Kitabı oku: «Old Court Life in France, vol. 1», sayfa 4

CHAPTER VII.
LA DUCHESSE D’ÉTAMPES

RIDING with all speed from Madrid – for he fears the Emperor’s perfidy – Francis has reached the frontier of Spain, on the banks of the river Bidassoa. His boys – the Dauphin and the Duc d’Orléans, who are to replace him at Madrid as hostages – await him there. They rush into their father’s arms and fondly cling to him, weeping bitterly at this cruel meeting for a moment after years of separation. Francis, with ready sympathy, mingles his tears with theirs. He embraces and blesses them. But, wild with the excitement of liberty and insecure while on Spanish soil, he cannot spare time for details. He hands the poor lads over to the Spanish commissioners. Too impatient to await the arrival of the ferry-boat, which is pulling across the river, he steps into the waters of the Bidassoa to meet it. On the opposite bank, among the low scrub wood, a splendid retinue awaits him. He springs into the saddle, waves his cap in the air, and with a joyous shout exclaims, “Now I am a king! Now I am free!”

The political vicissitudes of Francis’s reign are as nothing to the chaos of his private life; only as a lover he was never defeated. No humiliating Pavia arrests his successful course. At Bayonne he finds a brilliant Court; his mother the Regent, and his sister Marguerite, await his arrival. After “Les embrasseurs d’usage,” as Du Bellay quaintly expresses it, the King’s eye wanders over the parterre of young beauties assembled in their suite, “la petite bande des dames de la Cour.” Then Francis first beholds Anne de Pisselieu, afterwards Duchesse d’Étampes. No one can compare to her in the tyranny of youth, beauty, and talent. A mere girl, she already knows everything, and is moreover astute, witty, and false. In spite of the efforts of Diane de Poitiers to attract the King (she having come to Bayonne in attendance on the Regent-mother), Anne de Pisselieu prevails. The King is hers. He delights in her joyous sallies. Anne laughs at every one and everything, specially at the pretensions of Madame Diane, whom she calls “an old hag.” She declares that she herself was born on Diane’s wedding-day!

Who can resist so bewitching a creature? Not Francis certainly. So the Court divides itself into two factions in love, politics, and religion. One party, headed by the Duchesse d’Étampes – a Protestant, and mistress of the reigning monarch; a second by Madame Diane de Poitiers – a Catholic, who, after many efforts, finding the King inaccessible, devotes herself to his son, Prince Henry, a mere boy, at least twenty years younger than herself, and waits his reign. Oddly enough, it is the older woman who waits, and the younger one who rules.

The Regent-mother looks on approvingly. Morals, especially royal morals, do not exist. Madame Louise de Savoie is ambitious. She would not see the new Spanish Queen – a comely princess, as she hears from her daughter Marguerite – possess too much influence over the King. It might injure her own power. The poor Spanish Queen! No fear that her influence will injure any one! The King never loves her, and never forgives her being forced upon him as a clause in the ignominious treaty of Madrid. Besides, she is thirty-two years old and a widow; grave, dignified, and learned, but withal a lady of agreeable person, though of mature and well-developed charms. Elinor admired and loved Francis when she saw him at Madrid, and all the world thought that the days were numbered in which Madame d’Étampes would be seen at Court. “But,” says Du Bellay, either with perfect naiveté or profound irony – “it was impossible for the King to offer to the virtuous Spanish princess any other sentiments than respect and gratitude, the Duchesse d’Étampes being sole mistress of his heart!” So the royal lady fares no better than Queen Claude, “with the roses in her soul,” and only receives, like her, courtesy and indifference.

The King returns to the Spanish frontier to receive Queen Elinor and to embrace the sons, now released, to whom she has been a true mother during the time they have been hostages at Madrid.

By-and-by the Queen’s brother – that mighty and perfidious sovereign, Charles V., Emperor of Germany – passing to his estates in the Netherlands, “craves leave of his beloved brother, Francis, King of France, to traverse his kingdom on his way,” so great is his dread of the sea voyage on account of sickness.

Some days before the Emperor’s arrival Francis is at the Louvre. He has repaired and embellished it in honour of his guest, and has pulled down the central tower, or donjon, called “Philippine,” which encumbered the inner court. By-and-by he will pull down all the mediæval fortress, and, assisted by Lescot, begin the palace known as the “Old Louvre.”

