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.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELINOR.]
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
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF AMBOISE.]
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.