Italy--and for two years Margaret saw nothing of either Gaston or her
newer comrade. When Bonnivet returned he was warmly welcomed at the
castle of Amboise. But apparently--it may have been a ruse--he had
come back visibly dejected through the weight of some great sorrow.
Margaret commenced to ask questions. This was clearly only out of a
desire for flirtation, for Bonnivet's feelings had never known
secrecy, and Margaret was more than ordinarily intelligent. One day
they leant together at one of the windows of the castle. Bonnivet
ceased to talk of Gaston, and confessed the reason of his own
melancholy. Having done so, he stated that he must go away.
Margaret--to suspect that she enjoyed all this is unavoidable--replied
that there was no need, "she trusted utterly in his honour, she was
not angry at all;" which last statement, at any rate, strikes one as
being unmistakably accurate.
The confession, nevertheless, was an error. Margaret wanted to be
loved, and she adored the glow of a sentimental friendship. But
Bonnivet desired more than this, and showed that he did. The situation
lost its grace and easiness. The girl found herself pressed by an
emotion tired of simple playfulness; she grew uncomfortable, and
Bonnivet, seeing that the situation had become untenable, went away. A
wise, grave woman would have let him stay away. It is part of
Margaret's appeal to us that she was never entirely sensible. She
liked Bonnivet, and she felt that a young creature left destitute of
love has lost a large part of the exquisiteness of youth. Gaston had
faded by now into a sentimental and rather plaintive memory; she
wrote, therefore, to Bonnivet to come back. Away among other women he
could not be trusted to remain the same--he was one of those who love
vehemently and often. He came in answer to her call, but shortly
afterwards another Italian expedition removed him once more from her
influence. In this war he was taken prisoner, and Margaret is said to
have both fasted and gone pilgrimages in order to win God into
releasing the prisoner. She had also promised him before he left that
wherever she went after her marriage she would take his wife as one of
her ladies, thereby assuring a re-meeting.
And marriage had become at last unavoidable. The Duc D'Alençon had
asked the king and queen for her hand, and she had refused so many
husbands that it was impossible to continue obdurate. Margaret hung
back, but could not ultimately resist the wishes of the king, and
though it is said she declared that she would rather have had death
instead, the marriage took place at the court of Anne and Louis on
October 9, 1509.
The match was in all ways unsuitable. The Duc D'Alençon was
good-looking, but invertebrate, jealous, and very stupid. This was
exactly the type of character to depress Margaret, who at
seventeen--or, for that matter, all her life--showed herself an ardent
seeker after a cheerful way of living. The mystic strain in her
temperament was involuntary. She troubled about the soul, death, and
the after life because she could not help herself; questions of
conduct and the future came unasked, and shook her with uncontrollable
distresses. But of her own desires she was all in tune with the
Renaissance. She says of herself that "she was _de moult joyeuse
vie_," and her contemporaries bear her out in the statement.
Life at Alençon proved more than uncongenial to her. Separated from
her mother and Francis, the two people Margaret loved best in the
world, and from all congenial society, the girl fretted visibly. It
was at this time that, in her correspondence with the Bishop of Meaux,
she called herself "worse than dead."
But her love-story with Bonnivet was far from being terminated. Some
time after her marriage, when Margaret, her husband, and her
mother-in-law were together, Bonnivet once more returned from foreign
service. He at once went to Alençon, presumably to see his wife.
Margaret watched him arrive from an upper window, for fear that in the
brusqueness of a sudden meeting she might betray the tumult of her
heart. It had been left to grow so cold, this little hot heart, since
her marriage. They met, and when they were alone she slipped back
joyfully into the old habit of confidence. She told him about her
marriage, she talked of Gaston, and cried. Bonnivet grew hopeful that
she loved him, when a sudden untoward event once more flung them
apart. Bonnivet's wife died; he had no longer any excuse for hanging
about Margaret's person. The king also sent orders for his departure.
But this renewed separation--his lady had grown more than ever
seductive and engrossing--affected his health. He fell ill and took to
his bed.
