me a thing that I find very difficult, namely: to teach you a pastime
which shall deliver you from ennui. Having searched for this remedy all
my life, I have found but one, and that is the reading of Holy Epistles,
in which will be found the true and perfect joy of the soul, from which
proceeds the repose and health of the body.” But the joyous company
cannot keep wholly to so austere a system, and it is agreed that the
time shall be divided between the sacred and the profane. Early in the
morning the company assembled in the chamber of Dame Oisille to share in
her moral readings, and from there they went to mass. They dined at ten
o’clock, after which, having retired each to his or her chamber for
private affairs, they met again about mid-day on the meadow: “And, if it
please you, every day, from mid-day till four o’clock, we went through
the beautiful meadow, on the banks of the river du Gave, where the
trees are so leafy that the sun cannot pierce the shadows, or heat the
coolness; and there, seated at our ease, each told some story he had
known, or else heard from a trustworthy person.” For it was well
understood that nothing should be told that was not _true_; narrators
must be content to disguise, if necessary, the names of both persons and
places. The company numbered ten; as many men as women, and each told a
story daily; so it followed that in ten days the hundred tales would be
completed. Every afternoon, at four o’clock, a bell was rung, giving
notice that it was time to go to vespers; the company went,--not,
however, without sometimes obliging the monks to wait for them; to which
delay the latter lent themselves with very good grace. Thus rolled the
time away, no one believing that he or she had passed the limits of
sanctioned gayety or committed any sin.
The Tales of the Queen of Navarre have nothing absolutely out of keeping
with this framework and design. Each story has a moral, a precept,
either well or ill deduced; each is related to support some maxim, some
theory, on the pre-eminence of one or other of the sexes, on the nature
and essence of love, with examples or proofs (often very contestable) of
what is advanced. Prudery apart, there is not much in these tales that
is really charming. The subjects are those of the time. At moments we
exclaim with Dame Oisille: “Good God! shall we never get out of these
stories of monks?” We are made aware that even the honourable men and
well-bred women of those days were contemporaries of Rabelais. However,
it all turns to a good end. There is wit and subtlety in the discussions
which serve as epilogue or prologue to the different tales. Most of the
histories, being true, are without art, composition, or _dénouement_.
The Queen of Navarre has been very little imitated in the tales and
verses made since her day; in fact, she lends herself poorly to
imitation. Only once does La Fontaine put her under contribution, but
then in what is, as I think, the most piquant of her writings, namely:
the tale of _La Servante justifiée_. In Marguerite’s story a merchant, a
carpet-dealer, emancipates himself with another than his wife, and is
discovered by a female neighbour. Fearing that the latter will gabble,
the merchant, “who knew how to give any colour to carpets,” arranges
matters in such a way that his wife is induced of her own accord to walk
to the same place; so that when the gossiping neighbour comes to tell
the wife what she has seen, the latter replies, “Hey! my crony, but that
was I.” This “that was I” repeated many times and in varying tones,
becomes comical, like the sayings of the farce called _Patelin_, or a
scene of Regnard; there are, however, not many such sayings in
Marguerite’s Tales.
A question which arises on the reading of these _Nouvelles_, the image
and faithful reproduction of the good society of that day, is on the
singularity that the tone of conversation should have varied so much
among honourable persons at different epochs before it settled down upon
the basis of true delicacy and decency. Elegant conversation dates much
farther back than we suppose; polished society began much earlier than
we think. The character of conversation as we now understand it in
society, and that which specially distinguishes it among moderns, is
that women are admitted to it; and this it was that led, during the
finest period of the middle ages, to charming conversations in certain
Courts of the South, and also in Normandy, in France, and in England. In
those castles of the South where troubadours disported, and whence the
echo of their sweet songs comes to us, where exquisite and ravishing
stories were composed (like that of _Aucassin et Nicolette_), there
must have been all the delicacy, all the graces one could wish for in
conversation. But taking matters as they appear to us at the end of the
15th century, we notice a mixture, a very perceptible struggle between
purity and license, between coarseness and refinement. The pretty little
romance _Jehan de Saintré_, in which the chivalric ideal is pictured
from the start in the daintiest manner, and which assumes to give us a
little code in action of politeness, courtesy and gallantry,--in a word,
the complete education of a young equerry of the day,--this pretty
romance is also full of pedantic precepts, essays on minute ceremonial,
and towards the end it suddenly turns into gross sensuality and the
triumph of the monk, after Rabelais.
