Ercole and his duchess. Madame de Soubise's secret labours prevented
any but the briefest pacification. And Ercole had not long been duke
when he came to the conclusion that, even at the price of a break with
France, the daily infliction of her person was no longer supportable.
With as much tact as the circumstances permitted, he wrote to Francis
I. upon the subject, and in the end received authority for her
departure. But even so, difficulties arose about the actual journey,
and she still continued long enough in Ferrara to negotiate one last
unpleasantness for Ercole.
He went away for a short time, and during his absence Madame de
Soubise subtly arranged with the French royalties that Renée should at
last go on a visit to her own country. Ercole returned to find the
invitation waiting for him. He was placed by it in a very awkward
position. An unhappy wife, quivering to tell a tale of misery and
ill-treatment, was not a politic person to send to her own people
when, should it suit them, they possessed the power to make affairs
very difficult for the husband. On the other hand, to refuse might be
to rouse suspicion and displeasure.
Not entirely unperturbed, Ercole chose the second risk as the less
dangerous of the two. In reply to the French invitation, he wrote that
Renée had several small children to take care of, and that she was
also still too feeble in health to undertake so long and dangerous a
journey. The refusal came almost like a loss of all hope to Renée.
Thought of it had been a sudden irradiating anticipation in the drear
distastefulness of life. Nothing in a monotonous existence is more
uplifting than an incident to make plans for, and now from the sudden
quickening influence of a contemplated holiday she was flung back
again upon the old confusing friction of her days in the grim
Castello.
Every year Ercole's interests diverged more widely from her own. Renée
loved France instinctively, as people love the home of their
forefathers. When she first married Ferrara's interests lay in
friendship with France. But Ercole's policy brought him later to the
side of Pope and Emperor, when support from France ceased to be
important. After Madame de Soubise, therefore, had at last been sent
from Italy, and all hope of Renée's going home had been withdrawn,
the latter must have experienced almost a sense of desolation. The
easement of heart entailed by merely telling the hoarded mischances of
her married life would have warmed her spirit like a cordial.
She did not naturally love Ercole better for getting rid of the woman
who had been motherly to her all her days, and for having thwarted the
one intense longing which it was in his power to gratify. Their
antagonism quieted not a whit through the departure of Renée's
governess; Ercole had rid himself of one grievance only to find
another grow more hardy.
Its first public demonstration took place during a Good Friday service
in the church of Ferrara. As the cross was being raised for adoration,
a little singer, Zanetto, belonging to the duchess's service, suddenly
walked out of the building, making blasphemous comments in a voice of
penetrating clarity. He was arrested that evening, and trouble and
danger swept into Renée's household. She herself had for some time
past secretly belonged to the Protestant party. Ercole's hope that his
wife would fall into a weary acquiescence of conduct, when the
influence of Madame de Soubise had been withdrawn, ended in
inevitable failure. Renée was disastrously obstinate, and in addition,
the doctrines of Calvin had already become too deeply engrafted in her
ever to be really uprooted. Religion was an urgent necessity to her.
She was an unloved woman, and consequently the other world had never
slunk into vagueness through the engrossing sufficiencies of this one.
The appeal made to her by the new religion is easy to understand. Her
little soul was narrow, but it was at the same time eager, and
temperamentally attuned to austere and dreary dogmas. Renée belonged
to the class who prefer to take life sadly--a gloomy religion, hedged
in by appalling terrors, met the needs of her character far more
closely than the shifty and cheerful methods of Roman Catholicism
could ever have done.
Before the Good Friday incident Calvin had secretly been to see her,
had preached to her, and exhorted her. No man was better fitted to
keep a hold over Renée; for Calvin was not merely the great preacher
of a new religion, he was an impassioned and autocratic schoolmaster.