Margaret--for the age permitted these acts of intimate
graciousness--went to pay him a visit. He looked so ill that she cried
once more. They both cried, and the girl, whose instincts were always
mothering, put her arms round her ailing friend. Intelligence should
have warned her against the action. But Margaret, whose intelligence
was so markedly above the average, seldom used it when love scenes
were in question--they fascinated her too much. Bonnivet lost his
head, and his visitor, frightened, began to scream. Plain speaking had
grown unavoidable. The invalid urged her loveless marriage, his own
despair and constancy. Margaret became sad and reproachful. "In her
sorrow," she said wistfully, "she had thought to have found a friend."
They separated for the third time; after which, Margaret did nothing
but cry for several days.
After further fighting, Bonnivet received a post at home. The Duchesse
D'Alençon had gone to pay a visit to her mother, and Bonnivet knew
that Louise was his friend--she hated anybody, it would seem, to be
more fastidious than herself upon questions of morality. One evening,
when passing upon state business, he asked permission to call, and
Louise at once told her daughter to be ready when sent for. Margaret
knew the disposition of her mother; instead of obeying, she ran to the
castle chapel, and prayed, with all her heart flowing into the words
upon her lips, for the help of Heaven. She did more; she took a stone
and tore her face with it until the cheeks were swollen and scratched
and bleeding. The action is wholly beautiful. No girl disfigures and
hurts herself unless driven by a fundamental instinct of the soul into
an extremity for salvation. Margaret was afraid--terribly afraid. She
liked Bonnivet, she hated her husband, and she was not made of stone;
after all, she was the daughter of Louise and Charles of Savoie, and
the sister of Francis. But she wanted more ardently to be good than
anything, and she knew no surer way than this to defend herself while
the youth ran so hot in her pulsing body.
Louise found her torn and bleeding, but remained inexorably upon the
side of unrighteousness. The girl's face having been hastily attended
to, she was sent straight into the presence of Bonnivet. The naïve
grace of the action demanded, in truth, a more pitiful generation
than Margaret's for appreciation. Her little hands were roughly
seized, and the scene developed into an inexcusable and ungentle
struggle.
Margaret screamed for her mother. Louise, who was undisturbedly
holding her usual evening court, had in the end to go to them.
Embarrassing explanations brought the incident to a close, but there
is no doubt that Margaret once more wept a good deal. Louise was very
angry, and in refusing to have Bonnivet as a lover, the Duchesse
D'Alençon lost her friend. She had to go back to the chill life of her
husband's court with the one soft thread drawn out of existence. But
when it came to more than words--Margaret had no prejudices of
speech--she never made vital mistakes. Conduct was the one ultimate
test by which the mystery of life became beautiful and tranquillizing.
For six years Margaret lived at Alençon, and it is said that her
mystical and Protestant sympathies were principally developed in these
years. But there is very little known of this period, and nothing that
is at all intimate. She emerged into prominence only from the year
1515, when Louise wrote in her journal, "The first day of November,
1515, my son was King of France."
This event brought some improvement into Margaret's life. Francis
cared for both his mother and sister; nobody flattered him with the
same undoubted sincerity as these two. After his accession the
Duchesse D'Alençon was often with her brother's court at Paris. But
the intervals between these visits were still dull and melancholy. Her
famous correspondence with the Bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briconnet,
could not have commenced until some five years after her brother's
accession, when Martin Luther had uprisen to preach against the Pope.
These letters are steeped in complainfulness. Written from Alençon,
they read as the letters of a young person--unhappy, but not too
unhappy to make a sort of pretty plaintiveness out of melancholy.
Questions of the soul had begun to vex her. According, also, to the
new and curiously convincing doctrines, it was not so easy to elude
punishment for this life's licences as the priests protested. The new
theories found obscure, hesitant acquiescences in her own
intelligence. Their spiritual clearness possessed a renewing freshness
after the iniquities into which the old religion had fallen. Margaret
was insatiably curious; she craved to know everything, and when she
started her correspondence with Briconnet--at that time sympathetic
to the new religion--she both desired more knowledge of the Lutheran
doctrine, and some one who could attune conflicting uncertainties.
