Isabella Orsini: A Historical Novel of the Fifteenth Century

by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi

Your tottering footsteps to your home on high?

It is the mother who our lip unseals,

Loosens the lisping accents patiently,

And still the earliest word our tongue reveals

Is "mother!"——

Catherine of France!—wife of a king, mother of a king,—and nevertheless, would the most wretched woman that ever did or ever will live, accept the Empire of France with the sorrows of her life, or her fame after death! Daughter of an abhorred prince, a child, forsaken and alone, she fell into the power of the infuriated republicans, who wished to avenge in her the crimes of her race, and to expose her upon the walls to the artillery of her relations, who certainly would not on that account have abstained from firing! Notwithstanding, bright and cheerful, careless of present danger, she conspired for the grandeur of her house. The heavens bestowed upon her the instinct and capacity for government. The youthful wife of Henry II., she saw herself neglected for Diane de Poitiers, the now elderly mistress of the king her husband; and she was silent, and shut deep in her heart the offence to woman, wife, and queen, and remained like a fire, hidden in order to flash out unexpectedly, to dazzle or to terrify the world. The mother of Francis II., she saw preferred to her experience and gravity, the frivolities of Marie Stuart, the almost infant wife of a child king; and she was silent, and with a smile upon her lips flattered the follies of the royal children, while she saw gathering over their heads the whirlwind fatal to the lilies of France. At last behold her the true Queen,—she rules. Like Niobe, she protects with her own mantle the head of a royal child; doubt not, she will defend it more successfully against the fury of factions than the ancient Niobe could hers, against the arrows of Latona's children. What did the kingdom appear? What the King? Charles IX. was a bird—a bird of ill-omen if you will—for whom a falcon and a vulture both stretched forth their talons. The Guises declared themselves his protectors; but can you imagine a king who needs the protection of his subjects? The Huguenots also wished to protect him—as a master the slave; and each of these parties was more powerful than Catherine. The former called themselves the friends of religion and the throne, and committed acts, to avoid the sight of which religion would have wished herself blind; friends of the throne, they composed a genealogy, which made them the descendants of Charlemagne, to expel the Capetians from the kingdom, as Capet had expelled the Carlovingians; finally they became demagogues and were extinguished. The latter, hostile to the Catholic rites, consented that Henry IV. should win Paris by a mass;[38] hostile to the throne, they ended by giving a king to France. It was not then for the king, but for the kingdom that they fought. Catherine had to fear, not only for her crown but for her life; laying aside the royal robes, she and her sons expected the mantle of sod that is assigned to the dead. Cruel inheritance prepared by the snares of Louis XI., the misfortunes of Louis XII., the follies of Francis I., and made more perilous by the doctrines of Luther and the other sectarians who followed him. The equilibrium could not then, as now, be maintained by gold freely spent, and votes thrown into an urn;—there a river of blood was required; there, instead of votes, heads, to be cast into the urn of destiny;—and Catherine accepted that inheritance with all its consequences—all! Truly, these are not such virtues as belong to women, nor yet to men; but the beings appointed by Providence to govern nations in such emergencies hardly belong to human nature; souls of bronze, created where the thunderbolt, the hurricane, and the other scourges of God arise. Catherine saved the kingdom of France from being rent to atoms in the sternest strife that she has ever suffered before or since. Louis XI. is praised, because, by cutting off the heads of the hydra of the feudal system, he laid the foundation for the greatness of the kingdom; and applauding the end, the means are disregarded. The Cardinal Richelieu is praised because he reduced the barons finally to gilded slaves of the Court. The Conventionalists are also praised, because they wrote in the blood of the Girondists that the Republic was one and indivisible. But leaving out these last, were the first as wise as the world considers them? Carried away by the ardor of the undertaking, they strained every nerve to throw down a wall, ignorant of what it concealed; behind that wall, when broken down, they found a wild beast with sharp teeth, fiery eyes, eager to rend in pieces, greedy of spoil, famished with want, thirsting for blood—in short, the goaded people. The two hostile principles, without any intermediate one, which disjoined or moderated them, rushed upon each other one day and the second devoured the first; but no sooner was it swallowed than it revived in its own bosom, and from that moment the devourer has lain sick, and will lie—how long?[39] The destinies of the world are held hidden in the hand of God. But it seems to me a strange thing to think that Louis XI. and Richelieu, the most despotic of rulers, should have been the fathers of popular revolutions. Catherine dei Medici, a woman with baby kings in her arms, with power weaker than theirs, indeed without power, did much more for France than they; events did not allow her to be milder, nor was she more cruel than the manners of her times, and I should like to be told if Louis XI., if Richelieu, if Francis, if Henry, if Guise, if Coligny himself were any better than she. And, nevertheless, the memory of Catherine dei Medici is held in perpetual infamy in France; not a generation but curses her in passing, and imprecates heavily upon her head the marble of the tomb and the vengeance of God! It would seem almost incredible if it were not true, that she, a queen, buried in a royal tomb, with the crown and vesture of royalty, had not a single mouth—a mouth however bribed—to pronounce a venal eulogy over her coffin. Three days after her death the preacher, Lincestre, thus spoke of her from the pulpit to his hearers: "The Queen-mother is dead, who, living, did much good and much evil, and, as I believe, more evil than good. And now a difficulty presents itself, which is to know whether the Catholic church ought to pray for one whose life was so wicked, and who so often upheld heresy, although they say that latterly she was on our side, and did not consent to the death of our princes. Therefore, I tell you, that if you would wish to recite a pater or an ave for her, do it; let it go for what it is worth; I leave it to your own option."

