Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE END.


The King was dead; but life still went on full of pressing needs and sordid complications. Margaret's belief had proved fallacious; her brother was dead and she was still alive. Nay, rich as was the past in dear and solemn memories, she had little time to brood on it. Never had the present called her with so urgent, vulgar, and clamorous a voice. For, not only her brother was dead, but the King her patron; with him her royal pensions, her influence, her authority, died too. And even in the first flush of her grief Margaret had to set her mind to saving what she could from the general disaster.

The death of her brother left her with scarcely sufficient money to cover her yearly expenses; for, though her revenues were large, her generosity was larger. Spending little on herself—very little, as we shall see—she had always chosen to give away the surplus, not to save it. Hitherto there had seemed small need for thrift, for Francis had always shared abundantly with his Mignonne. Now he was dead, and Margaret's expenses were greater than at any former time. The young Princess Jeanne, at this time a handsome and piquante brunette of seventeen, was living at the court of Francis. Fond of splendour and gaiety, extravagant and wilful, she maintained an almost royal establishment in Paris. Her mother's letters are frequent to M. d'Izernay, the governor of Jeanne's household, and in all of them she beseeches him to check the ruining course of her thoughtless girl's expenditure; "for the King of Navarre and I do find it insupportable, and deem that it is impossible it should continue long, since we have not the means to defray it; and the said lord has told me that, being at Paris, he found the expenses of my daughter marvellously great, wherefore I warned you of it, as I do again, beseeching you, M. d'Izernay, to stay your hand; for, with the expenses that I have already, I could not find the means to support this extra charge."

Jeanne, however, does not appear to have made any retrenchments, for, in the ten months of the next year her housekeeping absorbed the whole of her mother's yearly pension, £25,000 Tournois (about £2,100 English), without counting her pin-money (£3,250), and the cost of her trousseau (£5,213). To the gay, high-spirited, charming girl at court, ambitious, and one of the prettiest princesses of her age, the remonstrances of her mother appeared ignorant and ill-founded. Of course, down in Nérac it was difficult to understand the necessary expenses of a royal princes in Paris. So Jeanne attempted to persuade her mother, assuring Margaret that she could not spare one of the officers of her household, for her state was only the legitimate splendour of a fille à la suite de la cour.

Meanwhile, the very continuance of this pension which Jeanne was so amply spending was yet undecided. Yet it is characteristic of Margaret's generous temper that when, at this anxious moment, Henry offered to liquidate a debt of £4,885 Tournois, which had been lent to his father by Margaret and the Duke of Alençon, Margaret refused to receive the money, and insisted that it should be paid to her dead husband's sisters, the Marchioness of Montferrat and the Duchess of Vendôme. She was herself in great straits. Pressed by her urgent need, she wrote from Pau to M. d'Izernay (13th June 1547):—

"The King of Navarre will leave on Friday, after the Feast of St. John, and take his daughter back to Court with him; and I shall go to Mont de Marsan, and keep house so thriftily that everyone will stare. It is not necessary that you should take the trouble to come to me just yet, for reasons that I will tell you so soon as I am there; and also because you do me a much greater service in soliciting my affairs at Court; of which the greatest is the assurance of my xxv. thousand pounds Tournois; for, as you know, without them it would be impossible for me to maintain my state, and I have no more in reserve than will pay this year's expenses—and one may well believe it is not my custom, without sore necessity, to ask any favour. And, if I had father, mother, brother, uncle, or kinsman, I would pray them to be my advocates. But, since it has pleased the King (Henry II.) to promise to be all these things to me, it will not in any wise vex him that I demand his aid; for, without his grace and goodness I could not live at all, having in this world no other wealth than that which the King (Francis I.) and he have given me; and I have always been as content therewith as if I had had a great share of the revenues of my House.

Henry confirmed the pension, and asked Margaret to stand sponsor to his new-born child, treating her with a kindness and regard that would go far to endear his memory, did we not suspect an aim in reserve, an object which made it worth his while to conciliate. Margaret suspected nothing. She was profoundly touched by his goodness, and by a friendly and magnanimous letter which Constable de Montmorency had the fine tact to send her on his reinstatement in power. That Montmorency should be the advocate of the Queen of Navarre, who had been tho instrument of his fall, was indeed a heaping of coals of fire upon her head. She scarcely knew how sufficiently to confess her humility. She wrote:—

"My Nephew,

"You will not find it strange if incessantly I thank you as you incessantly give me occasion, for, by the message this porter has brought me, I see clearly that time has had no victory over your remembrance, to be able to efface the affection that, since your childhood, I have borne you; and the like I pray you to continue until the end of your old mother, and be you to her the staff of her age, as she was the rod of youth to you. For you have had many friends, but, remember, you have had but one mother, who will never lose this name or character in all that she may do or desire for you or yours."

