Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 13
THE HEPTAMERON.
While wars and rumours of wars invaded this distracted land of France, the King had lost his genius for battle and adventure. A restless invalid, prematurely old, he was unable to control the fortunes of his kingdom. The hero of Marignano was no more, nor the chivalric captive of Pavia, whose noble and gently demeanour in misfortune had been the ideal of Europe. In their stead reigned this sad and superannuated man, consumed by his abscess, tormented with unrest, his kingdom ravaged by his enemies, his Church bewildered by heresy and fanatic suspicion, his Court split up into cliques and angry rivalries, himself the disregarded head of a waning faction.
No one at the Louvre could charm away the melancholy of the unhappy King. The proud and ardent Queen, too long insulted, was only nominally a member of her husband's Court. Shut in her own apartments, with her Spanish suite, her priests, and her confessor, she made of her presence-chamber a little Spain, decorous and fanatic, in which she strove to forget "this Court of France, where God knows how I am treated, and the manner in which the King has used me." Worn by disappointment and anxiety, she had become a nervous, delicate, and melancholy woman, hopelessly estranged from her frivolous husband.
Madame d’Étampes, who for so many years had taken her place and usurped her duties, was now too anxious on her own behalf to care to soothe the trouble of the King. Should Francis die, what would become of her who for so long, so wantonly, had provoked the anger and hate of the Dauphin and of his stately Diana? What lurid clouds would not cover her when that pale crescent moon had filled its orb? The pretty Huguenot Duchess was in a very fever of anxiety and suspicion. What was the melancholy of Francis to her own?
Nor were the children of the King of much avail. Henry was of the opposite faction; he looked sternly and coldly on the frivolities of his father. The Duke of Orleans, riotous, gallant, high-spirited, the favourite child of Francis, was of little use in so sorrowful a sick-chamber. Madelaine was dead. Studious Madame Marguerite was too young, too inexperienced to help. She lived, for the most, in the decorous Court of the Queen, apart from the dying licentious old King, the selfish, imperious mistress, the riotous young Duke of Orleans. And Catherine dei Medici, who had courted Francis in order to discover his secrets, had not the art to cure a distempered soul. The King was virtually alone in his melancholy and his suspicion.
Then the double war broke out with Charles V. and with Henry of England. Queen Leonor, never hardened to the constant war between her husband and her brother, fell ill of a nervous fever from grief and distraction; the two young princes went to the war; the Court was so pervaded by desolating anxiety, that Francis, unable any longer to endure his distress alone, summoned his sister from Alençon to Paris.
Margaret had met her brother in April at her Castle of Alençon, and had spent some time in his company, while he directed the arrangements for the campaign in the North. She was, therefore, aware of the further change that his sickness had worked in him. But in April she had still been able to interest him in projects of war and of State; in April she still had held a brief for England, she still had hoped to gain Henry and detach him from the Emperor; in July she found him at war with both alike, confined to his room, without energy, or impulse, or resource: the miserable débris of a King.
Her cheerful ardour infused new life into Francis. She roused him from his nerveless melancholy, and made him show himself to the anxious burghers of Paris. She restored him, as far as possible, to his legitimate place as head of the State. She prayed with him and for him, exerting her benign and tolerant spirit to direct him into the way of peace; and, amid these more serious endeavours, she did not forget to amuse. She knew that the most grievous enemy of her brother was neither the Emperor Charles nor Henry of England, but the hypochondriac melancholy which hung like a cloud over his senses. She sang to him the psalms of her protégé, Clément Marot. She read to him the novels of Boccaccio, recently translated by another of her gentlemen-in-waiting, Antoine Le Maçon, under her own direction, and these novels became at once as great a fashion at Court as the Psalms of Marot had been a year or two before. For a few hours they even chased away the pain and depression of the King. In this book, says the preface to the Heptameron, "so great a delight was taken by the most Christian King, Francis, first of the name, by my Lord Dauphin, Madame the Dauphiness, and Madame Marguerite, that if Boccaccio, from the place where he is, could have heard their voices, he would have been brought to life again by the praise of such as they."