It is enough: she appeals from the judgment of men to that of Him who cannot err. Meanwhile, as for this earthly judgment, it is well to think that it is borne by those whose powers of judging may well be doubted, and that Catherine, as an Italian, ought not to expect justice from a presumptuous people, once only great, when a lofty Italian soul[40] shed over them the influences of his genius.

Catherine dei Medici, Queen of France, desirous of saving from shame the family from which she rose, had answered Donna Isabella's letter, appearing very willing to give her shelter, but advising and entreating her, with all speed, to put her design into execution; she wrote, that she had ordered persons to meet her at Genoa, accompany her to Marseilles, and then conduct her with a strong escort to Paris, where she would take care to place her in safety from assassins and daggers. The Knight Lionardo Salviati, immediately upon the receipt of the letter, to avoid suspicion and fatal accidents, sent it as carefully and secretly as possible to Isabella by Don Silvano Razzi, a monk of Camaldole, and a very intimate friend of his. But Isabella had of late lost her natural firmness, and becoming discouraged and feeling a presentiment of her fate, allowed herself to be entirely overcome by dejection. The manuscripts which remain to us concerning those wretched events, speak as follows: "But the scheme did not succeed, for it was not the will of the good God, her affairs being too well known, so that now she could no longer disguise her intentions, and all knew her thoughts." In short, whether she could not or would not, the fact is that some time before the reply of Catherine Queen of France reached her, she had dismissed from her mind all idea of flight.

The Duchess had a foster sister; she had received the same nourishment as a daughter of the people, and happy would she have been, if, with the milk, she had imbibed the domestic virtues of her good nurse! Gifted with an excellent disposition, Isabella always wished to retain near her, her foster sister, whose name was Maria, and loved her passionately. It seemed as if she could not live without her; to her she confided the most hidden secrets of her heart, so long as they were such as she could reveal without shame; but when they ceased to be such, she began to shroud herself in silence and circumlocution; much more, since having once tried to inform Maria of her feelings, which, although not exactly guilty, had begun to deviate from the right path, she was met with such an admonition as took from her all wish to continue. Maria, although an excellent woman, was not very quick at observing, yet she perceived only too well that her lady's heart was withdrawn from her, and also that she could not regain it except by complying with her foolish wishes, and thus, as it were, becoming her accomplice. This, neither her own religion would permit, nor the faith she had always had in her mistress; and since she could devise no means of reuniting herself to her as she had been, she resolved to leave her as she was. The poor girl, in order not to separate from Isabella, had refused advantageous offers of marriage, and to her praise it must be added, had even subdued an affection that she had felt arising in her heart. The first roses of her youth had somewhat faded, but living modestly and "avoiding even the appearance of evil," she still looked young and handsome. While she was in this state of mind, fortune threw in her way a young man named Cecchino del Bandieraio, whose person pleased her, and even more the devoted filial affection which he manifested for his aged mother. Maria, the sole survivor of her family, had to ask leave of no one except her mistress, who was then so much under the influence of her passion, that she permitted without sorrow the departure of Maria, who might be considered the last anchor of her salvation; she even saw her go with pleasure, as her presence had become a kind of restraint upon her. But as her truly royal disposition prompted, she was liberal in her gifts; bestowing upon her in abundance clothes, furniture, jewels, money, and kind words, and entreaties that in case of any need, she would come to her. When the moment of parting arrived, however, the old tenderness revived, and she embraced her so closely, that it seemed as if she could not let her go, and wept bitterly; but an ardent kiss of love quickly dried her tears, and Maria was soon forgotten.

But Maria, on her part, could not forget Isabella, and never failed to go daily to the palace; but she did not see her more than once in a hundred times, for she was told at one time that the Duchess could not be seen, at another that she was absent, and poor Maria would turn away sorrowful, her heart swelling, and her eyes filling with tears, but before she had gone half-way down the street, she would find excuses for Isabella, believe the reason for her dismissal, reproach herself for having doubted her, and comfort herself in the hope that she should be more fortunate the following day. But the following day it was the same thing over again, and her grief was sharpened by her constantly receiving applications from persons who wished her to obtain for them some favor from Isabella. In vain she assured them that she no longer possessed any influence over the Duchess; they did not believe her, but thought that she wished to avoid obliging them, and said to her: "We know perfectly well that Isabella and you are one person; one soul in two bodies; whatever pleases you, she does; whatever you wish, you can have; do not reject the prayer of the widow and orphan, intercede for us, and you will obtain; perform this act of charity, remember that you are one of the people; do not grow proud; a day may come when the Lord will visit you too, and then how sweet will it be to think of the good you have done; and you can demand the assistance of the people, who will give it gladly, that you may know that they can feel gratitude."