So Margaret wrote to Montmorency, gratefully smiling through her tears, and wrote to Henry that he is the "life, health, and repose of her spirit." Meanwhile, Montmorency, under Henry's orders, was opening all the letters and packets addressed to the Queen and King of Navarre, in search of complaint, or a treasonable plan to frustrate the King's arrangement for their daughter's marriage.

Henry had inherited his father's fears lest the King of Navarre should marry his only daughter to the heir of Spain. It seemed so natural a match, and one that would set so old a feud at rest, that the King of France did not feel himself secure till Jeanne of Navarre was given to a husband of his choice. France, not Spain, must acquire Navarre; it was too dangerous an outpost to yield to the enemy. Therefore, little Jeanne had been taken away from her father and mother and brought up as a French princess; therefore, she had been married, against her will, to the Duke of Cleves. Since that marriage had been dissolved, the old peril was nearer than before. Her gaiety and spirit gave a great charm to this girl, known in Paris as the Darling of Kings, and her father had always ardently desired the Spanish match. Henry determined to marry Jeanne at once.

The husband that he chose for her was rich, noble, the son of her mother's dearest friend, Françoise d'Alençon. Antoine de Bourbon, the Duke of Vendôme, held the first rank in France, after the King's children. If he were suspected of Lutheran tendencies, that was but another passport to the favour of the Queen of Navarre. In choosing him for Jeanne, Henry had done well by his little niece, with her dowry of a poverty-stricken and confiscated kingdom. Yet Margaret passionately opposed the match. Both she and her husband so disliked the mere thought of it, that we are tempted to believe they had really set their hearts on Philip of Spain for their son-in-law. Henry of France certainly believed this, and he was strenuous in urging on the Bourbon marriage.

Meanwhile, the King of Navarre, too weak to openly oppose the plan, impotently tried to shuffle out of it. His nephew sent for him to Paris; but first he was detained at Pau by the affairs of Madame de Laval. Then he was ill, with a long intermittent illness which forced him to stay at home. Nobody believed much in these excuses, and at last the King of France got hold of his shuffling and irresolute opposer. Then the affair was quickly decided. The French King wrote to Montmorcncy, in letters that have something of the expression of his face after youth—something embittered, discordant, and cynical:—"I have got quit of him (the King of Navarre) cheaper than I thought. I grant him only 15,000 francs a year for the government of his kingdom. That is less than I offered him by Monge, for, if you remember, I had offered him ten thousand crowns. . . . It is true there is no love lost between my good Aunt and her husband—never any couple were less united; and she already far from loves her son-in-law. The King of Navarre will swear by nothing but the allegiance that he owes me, and I trust his protestations just as much as I ought. . . . They are very poor. I don't believe that altogether they have ten gentlemen-in-waiting. The King has beseeched me to appoint him a lieutenant; I said I would think of it. It seems to me this is a very different thing from determining to choose one himself, as he used to declare. . . . There is no further need that you should open the packets addressed to the King and Queen of Navarre. After all, there is nothing to make it worth your while. The King of Navarre told me he knew very well that his wife was the cause of his not receiving all his packets."

In these letters, and fragments of letters, we perceive the lessened authority of Margaret and her husband. Their opposition was not likely, now, to frustrate any plan of the King.

Meanwhile, Jeanne was brilliantly happy. She had so little affection for her mother that Margaret's sorrow touched her not at all. She had made a brilliant marriage, and had made it in France, with a man of her own language and her own manners; these had ever been the chief of her ambition. Antoine de Bourbon was vacillating, uncertain, timid. But he was better than the Duke of Cleves. He was rich, amiable, of the highest rank. Jeanne set about the pleasant extravagances of her trousseau with a merry heart. "I never saw so happy a bride," said Henry II. to Montmorency.

Meanwhile, Margaret continued her unaccountable opposition. She was deeply attached to Jeanne; but her daughter's happiness did not change her. Perhaps she foresaw how little fitted was the vacillating and fickle temper of Vendôme to guide her daughter's headstrong, courageous nature. More likely the long depression which took possession of her on her brother's death rendered her incapable of pleasure. It was sorely against her will that she joined the French Court at Lyons, proceeding thence to Moulins, where, on the 20th of October 1548, Jeanne d'Albret, the future mother of Henry IV., was married.

