Bore incessantly.”
She was, in truth, tired to death of the involved labour of life. Thoughts of the complacent, unprincipled, mendacious Louise de Savoie, whose son was heir to the throne of France, fermented in her blood, and kept her heart from beating contentedly. From the time of Renée’s birth she surrendered to an uncontested weakliness. Though she became enceinte again shortly afterwards, hope scarcely fluttered, and her physical condition bore witness to a mind past any salutary optimism. She had already given birth to three sons, not one of whom had lived, and throughout the household it was recognized that she lacked good fortune in motherhood.
In 1512, some one wrote: “The queen is in great pain, and her baby is expected at the end of this month or the beginning of next. But there is not the fuss and excitement here that was made over the others.”
The child came, but the triumphant Louise records the event in her diary with cynical cheerfulness: “... His birth will not hinder the exaltation of my Cæsar, for the infant was born dead.”
Anne, worn and heartbroken in her second best bed—always used for accouchements—becomes at last entirely touching. She was by this time ultimately and irremediably beaten. The child had been a son, but was dead. “She took pleasure in nothing afterwards,” said D’Argentre, while she continued so ill that most of the time she had to stay in bed. Louis, back from renewed disasters in Italy, found her there on his return. Shortly afterwards—on the 9th of February, 1514—she died.
Louis grieved considerably. The flaring heat of latter quarrels had burnt up much original tenderness, but De Seyssel’s statement that Louis “loved her so that in her he had placed all his pleasure and delight,” was an approximate interpretation of their position until vital antagonisms sharpened the tongues of both.
Anne was given a sumptuous funeral. The arrangements for it, could she have known them, would have caused her exquisite pleasure. For six days she lay in her own room, prayed for unceasingly. Then she was placed upon a Lit de Parade, and covered with a pall of gold cloth bordered with ermine, the fur represented by the coat-of-arms of Brittany. She lay underneath this, with white gloves upon her hands, and a crown upon her head; her dress was of purple velvet, and on each side were cushions holding the Sceptre and the Hand of Justice.
After the funeral Louis sent her heart in a golden case to be entombed in Brittany. On the casket was written—
“In this small vessel
Of pure, fine gold