=MARRIAGE OF FRANCIS AND ELEANOR.=
The court had never been more brilliant. The less happiness there was in this marriage, the more pomp the king desired to display; joy of the heart was replaced by the sound of the fife and drum and of the hautboy. The dresses were glittering, the festivities magnificent.
There were mysteries and games, and the streets were gaily drest,
And the roads with flowers were strewn of the sweetest and the best;
On every side were galleries, and, if 't would pleasure yield,
We'd have conjured up again for thee a new Elysian field.[181]
Princes, archbishops, bishops, barons, knights, gentlemen of parliament, and the magistrates of the city, were assembled for this illustrious marriage; scholars and poets were not wanting. Francis I. would often repeat the proverb addressed by Fouquet, Count of Anjou, to Louis IV.:
Un roi non lettré
Est un âne couronné.[182]
Philologers, painters, and architects had flocked to France from foreign countries. They had met in Paris men worthy to receive them. William Budæus, the three brothers Du Bellay, William Petit, the king's confessor; William Cop, the friend of Lascaris and Erasmus; Pierre du Châtel, who so gracefully described his travels in the East; Pellicier, the learned commentator on Pliny, whose papers have not, however, been printed;[183] Peter Danès, whose talents and knowledge Calvin esteemed so highly: all these scholars, who entertained sympathies, more or less secret, for the Reform, were then at court. These men of letters passed among the Roman party as belonging to Luther's flock.[184] Somewhat later, indeed, when one of them, Danès, was at the Council of Trent, a French orator inveighed strongly against the lax morals of Rome. The Bishop of Orvieto said with contempt: 'Gallus cantat!'—'Utinam,' sharply retorted Danès, then ambassador for France, 'utinam ad galli cantum Petrus resipisceret!'[185] But the cock has often crowed, and Peter has shed no tears.