The correspondence is extraordinary. Briconnet--impassioned of
complexity in style--was half the time not comprehensible. In answer
to some letter of Margaret's dealing with spiritual bewilderments, he
wrote to her: "The extent of your kingdom's goods and honours should
be a voice to stimulate, and a great breath to light a torrent of fire
of love for God. Alas, madam, I fear that it is in some uneasiness;
for, as Jeremiah said, the bellows that should light the fire has
failed--_defect sufflatorium in igne_!... Madam, who is deserted in a
desert, in a desert is lost, seeking solitude and cannot find it; and
when he finds it is then prevented, is a bad guide to guide others out
of the desert and lead them to the desired desert. The desert starves
them with mortal hunger, even though they should be full up to the
eyes, sharpening desire only to satiate it, and impoverish him to
hunger."
Margaret could make no sense of this. She wrote back
humorously--nobody was more quickly moved to laughter--"The poor
wanderer cannot understand the good which is to be found in the
desert for lack of knowing she is benighted there. I pray you that in
this desert, out of affection and pity, you will not hasten forwards
so swiftly that you cannot be followed, in order that the abyss,
through the abyss which you invoke, may not engulf the poor wanderer."
But the request for clarity passed unheeded. Briconnet seized the word
"abyss," and the following paragraph was his answer. I give it in the
original French, as translation is almost impossible. "_L'Abysme, qui
tout abysme présent, pour en le désabysment l'abysmes en l'abysme
(sans l'abysmes). Auquel abysme est fond sans fond voie des errants_,"
etc.
Margaret must have abandoned hope of enlightenment; but Briconnet,
happily, had intelligible intervals. When he chose he could write with
the same lucidity as other people. Once, for instance, after Margaret
had written more sadly than usual, he replied sensibly enough:
"Madame, you write to me to have pity on you because you are lonely. I
do not accept this proposition. Who lives in the world and has her
heart in it remains alone through being badly accompanied. But she
whose heart sleeps to the world and lives for the gentle and debonnair
Jesus, lives in all that is necessary, and certainly is not alone."
Margaret refused to respond to this; she had such need of men and
women, of friendship, of intellectual friction, of a perpetual output
of loving-kindnesses. She wrote again to Briconnet, saying, "It is so
cold--one's heart is frozen;" and signed herself, "Worse than dead."
Briconnet may have been moved; young women should not be neglected and
unhappy. But he remained sensible, and reproved the method of
signature. Then Margaret, with a defiant meekness, signed her next
letter, "Worse than ill."
This humorous docility shows that the depression she complained of was
not yet grief--merely the illusive melancholy of juvenility. After the
days of Alençon there was no repetition of it. Youth once traversed,
the realities of death, of irretrievable sorrow--nothing is
irretrievable until thirty--put an end to imaginative melancholy.
Conscious of the familiar agonies always so close, the intelligent
grow to hug what gaiety they can. Certainly there is no longer the
playfulness in regard to sorrow, to sign "Worse than death" in a mood
of amused defiance.
Some time before Francis started upon the disastrous Italian campaign,
Margaret went through the last episode in her love-story with
Bonnivet. Except for the light it throws upon the morals of the
period, it would be as well omitted; and but for Monsieur de
Claviere's assertion of its veracity, one would gladly leave the story
at its last dramatic moment. Bonnivet had married again, and during
one of Margaret's visits to Paris he invited royalty to pay a visit at
his estate in the country, in order to take part in a great hunt he
had organized. Margaret gives in the "Heptameron" a very full account
of what occurred; but, condensed, it comes to this--that Bonnivet,
having previously made a trap-door for the purpose, penetrated one
night into the princess's bedroom. This time Margaret did not scratch
her own face, but her adversary's. Before her lady-in-waiting rushed
into the room, and her conscienceless admirer fled back through the
carefully arranged trap-door, Bonnivet's appearance had been rudely
disfigured. He could not appear next day; it was necessary to plead
illness to avoid unanswerable questions, and Margaret never saw him
again. He was killed at the battle of Pavia. They had fought, but she
grieved at his death, and to the end of her life loved to talk of him
as one dear and tender in her memory.
Among other friends of this period, the poet Marot ought to be
included. Marot's father, also a poet, had been attached first to the
court of Anne, and then to that of Francis. Marot himself had been
brought up in an atmosphere of royalty. He was an interesting
personality--incurably light and incurably honest. His poetry, of
which Sainte Beuve remarked that good manners in poetry were born with
him, was never deep, but always fascinating, natural, light-hearted.