When later he controlled the town of Geneva, it became impossible to
indulge in even the mildest private weaknesses. Domestic conduct fell
under the jurisdiction of a council, which inflicted penalties for
the least undesirable idiosyncrasy. It was at Geneva, for instance,
that Calvin had a gambler set in the stocks for an hour, with his
playing-cards hung round his neck; the inventor of a masquerade was
forced to ask pardon for it on his knees in the cathedral; a man
guilty of perjury they hoisted on a ladder and kept there for several
hours, his right hand fastened to the top; while a man and woman,
whose love lay under the stigma of impropriety, were paraded through
the streets of the city for the abuse of virtuous horror. Calvin flung
immense energy into the conversion of Renée. As an individual he
thought little of her, but converts among the socially great were
momentous for the growth of the cause. Renée, moreover, gave awed and
pliant assent to the uncompromising preacher's teaching, until the
arrest of her singer for blasphemy brought the sudden sharpness of
danger into her household. This created panic. Not actually for
herself--while Francis I. remained King of France she relied
implicitly upon French protection--but for the people of her
entourage. Zanetto, placed upon the rack, broke down at the third
twist of the screw, and a list of names poured out of his lips. They
were all persons employed in the duchess's service. Several had
already been arrested as accomplices, though concerning one of them,
usually thought to be Calvin, there is considerable mystery. The
arrests had been made by Ercole's orders, chiefly, it would appear, to
exasperate his wife.
He owed her a fresh sword-thrust. This public religious scandal
constituted a really serious danger for him. The Vatican had some time
previously realized that the new heresy must be exterminated if it
were not to become a growing danger to the power at Rome. Apart from
this, Renée had been behaving with an inimical cunning difficult for
any man to pass over good-humouredly. She had been writing secret
letters to the Pope, supplicating him to have the prisoners delivered
out of the power of Ercole into the authority of France.
In retaliation, Ercole had Cardillan, treasurer and controller of
finances to Renée ever since her arrival in Ferrara, imprisoned with
the others. Few things could have hurt her more, and the scenes that
took place between the two over the Zanetto business must again have
driven them into unforgettable personalities. In the matter of
personal interviews Ercole no doubt had the best of it. Renée did not
possess the gift of facile utterance; her face alone shows a mind
easily disconcerted. But her stolid silence would have held as much
inner rancour as the other's violence. Beyond question, when roused,
Ercole frightened her, but not sufficiently to abate forlorn
contrariness. All he could achieve was to make her hate him a little
more desperately than before, and to fling her with renewed tenacity
upon the policy of aggravation. According to current rumour, Ercole
beat her. The allegation has not been proved, but she was the type of
woman liable to ill-treatment, and it is more than likely that he did.
Certainly no respect was enforced towards her, for Renée, writing to
Margaret of Navarre, complained that the Inquisitor whom she
interviewed concerning the arrested heretics spoke to her with so much
contempt and insolence, that the other would have been dumbfounded had
she been present.
The situation of husband and wife at that period could not possibly
have been worse. Ercole's enflamed resentment also found utterance in
a letter. It was written to the Ferrarese envoy at the French court.
Extreme caution in statements conveyed to paper formed part of Italian
education, and the plain truthfulness of the duke's expressions could
only have issued from a spirit choking with a sense of injury. He
wrote: "If it were not for the respect I owe to the king, I should
certainly not have suffered such an insult, and should have shown
madame the deep resentment I feel."
The bustling distress and excitement roused by the heretics
nevertheless fizzled out. That a scandal of this sort should take
serious proportions would have brought very evil notoriety upon the
Ferrarese court. Cardillan was released and banished; the other
prisoners conveniently permitted to escape. Ercole still gained his
main object--the satisfaction of depriving Renée of another of her
French attendants. Probably husband and wife hated each other a little
more keenly than before, but to all appearances another storm had
passed over. For the two still continued to share one bedroom. They
must in consequence have enjoyed intervals of ordinary conversation
and apparent friendliness. Moreover, they had children. In all the
divergences of their interests, there remained some that could not be
separated. After the sharp encounter brought about by the unwisdom of
Zanetto, Renée gave birth to another infant. Household trivialities
provided permanent groundwork for amiable bedroom discussions, and,
however apathetically, they must at least have gone through intervals
of superficial good-humour.
Outwardly, at any rate, there occurred another lull in the fighting.
