' Medici, December 17 of the same year. Five years later (1605) Marguerite returned from the castle of Usson and held her Court in Paris at the hotel de Sens (which still exists) and at her various chateaux in Languedoc ; no longer, alas ! the Peine Margot of our ill- regulated affections, and somewhat open to the malicious comments of Tallemant dos Peaux, but appearing at times with all her wonted spirit and regal dignity. These were MAEGUERITE OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. 211 the days when she kept a brigade of golden-haired footmen who were shorn for the wigs ; and the story goes that her gowns were made with many pockets, in each of which she kept the mummied heart of a lover. But such tales must be taken for what they are worth, and a better chronicler than the satirists of the Valois has given us ocular proof of her last majestic presence at a public ceremony five years before her death. In 1610, Henri TV. preparing to leave France for the war in Germany, and wishing to appoint Queen Marie de* Medici regent, it became necessary to have the latter crowned. This was done in the cathedral of Saint-Denis, May 13, 1610. The Queen of oSTavarre, as Marguerite, daughter of France and first princess of the blood, was required to be present at the ceremony. Eubens' splendid picture (reproduced in this volume) gives the scene. Marie de' Medici, kneeling before the altar, is being crowned by Cardinal de Joyeuse, assisted by his clergy and two other cardinals ; beside the queen are the dauphin (Louis XIII.) and his sister, Ehsabeth, after- wards Queen of Spain. The Princesse de Conti and the Duchesse de Montpeusier carry the queen's train ; the Due de Ventadour, his back to the spectator, bears the sceptre, and the Chevalier de Vendome the sword of Justice. To the left, leading the cortege of princesses and nobles, is the Queen of Navarre, easily recognized by her small closed crown, all the other princesses wearing coronets. In the background, to right, in a gallery, sits Henri IV. viewing the ceremony. As he did so he turned with a shudder to the man behind him and said : " I am thinking how this scene would appear if this were the Last Day and the Judge were to summon us all before Him." Henri IV. was killed by Eavaillac the following morning, while his coach stood blocked in the streets by the crowds who 212 THE BOOK OF THE LADIES. were collecting for the public entry of Marie de* Medici into Paris. The young Elisabeth, eldest daughter of the king and Marie de' Medici, who appears at the coronation of her mother, was afterwards wife of Philip IV. of Spain, and mother of the Infanta Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV., also of Carlos II., at whose death Louis XIV. obtained the crown of Spain for his grandson, the Due d'Anjou, Philip \. This Elisabeth of France, Queen of Spain, is the original of Piubens' magnificent portrait reproduced in this chapter. — Tii.] Queen Marguerite returned from Usson to Paris in 1605; and here we find her in her last estate, turned sliFrferes. Paris. IL (See page 44.) This is doubtless the Discours merveilleux de la, vie, actions, et cUportemens de la reine Catherine de Medicis, attributed to Theodore de Bfeze, also to de Serres, but with more proba- bility to Henri Etienne ; coming certainly from the hand of a master. It was printed and spread about publicly in 1574 with the date of 1575 ; inserted soon after in the Memoires d'etat sous Charles IX., printed in 1577 in three volumes, 8vo, and subsequently in the various editions of the Beceuil de diverses jpieces jpour servir d, Vhistoire du rlgne de Henri III. French editor. III. (See page 91.) M. de Maison-Fleur was a gentleman of the Bordeaux region, a Huguenot, and a somewhat celebrated poet in his day, whose principal work, Les Divins Cantiques, was printed for the first time at Antwerp in 1580, and several times reprinted in succeeding years. For details on this poet, see the Bihliotheque Frangaise of the Abb^ Goujet. French editor. lY. (See page 92.) We see, 'neath white attire, In mourning great and sadness, Passing, -with many a charm Of beauty, this fair goddess, Holding the shaft in hand Of her son, heartless. APPENDIX. 