The book of the ladies. Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme

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СКАЧАТЬ He and M. Strozzi and I have often spoken of it, he not approving of such bravados, audacities, and threats as were made at the very Court of the king in his city of Paris; and he greatly blamed M. de Theligny, his brother-in-law, who was one of the hottest, calling him and his companions perfect fools and most incapable. M. l’amiral never used such language as I have heard from others, at least not aloud. I do not say that in secret and private with his intimate friends he never spoke it. That was the cause of the death of M. l’amiral and the massacres of his people, and not the queen; as I have heard say by those who know well, although there are many from whose heads you could never oust the opinion that this train was long laid and the plot long in hatching. It is all false. The least passionate think as I have said; the more passionate and obstinate believe the other way; and very often we give credit for the ordering of events to kings and great princes, and say after those events have happened how prudent and provident they were, and how well they knew how to dissimulate, when all the while they knew no more about them than a plum.

      To return again to our queen; her enemies have put it about that she was not a good Frenchwoman. God knows with what ardour I saw her urge that the English might be driven from France at Havre de Grâce, and what she said of it to M. le Prince, and how she made him go with many gentlemen of his party, and the crown-companies of M. d’Andelot, and other Huguenots, and how she herself led the army, mounted usually on a horse, like a second beautiful Queen Marfisa, exposing herself to the arquebusades and the cannonades as if she were one of her captains, looking to the making of the batteries, and saying she should never be at ease until she had taken that town and driven the English out of France; hating worse than poison those who had sold it to them. And thus she did so much that finally she made the country French.

      When Rouen was besieged, I saw her in the greatest anger when she beheld supplies entering the town by means of a French galley captured the year before, she fearing that the place, failing to be taken by us, would come under the dominion of the English. For this reason she pushed hard at the wheel, as they say, to take it, and never failed every day to come to the fort Sainte-Catherine to hold council and see the firing. I have often seen her passing along the covered way of Sainte-Catherine, the cannonades and arquebusades raining round her, and she caring nothing for them.

      Those who were there saw her as I did; there are still many ladies, her maids of honour who accompanied her, to whom the firing was not too pleasant; I knew this for I saw them there; but when M. le connétable and M. de Guise remonstrated with her, telling her some misfortune would come of it, she only laughed and said: Why should she spare herself more than they, inasmuch as she had as good courage as they had, though not their strength, which her sex denied her? As for fatigue, she endured that well, whether on foot or on horseback. I think that for long there had never been a queen or a princess better on horseback, sitting with such grace, – not appearing, for all that, like a masculine dame, in form and style a fantastic amazon, but a comely princess, beautiful, agreeable, and gentle.

      They said of her that she was very Spanish. Certainly as long as her good daughter lived [Élisabeth, wife of Philip II.] she loved Spain; but after her daughter died we knew, at least some of us, whether she had reason to love it, either country or nation. True it is that she was always so prudent that she chose to treat the King of Spain as her good son-in-law, in order that he in turn should treat better her good and beautiful daughter, as is the custom of good mothers; so that he never came to trouble France, nor to bring war there, according to his brave heart and natural ambition.

      Others have also said that she did not like the nobility of France and desired much to shed its blood. I refer for that to the many times that she made peace and spared that blood; besides which, attention should be paid to this, namely: that while she was regent, and her children minors, there were not known at Court so many quarrels and combats as we have seen there since; she would not allow them, and forbade expressly all duelling and punished those who transgressed that order. I have seen her at Court, when the king went away to stay some days and she was left absolute and alone, at a time when quarrels had begun again and were becoming common, also duelling, which she never would permit, – I have known her, I say, give a sudden order to the captain of the guards to make arrests, and to the marshals and captains to pacify the quarrel; so that, to tell the truth, she was more feared than the king; for she knew how to talk to the disobedient and the dissolute, and rebuke them terribly.

      I remember that once, the king having gone to the baths of Bourbon, my late cousin La Chastaignerie had a quarrel with Pardailhan. She had him searched for, in order to forbid him, on his life, to fight a duel; but not being able to find him for two whole days, she had him tracked so well that on a Sunday morning, he being on the island of Louviers awaiting his enemy, the grand provost arrived to arrest him, and took him prisoner to the Bastille by order of the queen. But he stayed there only one night; for she sent for him and gave him a reprimand, partly sharp and partly gentle, because she was really kind, and was harsh only when she chose to be. I know very well what she said to me also when I was for seconding my said cousin, namely: that as the older I ought to have been the wiser.

      The year that the king returned to Poland a quarrel arose between Messieurs de Grillon and d’Entraigues, two brave and valiant gentlemen, who being called out and ready to fight, the king forbade them through M. de Rambouillet, one of his captains of the guard then in quarters, and he ordered M. de Nevers and the Maréchal de Retz to make up the quarrel, which they failed in doing. That evening the queen sent for them both into her room; and as their quarrel was about two great ladies of her household, she commanded them with great sternness, and then besought them both in all gentleness, to leave to her the settlement of their differences; inasmuch as, having done them the honour to meddle in it, and the princes, marshals, and captains having failed in making them agree, it was now a point of honour with her to have the glory of doing so: by which she made them friends, and they embraced without other forms, taking all from her; so that by her prudence the subject of the quarrel, which was delicate, and rather touched the honour of the two ladies, was never known publicly. That was the true kindness of a princess! And then to say she did not like the nobility! Ha! the truth was, she noticed and esteemed it too much. I think there was not a great family in the kingdom with whom she was not acquainted; she used to say she had learned from King François the genealogies of the great families of his kingdom; and as for the king, her husband, he had this faculty, that when he had once seen a nobleman he knew him always, in face, in deeds, and in reputation.

      I have seen the queen, often and ordinarily, while the king, her son, was a minor, take the trouble to present to him herself the gentlemen of his kingdom, and put them in his memory thus: “Such a one did service to the king your grandfather, at such and such times and places; and this one served your father;” and so on, – commanding him to remember all this, and to love them and do well by them, and recognize them at other times; which he knew very well how to do, for, through such instruction, this king recognized readily all men of character and race and honour throughout his kingdom.

      Detractors have also said that she did not like her people. What appears? Were there ever so many tailles, subsidies, imposts, and other taxes while she was governing during the minority of her children as have since been drawn in a single year? Was it proved that she had all that hidden money in the banks of Italy, as people said? Far from that, it was found after her death that she had not a single sou; and, as I have heard some of her financiers and some of her ladies say, she was indebted eight thousand crowns, the wages of her ladies, gentlemen, and household officers, due a year, and the revenue of the whole year spent; so that some months before her death her financiers showed her these necessities; but she laughed and said one must praise God for all and find something to live on. That was her avarice and the great treasure she amassed, as people said! She never amassed anything, for she had a heart wholly noble, liberal, and magnificent, like her great uncle, Pope Leo, and that magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici. She spent or gave away everything; erecting buildings, spending in honourable magnificences, and taking pleasure in giving recreations to her people and her Court, such as festivals, balls, dances, tournaments and spearing the ring [couremens de bague], of which latter she held three that were very superb during her lifetime: one at Fontainebleau on the Shrove СКАЧАТЬ