Part 17

Leaving Namur, we have at Liège a touching and pathetic story of a poor young girl, Mlle. de Tournon, who dies of grief for being slighted and betrayed by her lover, to whom she was going in the utmost confidence; and who himself, coming to a better mind too late, rushes to console her, and finds her coffin on arrival. We have here from Queen Marguerite’s pen the finished sketch of a tale in the style of Mme. de La Fayette, just as above we had the drawing of a perfect little Flemish picture. On her return from this journey, the scenes Marguerite passes through at Dinant prove her coolness and presence of mind, and present us with another Flemish picture, but not so graceful as that of Mons and the beautiful nursing countess; this time it is a scene of public drunkenness, grotesque burgher rioting, and burgomasters in their cups. A painter need only transfer and copy the very lines which Marguerite has so happily traced, to make a faithful picture.

After these journeys, being now reunited at her house of La Fère in Picardy with her dear brother d’Alençon, she realizes there for nearly two months, “which were to us” she says, “like two short days,” one of those terrestrial paradises which were at all times the desire of her imagination and of her heart. She loved beyond all things those spheres of enchantment, those Fortunate Isles, alike of Urania and of Calypso, and she was ever seeking to reproduce them in all places and under all forms, whether at her Court at Nérac or amid the rocks of Usson, or, at the last, in that beautiful garden on the banks of the Seine (which to-day is the Rue des Petits-Augustins) where she strove to cheat old age.

“O my queen! how good it is to be with you!” exclaims continually her brother d’Alençon, enchanted with the thousand graceful imaginations with which she varied and embellished this sojourn at La Fère. And she adds naïvely, mingling her Christian erudition with sentiment: “He would gladly have said with Saint Peter: ‘Let us make our tabernacle here,’ if the regal courage he possessed and the generosity of his soul had not called him to greater things.” As for her, we can conceive that she would gladly have remained there, prolonging without weariness the enchantment; she would willingly have arranged her life like that beautiful garden at Nérac of which she constantly speaks, “which has such charming alleys of laurel and cypress,” or like the park she had made there, “with paths three thousand paces long beside the river;” the chapel being close at hand for morning mass, and the violins at her orders for the evening ball.

Whatever ability and shrewdness Queen Marguerite may have shown in various political circumstances in the course of her life, we nevertheless perceive plainly that she was not a political woman; she was too essentially of her sex for that. There are very few women who, like the Princess Palatine [Anne de Gonzaga] or the illustrious Catherine of Russia, know how to be libertine yet sure of themselves; able to establish an impenetrable partition between the alcove and the cabinet of public affairs. Nearly all the women who have mingled in the intrigues of politics have introduced and confused with them their intrigues of heart or senses. Consequently, whatever intelligence they may have, they elude or escape at a certain moment, and unless there be a man who holds the tiller and gives them with decision their course, we find them unfaithful, treacherous, not to be relied on, and capable at any moment of colloguing through a secret window with an emissary of the opposite side. Marguerite, with infinite intelligence and grace, was one of those women. Distinguished but not superior, and wholly influenced by passions, she had wiles and artifices of a passing kind, but no views, and still less stability.

One of the remarkable features of her Memoirs is that she does not tell all, nor even the half of all, and in the very midst of the odious and extravagant accusations made against her she sits, pen in hand, a delicate and most discreet woman. Nothing can be less like confession than her Memoirs. “We find there,” says Bayle, “many sins of omission; but could we expect that Queen Marguerite would acknowledge the things that would blast her? Such avowals are reserved for the tribunal of confession; they are not meant for history.” At the most, when enlightened by history and by the pamphlets of the period, we can merely guess at certain feelings of which she presents to us only the superficial and specious side. When she speaks of Bussy d’Amboise she scarcely restrains her admiration for that gallant cavalier, and we fancy we can see in the abundance of that praise that her heart overflows.

Even the letters that we have from her say little more. Among them are love letters addressed to him whom at one time she loved the most, Harlay de Chanvalon. Here we find no longer the charming, moderately ornate, and naturally polished style of the Memoirs; this is all of the highest metaphysics and purest fustian, nearly unintelligible and most ridiculous. “Adieu, my beauteous sun! adieu, my noble angel! fine miracle of nature!” those are the most commonplace and earthly of her expressions; the rest mount ever higher till lost in the Empyrean. It would really seem, from reading these letters, as if Marguerite had never loved with heart-love, only with the head and the imagination; and that, feeling truly no love but the physical, she felt herself bound to refine it in expression and to _petrarchize_ in words, she, who was so practical in behaviour. She borrows from the false poetry of her day its tinsel in order to persuade herself that the fancy of the moment is an eternal worship. A practical observation is quoted of her which tells us better than her own letters the secret of her life. “Would you cease to love?” she said, “possess the thing beloved.” It is to escape this quick disenchantment, this sad and rapid awakening, that she is so prodigal of her figurative, mythological, impossible expressions; she is trying to make herself a veil; the heart counts for nothing. She seems to be saying to love: “Thy base is so trivial, so passing a thing, let us try to support it by words, and so prolong its image and its play.”