Francis is seated tête-à-tête with the Duchesse d’Étampes. The room is small – a species of boudoir or closet. It is hung with rare tapestry, representing in glowing colours the Labours of Hercules. Venetian mirrors, in richly carved frames, fling back the light of a central chandelier, also of Venetian workmanship, cunningly wrought into gaudy flowers, diamonded pendants, and true lovers’ knots. It is a blaze of brightness and colour. Rich velvet hangings, heavy with gold embroidery, cover the narrow windows and hang over the low doors. The King and the Duchess sit beside a table of inlaid marble, supported on a pedestal, marvellously gilt, of Italian workmanship, on which are laid fruits, wines, and confitures, served in golden vessels worked in the Cinque-cento style, after Cellini’s patterns. Beside themselves, Triboulet,⁵ the king’s fool, alone is present. As Francis holds out his cup time after time to Triboulet, who replenishes it with Malvoisie, the scene composes itself into a perfect picture, such as Victor Hugo has imagined in Le Roi s’amuse; so perfect, indeed, that Francis might have sung, “La donna è mobile,” as he now does in Verdi’s opera of Rigoletto.

“Sire,” says the Duchess, her voice dropping into a most delicious softness, “do you leave us to-morrow?”

The King bows his head and kisses her jewelled fingers.

“So you persist in going to meet your brother, the Emperor Charles, your loving brother of Spain, whom I hate because he was so cruel to you at Madrid.” The Duchess looks up and smiles. Her eyes are beautiful, but hard and cruel. She wears an ermine mantle, for it is winter; her dress is of the richest green satin, embroidered with gold. On her head is a golden net, the meshes sprinkled with diamonds, from which her dark tresses escape in long ringlets over her shoulders.

Francis turns towards her and pledges her in a cup of Malvoisie. The corners of his mouth are drawn up into a cynical smile, almost to his nostrils. He has now reached middle life, and his face at that time would have made no man’s fortune.

“Duchess,” says he, “I must tear myself from you. I go to-morrow to Touraine. Before returning to Paris, I shall attend my brother the Emperor Charles at Loches, then at Amboise on the Loire. You will soon follow me with the Queen.”

“And, surely, when you have this heartless king, this cruel gaoler in your power, you will punish him and revenge yourself? If he, like a fool, comes into Touraine, make him revoke the treaty of Madrid, or shut him up in one of Louis XI.’s oubliettes at Amboise or Loches.”

“I will persuade him, if I can, to liberate me from all the remaining conditions of the treaty,” said the King, “but I will never force him.” As he speaks Triboulet, who has been shaking the silver bells on his parti-coloured dress with suppressed laughter, pulls out some ivory tablets to add something to a list he keeps of those whom he considers greater fools than himself. He calls it “his journal.”

The King looks at the tablets and sees the name of Charles V.

“Ha! ha! by the mass! – how long has my brother of Spain figured there?” asks he.

“The day, Sire, that I heard he had put his foot on the French frontier.”

“What will you do when I let him depart freely?”

“I shall,” said Triboulet, “rub out his name and put yours in its place, Sire.”

“See, your Majesty, there is some one else who agrees with me,” said the Duchess, laughing.

“I know,” replies Francis, “that my interests would almost force me to do as you desire, madame, but my honour is dearer to me than my interests. I am now at liberty, – I had rather the treaty of Madrid should stand for ever than countenance an act unworthy of ‘un roi chevalier.’ ”

Francis receives Charles V. at Amboise with ostentatious splendour. Aware of the repugnance of his royal guest to mount steps (the Spanish Emperor was early troubled by those attacks of gout that caused him at length to abdicate and to die of premature old age, at the monastery of San Juste), Francis caused an inclined plane or slope to be constructed in place of stairs within one of the round towers by which the Castle of Amboise, standing on a precipitous pile of rocks, is approached. Up this slope, which remains in excellent preservation, Charles ascends to the plateau on which the castle stands, seated in his ponderous coach, drawn by heavy horses, attended by guards and outriders. Elinor, his sister, the neglected Queen, as well as the favourite, Madame d’Étampes, are present at the fêtes given in honour of the Emperor. There are no secrets at Court, and Charles soon comes to know that the maîtresse en titre is his enemy. One evening, after a dance executed by Anne d’Étampes along with the ladies of the Court, in which she displayed the graces of her person, the Emperor approaches her.