The vein of license and wanton language never ceased its flow from the
time it originated, disguising itself in brilliant moments and noble
companies only to again unmask at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, when it seems to borrow still further audacity from the Latin
Renaissance. This was the time when virtuous women told and openly
discoursed of tales _à la_ Roquelaure. Such is the tone of the society
which the _Nouvelles_ of Marguerite of Navarre represent to us, all the
more naïvely because their intention is in no way indecent. Nearly a
century was needed to reform this vice of taste; it was necessary that
Mme. de Rambouillet and her daughter should come to reprimand and school
the Court, that professors of good taste and polite language, like Mlle.
de Scudéry and the Chevalier de Méré, should apply themselves for years
to preach decorum; and even then we shall find many backslidings and
vestiges of coarseness in the midst of even their refinement and
formalism.
The noble moment is that when, by some sudden change of season,
intellects and minds are spread, all of a sudden, in a richer and more
equal manner over a whole generation of vigorous souls who then return
eagerly to that which is natural, and give themselves up to it without
restraint. That noble moment came in the middle of the seventeenth
century, and nothing can be imagined comparable to the conversations of
the youth of the Condés, the La Rochefoucaulds, the Retzes, the
Saint-Evremonds, the Sévignés, the Turennes. What perfect hours were
those when Mme. de La Fayette talked with Madame Henriette, lying after
dinner on the cushions! Thus we come, across the greatest of centuries,
to Mme. de Caylus, the smiling niece of Mme. de Maintenon, to that airy
perfection where the mind without reflecting about it, denies itself
nothing and observes all.
In the second half of the seventeenth century no one but Mme. Cornuel
was allowed to use coarse language and be forgiven because of the spicy
wit with which she seasoned it. At all times virtuous women must have
heard and listened to more than they repeated; but the decisive moment
(which needs to be noted) is that when they ceased to say unseemly
things and fix them in writing without perceiving that they themselves
were lacking in a virtue. This moment is what Queen Marguerite, as a
romance-writer and maker of _Nouvelles_, had not the art to divine.
As a poet she has nothing more than facility. She imitates and
reproduces the various forms of poesy in use at that date. It is told
how she often employed two secretaries, one to write down the French
verses she composed impromptu, the other to transcribe her letters.
Marguerite died at the Castle of Odos in Bigorre, December 21, 1549, in
her fifty-eighth year; in yielding her last breath she cried out three
times: “Jesus!” She was the mother of Jeanne d’Albret.
Such as I have shown her as a whole, endeavouring not to force her
features and to avoid all exaggeration, she deserves that name of
_gentil esprit_ [charming spirit] which has been so universally awarded
to her; she was the worthy sister of François I., the worthy patron of
the Renaissance, the worthy grandmother of Henri IV., as much for her
mercy as for her joyousness, and one likes to address her, in the halo
that surrounds her, these verses which her memory calls forth and which
blend themselves so well with our thought of her:--
“Spirits, charming and lightsome, who have been, from all time, the
grace and the honour of this land of France--ye who were born and played
in those iron ages issuing from barbaric horrors; who, passing through
cloisters, were welcomed there; the joyous soul of burgher vigils and
the gracious fêtes of castles; ye who have blossomed often beside the
throne, dispersing the weariness of pomps, giving to victory politeness,
and recovering your smiles on the morrow of reverses; ye who have taken
many forms, tricksome, mocking, elegant, or tender, facile ever; ye who
have never failed to be born again at the moment you were said to have
vanished--the ages for us have grown stern, reason is more and more
accredited, leisure has fled; even our pleasures eagerness has turned
into business, peace is without repose, so busy is she with the useful;
to days serene come afterthoughts and cares to many a soul;--’tis now
the hour, or nevermore, for awakening; the hour to once more grasp the
world and again delight it, as, throughout all time, ye have known the
way, eternally fresh and novel. Abandon not forever this land of France,
O spirits glad and lightsome!”