He wrote many verses to Margaret, in the gay and witty manner which
was peculiarly his own. An excellently condensed impression of
Margaret's temperament is given in the following lines:--
"Tous deux aimons la musique chantes,
Tous deux aimons les livres fréquenter,
Tous deux aimons d'aucun ne médire,
Tous deux aimons un meilleur propos dire,
Tous deux aimons gens pleins d'honnêtete.
* * * * *
Tous deux aimons a visites les heux
On ne sont point gens mélancoleux
Que diraj plus? Ce mot, la dire j'ore
Je le disaj! Que presque en toute chose,
Nous ressemblons, fois que j'ai plus d'envoi,
Et que tu as le cœur plus dur que moi."
As a personality, Marot only came into prominence later, when the
religious persecutions had begun. He leant towards Lutheranism, and
Margaret had twice to save him from the sinister machinery of the
Sorbonne. Later still, after her second marriage, she sheltered him
at Navarre, and when even that became a place of doubtful security,
she sent him to Renée in Ferrara. To translate Clement Marot's poetry
is to destroy all impression of its delicate and witty pleasantness.
The following example is typical of his manner at its lightest. They
are verses to
"UNE DEMOISELLE MALADE.
"Ma Mignonne,
Je vous donne
Le bon jour.
Le séjour
C'est prison.
Guerison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Vostre porte,
Et qu'on sorte
Vistement.
Car Clement
Je vous mande
Va, friande
De ta bouche
Qui se couche
En danger
Pour manger
Confitures.
Si tu dures
Trop malade
Couleur fade
Tu prendras.
Et perdras
L'Embonpoint.
Dieu te doint
Santé bonne
Ma Mignonne."
It was characteristic of a strain of cheerful callousness in the poet
to tell his friend that to continue ill would be to lose the pretty
plumpness which made her so attractive.
In 1524, Francis started to reconquer Milan, and from that time a
great change came into Margaret's way of life. When he went, her
husband went with him; also Bonnivet, Anne de Montmorency, and many
others who were her friends. Margaret then moved to Paris to keep her
mother company; also the poor queen Claude, who was in the last stages
of consumption, and who died before Francis had gone far upon his
journey. The disaster of Pavia came as an almost inconceivable blow to
those in Paris. Francis was the prisoner of Charles V., and it was
said the calamity had taken place, to a great extent, owing to the
stupidity of Margaret's husband, who, as leader of the vanguard, had
failed to come to the king's rescue. La Palice, Bayaret, and Bonnivet,
among her friends also, were dead, and Marot and Montmorency were
prisoners. In reference to Palice's death some ridiculous verses were
sung in the streets by the people--
"Hélas, La Palice est mort,
Il est mort devant Pavie.
Hélas, s'il n'etait pas mort
Il serait encore en vie."
From the moment of Francis's capture Margaret commenced a
correspondence of almost impassioned tenderness with him and about
him. The poet Dr. Bellay refers to Margaret, Louise, and Francis as
one heart in three bodies, and they were known as The Trinity,
Margaret, upon one occasion, referring to herself as the last corner
in it. She wrote to Francis, after he had been taken to Madrid: "If I
can be of service to you, even to the scattering of the ashes of my
bones to the winds, nothing will be amiss, difficult, or painful, but
consolation, repose, and honour."
The next incident was to fling Margaret upon the colossal failure of
her life. Charles V. would agree to no terms of peace in which Francis
did not surrender Burgundy as well as all claims to Milan and Naples.
Francis was willing to give up claim to the last two places, but to
relinquish Burgundy, which meant giving up a slice of France, was out
of the question.
Margaret had meanwhile become a widow. The Duc D'Alençon died shortly
after the disaster of Pavia--it is said, in a great measure, from want
of will to live. Everybody--including his wife--looked upon him with
abhorrence, since he had been, in some measure, responsible for the
capture of the king. The knowledge helped to destroy vitality, though,
in the end, Margaret nursed and coddled and forgave him, as she ought
to have done--the ultimate necessity for every woman being to possess
the power to forgive interminably.