The festival, though not so fine as that which graced the unlucky nuptials of the Duke of Cleves, was still a splendid sight, celebrated avec toute espèce de festins, joyeusetés et pompes royales. The King of France was present. The Duke of Vendôme—though at the last thinking with disrelish of Jeanne's earlier bridal—showed himself a generous lover, and settled £100,000 Tournois upon the bride. Jeanne was as merry as her marriage-bells. Yet Margaret persisted in her displeasure, and only at her nephew's express command would affix her signature to the marriage-contract.

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. I have not determined to refuse them the permission, for it seems to me that, having married their daughter, I have the best hostage they can give. He pretends to be the best-contented father in the world—you know the man! But from all I can learn from him, and from many others, now that his daughter is really married, he thinks of nothing but amassing a large fortune and making good cheer. . . . The Queen of Navarre is at daggers drawn with her husband, through her love for her daughter, who, for her part, makes no account of her mother. You never saw anyone cry so much as my Aunt when she went away, and, if it had not been for me, she would never have gone back with her husband."

It is difficult to account for these tears. In Margaret's nature ambition was scarcely so eminent a factor that she should break her heart over what, after all, was a fair match for her daughter. The Estates of Béarn had long ago pleaded that their princess should marry no stranger, but rather some great French noble who would strengthen her hands at home. So that this marriage pleased the King of France, the bride herself, and the subjects of the bride. There was nothing personally to object to in Antoine de Bourbon; he was chivalrous and gentle, though weak in disposition. In fact, there was no cause, no reason, for Margaret's grief. The string strained too tight had broken, that was all. A constitutional melancholy, sharply accented by her brother's death, grew stronger and stronger on her, day by day, blotting all the world from her in a thick haze of cloud and misery, till it ended, even as did the melancholy of Francis, in lethargy and death.

Margaret had gone to Fontainebleau, but she found little comfort there in the court of Diana, where everything reminded her of the buried past. She returned to Pau for Christmas with her husband, and thence, for her health's sake, she went to Mont de Marsan. She was getting very weak; a religious misery took hold of her. She did not share her husband's pleasure in wealth and good cheer. She lived very quietly and simply, spending much of her time in that convent of Tusson where she had learned her brother's death. But now, in any place, it was a nun's life that she led. We find her expenses for the year 1548 entered in her account book; exclusive of pensions, loans, and donations to the poor, they do but reach the sum of £220 Tournois.

For pins, nine livres, 15 sols.
Six wooden combs, each £0 $36.
For gold and silver for her needlework, Three marks.
For a gold chain to be given away, £175.
For the deed of a loan to M. de Rohan, £4.
For New Year's gifts to the King of Navarre, £30.

That is the slender amount. Margaret had done with the world and with worldly gear. She had a lodging built for her in the convent at Tusson, and went there in 1549 to spend her Lent in retreat; but the life suited her so well, she stayed the summer there. Her leaning towards reform was no obstacle in her love for this conventual routine. It was because she loved the Church that she had wished to chasten it. She had no desire, as we have said, to establish a sect outside the Roman pale; only to keep a spirit of national life in the Church of France, to keep it French, while admitting the authority of Rome. So Margaret lived in peace of conscience at Tusson. Not, alas! in peace of mind. Her growing weakness sorely distressed her; and when her physicians told her that the end was near, she wept, and found their saying a very bitter word. 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. Knowing the disgust for mortality which she had inherited from her mother, her maidens begged the Queen to let them lead her away; her presence could not save the poor dying girl. But it was not affection that made the reluctant Queen vanquish her instinctive horror; that kept her sitting by the bed, silent, motionless, looking at the face of the sufferer so fixedly, so strangely, that her women marvelled among themselves. At last, when all was over, one ventured to ask the meaning of that look. 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. To catch this issuing soul she had narrowly watched the lips of the dying girl; but she had seen nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing.

"And were I not firm in my faith," she said, "I should not know what to think of this dislodging and departing of the soul." Then she went back to her weeping and her praying, shuddering at the mystery of death; triving to see beyond the visible, evident grave, the distant Paradise. "But ah! we stay so long under the earth before our coming there!"

The summer dragged away, and every month left Margaret weaker. With the autumn she moved to Odos, a castle near the city of Tarbes. Here sprang wells of mineral water, said to cure diseases of the chest. Margaret drank them, but they did not dispel her languor. She grew weaker and weaker. Her melancholy deepened into apathy. She fell into a drowsiness from which her physicians could not rouse her. The heart, so hungry for emotions, the eager intellect, the generous sympathies, the poignant vitality of her nature; all these slept a deep slumber now. But through her stupor she dreamily wondered on the nature and fate of spirits. That was her preoccupation.

