Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux

“ The orb of Diana filled the earth with its pale, cold, romantic, and illusive light. The moon had arisen, and reigned over an altered world; a world without colour, at once vague and hard, all black and white; a world of superstition, of phantasmal ghosts and fears; a world of enchantment, a new Armida's garden, where the young adore the old, where a courtesan is honoured as widowed Fidelity, where Probity is avaricious, treacherous, and a bigot. A moonlit world, where the false and the true are equally shadows: the world of Diana and of Montmorency.
It was best that Margaret should die. ”

“ Spain praised loudly. Spain, continually persecuting two entire nations, the Jews and the Moors; Spain whose autos daily sent the smoke of their human sacrifice to the blue heaven; whose Inquisition in forty years condemned over forty thousand heretics; whose armies, in one year (1570) , sent fifty thousand Moors to death or slavery; Spain, the cruel, pure-eyed fanatic, piously setting a world in flames for the greater glory of God; Spain applauded.
But Switzerland, Germany, England, the natural allies of France, shrank back from her in horror. The Treaty of Crépy had already done its worst. ”

“ It is only at this moment that we fully appreciate the intense and all-absorbing devotion of Margaret to her brother. This whim of his ran counter to every interest of her husband, of her subjects, even of her child. They are all nothing to her. She cannot conceive that they should oppose their will to that of Francis. Even the passionate anger and grief of the little princess did not touch her mother's heart. Jeanne, still ailing, frightened, not yet twelve years old, wept bitterly at the thought of being given to the care of a stranger, different in language and manners. ”

“ The party of Henry, less concerned with ideas, and far more delicate in expression, enriched the world with Ronsard and the Pleiad, with Anet and Écouen, with the Art of Francois Clouët and his school. A delicate, precise, charming, but artificial beauty centres in that Court: a second renaissance not passionate for truth, for knowledge, for freedom, for humanity, like the movement that inspired the life of Margaret of Angoulême.
The first consequence of the Dauphin's death was immensely to increase the prestige of Montmorency. ”

“ Read the contemporary Lutheran historians, and it is clear that the ignorance and brutal injustice were not entirely upon the side of the Sorbonne. Coarseness and violence were as rife at Geneva as at Paris, and Margaret would not have been happy in Calvin's City of God. She would have pitied Servetus as sorely as she pitied Loys de Berquin. Her rare and modern spirit would ill have understood that hard-and-fast salvation of Geneva, that satisfaction in the damnation of disbelievers. Human life, knowledge, tolerance and freedom, were dearer to her than any code or any creed. ”

“ Meanwhile, at Tusson, Margaret weeps and prays; and, in Madrid, the Emperor surprises the messenger who brings him the news by an outburst of grief for the death of his captive of yore. "He is gone!" cries Charles, like Guise and Diana; but with how different an accent. "He is gone, the great prince! I think that Nature will not make his like again." Charles takes the loss to heart; even as Francis sorrowed for Henry of England. The news leaves him old and lustreless. He has lost his rival and his captive; his brother and his noblest adversary. ”

“ Now that Henry was the heir, his faction became scarce less puissant than his father's. It stood in the sharpest contrast so the splendid, free-living, tolerant Court of Francis, the Court for which Andrea and Lionardo had painted, the Court which established the College of France, which dreamed of the League with Luther and with Soliman. The object of the one party was the expansion of France; they would give one hand to the Turk and one to the Huguenot; they would draw from Italy, from the East, from the Jews, all that could enrich their country. ”

“ But it was above all in Spain, in the land of his captivity, that the cult of Francis reached its most fantastic heights. The Spaniards, instinct with romance, chivalry, respect for heroic misfortune, saw their ideal in this flimsy and volatile Francis. Thrown by the Austrian Charles (always a foreigner to all his subjects) into a dark, unsightly prison, the French King inspired a reverent pity in the generous heart of Spain. From the lowest to the highest, the nation was interested in the illustrious captive. ”

“ As the little girl grew out of babyhood, people noticed that her mother's aquiline features were softened in her face by the look and smile of her gentle father, and that in her character his delicate and benevolent nature qualified the love of learning and capacity for devotion which her mother gave her. More intense than he, more refined and unworldly than Louisa, the little Margaret displayed a singular and beautiful personality. ”

“ And let us own that much such a Court as Thelema was held at the castles of Nérac and of Pau; a Court of scholars, of poets and thinkers, who fled thither from the stake or from the dreadful convent in pace; a court of charming women, at once good and gay; and of men as light-hearted as the King, and as courteous as the Queen.
Henry and Margaret, early estranged at heart, had one great interest in common: the desire to improve this desolate princedom of Béarn. ”

