* * * * *
She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;
Clement Marot stayed; I followed after."
Catching her up, he asked what it had all meant. "I'm a poet," he added; "I must know human nature."
"She told me, 'Too long had I heard
Of the deed proved alone by the word:
For my love—what De Lorge would not dare!
With my scorn—what De Lorge could compare!
And the endless descriptions of death
He would brave when my lip formed a breath,
I must reckon as braved'" . . .
—and for these great gifts, must give in return her love, as love was understood at the Court of King Francis. But to-day, looking at the lion, she had mused on all the dangers affronted to get that beast to that den: his capture by some poor slave whom no lady's love was to reward, no King or Court to applaud, but only the joy of the sport, and the delight of his children's wonder at the glorious creature. . . . And at this very Court, the other day, did not they tell of a page who for mere boyish bravado had dropped his cap over the barrier and leaped across, pretending that he must get it back? Why should she not test De Lorge here and now? For now she was still free; now she could find out what "death for her sake" really meant; otherwise, he might yet break down her doubts, she might yield, still unassured, and only then discover that it did not mean anything at all! So—she had thrown the glove.
"'The blow a glove gives is but weak:
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
But when the heart suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?'"
* * * * *
De Lorge, indeed, had braved "death for her sake"; but he had then been capable of the public insult. The pain of that, had she loved him, must quite have broken her heart. And not only had he been capable of this, but he had not understood her, he too had thought it "mere vanity." Love then was nowhere—neither in his heart nor in hers. . . . Ronsard, following her with his eyes as she went finally away, saw a youth keeping as close as he dared to the doorway by which she would pass. He was a mere plebeian; naturally his life was not so precious as that of the brilliant De Lorge (thus Ronsard ironically remarks); but there was no doubt what he would have done, "had our brute been Nemean." He would exultantly have accepted the test, have thought it right that he should earn what he so ardently desired.
"And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the Court, and they married,
To that marriage some happiness, maugre
The voice of the Court, I dared augur."
De Lorge led for some time the most brilliant of envied careers, and finally married a beauty who had been the King's mistress for a week. Thenceforth he fetched her gloves very diligently, at the hours when the King desired her presence and his absence—and never did he set off on that errand (looking daggers at her) but Francis took occasion to tell the Court the story of the other glove. And she would smile and say that he brought hers with no murmur.