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 singular 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 III. 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!
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 human
life; tears escaped me also before the tomb of the great and good king,
François 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 naïvetés, these wholly
patriotic and antique sensibilities.
Mézeray [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 handkerchiefs and
keep them as precious relics.”
And two centuries later, Comte Rœderer, in his Memoir on Polite
Society and the Hôtel de Rambouillet, 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
discovered, he says, that at the close of the fifteenth century and the
beginning of the sixteenth what has since been called the “French
Revolution” 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 Rœderer 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 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.
Rœderer makes King Louis a type of perfection; seeming to have
searched in regions far from those that are historically brilliant, 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 XII.,
in Anne de Bretagne, the foundress of a school of polite manners and
perfection for her sex. “She was,” Brantôme 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.” Rœderer takes these words of
Brantôme and, giving them their strict meaning, draws therefrom a series
of consequences: just as François I. had, in many respects, overthrown
the political state of things established by Louis XII., so, he
believes, had the women beloved of François overturned 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’Étampes 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 gallantry, by the giddy
pupils of the school of François I. To Rœderer the Hôtel de
Rambouillet, 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 François I., including Henri IV.,
had paid tribute.
Reaching thus the Hôtel de Rambouillet and holding henceforth an
unbroken thread in hand, Rœderer 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
François I., to the brilliant mistresses. Rœderer, not concerning
himself with the displeasure he will cause the classicists, lays a
little of the blame for this return on the four great poets, Molière, La
Fontaine, Racine, 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 Rambouillet’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 propriety,--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.
DISCOURSE II.
CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, QUEEN, AND MOTHER OF OUR LAST KINGS.
I have wondered and been astonished a hundred 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 historian] when, on his
return from his triumphant voyage in the “Goulette” intending to make
war upon King François, 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;”[3] 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 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.
[Illustration: _Catherine de’ Medici_]
This queen is extracted, on the father’s side, from the race of the
Medici, one of the noblest and most illustrious families, 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 kingdom; 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 _fleur-de-lys_ that King Louis XI. gave that house in sign of
alliance and perpetual confederation [the _fleur 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 design of Brennus, after his 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 obtained 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 companion, 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 surnamed _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 Medici, according to
that lying book which I have mentioned 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 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 Nicæa in Asia. Such greatness always continued in that
family until Florence was reduced to a republic by the intestine wars in
Italy between the emperors and the peoples, the illustrious members of
it manifesting 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 Mediterranean 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 Raffaelle 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 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 Président 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 I
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 _livres_,--such as the counties of Auvergne
and Lauragais, the seigneuries of Leverons, Donzenac, Boussac, Gorrèges,
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 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 François was very willing
to say that the marriage 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 φὡϛ φἑρι ἡδἑ γαλἡνην. 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 François, he was nursing 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 latter as able,
courageous, and vindictive for his imprisonment by the imperial forces
at the sack of Rome [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
himself 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 Genoa; for the pope had promised
King François, 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
imprisonment, 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 François I.], that on remaining ten years without producing
issue, and many persons endeavouring to persuade the king and the
dauphin, her husband, to repudiate 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 François II. After that, was born
the Queen of Spain, and then, consecutively, that fine and illustrious
progeny whom 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 temperament, 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 efface 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 _à la Française_ 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 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 remember 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 François, having chosen and made a company which was
called “the little band of the 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 sometimes less, as the humour
took him. Our queen (who was then only Mme. la dauphine) seeing such
parties made without 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 budge without him.
[Illustration: _Henri II_]
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 François 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 _à jalet_ [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.