Soon, however, Margaret was compelled to leave her brother. Peace was arranged with Charles V. on what appeared to be favourable terms. Queen Leonor began to recover from her fever, and was able to return to Court. Notwithstanding the anger of the Dauphin at the sudden termination of a war which he had hoped to lead to a more glorious end, Francis I. was manifestly content. By deserting his ally, Soliman of Turkey, by revoking his protection from the Lutherans, by giving his promise to Charles V. to crush out heresy and subdue the Turks—Francis had secured a splendid inheritance for his favourite son. He had sold his soul for an abundant mess of pottage.
Margaret, the champion of the Huguenots, should have shrunk from an advantage secured by so infamous a desertion. But no; she was carried away by that fatal idolatry for her brother, which deprived her of judgment when he was at the bar. Her brother was pleased, was better, was almost happy, and Margaret exults over the peace between "le lys et la pomme ronde."
As soon as the peace of Crépy was arranged, the King left Paris to hunt in his forests at Romorantin, impelled by that nervous restlessness which hurried him continually from place to place; and Margaret returned to her Duchy of Alençon, to set her affairs in order there. She was glad to leave her brother in a less miserable mind, yet keen enough to see that his cure was as yet but half begun. He must still be amused, roused, entertained; the on-coming of melancholy must incessantly be watched. And then it entered into Margaret's eager brain to compose another book like those novels of Boccaccio which had delighted him so much, to write a Decameron herself, in which the adventures should belong to people at the Court of the King, or, at the least, of his time and country. On her frequent journeys from place to place, she wrote these novels as the horses slowly jogged along with her great curtained litter, "my grandmother holding the ink-horn for her," says Brantôme in his Memoir. And, as she first began to write these stories in that city of Alençon, where she had spent unwillingly so much of her youth, old memories thronged her mind; and many of the adventures of the Heptameron take place at Alençon, always "in the time of the last Duke Charles."
It has been the fashion hitherto to date the Heptameron too early. Miss Freer, Margaret's principal biographer in England, misled, perhaps, by the constant occurrence of the words Alençon and Argentan, and yet more by an eager desire to do the best for her favourite, has placed the Heptameron in Margaret's thoughtless youth. But, after all, all the Heptameron does not need our excuses for its thoughtlessness. It is gross, but not so gross as the time; it is worldly and amorous, but less so than the Court. On the whole, the remarkable thing about it is the ideal of religion and virtue, which it still lifts, however feebly, in opposition to the gay society for which it was written.
We can see that Margaret has no natural distaste for the freedom of manners which she has schooled herself to condemn. It is only immorality that meets the censure of Oisille—never indecency. Her blame is an affair of the conscience, not of the temperament. But, even if the book did not painfully attain to virtue, did not attempt to teach lesson, were there no further intention in it than to amuse with questionable stories, none the less is it plain that Margaret wrote the book, not in her youth, but in her ripe maturity. It is no fault of youthful folly, as I hope to prove. On looking closer, it is, perhaps, no fault at all. At the best and the worst, it remains the pathetic endeavour of a devoted sister to beguile the tedium of her dying brother by the only sort of stories he will listen to; while, at the same time, she infuses, by a strange, incessant twisting of the facts, a lesson of trust in God and in virtue; while she attempts to advocate tolerance, to condemn a corrupted Church. That these morals follow very oddly on the gross adventures of the Heptameron must certainly be conceded, for it is not always easy both to point a moral and adorn a tale, and with Margaret the two intentions are equally strong and equally manifest. Still, though often perverse, grotesque, or profane, throughout these stories the Moral, the Ideal, is evident.
It is not difficult to determine the date of the Heptameron. In almost every novel of the series we find allusions to events which did not take place till Margaret was certainly middle-aged. To give a few of these: the Regency of Madame (1524–26) is referred to in one of the novels; both Bonnivet and the Duke of Alençon are always spoken of as dead (1525); the League of Cambray (1529) gives rise to one adventure; and in the second story we hear of the little Prince Jean of Navarre who died in 1530. The descent of Charles V. into Provence is the occasion of another (1536). The murder of Alessandro dei Medici by his cousin Lorenzaccio (1537) is related in the twelfth novel. More than once a reference is made to the sudden death of the Dauphin François in 1536. And Henry and Catherine are invariably called M. le Dauphin and Mme. la Dauphine. The Armistice of Nice (1538), or more probably that of Crespy (1544), is alluded to in the tenth novel. In the twenty-fifth we hear the unedifying story of the love of Francis for la belle Ferronière (1539). The novels towards the end were evidently written later than the Introduction (which must have been composed in 1544), because the death of the Duke of Orleans (1545) is spoken of in one; and the marriage of the little Princess Jeanne to Monsieur de Vendôme, which occurred in 1548, is the subject of another.
