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. l’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 Religion did very wrong to make the threats it is
said they made; for they brought on the fate of poor M. l’amiral, and
procured his death. If they had kept themselves quiet, said no word, and
let M. l’amiral’s wound heal, he could have left Paris at his ease, and
nothing further would have come of it. M. de La Noue was of that
opinion. 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 perfect fools and most incapable. M. l’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. l’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 Grâce, 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 it to them. And
thus she did so much that finally she made the country French.
When Rouen 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 dominion 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 Sainte-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 round 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 connétable
and M. 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 horseback, 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 [Élisabeth, 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 treat better her good and
beautiful daughter, as is the custom 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 life, 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 night; 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 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 Maréchal 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 captains 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 without 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 François the genealogies of the great families
of his kingdom; and as for the king, her husband, he had this faculty,
that when he had once seen 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 herself 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 remember all
this, and to love them and do well by them, and recognize 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 tailles, 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 magnificences,
and taking pleasure in giving recreations to her people and her Court,
such as festivals, balls, dances, tournaments and spearing the ring
[_couremens de bague_], of which latter she held three that were very
superb during her lifetime: one at Fontainebleau on the Shrove Tuesday
after the first troubles; where there were tourneys and breaking 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’Angoulême 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 Élisabeth, 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 foreigners 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 matters 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 that 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 had 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 queen made this outlay. She 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 purpose 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 were
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 themselves into a little
battalion, fantastically imagined, with violins to the number of thirty
sounding a warlike air extremely 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 beautifully chased, on which were engraved the fruits and products
of each province in which they were most fertile, such as 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 inventress 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 like 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 Roman 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 own art, so that they never wanted
for work, especially masons and builders, as is shown by her beautiful
houses: the Tuileries (still unfinished), Saint-Maur, Monceaux, 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. All 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.
She wished to know everything. On the voyage to Lorraine, 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 calibre [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 procès-verbal
made on Derbois, favourite secretary of the late M. le connétable, as to
certain 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
importance, 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; 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 parliament to come and be spoken to,--they not
being willing to abolish a certain brotherhood, by them invented and
maintained, 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 prepared, 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 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, which 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 François, 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 ornament of France, as the
foreigners who 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, 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 Rome in the olden time ever held for ladies, nor
any of our Kings of France. Though it is true that the great Emperor
Charlemagne, King of France, during his lifetime took great pleasure 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 honour (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 fête 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 ascending 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
duration (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, 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 anything finer; in fact I
think, since the world was, nothing has ever been seen like it; and as
the noble names of these beautiful 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 Élisabeth 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’Angoulême.
Madame d’Enghien, of the house of Estouteville.
Madame la Princesse de Condé, of the house of Roye.
Madame de Nevers, of the house of Vendôme.