The court removed into the country, and eased everything by an
out-of-door existence. Marot, who had been sent by Margaret of Navarre
to Renée for safety, made light, enticing verses upon the ladies he
transiently delighted in. He also wrote a sonnet to Renée herself,
that, besides containing one line of exquisite musicalness--"_O la
douceur des douceurs feminines_"--shows how unconcealed the failure of
her marriage had become. It suggests, in fact, that Ercole's behaviour
was publicly abusive and unpardonable. He wrote--
"Souvenant de tes graces divines
Suis en douleur, princesse, en ton absence,
Et si languis quand suis en ta presence
Voyant ce Lys au milieu des épines.
O la douceur des douceurs feminines?
O cœur sans fiel? O race d'excellence?
O dur mari rempli de violence."
The rest is uninteresting. But the reference to Ercole, allowing for
prejudice, could not have been uttered, one imagines, wholly without
justification. No fundamentally pleasant person could be referred to
so uncompromisingly as steeped in hateful violences.
Marot sided deeply with Renée, and wrote some additional verses to
Margaret, which he told her openly were intended to convey a picture
of the wrongs and sufferings to which the duchess was subjected. All
the lines dealing directly with the subject read as if sincere and
vivid, while the note of gravity was struck in the poignant bluntness
of the opening verse. Marot meant the queen to realize that he handled
something unmistakably and acutely tragic--
"Playne les morts qui plaindre les voudra
Tant que vivrai mon cœur se résoudra
A plaindre ceux que douleur assauldra
En cette vie.
* * * * *
"Ha Marguerite, écoute la souffrance
Du noble cœur de Renée de France
Puis comme sœur plus fort que d'espérance
Console-la.
"Tu sais comment hors son pays alla
Et que parens et amis laissa là,
Mais tu ne sais quel traitement elle a
En terre étrange.
"De cent couleurs en une heure elle change,
En ses repas percée d'angoisse mange
Et en son vin larmes fait melange
Tout par ennui.
"Ennui reçu du côté de celui
Qui dut être sa joie et son appui
Ennui plus grief que s'il venait d'autrui
Et plus à craindre."
* * * * *
Few phrases could expose more explicitly a brutal husband. Allowing
for exaggeration, Ercole obviously behaved like a boor, making his
wife's meals, when he was present, little else than a weeping
martyrdom. Renée certainly had the temperament to cry often and
easily, though not tempestuously; but at Ferrara the vague-looking
eyes seem to have possessed ample reason for being constantly and
bitterly watered. Marot, of course, had neither the opportunity nor
the desire to dwell upon intervals of passivity. But, as one knows,
there must inevitably have been some in the hectored years of Renée's
Italian existence. And among them was certainly the visit of Vittoria
Colonna. She stayed for ten months, and all the information given
implies that during that period there was almost peace at the
Castello. This is to Ercole's credit, for Vittoria Colonna would have
bored any but a practised intelligence. Her _forte_ lay in an unerring
sense of what was fine in everything--art, conduct, and deliberation.
Clever men adored her, and her brain was certainly imposing,
deliberate, attentive, and comprehending. The woman who understood
Michelangelo could scarcely fail to grasp the meanings of lesser
intelligences. But the minor gaieties she had not; the quaint, swift
humour with which subtle women sweep away tension would never have
lightened Vittoria's solid arguments. She wrote poetry--very insincere
and laboured--but she possessed no imagination. The gravity of
existence, and the fact that each soul in it is born to exist
eternally, clothed her thoughts with an almost restricting austerity.
Few jokes would have sounded suitable in her presence. She appeared
too exquisitely reasonable, cool, and punctiliously magnificent for
any descent into the ridiculous.
Undoubtedly Vittoria's presence eased domestic friction, though it is
doubtful, notwithstanding, whether Renée liked her. There are letters
between Vittoria and Ercole, but none to be found between the two
women. Vittoria Colonna was inherently good, but she was also
triumphant, pampered, flattered, and successful. When she came to
Ferrara she was received with a voluntary public ovation. Flanked by
the mental sumptuousness of this efficient creature, Renée's
insignificance was accentuated; the contrast dragged the whole extent
of her ineffectuality into light. And Renée, almost meek in
appearance, with her "weakened body," as Brantome put it, and her
vague-looking face, was not meek in disposition. She forgot at no time
of her life that but for the Salic law she would have sat upon the
throne of France.