Margaret died in 1549. The dates given above will prove abundantly that these novels cannot have been the work of Margaret's girlhood. It is clear to me that the Heptameron was composed from 1544 till the autumn of 1548. It is, of course, very likely that Margaret had already in her portfolio several isolated stories and adventures, for story-telling was the fashion of the time, and she is spoken of as excelling in the accomplishment. But, as a whole, the book began, most probably, in 1544. In the Introduction, which presents to us the principal personages of the work, the following passage occurs:—
"I believe there is no one among you who has not read the hundred novels of Jean Boccace, recently translated from Italian into French [1543], in which the most Christian King Francis, first of the name, Monseigneur le Dauphin, Madame la Dauphine, and Madame Marguerite, have taken such delight . . . that the two last-mentioned ladies would fain have done as much themselves, and many others of the court deliberated to do as much—only in one thing differing from Boccace, that they would write no novel that was not veritable history. And with Monseigneur le Dauphin with them, and as many as would make ten persons in all, whom they thought worthy to tell such stories, they concluded each to write ten; but they would not admit students and men of letters to their number, for Monseigneur le Dauphin did not wish that their art should be mingled with this sport. Also he feared that the beauties of rhetoric might do wrong to some portion of the veritable story. But the great affairs that since then have happened to the King [the double invasion, 1543–44], also the peace between him and the King of England [this was not signed and ratified until 1546, but serious hostilities ceased after the peace of Crespy in September 1544; this earlier date must be meant, since no allusion is made to the death of the Duke of Orleans in 1545], and the confinement of Madame la Dauphine [Jan. 20, 1544], with many other things sufficiently important to engross the Court, have caused this enterprise to fall into oblivion."
I believe that a comparison of the dates cited here, and a little consideration of the events of the time, will convince my readers that, in her solitary state at Alençon in 1544, and in her frequent journeys about the duchy, Margaret began the book of which she meant to make a modern Decameron, but which her untimely death cut short before the end.
The mechanism of her stories is clearly borrowed from Boccaccio and Castiglione. A company of ladies and gentlemen of good family have been spending the autumn at the Pyreneean baths. Being surprised by grievous floods and a heavy deluge of rain, the visitors have left the baths and set out for their homes. But the dangers of travel from the swollen rivers, from wild beasts, and yet more savage robbers, has overtaken many by the way; so that of all that society only ten find refuge safe and sound in the friendly abbey of St. Savin. Here they must wait until the floods subside; and, to wile away the tedium of their imprisonment, they tell true adventures to each other every afternoon from the midday dinner till the hour of vespers.
The little company is composed of five noble gentlemen and five ladies. The first to arrive is an elderly and pious widow, Dame Oisille, who has lost in the confusion her gentleman-in-waiting named Simontault, once the très affectueux serviteur of Madame Parlamente, a spirited but pious woman of the world, "never lazy nor melancholy," who has also taken refuge at St. Savin with her churlish husband, Hircan. She, in her turn, is surprised to meet in this place of refuge her platonic lover Dagoucin: a most devoted admirer" who would rather die than do ought to hurt the conscience of his lady." Dagoucin has escaped from the floods with his friend Saffredant, a brilliant young scapegrace, wild and reckless, but not unloveable, who is under the charm of Longarine, a tender-hearted, timid creature, whose husband has been slain by robbers in escaping from the flood. The shadow of her sudden loss still overhangs her delicate nature. These fugitives are joined by two young unmarried ladies, Émarsuitte, a quiet, somewhat jealous-tempered young woman, with a turn for sentiment ("Ah, Sire, you know not what a heartbreak comes from unrequited love!"); and Nomerfide, a scatter-brained high-spirited girl, "the youngest and maddest of us all." Nor is the number yet complete. Two bachelors, Guébron, a worthy, steady gentleman, and the missing Simontault, a proficient in badinage ("who is always complaining of the ladies, though he looks so merry and in such good condition"), have escaped with difficulty from the swollen river and reach the abbey at last, thus bringing the number of the rescued to the necessary ten.
