Struck down mysteriously one day at Mass in the Cathedral of Aix by a stalking epidemic,—he had not spared himself in visits of condolence to the stricken and bereaved,—in the springtide of 1480, the King was borne tenderly to the palace. No more tender nurse could there be than his devoted consort. She took her station at once at his bedside, and, laying her head upon his pillow, she cheered and solaced him as none other could; only did she rouse herself for needful ablutions, for food, and for the saying of the “Hours” in the oratory. With her was a little maiden, René’s grandchild Marguerite, thirteen years of age, Yolande de Vaudémont’s daughter, a great pet of Queen Jehanne. The child had the sweetest of sweet voices,—a quality very precious in the estimation of the King,—and she soothed his sufferings and refreshed his weaknesses by childish songs and minstrelsy, whilst she stroked his withered hands and in them placed her own.
At dawn of day, July 10, amid the rustling of the summer foliage outside the wide-open windows of the palace, came whisperings from the sick-room—soft, low, and sad: “Le bon Roy est mort!” It was gently told to the weeping Queen by the royal physicians, but her Ladies of Honour in the anteroom caught the ominous news besides. They stole outside the heavy arras and told the terrible secret to the valets and men-at-arms; then it flashed out through the galleries and across the courtyards, and stayed the janitors of the gates as they prepared to open them as usual for the new day’s life. “Le bon Roy est mort!” soon was echoed through the city streets, and tears and protestations of affection and tender souvenirs of regret found full utterance. “Le bon Roy is mort!” was like the knell of doom. No one could realize it or prophesy.
III.
No one has told us of Queen Jehanne’s sorrow—better so. No stranger ever shares a full heart’s loss. Broken, but submissive and self-sustained, her consort’s fortitude in distress had come to her as well; she failed not at the moment of her trial. With her own hands she led the last offices of reverent duty to the dead. Shrouded in a simple white linen shift, but covered with the crimson and ermine mantle of state, they laid their deceased Sovereign upon the canopied bed of Estate, moved to the centre of the great hall. The Queen herself had closed his eyes, and now she arranged his hands. In them she placed a costly ruby cross he had given her at her marriage; at his feet she laid the “Livre des Heures,” which was also his nuptial gift; and then she placed around his neck the Sovereign’s jewel,—there was no heir to wear it, alas!—and last of all she knelt and sprinkled holy water on his corpse.
Every door and window was set wide ajar that, night or day, all might see and pray and bless. Dusk fell on that long, long day, but the crowd of loving servants and subjects still surged along reverently to pay their last respects; and so night fell and passed, not in the peaceful hush of slumber, but with smothered tread of painful feet and the smothered sob of woe.
All Aix was hung in black, and on July 14 the streets were lined by weeping citizens as the funeral cortège of “le bon Roy” passed to the Cathedral of St. Sauveur. The burial casket, after the requiem and Court ceremonies, was placed, not in a tomb direct, but in a chapelle ardente, and watches of religious mounted guard and prayed. Soon the wish of their venerated Sovereign was made public property, and then, amid fresh lamentations lest Aix should lose his remains, appeals were made to Queen Jehanne. She was deeply affected, but remained quiet and resigned. She could not reverse her husband’s will, but she could allow his body to remain awhile where it was. With this the authorities had to be content, and forthwith, to strengthen their hold upon that sacred casket, steps were taken to erect a splendid monument and tomb. An embassy was sent off at once to Rome to ask for a “Bull” whereby the late Sovereign’s directions as to the place of sepulture might be laid aside. Aix was not so much jealous of Angers as she was devoted to her King.
In accordance with the marital customs of the time, King René had a mistress—perhaps more than one, but one at least whose name has been preserved by chroniclers, Marie de la Chapelle, a respectable middle-class woman of Provence. Whether “de la Chapelle” was a sobriquet or not is not clear; probably it was so, and given her later on in life after the artist King had painted her wearing a chapelle, or black velvet hood, in a diptych, wherein he faces her, which he kept secretly in his own studio. It is said that she did not really love René, but liked to rule him and to direct the royal household. She was exigeant, too, for the legitimatizing of the three children she bore the King, whom René had always duly acknowledged as his. These were Jean, “le Bâtard d’Angers,” created, after the premature death of Prince Louis, Marquis de Pont-à-Mousson and Seigneur of St. Cannot; Blanche; and Madeleine. Jean married Isabelle, daughter of Raymond de Glandevez, Ambassador to the Pope, pro-Governor of Genoa, and Grand Master of France. Blanche d’Anjou married Bertrand de Beauvau, Seigneur de Precigny, Master of the Court of Angers and Seneschal of Anjou. He was in 1462 appointed President of Provence. His father was Seigneur de Rochette. René gave his daughter the estate of Mirabeau in Poitou, which he purchased in 1488. In the Comptes du Roy René is the record of a gift to Blanche of a gold mirror worth 20 écus d’or, under date January 12, 1488, and the same year, on March 18, she received a large table diamond from her father, which unfortunately she lost when playing in a farce before the Court on the following Jour de l’An. The precious bauble was found by a monk, Alfonso de la Rocque, Prior of the monastery of Les Anges d’Aix, and restored on payment of a tun of red wine. The discovery was only made known, it appears, through the confessional; the good friar had qualms about not making known his find. This Blanche d’Anjou was educated at Beaucaire by Demoiselle Collette, a worker in furs, who received many costly gifts from King René. It has been sought to prove that Marie de la Chapelle was this Demoiselle Collette. Among the King’s gift were homely objects, too. His Comptes, under April 4, 1447, record “three cannes of fine holland cloth; two ditto fine muslin, and five black silk velvet for a head-dress.” Another gift to Blanche d’Anjou, on May 16, 1447, was hair for a rigotter, a coiffure postiche for which the King paid 7 florins to Marguerite, wife of Jehan Augier, at Beaucaire. Again Blanche was the recipient of her father’s generosity, for on June 7 the same year he gave her a cincture of wrought silver which cost 11 florins.
Before Blanche married the Seigneur de Precigny he had buried three wives, and he himself was buried with them at Angers in October, 1474. She died prematurely in giving birth to a child, April 11, 1470, no more than twenty-one years of age. Madeleine, René’s second illegitimate daughter, married Louis Jehan, Seigneur de Belleneve, Chamberlain to Charles VIII. of France when Dauphin. He gave him for his marriage 15,000 florins, that he might “espouse worthily ma cousine,” as he calls her. Louis XII. gave her on her widowhood a sum of 12,000 florins.
On the death of King René, his eldest daughter, Yolande, Countess of Vaudémont, claimed and assumed the title of Queen of Sicily, Jerusalem, Naples, and Aragon, but took no steps to enforce her claim upon that vulture monarch, Louis XI., who at once seized upon the lands of his uncle, and styled himself Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence. Countess Yolande was her father’s child, tender and retiring. She craved the charms of the quiet life, and consequently, at the convocation of the Estates of Anjou and Provence, she renounced her title, and made it over to her son René. He had already taken up the gauntlet of his grandfather, and given proof of the sterling qualities of his ancestry. The duchy of Lorraine and that of Bar were his through his mother also, and as Duke of Lorraine René II. is known to historians. Countess Yolande died at Nancy February 21, 1483. René II. was the Prince whom his father, Ferri de Vaudémont, insisted should make a pilgrimage from Vezelay,—famous in the history of Thomas à Becket,—the capital of Le Morvan, to Jerusalem with one foot booted, the other bare, and, as he went, to distribute to every poor person he met 12 livres by way of satisfaction for small sums he himself had borrowed and had not paid back—surely a wide stretch of fatherly authority and the law of substitution!