Her life well deduced and well related would make the subject of a teeming and interesting volume. Having obtained, after the persecutions and troubles, permission to rejoin her husband in Gascogne (1578), she remained there three and a half years, enjoying her liberty and leaving him his. She counts these days at Nérac, mingled, in spite of the re-beginning wars, with balls, excursions, and “all sorts of virtuous pleasures,” as an epoch of happiness. Henri’s weaknesses and her own harmonized remarkably, and never clashed. But Henri soon crossed the limit of license, and she, on her side, equally. It is not for us to hold the balance or enter here into details which would soon become indelicate and shameful. Marguerite, who had gone to spend some time in Paris at her brother’s Court (1582, 1583) did not return to her husband until after an odious scandal had made public her frailty.

From that time forth her life did not retain its early, smiling joyfulness. She was now past thirty; civil wars were lighted, never to be extinguished until after the desperate struggles and total defeat of the League. Marguerite, becoming a queen-adventuress, changed her abode from time to time, until she found herself in the castle of Usson, that asylum of which I have spoken, where she passed no less than eighteen years (1587-1605). What happened there? Doubtless many common frailties, but less odious than are told by bitter and dishonourable chroniclers, the only authorities for the tales they put forth.

During this time Queen Marguerite did not entirely cease to correspond with her husband, now become King of France. If the conduct of the royal pair leaves much to be desired with regard to each other, and also with regard to the public, let us at least recognize that their correspondence is that of honourable persons, persons of good company, whose hearts are much better than their morals. When reasons of State determined Henri to _unmarry himself_, to break a union which was not only sterile but scandalous, Marguerite agreed without resistance,--seeming, however, to be fully conscious of what she was losing. To accomplish the formalities of divorce, the pope delegated certain bishops and cardinals to interrogate separately the husband and wife. Marguerite expresses the desire, inasmuch as she must be questioned, that this may be done “by more private and familiar” persons, her courage not being able to endure publicly so great a _diminution_; “fearing that my tears,” she writes, “may make these cardinals think I am acting from force or constraint, which would injure the effect the king desires” (Oct. 21, 1599). King Henri was touched by the feelings she showed throughout this long negotiation. “I am very satisfied,” he writes, “at the ingenuousness and candour of your procedure; and I hope that God will bless the remainder of our days with fraternal affection, accompanied by the public good, which will render them very happy.” He calls her henceforth his sister; and she herself says to him: “You are father, brother, and king to me.” If their marriage was one of the least noble and the most bourgeois, their divorce, at any rate, was royal.

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[Here Sainte-Beuve does not keep strictly to history. Henri IV. had long urged Marguerite to consent to a divorce; but she, aware that he was taking steps to divorce Gabrielle d’Estrées from her husband, in order to marry her, and feeling the indignity of such a marriage, firmly refused, and continued to do so until the sudden death of Gabrielle in Paris during Holy Week of 1599; on which Marguerite consented at once to the divorce, and Henri married Marie de’ Medici, December 17 of the same year.

Five years later (1605) Marguerite returned from the castle of Usson and held her Court in Paris at the hôtel de Sens (which still exists) and at her various châteaux in Languedoc; no longer, alas! the Reine Margot of our ill-regulated affections, and somewhat open to the malicious comments of Tallemant des Reaux, but appearing at times with all her wonted spirit and regal dignity. These were the days when she kept a brigade of golden-haired footmen who were shorn for the wigs; and the story goes that her gowns were made with many pockets, in each of which she kept the mummied heart of a lover. But such tales must be taken for what they are worth, and a better chronicler than the satirists of the Valois has given us ocular proof of her last majestic presence at a public ceremony five years before her death.