These fugitives from the floods, being safely arrived at St. Savin, consider how they shall pass their time. They must wait there about a fortnight while the bridges are repaired and the waters subside. To live a fortnight without pastime is an insupportable idea. To lament their dead friends and perished servants would be a waste of time. Ought they not rather, "in joy inestimable, to praise the Creator who, contenting Himself with the servitors, has saved the masters and the mistresses?" The mere loss of servants (as Émarsuitte remarks, with a lingering touch of mediævalism), the death of servants should not throw one into despair: they are so easily replaced. Longarine, the tender-hearted, is a little shocked at this philosophy; but she too admits that a pastime is necessary, "else, remembering our losses, we might become wearisome, and that is an incurable malady." As for the madcap Nomerfide, she declares that, were she a single day without amusement, she would be found dead in the morning. To avert so doleful a catastrophe, Hircan and all the gentlemen beseech Madame Oisille, as the eldest of the party, to discover some pastime which, without hurting the soul, may be pleasing to the body.
In this character of Madame Oisille, it is clear that the Queen of Navarre has meant to draw her own likeness. Margaret, in 1544, was fifty-two years of age, and loved to speak of herself as older than she was. The reader is already acquainted with her leaning towards mystical piety, and her strong sense of the necessity for reforming the Catholic Church. 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. Her customary dress of sober black, with the short mantle fastened by pins in front, with the white chemisette gathered high at the throat, and the low French hood covering the hair, is more like mourning garb than royal splendour. A widow's dress is her most natural disguise.
Madame Oisille is a virtuous widow of good birth; she is old and full of experience; herself all piety and virtue, and even an adherent of the severe and scriptural religion of Geneva, she is none the less disposed to the conventional gallantry of the time. The stories of her companions sometime draw from her a mild remonstrance, but she never forbids their recital. She possesses, indeed, quite a singular talent for drawing a pious conclusion from the loosest adventure. As all examples of human frailty go to prove that virtue and strength should be sought in heaven and not on earth, Oisille discovers an occasion for piety in Boccaccio. And sometimes the use she makes of her scriptural knowledge is very strange indeed. A story of loveless, faithless marriage suggests the conclusion that "St. Paul wills not for married people to love each other much; for if our hearts be bound by an earthly affection, we are so much the farther from grace." And in another adventure, where a good wife laughs at her husband's infidelity, Oisille remarks: "She was not one of those against whom our Saviour speaks, saying, We have mourned and ye have not wept, we have piped and ye did not dance; for when her husband was sick she wept, and when he was merry she laughed. So all good women should share in their husband's good and evil, joy or sorrow; and serve him as the Church serves Jesus Christ." This quotation, as a quotation, might be taken as a caustic piece of sarcasm; but the peculiarity of the Heptameron is its union of an ideal of chivalry, honour, and religion, with an entire absence of the moral sense. Piety is an affair of the thoughts, the opinions, the ideas; possibly a matter for one's own personal life and soul. That it should attempt to regulate the lives of others would be to fall into the deadly sin of pride. Mystical as Margaret ever is, she is naturally lenient to the grosser sins; for all her esoteric dogmas go to prove, firstly, that the sins of the body are of small account compared with sins of the soul, such as pride and deadness of spirit; and secondly, that the soul exists only in its relations to the idea of God, and that it has no duties and no relations to the external world. The militant and responsible side of virtue is dead in such a soul.
Of the subjective, idealist, romantic side of virtue, the Heptameron affords many an example, oddly twisted through a tangle of worldliness, gallantry, and gross indecency. Oisille always ranges herself on the side of constancy and chivalry against Hircan and Saffredant, who are supporters of the loose old adage that—
"Nous sommes faits, beaux fils, sans doute
Toutes pour tous, et tous pour toutes."