There is no statement against the existence of affection between the
two women, but the probabilities are not for it. There is far more
likelihood that Vittoria got upon her hostess's nerves, and chilled
her by flaming, for all her disadvantages of years, with a sort of
opulent beauty that intensified the pallid ugliness of the foreign
duchess. Small wonder that Renée turned to the sympathy offered by
Monsieur Pons; small wonder that she permitted the elegant and amiable
Frenchman to make inroads upon her affections.
Monsieur Pons represents the solitary scandal of Renée's existence.
Some writers do not like Monsieur Pons. They desire the page
unblemished by this warm and doubtful incident. To them Renée must
stand as a blameless martyr to the cause of Protestantism, and this
friendship confuses the picture. In such hands Monsieur Pons fades
into an insignificance not sufficiently substantial for impropriety.
The effacement is entirely to be regretted. Monsieur Pons was the one
wholly tender circumstance in Renée's life. It is ridiculous to
pretend that she did not love him. Her harassed heart, unaccustomed
to being besieged, surrendered naturally to sympathetic advances from
a fascinating man of her own nationality. He made love to her
discreetly, mildly, and, no doubt, indirectly, while the woman warmed
under it before she realized the fearsome pleasantness of the
sensation. They may actually have had sympathy of temperament.
Monsieur Pons also may really have experienced a slight compassionate
tenderness for the frail, misshapen little duchess, who was openly
ill-treated by a lusty and unfaithful husband. It is difficult to
probe Monsieur Pons's motives. Policy is rarely absent from the mind
of those who deal with powerful persons. He was upon admirable terms
with his own wife. So was Renée, notwithstanding a friendship for the
husband exhilarated by a hint of something just a little more alive
and poignant. Genuine impropriety, one feels assured, there was not.
Yet to those anxious for scandal the duchess's letters would in
themselves be considered sufficient to take away any woman's
character. They are personal, intimate, and interwoven with unspoken
statements. Actually they have charm--the charm that issues when a
woman with some grace of mind desires her letter to be chiefly a
persuasive form of flirtation. The word "love" is not mentioned in
them, but for all that they are undeniably love-letters. They are, in
addition, the love-letters of a woman not yet muddled by any
uncertainty as to the recipient's reciprocity.
It must be admitted that Renée, had she behaved with strict decorum,
would not have written these documents. Married persons forfeit the
licence to indulge in a certain kind of correspondence. But there is
no reason to suppose that because a woman writes a delicately
flirtatious letter she has any evil thoughts at the back of it, or
that the relations of the two will at any time transgress the limits
of an audacious friendliness. The mistake is usually made, though few
things show less acquaintance with human nature.
Renée of Ferrara was temperamentally incapable of the scandal some of
her biographers have foisted upon her. Putting it upon the lowest
basis, she had neither sufficient courage nor sufficient pliancy for
unfaithfulness. The distinguishing trait of Renée's character was her
incapacity ever to go the extreme length in anything. There are no
tenable grounds, besides, for supposing that she desired to forget
right living for Monsieur Pons and passion. She was not an ardent
woman; the dull face expresses nothing so unmistakable as a wistful
apathy and a bad circulation.
From the internal evidence of the letters themselves, one finds a
romantic and sentimental friendship, or, phrased more colloquially, a
flirtation. But the essence of a flirtation is to play at being more
than it is in reality--to hover skilfully about borders neither player
would really care to trespass. Not a phrase in Renée's letters reveals
any desire to thrust aside cautious boundaries. She had also perfect
knowledge of Monsieur Pons's comfortable domestic circumstances.