SAINT-BEUVE, _Causeries du Lundi_ (1852).
DISCOURSE VII.
OF VARIOUS ILLUSTRIOUS LADIES.[22]
1. _Isabelle d’Autriche, wife of Charles IX., King of France [daughter
of the Emperor Maximilian II.]._
We have had our Queen of France, Isabelle d’Autriche, who was married to
King Charles IX., of whom it is everywhere said she was one of the best,
the gentlest, the wisest, and most virtuous queens who reigned since
kings and queens began to reign. I can say this, and every man who has
ever seen or heard of her will say it with me, and not do wrong to
others, but with the greatest truth. She was very beautiful, having the
complexion of her face as fine and delicate as any lady of her Court,
and very agreeable. Her figure was beautiful also, though it was of only
medium height. She was extremely wise, and very virtuous and kind, never
giving pain to others, no matter who, nor offending any by a single
word; and as to that, she was very sober, speaking little, and then in
Spanish.
[Illustration: Isabella of Austria, Wife of Charles IX]
She was most devout, but in no way bigoted, not showing her devotion by
external acts too visible and too extreme, such as I have seen in some
of our paternosterers; but, without failing in her ordinary hours of
praying to God, she used them well, so that she did not need to borrow
extraordinary ones. It is true, as I have heard her ladies tell, that
when she was in bed and hidden, her curtains well-drawn, she would kneel
on her knees, in her shift, and pray to God an hour and a half,
beating her breast and macerating it in her great devotion. Which they
did not see by her consent, and then not till her husband, King Charles,
was dead; at which time, she having gone to bed and all her women
withdrawn, one of them remained to sleep in her chamber; and this lady,
hearing her sigh one night, bethought her of looking through the
curtains and saw her in that state, and praying to God in that manner,
and so continuing every night; until at last the waiting-woman, who was
familiar with her, began to remonstrate, and told her she did harm to
her health. On which the queen was angry at being discovered and
advised, and wished to conceal what she did, commanding her to say no
word of it, and, for that night, desisted; but the night after she made
up for it, thinking that her women did not perceive what she did,
whereas they saw and perceived her by her shadow thrown by the
night-lamp filled with wax which she kept lighted on her bed to read and
pray to God; though other queens and princesses kept theirs upon their
sideboards. Such ways of prayer are not like those of hypocrites, who,
wishing to make an appearance before the world, say their prayers and
devotions publicly, mumbling them aloud, that others may think them
devout and saintly.
Thus prayed our queen for the soul of the king, her husband, whom she
regretted deeply,--making her plaints and regrets, not as a crazed and
despairing woman, with loud outcries, wounding her face, tearing her
hair, and playing the woman who is praised for weeping; but mourning
gently, shedding her beautiful and precious tears so tenderly, sighing
so softly and lowly, that we knew she restrained her grief, not to make
pretence to the world of brave appearance (as I have seen some ladies
do), but keeping in her soul her greatest anguish. Thus a torrent of
water if arrested is more violent than one that runs its ordinary
course.
Here I am reminded to tell how, during the illness of the king, her lord
and husband, he dying on his bed, and she going to visit him; suddenly
she sat down beside him, not by his pillow as the custom is, but a
little apart and facing him where he lay; not speaking to him, as her
habit was, she held her eyes upon him so fixedly as she sat there you
would have said she brooded over him in her heart with the love she bore
him; and then she was seen to shed tears so quietly and tenderly that
those who did not look at her would not have known it, drying her eyes
while making semblance to blow her nose, causing pity to one (for I saw
her) in seeing her so tortured without yielding to her grief or her
love, and without the king perceiving it. Then she rose, and went to
pray God for his cure; for she loved and honoured him extremely,
although she knew his amorous complexion, and the mistresses that he had
both for honour and for pleasure. But she never for that gave him worse
welcome, nor said to him any harsh words; bearing patiently her little
jealousy, and the robbery he did to her. She was very proper and
dignified with him; indeed it was fire and water meeting together, for
as much as the king was quick, eager, fiery, she was cold and very
temperate.