In 1610, Henri IV. preparing to leave France for the war in Germany, and wishing to appoint Queen Marie de’ Medici regent, it became necessary to have the latter crowned. This was done in the cathedral of Saint-Denis, May 13, 1610. The Queen of Navarre, as Marguerite, daughter of France and first princess of the blood, was required to be present at the ceremony. Rubens’ splendid picture (reproduced in this volume) gives the scene. Marie de’ Medici, kneeling before the altar, is being crowned by Cardinal de Joyeuse, assisted by his clergy and two other cardinals; beside the queen are the dauphin (Louis XIII.) and his sister, Élisabeth, afterwards Queen of Spain. The Princesse de Conti and the Duchesse de Montpensier carry the queen’s train; the Duc de Ventadour, his back to the spectator, bears the sceptre, and the Chevalier de Vendôme the sword of Justice. To the left, leading the cortège of princesses and nobles, is the Queen of Navarre, easily recognized by her small closed crown, all the other princesses wearing coronets. In the background, to right, in a gallery, sits Henri IV. viewing the ceremony. As he did so he turned with a shudder to the man behind him and said: “I am thinking how this scene would appear if this were the Last Day and the Judge were to summon us all before Him.” Henri IV. was killed by Ravaillac the following morning, while his coach stood blocked in the streets by the crowds who were collecting for the public entry of Marie de’ Medici into Paris.

The young Élisabeth, eldest daughter of the king and Marie de’ Medici, who appears at the coronation of her mother, was afterwards wife of Philip IV. of Spain, and mother of the Infanta Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV, also of Carlos II., at whose death Louis XIV. obtained the crown of Spain for his grandson, the Duc d’Anjou, Philip V. This Élisabeth of France, Queen of Spain, is the original of Rubens’ magnificent portrait reproduced in this chapter.--TR.]

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Queen Marguerite returned from Usson to Paris in 1605; and here we find her in her last estate, turned slightly to ridicule by Tallemant, the echo of the new century. Eighteen years of confinement and solitude had given her singularities, and even manias; they now burst forth in open day. She still had adventures both gallant and startling: an equerry whom she loved was killed at her carriage door by a jealous servant, and the poet Maynard, a young disciple of Malherbe, one of Marguerite’s _beaux-esprits_, wrote stanzas and plaints about it. During the same period Marguerite had many sincere thoughts that were more than fits of devotion. With Maynard for secretary, she had also Vincent de Paul, young in those days, for her chaplain. She founded and endowed convents, all the while paying learned men to instruct her in philosophy, and musicians to amuse her during divine service and at hours more profane. She gave many alms and gratuities and did not pay her debts. It was not precisely good sense that presided over her life. But amidst it all she was loved. “On the 27th day of the month of March” (1615), says a contemporary, “died in Paris Queen Marguerite, sole remains of the race of Valois,--a princess full of kindness and of good intentions for the good and the peace of the State, _who did no harm to any but herself_. She was greatly regretted. She died at the age of sixty-two.”

Certain persons have attempted to compare her for beauty, for misfortunes, for intellect, with Marie Stuart. Certainly, at a point of departure there was much in common between the two queens, the two sisters-in-law, but the comparison cannot be maintained historically. Marie Stuart, who had in herself the wit, grace, and manners of the Valois, who was scarcely more moral as a woman than Marguerite, and was implicated in acts that were far more monstrous, had, or seemed to have, a certain elevation of heart, which she acquired, or developed, in her long captivity crowned by her sorrowful death. Of the two destinies, the one represents definitely a great cause, and ends in a pathetic legend of victim and martyr; the reputation of the other is spent and scattered in tales and anecdotes half smutty, half devout, into which there enters a grain of satire and of gayety. From the end of one comes many a tearful tragedy; from that of the other nought can be made but a _fabliau_.

That which ought to be remembered to Marguerite’s honour is her intelligence, her talent for saying the right word; in short, that which is said of her in the Memoirs of Cardinal de Richelieu: “She was the refuge of men of letters; she loved to hear them talk; her table was always surrounded by them, and she learned so much from their conversation that she talked better than any other woman of her time, and wrote more elegantly than the ordinary condition of her sex would warrant.” It is in that way, by certain exquisite pages which form a date in our language, that she enters, in her turn, into literary history, the noble refuge of so many wrecks, and that a last and a lasting ray shines from her name.

C. A. SAINTE-BEUVE, _Causeries du Lundi_ (1852).

DISCOURSE VI.

MESDAMES, THE DAUGHTERS OF THE NOBLE HOUSE OF FRANCE.[19]

1. _Madame Yoland de France._

’Tis a thing that I have heard great personages, both men and ladies of the Court, remark, that usually the daughters of the house of France have been good, or witty, or gracious, or generous, and in all things accomplished; and to confirm this opinion they do not go back to the olden time, but say it of those of whom they have knowledge themselves, or have heard their fathers and grandfathers who have been at the Court talk of.

First, I shall name here Madame Yoland of France, daughter of Charles VII., and wife of the Duc de Savoie and Prince of Piedmont.