One night she dreamed that a very beautiful woman approached her bed, bearing in her hands a wreath of flowers—flowers of every sort that blow—and these, the angel said, were freshly gathered for Margaret to wear in Paradise. The Queen woke a little consoled. She had always put her trust in signs and visions. On the faith of a dream she could believe in Paradise.

A few days after this, a great comet was seen in the sky at night. The rumour went that it appeared for the death of Paul III. the Pope. Margaret, who had heard this tale, stood on an open balcony, looking at the blazing heaven, with the wintry stars in it, and the meteor flung across the blue. Standing there she must have remembered that other and more brilliant comet which appeared before her mother's death at Grèz-en-Gatinois. Margaret was ever superstitious. Suddenly her mouth was drawn a little awry. Her physician seeing this, persuaded her to go indoors; and to bed. He lost no time in treating her; but the December night had chilled her through; the spectacle of the comet had taken her courage away, and he felt persuaded she would die. The chill settled on her delicate lungs, and for three days she could not speak; but a few moments before the last she found her voice again. She caught at a cross which lay upon the bed, and, crying three times "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" in her stifled voice, she died. The story of de Rémond that she died a Catholic, declaring that she had helped the oppressed Reformers rather from compassion than conviction, has been received with great distrust and anger by the Lutheran historians, from the earliest chroniclers to Miss Freer. It seems to me no truer words could resume the character of Margaret: compassion not conviction. It is at once the rarest value and the limitation of her nature. Hence her sweet, large-hearted mercy, understanding and forgiving all men. Hence, also, her weakness, her lack of a firm standpoint, her hesitations and indecisions. Hence that signal bane of her influence over Francis, "the flux and reflux of uncertain authority," as Gaillard has turned the phrase.

Margaret of Angoulême died at the Castle of Odos, December 21, 1549, at the age of fifty-seven. Her reign was over. She who had been for a lifetime the influence and ideal of the most civilised court in Europe was no more. In all but sheer existence she had died two years ago, when her brother breathed his last at Rambouillet. A different ideal was now set up in her place, a different influence swayed the heart of the King of France:—a woman, two years older than herself, whom some magic, as it seemed, preserved from age. 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. She had no place in the new order of things; she could neither change them nor sympathise with them. Her sun had set, and the moonlight dazzled her. She, poor sunflower, could not live without the sun. "Mourut par trop aymer d'amour grande et naïfve."

Margaret was buried in the cathedral at Lescar, the last resting-place of the House of Navarre. It was observed that Montmorency sent no representative to the crowded funeral. But the poor of all the states of Béarn congregated round the solemn procession, and through all the world the men of learning and the poets poured out in rhyme and epitaph their sorrow for her loss. They, indeed, would feel her death as the sudden rattling-down of a buckler that had ever been held between them and their enemies. With more truth than befits an epitaph, Olhagaray declared, "all the learned, weary of living, succumbed at that blow." The Queen who had saved Roussel and Lefêbvre, Calvin, Farel, and Clément Marot, the protectress of Erasmus and Melancthon, the learned muse who inspired the King to found the College of France, la Marguerite des Marguerites, merited so fine a commendation.

Henry of Navarre mourned his wife's death, notwithstanding all their jealousies and quarrels. Without her, his petulant and vacillating character was as a ship without ballast. Day by day he became more feeble and variable, changing his mind from moment to moment, till finally the reins of government were handed over to Jeanne and her husband, who ruled the country well.

So Margaret passed out of life: others took up her tasks and filled her place. But her humane and gentle influence was gone for ever. In the brief and violent history of the House of Valois no other Egeria shines.

She is dead, and all her works are dead, or only live a little dimly on the shelves of historians and bibliophiles. But oblivion will never cover her memory. Rather, as the sphere of history widens, will the appreciation of her rare influence increase. Without her, the noblest part of the Renaissance in France must have perished at the Inquisition stakes. She made learning possible; and secured for a time a relative freedom of thought. She taught respect for life in an age which only respected opinions. Her strong national feeling was for years a bulwark against the invasion of Spanish superstition. She showed that compassion is larger than conviction; charity more honourable than faith. Her character was not great. It lacked decision, strength, moral judgment, and the splendour of mental purity. But her impassioned sweetness made it beautiful and rare. Her mercy and magnanimity were the saving of a nation. For this, and not for her novels or her poems, she will be remembered.