301 And Love, without his frontlet, Fluttering round her, Hiding his bandaged eyes With veil of mourning On which these words are writ : DiK OR BE CAPTURED. V. (See page 94.) Translation as nearly literal as possible. In my sad, sweet song, In tones most lamentable I cast my cutting grief Of loss incomparable ; And in poignant sighs I pass my best of years. Was ever such an ill Of hard destiny. Or so sad a sorrow Of a happy lady. That my heart and eye Should gaze on bier and coffin? That I, in my sweet springtide, In the flower of youth, All these pains should feel Of excessive sadness, With naught to give me pleasure Except regret and yearning ? That which to me was pleasant Now is hard and painful ; The brightest light of day Is darkness black and dismal ; Nothing is now delight In that of me required. I have, in heart and eye, A portrait and an image 302 APPENDIX. That mark my mourning life And my pale visage With violet tones that are The tint of grieving lovers. For my restless sorrow I can rest nowhere ; Why should I change in place Since sorrow will not efface? My worst and yet my best Are in the loneliest places. ■\Vhen in some still sojourn In forest or in field, Be it by dawn of day, Or in the vesper hour, Unceasing feels my heart Regret for one departed. If sometimes toward the skies My glance uplifts itself, The gentle iris of his eyes I see in clouds ; or else I see it in the water, As in a gTave. If I lie at rest Slumbering on my couch, I hear him speak to me, I feel his touch ; In labour, in repose, He is ever near me. I see no other object. Though beauteous it may be In many a subject, To which my heart consents. Since its perfection lacks In this affection. End here, my song, Thy sad complaint. APPENDIX. 303 Of which be this the burden : True love, not feigned, Because of separation Shall have no diminution. VL (See page 235.) This book, entitled Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses, is a collection of the poems of this princess, made by Simon de La Haie, surnamed Sylvius, her valet de cham- hre, and printed at Lyon, by Jean de Tournes, 1547, 8vo. The Nouvelles of the Queen of Navarre appeared for the first time without the name of the author, under the title : Histoire des Amants fortunes, dediee h Villustre ^^^incesse, Madame Marguerite de Bourbon, Duchesse de Nivernois, by Pierre Boaistuau, called Launay. Paris, 1558 4to. This edi- tion contains only sixty-seven tales, and the text has been garbled by Boaistuau. The second edition is entitled : Heptameron des Nouvelles de tres-illustre et tres-excellente princesse Marguerite de Valois, reine de Navarre, remis en son vrai ordre, by Charles Gruget, Paris, 1559, 4to. French editor. In 1841 M. Genin published a volume of Queen Margue- rite's letters, and in the following year a volume of her letters addressed to Frangois I. Since then Comte H. de La Ferrifere-Percy has made her the subject of an interesting " Study." This careful investi- gator having discovered her book of expenses, kept by Frott^, Marguerite's secretary, has developed from it a daily proof of the beneficent spirit and inexhaustible liberality of the good queen. The title of the book is : Marguerite d'Angouleme, sceur de Francois F^. Aubry : Paris, 1862. 304 APPENDIX. The poems of Frangois I., with other verses by his sister and mother, were published in 1847 by M. Aim^ Champollion. Notes to Sainte-Beuve's Essay. VIL (See page 262.) The Ladies given in Discourse VII. appear under the head of " The Widows " in the volume of Les Dames Galantes, a very different book from the Zivre des Dames, which is their rightful place. As Brantome placed them under the title of Widows, he has naturally enlarged chiefly upon the period of their widowhood. French editor. INDEX. Anne de Bretagne, Queen of France, wife of Charles VIII. and of Louis XII., her inheritance, lovers, and first marriage, 25, 26 ; her beauty, wisdom, and goodness, 26 ; spirit of revenge, 27, 28 ; second marriage, 29 ; the first queen to hold a great court, a noble school for ladies, 29, 30; how King Louis honoured her, 30-32 ; her death and burial, 32-34 ; her noble record, 34, 35, 37 ; her tomb at Saint-Denis, 39 ; the founder of a school of manners and perfection for her sex, 42, 43; Sainte-Beuve's re- marks upon her, 40-43, 219. Anne de France (Madame), daughter of Louis XL, 216-218. Blanche de Montferrat, Duchesse de Savoie, 293-297. Book of the Ladies (The), Bran- tome's own name for this volume, 1. BouRDEiLLE (Madame de), 297, 298. Bourdeille (Pierre de), Abbe de Brant6m.e, his name for the present volume, 1 ; origin and arms of his family, 3, 4 ; general sketch of his life and career, 4-19; his retirement, 20 ; his books, his will, 21 ; titles of his books, when first printed, 22, 23. Caste LNAUD (Pierre de), his account of Brantome, 1- 3. Catherine de Cloves, wife of Henri de Lorraine, Due de Guise, " le Balafre," 297. Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, wife of Henri II., 44 ; sketch of the Medici, 45-48; her marriage to the dauphin, 48-50; personal ap- pearance and tastes, 51-54; her mind, 54 ; conduct as regent and queen- mother, Brantome's defence of it, 57-72 ; her liberality and public works, 74 ; her accomplishments and majesty, 75-77 ; her court, 77-80, 81, 82 ; Henri IV. 's opinion of it, 83 ; her death at Blois, 83 ; Sainte-Beuve's estimate of her, 85-88 ; H. de Balzac's novel upon her, 86 ; Mezeray's opinion of her, 85 ; her daughter Elisabeth's fear of her, 145, 146; 164, 165, 167, 289, 290, 300. Charles IX., King of France, his funeral attended by Brantome, 35- 37; 198, 264, 265, 271, 272. Charlotte de France (Madame), daughter of Francois I. and Queen Claude, died young, 223. Chastellard (Seigneur de), his jour- ney with Brantome in attendance on Marie Stuart to Scotland, 99 ; his story and death, 117-120. Christine of Denmark, wife of the Due de Lorraine, 283-291. Claude de France (Madame), daugh- ter of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne, wife of Francois I., died young, 223. Claude de France (Madame), daugh- ter of Henri II. and Catherine de' Medici, wife of the Due de Lorraine, 229-231. CoRDELii:RE (La), man-o'-war built by Anne de Bretagne, which fought the " Regent of England," both shipa destroyed, 30, 299. 20 306 INDEX. Daegattd (M.), his impulsive history of Marie Stuart, 122. Diane de Feance (Madame), Du- chesse d'Angouleme, illegitimate daughter of Henri II., 231-234. ^feLisABETH DB France, Queeu of Spain, daughter of Henri II. and Catherine de' Medici, second wife of Philip II. of Spain, 137-151, 229, 230, 270, 271. fiLiSABETH DE France, Queeu of Spain, daughter of Henri IV. and Marie de' Medici, her portraits by Kubens, 212. Fleur-de-lis, how connected with the Florentine lily, 45. Francois I., King of France, 219, 220, 236, 237, 238, 241, 245-249, 254. Germai\e de Foix, wife of King Ferdinand of Spain, 142, 143. Guise (Henri I., Due de), le Balafre, 117, 198, 199, 273, 283, 288. Guise (Catherine de Cleves, Duchesse de), 288, 289. Henri II., King of France, 231, 232. Henri III., King of France, 177, 178, 180, 184, 196-198, 234, 267, 280, 283, 285, 286, 292. Henri IV., Kin g of Fr ance, opinion of Catherine"de' Medici, 83, 87, 88 ; 176, 180, 181, 201, 209; remark at the coronation of Marie de' Medici, 210; 234. IsABELLE d'Autriche, Quccn of France, daughter of Maximilian II., wife of Charles IX. of France, 262- 270. Isabella of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI. of France, first brought the pomps and fashions of dress to France, 157. Jeanne d'Autriche, wife of Jean, Infante of Portugal, 270-273, Jeanne db France (Madame), daugh- ter of Louis XI., married to and di- vorced by Louis XII., 215, 216. Labanoff (Prince Alexander), his careful research into the history of Marie Stuart, 121. L'HopiTAL (Michel de), chancellor of France, epithalamium on the mar- riage of Marie Stuart and Fran9ois II., 124; his changed feeling, 131, 132. Louis_XII., King of France, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 39, 41-43. Louise db France (Madame), daugh- ter of Fran9ois I. and Queen Claude, died young, 223. Louise de Lorraine, Queen of France, wife of Henri III., 280-282, 283. Magdelaine de France (Madame), daughter of Francois I. and Queen Claude, wife of James V. of Scot- land, 223, 224. Maintenon (Madame de), a pendant to Anne de Bretagne, 43. Maison-Fleur (M. de), 91, 97, 300. Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, sister of Francois I., wife of Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, grandmother of Henri IV., 234 ; her poems, 235 ; her devotion to her brother, 237-240, 245, 249; interest in the phenomenon of death, 242 ; her "Nouvelles," 242, 243, 244; Sainte-Beuve's essay on her, 243- 261 ; her learning and comprehension of the Renaissance, 244, 245 ; her letters, 249 ; Erasmus' opinion of her, 250, 251 ; favours, but does not be- long to, the Religion, 251-255 ; her writings, the Heptameron, 255-260 ; the patron of the Renaissance, 261 ; her works, 303. Marguerite de France (Madame), daughter of Francois I. and Queen Claude, wife of the Due de Savoie, 224-229. Marguerite, Queen of France and of Navarre, daughter of Henri II. and Catherine de' Medici, wife of Henri r INDEX. 307 rv,, Brantome visits her at the Castle of Usson and dedicates his work to her, 19; mention of her in his will, 22; his discourse, 152-193; her beauty and style of dress, 153-163 ; her mind and education, 164-166; marriage to Henri IV., 167 ; Brantome's argu- ment in favour of the Salic law, 168- 175; difficulty of religion between herself and her husband, 176; her dignity and sense of honour, 178- 180; retirement in the Castle of Usson, 183; on ill terms with her brother Henri III., 184; her beauti- ful dancing, 185 ; her liberality and generosity, 186-190; love of reading, 191 ; corresponds with Brantome, 191; Sainte-Beuve's essay on her, 1 93 ; reasons why she began her Memoirs, 1 95 ; faithfulness to the Catholic religion, 195 ; intimacy with her brother d'Anjou, Henri III., 196, 197; her love for Henri Due de Guise, le Balafre, her marriage to Henri IV., 198; the Saint-Bartholo- mew, 201 ; her Memoirs, 202, etc. ; anecdote of a Princesse de Ligne, 205 ; friendship with her brother, Due d'Alen9on, 206 ; her letters, 208; her life at Ugson, 209 ; divorce from Henri IV., 209, 210; return to Paris, eccentricities, appearance at the coronation of Marie de' Medici, 210-212 ; comparison with Marie Stuart, 213; her real merit, 213, 231. Marguerite be Lorraine, wife of the Due de Joyense, 282, 283. Marie b'Actriche, wife of the Em- peror Maximilian II., 291-293. Marib d'Autrichb, sister of the Em- peror Charles V. and wife of Louis, King of Hungary, 273-280. Marie Stuart, Queen of France and Scotland, her parentage, 89 ; youth- ful accomplishments and beauty, 90- 93 ; marriage to Fran9ois II., and widowhood, 93, 94 ; her poem on her widowhood, 94-96, 294 ; Charles IX.'s love for her, 96 ; returns to Scotland, Brantome accompanies her, 97-lGl * marriage to Darnley, 101 ; Bran- tome's defence of her, 102 ; her disasters, 103; her imprisonment in England, 104; her death, as related to Brantome by one of her ladies there present, 105-115; Sainte- Beuve's essay on Marie Stuart and summing up of her life, 121-136, 289 ; her poem on her widowhood, transla- tion, 301. Mezerat (Fran9oi3 Eudes de), his History of France, his picture of Catherine de' Medici, 85. MiGNET (Francois Auguste), his in- valuable History of Marie Stuart, 121, 122, 136. MoLAND (M. Henri), his essay on Brantome used in the introduction to this volume, 1. NiEi, (M.), librarian to Ministry of the Interior, his collection of original portraits and crayons of celebrated persons of the 16th century, 86, 87. Patin (Gui), his feelings in Saint. Denis before the tomb of Louis XIL and Anne de Bretagne, 40, 41. Philip IL of Spain, 138, 139, 142. Kenee de France (Madame), daugh- ter of Louis XII. and Anne de Bre- tagne, wife of the Duke of Ferrara, 220-223. RcEDEREK (Comte), his Memoirs on Polite Society, study of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne, 41-43. RoNSARD (Pierre de), 91, 124, 156, 157, 160, 185, 224. Sainte-Beuve (Charles- Augustin), his remarks on Anne de Bretagne, 40- 43 ; his estimate of Catherine de' Medici, 85-88 ; his essay on Marie Stuart, 121-136; on Marguerite de Navarre, 193-213; oa Marguerite de Valois, 243-261. Salic Law (the), Brantome's argument about it, 168-175. 308 INDEX. Tavannes (Vicomte de). Memoirs, 136, ■ViGNAUD (M. H.), his introduction to Brantome's "Vie des Dames ninstres " used in the introduc- tion to this volume, 1. Vincent de Paul (Saint), chaplain to Queen Marguerite de Kavarre, 212. YoLAND DE Fkancb (Madame), daugh- ter of Charles VII. and wife of the Due de Savoie, 214, 215. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 1 31 Series 9482 3 1205 ourirjfi III ZE> UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 000162 552 4 l!i'i! ■Ill |i!'lljljiiill!H!!i|| lilHil 1:11! ' iiiiliii lii iitiilillll 11 iJl: :ilil li !