“Madame,” he says, “it is only in France that I have seen such perfection of elegance and beauty. My brother, the King, would be the envy of all the sovereigns of Europe could they have witnessed what I have just seen. There is no ransom that I would accept for such a captive, had I the power of retaining her at Madrid.”

The Emperor’s eyes melt with admiration as he gazes on her.

The Duchess’s countenance beams with delight at the Emperor’s high-flown compliment.

The King approaches the spot where they stand.

“Know, my brother,” says the King with a slight touch of irony in his tone, for he is displeased at the tender glances Charles is casting on his favourite, “know that this fair Duchess would have had me detain you here a prisoner until you had revoked the treaty of Madrid.”

The Emperor starts visibly and frowns. “If you consider the advice good, your Majesty had better follow it,” he replies haughtily, turning away to address some nobles standing near.

Some few days afterwards the Duchess gives a supper in her apartments, to which the Emperor and the Court are invited. After the reception, sinking on her knees, she presents his Majesty with rose-water in a gold embossed basin in which to wash his hands. Charles adroitly drops a large diamond ring into the basin. The Duchess stoops and places the vessel on the ground in order to pick up the jewel.

“This ring, madame,” he says, and he speaks low, and leans forward in order to catch her ear, “is too becoming to that fair hand for me to remove it. It has itself sought a new possessor,” and he kisses her hand. “Keep it as a pledge of my admiration and my friendship.”

The Duchess rises and makes a deep obeisance. Not only did she keep the ring, but she became so decided a partisan of this “gaoler,” that she is popularly accused of having betrayed Francis to the Emperor; specially in the subsequent wars between England, France, and Spain.

CHAPTER VIII.
LAST DAYS

RAMBOUILLET is now a station on the railway between Versailles, Chartres, and Le Mans. It is a sunny little town, sloping to the south, in a sheltered hollow, over which the slanting roofs and conical turrets of the palace rise out of stately elms and spiked poplars. The principal façade of the château – which consists of two wings at right angles to each other, having at each corner a circular turret, surmounted by a spire – faces the mid-day sun. The ground lies low, and canals, extending in three directions, bordered by terraced walks and avenues, intersect the grassy lawns which lengthen into the tangled woodland of the surrounding forest. Opposite the château, on an islet, is a grotto called “La Marmite de Rabelais.” To the right, the three canals flow into a river, spanned by a low bridge, known as “the accursed bridge,” from some now obscure tradition foreboding evil to those who pass over it. On every other side, the trunks of venerable trees, their overarching branches closing above like a cloister – pillars of oak, elm, and ash – wind away into grassy meads and shady dingles, intersected by long rides cut straight through the forest, proper for the stag-hunts which have been held in this ancient manor since the Middle Ages.

The château itself has now been modernised, save where one ivy-crowned round tower (the donjon of the mediæval fortress), in deep shadow, frowns an angry defiance to the stucco and whitewash of the flimsy modern façade.

It is the month of March, in the year 1547. Francis, attended by a small retinue, has arrived at the foot of this round tower. Coming from the south, he has crossed the river by “the accursed bridge.”

During the whole past year he has wandered from place to place, revisiting all his favourite haunts as though conscious that he is bidding them farewell. The restlessness of mortal disease is upon him. Though he flies from city to hamlet, from castle to palace, vainly seeking respite from pain, death haunts and follows him. His life is agony. He is greatly changed – an internal fever consumes him. His eyes are haggard; his face is thin, and his body emaciated. Only fifty-two years old, like his great rival the Emperor Charles, he is prematurely aged. Now he is half lifted from his coach and slowly led up a winding staircase to his apartments on the second floor by his friend James d’Angennes, to whose ancestors Rambouillet belonged. Francis comes from Chambord, where Marguerite, now Queen of Navarre by her second marriage, met him. Marguerite and her brother still cling to each other, but they are both aged and full of care. Her beauty is faded and her health is broken. Even she, though devoted as ever, cannot amuse Francis or dissipate the weight that oppresses his spirit. The old topics that were wont to delight him are irritably dismissed. He no longer cares for poetry, is wearied of politics, shrinks from society, and abuses women. It is at this time he writes with the point of a diamond, on the window of his closet at Chambord, these significant lines: —

 
“Souvent femme varie;
Mal habile qui s’y fie!”
 