“ Then Margaret told them she had heard from learned doctors how, at the actual moment of dissolution, the spirit leaves the body, and she had looked for the soul and listened to catch the faintest sound or rustle. And she said those learned men had told her how the swan sings itself to death for love of the soul that travaileth up its long throat towards the issue. ”

“ Margaret at length is herself in fault. This last message is too hard for her. She beseeches Briçonnet to speak more plainly in a letter which pathetically endeavours to copy his own extraordinary style. "Demetaphorise yourself," she entreats him. "The poor wanderer cannot understand the good which is in the desert, for lack of knowing that she is deserted. Prithee, for kindness' sake, run not so swiftly through the desert that she cannot follow you . . . in order that the abyss invoked by the abyss may whelm in its abysm the poor wanderer Margaret." ”

“ The Sforzas, the successful usurpers, claimed possession as nine points of the law, and Maximilian the Emperor demanded Milan by right of his overlordship. Each was equally resolved to possess in that city the key of Italy. But these words, Milan, Italy, meant more to Francis than a mere political position. To his intensely artistic temperament, a corner of Italy was more precious than the whole of France. Milan to him meant beauty, poetry; gardened villas in which to pass a soft abandoned leisure; women more fair than those of his kingdom ”

“ The horn winds, the bounds yelp, the hunters ride through the glades of the green forest; and Francis is first of all, swiftest and most vigorous. Like a man under a charm, he feels neither fatigue nor anguish, neither the languor of his wasting fever nor the darting and throbbing of his wound.
All day he hunts; but, on returning to the castle, he is so prostrate, that he at once retires to sleep. A healthy fatigue, no doubt; in the morning he will be stronger. ”

“ The King of Navarre sullenly content to be outwitted at so good a price; Margaret miserable, dejected, angry with her husband, and lavishing unanswered love upon her girl; Jeanne thoughtless, delighted, accepting with laughter the good gifts of Fortune, and blind to the disappointment and vexed ambitions that surrounded her: this is the family portrait that we find in the letters of Henry II.
"I never saw so joyous a bride," he wrote to Montmorency; "she never does anything but laugh. I have heard that the King of Navarre intends to go to Nevers, taking his daughter. ”

“ Who were these Vaudois—this tiny people, springing from Lyons in the twelfth century, and settled among the valleys of the Alps of Piedmont—this scanty, timid herd of mountain folk, for whose destruction the Inquisition was invented? They were, indeed, a remnant, pursued with fire and sword from their earliest days; burned alive in the twelfth century; hacked to death in the thirteenth; suffocated by hundreds under Francis I.; roasted slowly, tortured, hurled like stones down the mountains, slaughtered in every diabolic fashion through the whole diabolic seventeenth century ”

“ Even then, we may be sure, no secret of the Catholic party was kept from her; and as soon as she became the mistress of Henry, she devoted herself to be his counsellor, his adviser, giving him wise instruction, and even lending him her money.
Catherine, seventeen years old, plump, merry, affectionate, had not known how to win her husband's love. It was different with Diana. The charm of an elder woman, her refined sweetness and delicate superiority, were, perhaps, the only wiles that could have caught the Dauphin. And Diana, with the dignity, had not the disadvantage of her years. ”

“ The gaiety and brilliance of his youth, the splendour of his court, his magnanimity, his courage, are constantly recorded; his amours and their adventures are fit themes for the pious Oisille and the virtuous Parlamente; his address and royal qualities are perpetually praised. It is King Francis who is not only the occasion, but the hero of the Heptameron.
Oisille in particular has so great an admiration for this prince, that she finds noble in him the very acts she would have blamed with biting wit in Saffredant. With not a word does she condemn the wildest of his adventures. ”

“ Charles V. declared he had not thought it possible a woman could speak so well. Young Henry d'Albret, impetuous, and always ready to fall in love, gave the reins to his admiration for this brave and tender woman. They had many adventures to tell each other; many an instance of the Emperor's perfidious coldness. Margaret, who ever since her journey into Spain hated Charles with a vigorous hatred strange in that kindly heart, found ample sympathy in Henry d'Albret, to whom the Emperor was not merely an ungenerous captor, but the usurper of his kingdom. ”

“ With all her piety she is, however, above all things a woman of the great world, indulgent to the laxities of others, though more severe towards herself. It is true that Oisille is a widow, Margaret a wife and a mother. But, alone in her Castle of Alençon, with her young husband so long away in the South, with her only child so seldom seen, bred and reared so far from her care, Margaret may well have portrayed herself as one who has outlived the dearest interests of life. ”