I have been told by those who know that after her widowhood, among her
most privileged ladies who tried to give her consolation, there was one
(for you know among a large number there is always a clumsy one) who,
thinking to gratify her said: “Ah, madame, if God instead of a daughter
had given you a son, you would now be queen-mother of the king, and your
grandeur would be increased and strengthened.” “Alas!” she replied, “do
not say to me such grievous things. As if France had not troubles
enough without my producing her one which would complete her ruin! For,
had I a son, there would be more divisions, troubles, seditions to gain
the government during his minority; from that would come more wars than
ever; and each would be trying to get his profit in despoiling the poor
child, as they would have done to the late king, my husband, when he was
little, if the queen-mother and her good servitors had not opposed it.
If I had a son, I should be miserable to think I had conceived him and
so caused a thousand maledictions from the people, whose voice is that
of God. That is why I praise my God, and take with gratitude the fruit
he gives me, whether it be to me myself for better or for worse.”
Such was the goodness of this good princess towards the country and
people to which she had been brought by marriage. I have heard related
how, at the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, she, knowing nothing of it
nor even hearing the slightest breath of it, went to bed as usual, and
did not wake till morning, at which time they told her of the fine drama
that was playing [_le beau mystère qui se jouoit_]. “Alas!” she said
quickly, “the king, my husband, does he know of it?” “Yes, madame,” they
answered her; “it was he himself who ordered it.” “0 my God!” she cried,
“what is this? What counsellors are those who gave him such advice? My
God! I implore thee, I beg thee to pardon him; for if thou dost not pity
him, I fear that this offence is unforgivable.” Then she asked for her
prayer-book and began her orisons, imploring God with tears in her eyes.
Consider, I beg of you, the goodness and wisdom of this queen in not
approving such a festival nor the deed then performed, although she had
reasons to desire the total extermination of M. l’amiral and those of
his religion, not only because they were contrary to hers, which she
adored and honoured before all else in the world, but because she saw
how they troubled the States of the king, her husband; and also because
the emperor, her father, had said to her when she parted from him to
come to France: “My daughter, you will be queen of the finest, most
powerful and greatest kingdom in the world, and for that I hold you to
be very happy; but happier would you be if you could find that kingdom
as flourishing as it once was; but instead you will find it torn,
divided, weakened; for though the king, your husband, holds a good part
of it, the princes and seigneurs of the Religion hold on their side the
other part of it.” And as he said to her, so she found it.
This queen having become a widow, many persons, men and women of the
Court, the most clear-sighted that I know, were of opinion that the
king, on his return from Poland, would marry her although she was his
sister-in-law; for he could have done so by dispensation of the pope,
who can do much in such matters, and above all for great personages
because of the public good that comes of it. There were many reasons why
this marriage should be made; I leave them to be deduced by high
discoursers, without alleging them myself. But among others was that of
recognizing by this marriage the great obligations the king had received
from the emperor on his return from Poland and departure thence; for it
cannot be doubted that if the emperor had placed the smallest obstacle
in his way, he could never have left Poland or reached France safely.
The Poles would have kept him had he not departed without bidding them
farewell; and the Germans lay in wait for him on all sides to catch him
(as they did that brave King Richard of England of whom we read in the
chronicles); they would surely have taken him prisoner and held him for
ransom, and perhaps worse; for they were bitter against him for the
Saint-Bartholomew; or, at least, the Protestant princes were. But,
voluntarily and without ceremony, he threw himself in good faith upon
the emperor, who received him very graciously and amiably, and with much
honour and privilege as though they were brothers, and feasted him
nobly; then, after having kept him several days, he conducted him
himself for a day or two, giving him safe passage through his territory;
so that King Henri, by his favour, reached Carinthia, the land of the
Venetians, Venice, and then his own kingdom.
This was the obligation the king was under to the emperor; so that many
persons, as I have said, were of opinion that King Henri III. would meet
it by drawing closer their alliance. But at the time he went to Poland
he saw at Blamont, in Lorraine, Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, Louise de
Lorraine, one of the handsomest, best, and most accomplished princesses
in Christendom, on whom he cast his eyes so ardently that he was soon in
love, and in such a manner that (nursing his flame during the whole of
his absence) on his return to France he despatched from Lyon M. du Gua,
one of his prime favourites, to Lorraine, where he arranged and
concluded the marriage between him and her very easily, and without
altercation, as I leave you to think; because by the father and the
daughter no such luck was expected, the one to be father-in-law of a
king of France, and the daughter to be queen. Of her I shall speak
elsewhere.