She was very clever; true sister to her brother, Louis XI. She leaned a little to the party of Duc Charles de Bourgogne, her brother-in-law, he having married her elder sister Catherine, who scarcely lived after wedding her husband, so that her virtues do not appear. Yoland, seeing that Duc Charles was her neighbour and might be feared, did what she could to maintain his friendship, and he served her much in the business of her State. But he dying, King Louis XI. came down upon her grandeur and her means, and those of Savoie. But Madame la duchesse, clever lady! found means of winning over her brother the king;, and went to see him at Plessis-lez-Tours to settle their affairs. She having arrived, the king went down to meet her in the courtyard and welcome her; and having bowed and kissed her and put his arm around her neck, half laughing, half pinching her, he said: “Madame la Bourgognian, you are very welcome.” She, making him a great curtsey, replied: “Monsieur, I am not Bourgognian; you will pardon me if you please. I am a very good Frenchwoman and your humble servant.” On which the king took her by the arm and led her to her chamber with very good welcome; but Madame Yoland, who was shrewd and knew the king’s nature, was determined not to remain long with him, but to settle her affairs as fast as she could and get away.

The king, on the other hand, who knew the lady, did not press her to stay very long; so that if one was displeased with the other, the other was displeased with the first; wherefore without staying more than eight days she returned, very little content with the king, her brother.

Philippe de Commines has told about this meeting more at length; but the old people of those days said that they thought this princess a very able female, who owed nothing to the king, her brother, who twitted her often about being a Bourgognian; but she tacked about as gently and modestly as she could, for fear of affronting him, knowing full well, and better than even her brother, how to dissimulate, being a hundred times slyer than he in face, and speech, and ways, though always very good and very wise.

2. _Madame Jeanne de France._

Jeanne de France, daughter of the aforesaid king, Louis XI., was very witty, but so good that after her death she was counted a saint, and even as doing miracles, because of the sanctity of the life she led after her husband, Louis XII., repudiated her [to marry Anne de Bretagne]; after which she retired to Bourges, which was given her as a dowry for the term of her natural life; where all her time was spent in prayer and orisons and in serving God and his poor, without giving any sign of the wrong that was done her by such repudiation. But the king protested that he had been forced to marry her fearing the wrath of her father, Louis XI., a master-man, and declared positively that he had never known her as his wife. Thus the matter was allowed to pass; in which this princess showed her wisdom, not making the reply of Richarde of Scotland, wife of Charles le Gros, King of France, when her husband repudiated her, affirming that he had never lived with her as his wife. “That is well,” she said, “since by the oath of my husband I am maid and virgin.” By those words she scoffed at her husband’s oath and her own virginity.

But the king was seeking to recover his first loves, namely: Queen Anne and her noble duchy, which gave great temptations to his soul; and that was why he repudiated his wife. His oath was believed and accepted by the pope, who sent him the dispensation, which was received by the Sorbonne and the parliament of Paris. In all of which this princess was wise and virtuous, and made no scandal, nor uproar, nor appeal to justice, because a king can do much and just what he will; but feeling herself strong to contain herself in continence and chastity, she retired towards God and espoused herself to Him so truly that never another husband nor a better could she have.

3. _Madame Anne de France._

After her comes her sister, Anne de France, a shrewd woman and a cunning if ever there was one, and the true image of King Louis, her father. The choice made of her to be guardian and administrator of her brother, King Charles [VIII.], proves this, for she governed him so wisely and virtuously that he came to be one of the greatest of the kings of France, who was proclaimed, by reason of his valour, Emperor of the East. As to his kingdom she administered that in like manner. True it is that because of her ambition she was rather mischief-making, on account of the hatred she bore to M. d’Orléans, afterwards King Louis XII. I have heard say, however, that in the beginning she loved him with love; so that if M. d’Orléans had been willing to hear to her, he might have had better luck, as I hold on good authority. But he could not constrain himself, all the more because he saw her so ambitious, and he wished his wife to depend upon him as first and nearest prince to the crown, and not upon herself; while she desired the contrary, for she wanted to hold the highest place and to govern in all things.

She was very vindictive in temper like her father, and always a sly dissembler, corrupt, full of deceit, and a great hypocrite, who, for the sake of her ambition, could mask and disguise herself in any way. So that the kingdom, beginning to be angry at her humours, although she was wise and virtuous, bore with them so impatiently that when the king went to Naples she no longer had the title of regent, but her husband, M. de Bourbon, received it. It is true, however, that she made him do what she had in her head, for she ruled him and knew how to guide him, all the better because he was rather foolish,--indeed, very much so; but the Council opposed and controlled her. She endeavoured to use her prerogative and authority over Queen Anne, but there she found the boot on the other foot, as they say, for Queen Anne was a shrewd Bretonne, as I have told already, who was very superb and haughty towards her equals; so that Madame Anne was forced to lower her sails and leave the queen, her sister-in-law, to keep her rank and maintain her grandeur and majesty, as was reasonable; which made Madame Anne very angry; for she, being virtually regent, held to her grandeur terribly.