She will not allow them with impunity to call a constant, chaste, unfortunate love, madness and folly. "Do you call it folly," she cries, "to love honestly in youth and then to turn that affection to the love of God?" And she reprimands the arrogant licentiousness of these gay youths; recommending to them the older-fashioned ideal of reverence and humility on the part of the lover.
In a fine passage, she defends these virtues against Hircan, who, with a sneer, declares that chastity is not only praiseworthy, it is even miraculous.
"It is no miracle," replies Oisille.
"Not," says Hircan, "to those who are already angelized."
"Nay," answers Oisille, "I do not only speak of those who by the grace of God are quite transformed in Him, but of the coarsest, rudest spirits one may see here below in the world of men; and, if you choose, you may discover those who have so at their heart and affection on finding the perfection of science, that they have not only forgotten the pleasures of the flesh, but even its necessities, even eating and thinking; for as much as the soul penetrates within the body, by so much the flesh becomes insensible. Thus it happens that those who love beautiful, honest, and virtuous women, have no grosser desire than to look on them and to hear them speak; and those who have no experience of these delights are the usually-minded, who, too closely wrapt in their flesh, cannot say whether they have souls or no; but when the body is subject to the spirit, it becomes insensible. And I have known a gentleman who loved his lady so unusually, that, among all his companions, he alone was able to hold alighted candle in his naked fingers, looking at his lady, until the flame burned him to the bone; even, he said that it did not hurt him at all."
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. And often He elects the lowly of the earth, to the confusion of those whom the world holds in honour; for He saith: Let us not rejoice in our own righteousness, but rather that our names are written in the Book of Life."
So much for the ideal of the Heptameron. Yet, let us add, there is one hero, one living, earthly hero, who embodies all Oisille's conceptions of chivalry, of courage, justice and mercy. To this Avatar of honour almost every page refers. 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. That he should betray his host, and unwittingly persuade a pious friar to forward an illicit love affair, all this is but a proof of his savoir faire. She immensely admires the piety that prompts him to say his prayers in church, on his return from an intrigue with the wife of his friend. She, the patroness of ideal goodness, cannot find any praise for an honest young girl who refuses the illegal love of the King. It is the impudence and not the virtue of such a refusal that amazes her. In her book, as in her life, Margaret's idolatry for her brother paralyses her judgment and her conscience.
But, though she cannot judge him, Margaret would fain persuade him. She is too timid, too submissive to reproach him for the tremendous guilt of the Vaudois massacres. She knows that women are smothered, brave men foully murdered, for holding opinions no more heretical than her own. And, though here and there she intercedes for some special victim, she dares not judge, she dares not condemn, she dares not rush in and stay the ruining arm of the King. But, with the timid fawning of a hound upon its angry master, she tries to reconcile him to her belief again. Timorously she plucks at his sleeve, she reminds him that this faith he punishes is her own. Even as he strikes and slays, she tells him her simple tale, and trusts that he will catch the moral. It is all the interference that she dares.
So throughout this Heptameron of hers, which aims above all things at beguiling the melancholy of Francis, we take note of a secondary aim, a purpose little less urgent. It is to point out the corruption of the Church; the immorality of the convents and monasteries; the impudent debauchery of the secular confessors; the low ignorant baseness of the wandering Franciscan friars. She tries to show how from the scriptures alone, and not from the dogmas of a Church intent on temporal power, should the spiritual rules of the Christian life be framed. She shows the inadequate repentance of those who buy a mass to condone a crime. Thoughts before deeds, souls before bodies, faith before works, this is her constant lesson, coming strangely enough from her frank and Gallic mouth. And again and again, explicitly and by implication, she distinguishes the purer thoughts, the cleaner lives of those who have left all to follow these doctrines. And who are they? She will not answer that. Let the King think a moment. They are Lefêbvre the dispossessed; Roussel, Farel, Calvin the exiled; Berquin, Le Court, and all the host of those who have gone up to heaven in a chariot of fire. They are the poor Vaudois, who are dying by scores and by hundreds at the King's command!
