Margaret of Anjou and Renè of Sicily.
So little resemblance in character was there between Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. and her father Renè, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, that it is related of him, that when the news of the loss of one of his kingdoms was brought to him, while he was engaged in painting a partridge from nature, he paid no attention to the communication, nor would he see the messenger till he had given the finishing strokes to his design. Renè’s compositions in music, are at this very time the delight of his native country, and indeed of Europe. He was the inventor of the Opera ballet; and the drama of La Tentation, lately revived with so much splendour at Paris in 1832, was originally composed by this Prince. The wild story is his own, and the delightful melodies his composition, which have been merely tamed and regulated by modern art. This Prince, adored for his beneficence by his people, who named him the “Good,” was scorned by the destructive nobles of his era as fainéant and feeble-minded. After the death of his first wife, Isabella of Lorraine, he married Jeanne de Lovel. She was of so grave a character, that she was never known to laugh but once, at a pageant devised by her royal husband—namely, a boat filled with water-pipes, which played on every side, and completely drenched the spectators that did not use some agility in getting out of the way.
Margaret’s elder sister, Yolente, survived her two years; she had a beautiful daughter called Margaret of Anjou the younger. Maria Louisa, Napoleon’s Empress, possessed the breviary of this Princess, in which there is one sentence supposed to have been written by the once beautiful, powerful, and admired Margaret, Queen of England, her aunt:
“Vanité des vanités, tout est vanité.”
To Julia.
Sweet, be not proud of those fair eyes,
Which star-like sparkle in their skies;
Be ye not proud of that rich hair,
Which wantons in the love-sick air,
Nor be you proud because you see
All hearts your captives, yours yet free.
When as that jewel which you wear
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone,
When all your world of beauty’s gone.