ANNE KNEELING
FROM THE “BOOK OF HOURS”
The attraction is difficult to account for. Possibly Anne held him through his domestic leanings, and through her own indomitable force of character. The monotonies of guilty love episodes may have given a restful grace to placid respectability; Louis knew by heart every cankering perversity inherent to the women who are not virtuous, and probably, therefore, set additional store by one possessing at least a steadfast and limpid purity. How much virtue in a woman, when she was not Jeanne, appealed to him is clear from a remark made some years later. It had reference to Anne’s aggressiveness. Some one complained of it to Louis. His answer offered no consolation, but expressed a definite attitude of mind. He remarked merely, “One must forgive much to a virtuous woman.”
Anne’s affection for Louis is more immediately comprehensible. He was peculiarly lovable, though almost as ugly as Charles himself. He had a low forehead, prominent ruminating eyes, a sensual, affectionate mouth, high cheek-bones, and a flabby skin. It was the face of a man who liked life as it was, and people as they were; there appeared in it no desire for illusions of any kind. He had in his own nature all the sympathetic weaknesses, and his expression conveyed the easy tolerance of a nature which had at least used experience as a school of understanding. A Venetian ambassador once called him “a child of nature,” and he was essentially natural, with an almost childlike trustfulness, not so much of manner as of opinion. He ruled—save for his unfortunate passion to possess a piece of Italy—like a man preoccupied with the happiness of his children. The people adored him. If money had to be raised, he made personal sacrifices rather than burden the poor with additional taxation, while his home policy was persistently humane and sensible. Historians rarely do him justice. Because he failed to prove a great diplomatist, they ignore his possession of a delightful personality. In regard to Italy, he was plainly foolish; but then Italy stood for the romance of life—the adventure that drew the commonplace out of existence. Even specialized astuteness could have blundered easily in the cunning complications of international politics at that crisis, and Louis went to Italy, not out of policy, but literally because he could not keep himself away from it.
Though in private life his interests were largely intellectual, he had always a certain strain of cordial earthliness. The “pastime of ladies” he is said to have given up entirely after his second marriage, but good dinners and good wine he liked to the end of life. When Ferdinand of Aragon was told that Louis complained of being twice cheated by him, he exclaimed exultantly, “He lies, the drunkard; I have cheated him more than ten times.”
Anne stood for his antithesis. She was regrettably without small weaknesses, and she forgave nobody. When Louis came to the throne he remarked, “It would ill become the King of France to avenge the wrongs of the Duke of Orleans.” But if any one hurt Anne, she could not rest until a greater hurt had been flung back upon the offender. Once a grown woman, and married to Louis, she was, except from the point of view of housewifery, almost completely a failure. She might have had more flagrant vices and aroused compassionate affection. But she was pre-eminently respectable, pious, hedged in by sedate rules of conduct. And all the time one of the most corroding sins possible flourished in her to offend posterity. Anne’s revengefulness is like a blight, destroying the grace of her femininity.
Happily she was generous, and generosity is a sweet redemption of much crookedness. She loved to give presents. After her second marriage she kept a gallery full of jewellery and precious stones, which she gave from time to time to the “wives of the captains or others who had distinguished themselves in the wars, or faithfully served her husband Louis.” Also, she never denied the tragic clamour of the poor. Mezerai wrote: “You saw thousands of poor waiting for her alms, whenever she left the palace.”
Of the private life led by Anne and Louis an unusual amount is known. They got up at six in summer and seven in winter. They had their dinner at eight or nine in the morning. At two o’clock they took some light refreshments. By five or six supper was served, and either at eight or nine o’clock they went to bed, after having a glass of wine and some spiced cakes. An old rhyme of the period might have been written for them—
“To rise at five, and dine at nine,
Sup at five, and sleep at nine,