Madame de Pons was her friend, the closest woman companion remaining
to her. What is more than likely is that she and Madame Pons--madame
with a finger secretly to her nose--enjoyed a perfect understanding as
to Renée's relations with the husband. They agreed together in worship
of Monsieur Pons, while he on his side was supposed to love them
both--though Renée, of course, with discretion, with reverence, with
the distance that her rank necessitated.
Madame Pons was safe; she could afford this dismal and lonely woman
some farcical illusions. Renée, in consequence, was allowed her
pathetic share in Monsieur Pons. The real, warm, comfortable
possession could only be the wife's, but Renée felt that she also had
her small, vague place; she was included; she was dear to Monsieur
Pons; she had her right of confidences, and perhaps--who knows?--in
certain ways, might convey an appeal his wife lacked possession of.
The wanderings of a heart ill-fed are always wild and a little tragic.
The letters were written during a diplomatic mission to France, upon
which Monsieur Pons had been sent by the duke. They contain intimate
accounts of little everyday doings, put down with a woeful disregard
of grammar, and yet with something approaching literary instinct.
Reading them, one discovers that the duchess was not an entirely
stupid woman. Without possessing the least intellectual capacity, she
shows a gift of irony, of graceful utterance, and of oblique
suggestion that is totally unexpected.
She says in one, "If this letter is badly written, it is because of
the place and the hour, for I write in bed, and I began so early that
I can scarcely see clearly; but I hope to write more every day until
the Basque starts again. I began yesterday, the very day he
arrived.... The wee doggie came, and fondled me a thousand times, in
betweenwhiles seizing the pen with his little teeth, after which he
came and settled himself on my arm, with the pen under his head, and
so went to sleep, and I too, to keep him company, for I don't know
which of us needed it most." This little pet dog, and another,
evidently given to her by Monsieur Pons, figure several times in the
correspondence. She writes again, "The Basque will give you an account
of your wife's state of health, of our little company, and, above all,
of the wee doggies who still, as always, sleep with me, and refuse to
leave my side."
How much Monsieur Pons was missed, is said many times and in diverse
ways. She conveys it very prettily upon one occasion, in the
statement, "Lesleu was saying that since you had gone the house seems
deserted. He is not the only one who thinks this. Several others say
the same, and there are some who are only too well aware of it." In
French the meaning is both more finely and more definitely
transmitted. In another place she says, "We need you to bring back the
joy you took away with your departure."
Madame Pons gave birth to a boy during her husband's absence, and
Renée writes that it resembles its father in chin and mouth, adding
immediately that she had kissed the little lips "two or three" times.
She also says, "He has such a sweet expression; everybody likes to
look at him. He does not sulk like the others." His mouth, she states,
is infinitesimal. Later, when his wife continued very unwell, Renée
wrote, "I beg you to try and return before the winter, as much for her
as for me, of whom I will say nothing, for I think less of my own
troubles than that you should be successful in your undertaking."
There were no concealments between Monsieur Pons and herself
concerning Ercole. She tells the diplomatist that her visit to France
had once more been broached by the ambassador, who had received the
usual answer, "when the weather permitted." With delicious irony the
duchess adds, "I think he means when the wind carries me." At all
times she was indifferent to her husband's mistresses. And she tells
Monsieur Pons, "Monday, which was the eve of St. John, I took him (the
ambassador) to the mountain where monsieur was having supper with the
Calcaquine.... The day after the birth of your son I had supper with
the cardinal and monsieur, and the day of St. John I had supper in the
'_bosquet_' with monsieur and the ambassador." The Contessa Calcaquine
was at that time Ercole's mistress.
In the continuation of daily details Renée makes it quite clear how
little she enjoyed "monsieur's" society. She had been asked by him to
join, if she cared to, a little party spending the evening on the
hill--presumably at the contessa's. But, she says, with an
undercurrent of wider meaning than the actual words express, "I made
the excuse that it would be too late."
Renée implied no objection upon the grounds of the hostess. She
mentions quite gaily a visit to one of Ercole's ladies, concluding,
"That is all the fresh air I have had since you left, but I am waiting
till your wife is up again, and then we shall go out together, and
with all the more pleasure because you will be with us."