He can only talk to his sister on sorrowful subjects: of the death by plague of his favourite son Charles, who caught the infection when sleeping at Abbeville; or of his old friend, Henry VIII. of England, who has also recently died.

The death of the latter seems to affect Francis terribly. “Our lives,” he says, “were very similar – he was slightly older, but I shall not long survive him.” Vainly does Marguerite combat these dismal forebodings. She laments in secret the sad change. Ever sympathetic with her brother, she, too, throws aside romance and poetry and composes “The Mirror of a Sinful Soul,” to suit his altered humour. Alas! what would Marguerite say if she knew what is carefully concealed from her? That the great surgeon Paré – Paré, who was afterwards to draw the spear-point from the cheek of the Balafré – has pronounced that the King’s malady is hopeless!

After a short sojourn together at Chambord, the brother and sister part never to meet again.

Francis was to have passed the carnival at Limours, says Du Bellay; now he commands the masked balls and the court ballets to be held at Saint-Germain en Laye. The King’s fancy changes; he will rouse himself; he will shake off the horrible lethargy that is creeping over him; he will dismiss sinister presentiments. Disguised himself, he will dance among the maskers – the excitement will revive him.

But strong as is his will, high as is his courage, the mortal disease within him is stronger still. Suddenly he countermands all his orders. He will rather go to Rambouillet to visit his old friend, D’Angennes; to meet Rabelais perhaps, who loves the old castle, and to hunt in the great woods.

The quiet old manor, half hunting-lodge, half fortress, buried in secluded woods just bursting into leaf, where the wild boar and the stag are plentiful, will suit him better than banquets, balls, games, and boisterous revelry. The once dauntless Francis is grown nervous and querulous, and is painfully conscious of the slightest noise. After a rapid journey he crosses the ill-omened bridge and arrives at Rambouillet. No sooner has he been laid in his bed than again his mind changes. He must rise and go to Saint-Germain, more suitable than Rambouillet in accommodation for his present condition. But the intense anguish he suffers renders his project impossible. Well, he will remain. He will rest one night here; then, he will depart. In the morning, says the same historian, he awakes at daylight, feeling somewhat better. He commands a royal hunt for stags and boars. Once more he hears the bugle of the huntsmen, the baying of the hounds, the tramp of the impatient steeds. The fresh morning air gives him fictitious strength. He rises from his bed, dresses himself, descends, forces himself on horseback and rides forth, defying disease and pain. Alas! he is soon brought back to the donjon tower and carried up the stairs speechless and in mortal agony to his bed. Fever and delirium ensue, but as the death shadows gather round him weakness clears his brain.

“I am dying,” says he, faintly, addressing D’Angennes, who never leaves him for an instant; “send for my son Henry.”

“Sire,” replies the Count, “his highness is already here.”

“Let him come to me at once; my breath fails me fast.”

The Prince enters and kneels beside the dying King. He weeps bitterly, takes his father’s already cold hand in his own and kisses it. Francis feebly returns the pressure. He turns his sunken eyes towards his son and signs that he would speak. Henry, the better to catch his words, rises and bends over him.

“My son, I have been a great sinner,” falters the dying King, “my passions led me astray; avoid this, Henry. If I have done well, follow that, not the evil.”

“Sire,” replies the Prince, “we all love and honour your Majesty.”

“Cherish France, my son,” continues the King; “it is a noble nation. They refused me nothing in my adversity, nor will they you, if you rule them rightly. Lighten the taxes, my son, – be good to my people.”

His voice grows fainter and less distinct, his face more ashen.

The Prince, seeing his lips move, but hearing no sound, lays his ear close to his father’s mouth.

“Commend me to Catherine, your wife; beware of the Guises; they will strip you; they are all traitors⁶; cherish my people.” He spoke no more.

The Prince motions to D’Angennes, and the parish priest with his acolytes enters, bearing the Host. Speechless, but conscious, with a look of infinite devotion, Francis receives the sacraments. Then, turning his dying eyes towards his son, he feebly raises his hands to bless him.

Henry, overcome by the sight of his dying father, sinks prostrate beside the bed. D’Angennes stands at the head, supporting his dying master in his arms; while he wipes the moisture from his forehead, Francis expires.

CHAPTER IX.
CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, widow of Henry II., and mother of three kings regnant, rules France in their name. Her father, Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, second tyrant of Florence, died before she was born; her mother, Madaleine de la Tour d’Auvergne (for Catherine had French blood in her veins), died when she was born; so fatal was this Medici, even at her birth.

