crushed, deprived of all that comforts and consoles, infirm, alas! with
whitened hair 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 hearts 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 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 beliefs, these patriotisms and nationalities
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 have mercy upon me, as He had upon him, in the
hour of death.” Those true and sincere feelings, that contrite humility
in her last and sublime moments, this perfect intelligence, and profound
need of pardon, leave us without means of seeing any stain of the past
upon her except through tears.
It was thus that old Étienne Pasquier felt. Having to relate in his
“Recherches” the death of Marie Stuart, he compares it with the tragic
history of the Connétable de Saint-Pol, and that of the Connétable de
Bourbon, which left him under a mixture of conflicting sentiments. “But
in that of which I now discourse,” he says, “methinks I see 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 phases of Marie Stuart’s captivity, 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 shipwreck of the invincible
Armada.
Issuing from this brilliant and stormy episode of the history of the
sixteenth century, which has been so strongly and judiciously set before
us by M. Mignet, full of these scenes of violence, treachery, and
iniquity, and without having the innocence 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
ameliorated 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 evil 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
Code, 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 Lundi_ (1851).
DISCOURSE IV.
ÉLISABETH OF FRANCE, QUEEN OF SPAIN.
I write here of the Queen of Spain, Élisabeth 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 Élisabeth no
one has borne that name who surpassed her in all sorts of virtues and
perfections, although that beautiful name of Élisabeth has been fateful
of goodness, virtue, sanctity, and perfection to those who have borne
it, as many believe.[11]
When she was born at Fontainebleau, the king her grandfather, 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 England; and to confirm and
strengthen it our king made him her sponsor and gave to his goddaughter
the beautiful name of Élisabeth; at whose birth and baptism the
rejoicings were as great as at those of the little King François the
last.
Child as she was, she promised 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 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 Duc de Lorraine, there were some who remonstrated
against the wrong done to the elder in marrying the younger before her;
but the king made this response: “My daughter Élisabeth 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 Élisabeth
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 himself. On which the French and Spaniards said with one voice that
one would think she was conceived and born before 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 accomplished. When the Duke of Alba
came to see her and espouse her for the king, his master, he found her
so extremely agreeable and suited to the said master that he said 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
revering her, so charming and agreeable 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 this figure she 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 thick, 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 paz y de la
bondad_, that is to say, “the queen of peace and kindness;” 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
undertook 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
shirts, 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 her 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 health; but I saw
so much devotion among the people in giving thanks to God, by fêtes,
rejoicings, magnificences, fireworks, 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 welcome 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
certainly 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 so many tears, being unable to recover
themselves in any way, but mourning her with despair incessantly.
She made a noble end [_at._ 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 that 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 the Indies of
Spain. This is very true, as I have been told.
There are other conjectures so great that silence must 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 Germaine de Foix, second wife
of King Ferdinand, who when she saw herself raised to such high rank
became so haughty that she made no account of her own country, and
disdained it so much that, when Louis XII., her uncle, and Ferdinand
came to Savonne, she, being with her husband, held herself so high that
never would she notice a Frenchman, not even her brother Gaston de Foix,
Duc de Nemours, 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 estate and being held in no great account, 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 Élisabeth 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 the 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 all; and likewise for the
affection she showed to Frenchmen, who, 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 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 familiar 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 saying: “Such and such were at
Court in my day, 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
thousand crowns, and some say more. She had a noble grace on horseback,
and it was fine to see her; she 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 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 conquest 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 Riberac, maid of honour, where I was and if I were ill,
and having heard what my trouble was she sent me her apothecary, 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
Élisabeth’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 Élisabeth 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.
M. Strozzi, who was fond of the said Pompadour, bethought him of
employing his sister, Signora Clarice Strozzi, Comtesse de Tenda, whom
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 anything for her 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 daughter,
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 impossible 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 was the kindness of this princess, and her virtue
in honouring and fearing 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 touched 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 her death was hard to Spaniards, it was still more bitter to
us Frenchmen, for as long as she lived France was never invaded by those
quarrels which, since then, 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 husband 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 infanta 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 their 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, having 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.
Would to God I were a good enough petrarchizer to exalt as I desire this
Élisabeth of France! for, if the beauty of her body gives me most ample
matter, 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 Élisabeth’s sweet acquaintance:
More 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 their appearance,
But now her virtues bear their perfect fruit.
When this queen was put into the hands of the Duc de l’Infantado and the
Cardinal de Burgos, who were commissioned by their king to receive her
at Roncevaux in a great hall, after the said deputies had made their
reverence, she rising from 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.