No braver letter, nor one more touching in its noble staidness of expression, was ever written by a woman, knowing that in a few hours life would have ceased for her. Two days after writing it she died, and Alphonso wrote after her death that it was hard to face the loss of so sweet a companion, the gentleness of her conduct having made the bond between them a very close and tender one. No single individual can possess the whole round of virtues—a fact too often ignored in current judgment of character—but every writer lingered upon Lucrezia’s gentleness. There is no more winning thing than a gentle woman. Persistent gentleness not only excludes harsh thoughts, but is a force constantly wooing men out of turbulent bitterness and acrimony of spirit.
Alphonso fainted at his wife’s funeral, and nothing could protest more eloquently against assertions of her wickedness. Grim men of Alphonso’s fibre do not, after nine years of marriage, faint for a woman who has not known how to bring to life the softer undergrowths of character. Lucrezia must have possessed a more than normal degree of conciliatory seduction. And she charms still, in spite of much calumniating gossip, not only because she expressed undeviatingly the heartening value of good cheer, and set so fine an example of how to discard bad yesterdays, but to a certain extent because, as far as one knows, she babbled nothing for biographers to seize upon, and so left herself perpetually among the engrossing enigmas of European history.
MARGARET D’ANGOULÊME
1492-1549
THE Renaissance in France has not the same degree of charm as the Renaissance in Italy. It misses the radiance and the sense of open-air sweetness that clings to the original movement. The women of the Italian Renaissance were constantly adventuring into the country; the enchantment of the climate lingers in all recollections of them. The Renaissance in France conveys a different impression—one colder, more troubled, more half-hearted. The large frescoed palaces, with their adorable colonnades, are gone, and the sensation given is of a bleaker, darker, and more housed existence. The entranced light-heartedness of the Italian period did not travel into France. When the Renaissance came into that country the Reformation came too, and the labours of the Sorbonne robbed it of the youth and irresponsibility that made the other so vital and complete. The Italian Renaissance breathed out the exultation of adolescence; the French, the reflectiveness of maturity.
Of the French Renaissance, Margaret D’Angoulême is the central female figure. She was born on April 11, 1492, when her mother, Louise de Savoie, was only fifteen. Louise had been a poor relation at court before she married, and her aunt, Anne of Beaujeu, had arranged her marriage. Louise de Savoie was among the women who had not been given a fair start in life. The bridegroom, Charles D’Angoulême, had already an attachment; he loved greatly a certain Jeanne de Polignac. He did his best not to marry Louise, and so remain unharassed in the service of his lady friend. But Anne de Beaujeu was very masterful, and Charles surrendered through necessity. He married Louise, then a child of twelve, and made Jeanne de Polignac one of her ladies-in-waiting.
When Louise was fifteen, Margaret was born, and two years afterwards, Francis—“My Cæsar, my lord”—came into the world. A year later Louise’s husband died. She mentions the fact in her journal without expressions of regret. Not but that she had been happy enough in his lifetime. Charles, absorbed by his own love affairs, allowed his wife moderate freedom to indulge in hers. But his death made such amusements less anxious and more easy. The complaisance of husbands has always an element of uncertainty.
There was another trait in Louise’s character to which her husband’s death gave fuller scope—her ardent maternal instincts. The quality of her love for her children was vehement, jealous, and primitive. Margaret, as a result of this, became educated in an atmosphere unusual at that period. An indulged tenderness steeped her juvenile days in pleasantness. There were no severities at Cognac. Of Francis, Louise made an idol, but Margaret, though trained from the days she could lisp to worship this idol along with her mother, was also herself a treasured person. The glow of these early days left their influence upon her for a lifetime. She never shook off the warmliness of heart all her upbringing had encouraged.
Upon Louise’s widowhood, Louis XII. was for a short time very kind to her and to her children. This mood suddenly changed—in a few days, it is said—and a certain Jean de St. Gelais, a friend of Louise’s, is credited with having caused the alteration. Louise was ordered to retire to the castle of Blois, and there was talk of taking the children away from her. In the end, the Marechale de Gie, whose tragic downfall has been told in the life of Anne, was given practical control of her household. His first act—presumably under Louis’s orders—consisted in the dismissal of St. Gelais. It was this action which Louise is supposed never to have forgiven. De Gie became her most devoted supporter; all his interests were on the same side as hers, all his aims were to place Francis subsequently upon the throne of France. But when the catastrophe of Anne’s luggage occurred, Louise flung the weight of her evidence remorselessly against him, and lied with a sinister heartiness.