The Duchessina, as Catherine was called, was reared by her aunt Clarice Sforza, within the mediæval stronghold of the Medici at Florence – now known as the Riccardi Palace. Although bereft of palisade and towers of defence, it is still a stately pile of Italian Gothic architecture, with pillared cortile, ornate front, and sculptured cornice, bidding a mute defiance to the encroachments of the modern buildings of the Via Cavour, the Corso of the City of Flowers.

Catherine was educated by the nuns of the “Murate” (walled up), in their convent near the Porta Santa Croce. The teaching of these lonely enthusiasts strangely contrasted with the life she afterwards led in the Florentine Court – a very hot-bed of vice, intrigue, and ambition. There did this Medea of the Cinque-cento learn how to dissimulate and to betray. At fifteen she became, by the favour of her uncle, Pope Clement VII., the richest heiress in Europe. She was tall and finely formed, of a clear olive complexion (inherited from her French mother), with well-cut features, and large, prominent eyes, like all the Medici. Her manners were gracious, her countenance expressive, but there was, even in extreme youth, a fixed and cold expression on the statuesque face that belied these pleasant attributes. Many suitors sought her hand, but Clement VII., outraged at the brutality of the Spanish coalition against him under Charles V., which had resulted in the sack of Rome and his own imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo, was glad to spite his enemies by bestowing his wealthy niece on the Duc d’Orléans, son of Francis I. As the heiress of the Medici came of a republican race of merchant princes, mere mushrooms beside the lofty antiquity of the Valois line, the Pope, to give greater lustre to the espousals, announced that he would himself conduct his niece to her future husband. At Leghorn, Catherine embarked with her uncle in a sumptuous papal galley, attended by his tonsured Court. A flotilla of boats accompanied the vice-regent of God upon earth, and his niece, the sparkling Duchessina. Fair winds and smooth seas soon wafted them to the French shore, where Francis and his sons awaited their arrival at Marseilles.

Francis, says Brantôme, was so charmed with the Medici bride, her intelligence and lively manners, that he romped with her the entire evening after her arrival. When Francis found that she danced admirably, that she shot with an arquebuse like a trooper, played at maille like a boy, and rode boldly and gracefully, his partiality to his new daughter-in-law knew no bounds. What was the opinion of the bridegroom Orléans, and what comparison he made between a bride of fifteen and a mistress of thirty-five, is not recorded. There was nearly twenty years difference in age between Prince Henry, Duc d’Orléans, a mere boy, and Diane de Poitiers, yet her influence over him was still absolute. To the day of his death he wore her colours – white and black – upon his shield. Diane, secure in power, was rather proud of her age. She boasted to the new Duchess that she was never ill, that she rose at six o’clock in the morning, bathed in the coldest water, and rode two hours before breakfast.

When Catherine first appeared at the Louvre as the bride of Prince Henry, she seemed but a clever, facile girl, ready to accept her humiliating position as subordinate in power, influence, and beauty to her husband’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, as well as to the Duchesse d’Étampes, the favourite of Francis. Placed among these two women and the lonely Spanish Queen, Elinor of Portugal, for fourteen years she acquitted herself with the most perfect temper and discretion. Indeed, with strange self-command in one so young, she endeavoured to flatter both the favourites, but failing to propitiate either Diane or the Duchess, and not being able to attract her husband or to interest the sedate Spaniard, she devoted herself wholly to charm her father-in-law, Francis. She became the constant and beloved companion of his various progresses and hunting-parties to Fontainebleau, Amboise, Chenonceau, and Loches. No court pageants these, on ambling pads over smooth lawns, among limber trees, with retinue of velvet-liveried menials on the watch for any possible casualty; but hard and dangerous riding in search of boars, and wolves, and stags, over a rough country, among thick underwood, rocky hills, and precipitous uplands.

Thus Catherine seemed; but in her heart she despised the Duchess, abhorred Diane, and suffered all the mortification of a neglected wife. Diane did not moreover spare her feelings, but insolently and ostentatiously paraded her superior influence, especially after Prince Henry came to the throne and created her Duchesse de Valentinois.

Catherine, however, with marvellous self-command bore all meekly, brought the King ten children, and for fourteen years bided her time. And that time came sooner than either the wife or the mistress expected.