To return now to our little queen, who, disliking to remain in France
for several reasons, especially because she was not recognized and
endowed as she should have been, resolved to go and finish the remainder
of her noble days with the emperor and empress, her father and mother.
When there, the Catholic king being widowed of Queen Anne of Austria,
own sister to Queen Isabelle, he desired to espouse the latter, and
sent to beg the empress, his own sister, to lay his proposals before
her. But she would not listen to them, not the first, nor the second,
nor the third time her mother the empress spoke of them; excusing
herself on the honourable ashes of the king, her husband, which she
would not insult by a second marriage, and also on the ground of too
great consanguinity and close parentage between them, which might
greatly anger God; on which the empress and her brother the king urged
her to lay the matter before a very learned and eloquent Jesuit, who
exhorted and preached to her as much as he could, not forgetting to
quote all the passages of Holy and other Scripture, which might serve
his purpose. But the queen confounded him quickly by other quotations as
fine and more truthful, for, since her widowhood, she had given herself
to the study of God’s word; besides which, she told him her determined
resolution, which was her most sacred defence, namely, not to forget her
husband in a second marriage. On which the Jesuit was forced to leave
her without gaining anything. But, being urged to return by a letter
from the King of Spain, who would not accept the resolute answer of the
princess, he treated her with rigorous words and even threats, so that
she, not willing to lose her time contesting against him, cut him short
by saying that if he meddled with her again she would make him repent
it, and even went so far as to threaten to have him whipped in her
kitchen. I have also heard, but I do not know if it be true, that this
Jesuit having returned for the third time, she turned away and had him
chastised for his presumption. I do not believe this; for she loved
persons of holy lives, as those men are.
Such was the great constancy and noble firmness of this virtuous queen,
which she kept to the end of her days, towards the venerated bones of
the king her husband, which she honoured incessantly with regrets and
tears; and not being able to furnish more (for a fountain must in the
end dry up) she succumbed, and died so young that she was only
thirty-five years old at the time of her death. Loss most inestimable!
for she might long have served as a mirror of virtue to the honest
ladies of all Christendom.
If, of a surety, she manifested love to the king her husband, by her
constancy, her virtuous continence, and her continual grief, she showed
it still more in her behaviour to the Queen of Navarre, her
sister-in-law; for, knowing her to be in a great extremity of famine in
the castle of Usson in Auvergne, abandoned by most of her relations and
by so many others whom she had obliged, she sent to her and offered her
all her means, and so provided that she gave her half the revenue she
received in France, sharing with her as if she had been her own sister;
and they say Queen Marguerite would indeed have suffered severely
without this great liberality of her good and beautiful sister.
Wherefore she deferred to her much, and honoured and loved her so that
scarcely could she bear her death patiently, as people do in the world,
but took to her bed for twenty days, weeping continually with constant
moans, and ever since has not ceased to regret and deplore her;
expending on her memory most beautiful words, which she needed not to
borrow from others, in order to praise her and to give her immortality.
I have been told that Queen Isabelle composed and printed a beautiful
book which touched on the word of God, and also another concerning
histories of what happened in France during the time she was there. I
know not if this be true, but I am assured of it, and also that persons
have seen that book in the hands of the Queen of Navarre, to whom she
sent it before she died, and who set great store by it, calling it a
fine thing; and if so divine an oracle said so, we must believe it.
This is a summary of what I have to say of our good Queen Isabella, of
her goodness, her virtue, her continence, her constancy, and of her
loyal love to the king her husband. And were it not her nature to be
good and virtuous (I heard M. de Langeac, who was in Spain when she
died, tell how the empress said to him: “That which was best among us is
no more”), we might suppose that in all her actions Queen Isabelle
sought to imitate her mother and her aunts.
_2. Jeanne d’Autriche, wife of Jean, Infante of Portugal, and mother of
the king, Don Sebastian._