But D'Alençon was scarcely cold before Louise de Savoie offered
Charles V. Margaret's hand, and proposed Charles's sister, the widowed
Queen of Portugal, as wife for Francis. Margaret, however, was not to
feel flattered at any period of her acquaintance with the
self-contained Spaniard. He took no notice of Louise's proposal as
regards her daughter. Nevertheless, when Margaret started upon her
famous embassy to Spain, there was in the minds of all those concerned
the almost secure anticipation that her personal enticement would have
a good deal of influence in bringing about a swift and satisfactory
release of the French prisoners.
[Illustration: CHARLES V.]
Neither Margaret nor her counsellors knew anything of the nature of
the man she had gone to deal with. A woman was the last person to
negotiate successfully with the suspicious and comprehending emperor.
From the first he was opposed to her coming. His opinion, and that of
his entourage, is frankly expressed by the English ambassador at
the Spanish court: "Being young, and a widow, she comes, as Ovid says
of women going to the play, to see and to be seen, that perhaps the
emperor may like her, and also to woo the Queen-Dowager of Portugal
for her brother.... Then, as they are both young widows, she shall
find good commodity in cackling with her to advance her brother's
matter, and if she finds her inclined thereto, they will help each
other."
Happily, Margaret was unaware of the Spanish views upon her embassy,
for, even without the knowledge, her nerves could only have been tense
with the crucial uncertainties of her expedition, and the gravity of
the issues hanging practically upon her personal fascination and
diplomacy. If this man could be made to feel attraction, her mission
was half secured already. All France looked upon success as a certain
prospect. She was held to be so clever, so fascinating, so superior
and intelligent, that beyond doubt, it was thought, she would achieve
in a few interviews what a man would require a month to bring to a
conclusion. She had hardly reached Spain before she received premature
congratulations--"_A vous, madame, l'honneur et la merite._"
But Margaret was to fail--bitterly, completely, and inevitably.
Charles had pointedly ignored the question of marriage in his answer
to Louise de Savoie's letter. After seeing Margaret, it had still no
attraction for him. That in itself was, in some measure, failure, and
a thrust at pride as well. As a matter of fact, Charles found her, not
only no longer very young or very pretty, but far too clever. "She is
more of a prodigy than a woman," remarked the man, who had every kind
of astuteness himself, and needed contrast for fascination.
The negotiations took place in Toledo, but from the beginning Margaret
had no chance of producing the smallest change of outlook. Charles
refused to have any witness to their interviews; whatever he said
could therefore be denied, if necessary. Margaret wrote to Francis
from Toledo: "I went yesterday to visit the emperor. I found him very
guarded and cold in his demeanour. He took me apart into his room with
one lady to await me"--(this was outside)--"but when there, his
discourse was not worth so great a ceremony, for he put me off to
confer with his council, and will give me an answer to-day."
The poor ambassadress soon grew baffled and exasperated. She had
hoped great things from gaining over the Queen of Portugal. But
Eleanor was cleverly sent upon an unwilling pilgrimage, concerning
which Margaret wrote to Francis: "It is true that she sets out on her
journey to-morrow. Before her departure I shall take leave of her. I
believe she acts thus out of obedience more than in compliance with
her own will, for they hold her in great subjection."
A later letter showed that Margaret had now grown utterly
disheartened. And before the end of her embassy, to express how deeply
inimical and unworthy she considered the emperor's conduct to be, she
left the palace placed by him at her disposal, and moved into a
convent, so as to destroy all obligations of hospitality.
The negotiations, as one knows, came to nothing. Charles was resolute
not to abate one demand for the woman who had all the facile
sweetnesses of her brother, all the glib and cunning adroitnesses he
knew so well in his intercourse with the other. The family resemblance
between them was over-strong; Charles could not avoid suspecting the
sister of the same deep, inherent duplicity as the brother.
Margaret had failed, and all her life this sharp and public failure
must have remained a hidden sore in memory. She had also, after her
defeat, ungracefully to rush back into safety. The period of her safe
conduct had almost expired, and information had been received that
Charles intended to detain her as prisoner if she exceeded it.
The consequent release of Francis and the terms of the agreement are
matters of history. Margaret had no hand in them, and the next
momentous incident in which she figured was her own re-marriage with
the King of Navarre.