This is her second aim: to scathe and expose, to soften and persuade. And after every bitter phrase, every flash of irony, we can imagine the pause, the anxious thought; will the King be the headsman of such bidders as these? But, alas! as is naturally the fate of a lesson so subtly, so indirectly conveyed, Francis laughed at the fable, and did not heed the moral. Oisille is an excellent mistress of the ceremonies; it is a pity, adds the Court, that she is taken with these new ideas. And Francis laughs, and says: "She loves me too well to adopt a religion that would prejudice my estate!"
With no better success than this, Madame Oisille also preaches to her companions. She induces them to read the Bible; they will do anything to gratify so charming a lady. So before dinner they study the scriptures at her side. After dinner, not to be outdone in complaisance, Oisille listens to their Boccaccian stories. And she listens without shame and without regret. She and her listeners are equally ignorant that their novels leave anything to be desired. For Madame Oisille, with her chivalric ideal, is no more fastidious than they.
But we have made too long a digression from the Heptameron itself. Hircan and his friends desiring, as I have told, that Madame Oisille should find them a suitable pastime, Oisille replies in a speech of real beauty:—
"My children, this is a difficult thing that you ask of me, to teach you a pastime that can deliver you from your troubles; for, having sought such a remedy all my life, I have never found but one. And this is the reading of the Holy Scriptures, in which is found the true and perfect joy of the spirit; and from which proceed health and rest for the flesh. And if you ask me to tell you the receipt which keeps me so joyous and so healthy in my age, it is that as soon as I arise in the morning I take the Holy Scriptures and read therein, seeing and contemplating the Will of God, who sent His Son for our sake into the world to announce His Holy Word and glad tidings, whereby He promises remission from our sins and the full discharge of all our debts, by the gift of His love, His passion, and His martyrdom. The thought of this so fills me with delight, that I take up my Psalter, and, as humbly as I can, I sing in my heart and say with my mouth the beautiful canticles and psalms which the Spirit of God composed in the heart of David, and of other writers. And the contentment that I find therein so eases me, that all the evils which my days may bring appear to me as benedictions; seeing that in faith I keep in my heart even Him who hath borne them all for me. Likewise, before supper time, I retire and pasture my soul in some holy lesson; and then, at night, I recollect my doings of the day, and ask forgiveness for my faults, and praise God for His mercies. And in His love and fear and peace, I take my rest assured against all evils. There, my children, you behold the pastime which, for long enough, has sufficed me, who, having questioned all things, have found in none of them contentment for the spirit. Haply, if every morning you would read the Scriptures for an hour, and afterwards say your prayers devoutly during Mass, you would find in this desert the beauty which is in every place; for he who knows God, sees all things fair in Him; and, afar from Him, there is but ugliness."
But this proposal fills Hircan and the others with dismay. Imagine Nomerfide, who would die without a pastime, and Longarine, who is afraid to sorrow for her husband, lest she should ruin her manners; imagine the dashing Saffredant, the cynical Hircan, the sentimental Simontault, giving a fortnight to devout meditation! Hircan ventures to remonstrate. He bids us remember that they are not yet so mortified but that they need some amusement and corporal exercise. They are willing to study the Scriptures; but at home, the men have hunting and hawking, the ladies their household, their embroidery and music; both have dances and honest amusements, "which make us forget a thousand foolish thoughts." In addition to devotion, they must have something which shall take the place of all this. It is then that Parlamente, who takes a sort of second lead in ruling the little society, suggests that they shall imitate the novels of Boccaccio. And a sort of compromise is finally adopted, by which the ladies and gentlemen agree to spend their forenoons in prayer, and their afternoons in pastime.
We can easily imagine that fair and gallant company, mastering in the pleasant warmth of the autumn noonday, along the road that leads from the convent to the pleasant meadow where they hold their sessions. Madame Oisille, all in white and sober black, stands out conspicuously from the knot of gaily-blended colours. Her dress we may fancy to be the same that the Queen of Navarre wears in the illustrations to La Coche. The others are clad after the pattern of the sisters and brothers of the Abbey of Thelema. The men wear close beards and moustaches, their hair clipped very short, and covered with a small low cap of black velvet, from which, towards the front, a white plume of Marabout feathers starts. Their long stockings are white or black, crimson or scarlet; their slashed trunk hose are of the same colours or of a varying and harmonious shade. They wear slashed and embroidered pourpoints, in cloth of gold or silver, damask, satin or velvet; their short cloaks are richly furred and guarded. At his side each man carries a handsome sword, with a gilded hilt and a sheath the same colour as his hose.