“ But soon it became known that no one would easily earn those 10,000 golden crowns; for M. de Bourbon was in the camp of the Emperor, preparing to invade Provence. The tide of opinion suddenly turned. Bourbon was no longer a popular hero; men saw in him, and justly, a traitor leagued against his country with her bitterest enemies. Nothing could have been better for Francis, whose carelessness and frivolity had begun to disgust the more serious of his subjects. He was again the Knight of France, the champion of the French, the Ogier of his time ”

“ Her attendants reminded her of the glory of the saints in Paradise. The Queen was not consoled.
"All that is true," she said. "But we stay so long a time under the earth before our coming there." And then she began to weep and ask why must she die; she was not yet so old but that she might well live a few years more. They could not appease her horror of death, her curiosity concerning the fate of the soul. One of the dearest of her maids of honour falling ill and lying near to death, Margaret persisted in sitting by her bed. ”

“ And, indeed; though a good enough match for the Duke of Orleans, little Catherine dei Medici, not beautiful even at seventeen, was, doubtless, made to feel herself a very poor alliance for the heir of France. "They have smirched the Valois lilies with a mercantile alliance!" cried the Emperor. Henry was ashamed of his wife, and did not love her. As time went on, and the plain, bourgeoise, unlovely girl did not even give him an heir, he began to think of a divorce. But all the pride and all the real love of Catherine's heart arose and pleaded against him with King Francis. ”

“ Like the Quakers, the Vaudois were a quiet, even a timid people. They did not seek the notice or the glory of the world. The life they loved the best was that of their lonely Alpine valleys, the simple days of shepherding among the fairy-haunted hills, the evenings when the head of every house read, in his own dialect, the Bible to his assembled children; the bursting of the flowers in spring (flowers which the Fantines, the Vaudois fairies, watch and water every day until they blow) ; the long days out on the hills in summer, when the cattle are led to the upper meadows ”

“ She is the champion, not only of ideal love, but of the sentiment of pity, of consideration for the poor. More than once her stories turn on virtue that shines the brighter in a humble setting. For, she declares—
"The graces of God are not given to men for their noble birth, neither for their riches, but as it pleases His mercy; for He is no respecter of persons, He elects whom He will; and His elect honour Him with virtue and crown Him with glory. ”

“ Over their looms the weavers bent and dreamed; the smiths and armourers hammered strange thoughts into their iron; the very clergy read new meanings in their missals. A great idea had stirred in the silent womb of the quiet, industrial, abandoned North of France; a thought continually born, dead, born again into the world: God is all, the rest is nothing.
"In the year 1520," says the Bourgeois of Paris, "there arose in the duchy of Saxony, in Germany, a heretic doctor of theology, named Martin Luther, who said many things against the power of the Pope . ”

“ Then Quentin and Pocques, those prosperous refugees, had to be dismissed. But the spirit of moral relaxation, the vague mysticism, which had tolerated their presence, could not be sent as easily away.
For, in the time of political emptiness, in the pause following the death of the Duke of Orleans, Margaret's spirit, no longer braced by the large air of the world's affairs, had become enervated and languid and dreamy. Her visionary disposition asserted itself more and more. ”

“ That cruel blunder, that heartless revenge, lost the cause of the Reform. Many a stake should smoke, and many a rack should strain and creek, in expiation for that murdered stone.
This affair of the placards sent a horror pulsing throughout the length and breadth of France. It frightened from the Reform its gentler and more reverent adherents. Margaret herself, ever compassionate, felt it necessary to declare her Catholicism to the world. Francis henceforth became no less combative than the Sorbonne itself. He set out at once for Paris to sift the matter. ”

“ Guillaume Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, a vague and holy nature, was not without the vanity of the mystic. A man of sincere sympathy, sincere emotions, his lack of precision in feeling and thinking condemned him to play an insincere part. He did not inquire of himself whether he really felt, to the same extent of daring and suffering, the intense faith that stirred the awakened clergy, the miserable populace of Meaux. ”

“ Margaret was in great distress. Even for her brother's sake she could not counsel the surrender of Burgundy. And yet, unless she could satisfy Charles, there seemed nothing but perpetual imprisonment for Francis. No other king would come forward as a champion. Soliman as yet had made no sign, nor would he be likely to leave Turkey in the winter; and before another summer came her brother might be dead. Louisa, at home, had concluded a peace with Henry of England; but that wary king would only risk his moral support. ”

“ But, on reading this book, one becomes poignantly aware that it falls short, not only of our standard of decency, but of our idea of pathos, of humour, of interest. There is none of the genius which sees the human being and not the apparel; none of the passion, the poetry, the wide and human wisdom, which have saved greater writers for the pleasures of an altered age. Its virtues, as well as its faults, are merely of the time, and not particular, and it is well that the Heptameron should be merely the delight of students and the treasure of antiquarians. ”