The confession, nevertheless, was an error. Margaret wanted to be loved, and she adored the glow of a sentimental friendship. But Bonnivet desired more than this, and showed that he did. The situation lost its grace and easiness. The girl found herself pressed by an emotion tired of simple playfulness; she grew uncomfortable, and Bonnivet, seeing that the situation had become untenable, went away. A wise, grave woman would have let him stay away. It is part of Margaret’s appeal to us that she was never entirely sensible. She liked Bonnivet, and she felt that a young creature left destitute of love has lost a large part of the exquisiteness of youth. Gaston had faded by now into a sentimental and rather plaintive memory; she wrote, therefore, to Bonnivet to come back. Away among other women he could not be trusted to remain the same—he was one of those who love vehemently and often. He came in answer to her call, but shortly afterwards another Italian expedition removed him once more from her influence. In this war he was taken prisoner, and Margaret is said to have both fasted and gone pilgrimages in order to win God into releasing the prisoner. She had also promised him before he left that wherever she went after her marriage she would take his wife as one of her ladies, thereby assuring a re-meeting.
And marriage had become at last unavoidable. The Duc D’Alençon had asked the king and queen for her hand, and she had refused so many husbands that it was impossible to continue obdurate. Margaret hung back, but could not ultimately resist the wishes of the king, and though it is said she declared that she would rather have had death instead, the marriage took place at the court of Anne and Louis on October 9, 1509.
The match was in all ways unsuitable. The Duc D’Alençon was good-looking, but invertebrate, jealous, and very stupid. This was exactly the type of character to depress Margaret, who at seventeen—or, for that matter, all her life—showed herself an ardent seeker after a cheerful way of living. The mystic strain in her temperament was involuntary. She troubled about the soul, death, and the after life because she could not help herself; questions of conduct and the future came unasked, and shook her with uncontrollable distresses. But of her own desires she was all in tune with the Renaissance. She says of herself that “she was de moult joyeuse vie,” and her contemporaries bear her out in the statement.
Life at Alençon proved more than uncongenial to her. Separated from her mother and Francis, the two people Margaret loved best in the world, and from all congenial society, the girl fretted visibly. It was at this time that, in her correspondence with the Bishop of Meaux, she called herself “worse than dead.”
But her love-story with Bonnivet was far from being terminated. Some time after her marriage, when Margaret, her husband, and her mother-in-law were together, Bonnivet once more returned from foreign service. He at once went to Alençon, presumably to see his wife. Margaret watched him arrive from an upper window, for fear that in the brusqueness of a sudden meeting she might betray the tumult of her heart. It had been left to grow so cold, this little hot heart, since her marriage. They met, and when they were alone she slipped back joyfully into the old habit of confidence. She told him about her marriage, she talked of Gaston, and cried. Bonnivet grew hopeful that she loved him, when a sudden untoward event once more flung them apart. Bonnivet’s wife died; he had no longer any excuse for hanging about Margaret’s person. The king also sent orders for his departure. But this renewed separation—his lady had grown more than ever seductive and engrossing—affected his health. He fell ill and took to his bed.
Margaret—for the age permitted these acts of intimate graciousness—went to pay him a visit. He looked so ill that she cried once more. They both cried, and the girl, whose instincts were always mothering, put her arms round her ailing friend. Intelligence should have warned her against the action. But Margaret, whose intelligence was so markedly above the average, seldom used it when love scenes were in question—they fascinated her too much. Bonnivet lost his head, and his visitor, frightened, began to scream. Plain speaking had grown unavoidable. The invalid urged her loveless marriage, his own despair and constancy. Margaret became sad and reproachful. “In her sorrow,” she said wistfully, “she had thought to have found a friend.” They separated for the third time; after which, Margaret did nothing but cry for several days.
After further fighting, Bonnivet received a post at home. The Duchesse D’Alençon had gone to pay a visit to her mother, and Bonnivet knew that Louise was his friend—she hated anybody, it would seem, to be more fastidious than herself upon questions of morality. One evening, when passing upon state business, he asked permission to call, and Louise at once told her daughter to be ready when sent for. Margaret knew the disposition of her mother; instead of obeying, she ran to the castle chapel, and prayed, with all her heart flowing into the words upon her lips, for the help of Heaven. She did more; she took a stone and tore her face with it until the cheeks were swollen and scratched and bleeding. The action is wholly beautiful. No girl disfigures and hurts herself unless driven by a fundamental instinct of the soul into an extremity for salvation. Margaret was afraid—terribly afraid. She liked Bonnivet, she hated her husband, and she was not made of stone; after all, she was the daughter of Louise and Charles of Savoie, and the sister of Francis. But she wanted more ardently to be good than anything, and she knew no surer way than this to defend herself while the youth ran so hot in her pulsing body.
Louise found her torn and bleeding, but remained inexorably upon the side of unrighteousness. The girl’s face having been hastily attended to, she was sent straight into the presence of Bonnivet. The naïve grace of the action demanded, in truth, a more pitiful generation than Margaret’s for appreciation. Her little hands were roughly seized, and the scene developed into an inexcusable and ungentle struggle.
Margaret screamed for her mother. Louise, who was undisturbedly holding her usual evening court, had in the end to go to them. Embarrassing explanations brought the incident to a close, but there is no doubt that Margaret once more wept a good deal. Louise was very angry, and in refusing to have Bonnivet as a lover, the Duchesse D’Alençon lost her friend. She had to go back to the chill life of her husband’s court with the one soft thread drawn out of existence. But when it came to more than words—Margaret had no prejudices of speech—she never made vital mistakes. Conduct was the one ultimate test by which the mystery of life became beautiful and tranquillizing.
For six years Margaret lived at Alençon, and it is said that her mystical and Protestant sympathies were principally developed in these years. But there is very little known of this period, and nothing that is at all intimate. She emerged into prominence only from the year 1515, when Louise wrote in her journal, “The first day of November, 1515, my son was King of France.”