The ladies are yet more magnificent. Orange, tawny, blue, ash-grey, yellow, white, or crimson, are their colours; velvet or silver taffeta embroidered is their favourite wear. Their skirts are distended to the shape of an inverted funnel. Their stockings are scarlet or flame-colour; their slashed hoes of crimson and violet velvet. They have mantles of taffeta furred with martin, lynx, or genet. On their heads they wear low French hoods, small caps edged with goldsmith's work, or gold nets with pearls at the angles. A gold chain hangs from the girdle; pomanders and scent-bottles, seals and keys dangle from it; and every lady has a feather fan, after the pattern of Queen Leonor's, with a little mirror at the back. They walk slowly, for the ladies have high pattens or choppines to keep their velvet shoes from the dust; you cannot see their faces, for they all wear little silken masks to shield their complexions from the noon; their hands are hidden in rich embroidered gloves. Thus, secured from cold of the wind or scorch of the sun, they walk along towards the fair green meadow.
If one should peer too close, perhaps those splendid, coloured garments would be seen to be stained with dust or rain, to be frayed with travel. If one should look too curiously, one might see many a speck in the courtesy and honour of the men, in the lovableness and spirit of the women. Yet from afar they look a happy and a pleasant company. We would fain know more of them. Oisille we know; we knew her when she was young; we have sympathised with her in good and evil fortune. But who are these, her fair and brilliant companions? M. Génin would believe them the ladies and gentlemen in waiting at the magnanimous and cultured little court of Nérac. But, if so, we only know the portraits; the originals are dead and forgotten; the dust of oblivion is piled thick upon them. I had hoped to discover here that courtly society whom Margaret mentions in her preface, those first would-be writers of the French Decameron. But, even to suit so delightful a theory, I could not identify the rude, harsh, savage, yet half-servile Hircan, with the musical, cultured, romantic Dauphin Henry, clad always in the colours of his fair incarnate moon, and passing his leisure in reading Amadis. How is it possible that in the brilliant, quick, active Parlamente one should recognize Catherine dei Medici, plump, thick-set, bourgeoise, with her conciliatory manners and servile grace? No; such a theory would cost too dear. To maintain it one must rival that restorer of the Apollo Belvidere, who, having made his pair of feet too small, scraped the ankles of the statue until they were slender enough to fit. It is best to throw aside such ready-made restorations. And then a sudden fancy shot across my mind. True, Madame Oisille is Margaret of Navarre. But yet (is it not possible?), as she sits in her gloomy room at Argentan, the room where she had often been unhappy in the good old days when she was so young—as she sways in her litter along the straight, dusty, poplar-bordered and familiar roads of Alençon, thinking how she shall make this book that is to charm her brother—may not a sudden vision of the old past-years rise up before her eyes, may not the contrast strike sharply on her? Then, half in regret and half in pitiful memory, may she not place beside this stately figure of herself grown old, the slimmer, swifter, brighter figure of Margaret d'Alençon, and marry this pious, worldly, brilliant Parlamente to Hircan, the moody and churlish Duke Charles? Then by their side we can imagine to arise the tender, loving, gentle vision of Philiberta of Savoy, and we behold the sweet and timid Longarine. With M. Franck, I should give Saffredant to Bonnivet. Many another, whom we knew not, comes back to mind again, and takes a place in her story. Lastly she creates "le gentilhomme Simontault," obviously not quite the equal in rank of his associates, who once, long ago, was Parlamente's très affectueux serviteur. And in this neat, merry, half-sentimental fellow, "a little sore at his jester's reputation," we fancy that we see again the well-remembered form of Clément Marot, of whose early death Queen Margaret must have heard in that very autumn of 1544.