Concerning her attitude in the matter of her household arrangements, it is more difficult to guess what lay in her peevish spirit. Madame de Soubise had obviously brought her up—sub rosa—to a tentative liking for the new religion. But by character she belonged to the conservatives; she was supremely among those who consider that what has been good enough for their parents is good enough for them also. And Louise and Francis—of whom she stood in awe—were not likely to receive pleasantly the news that her religious soundness had become doubtful. At the beginning there are no statements suggesting that she was not fairly comfortable in the tenets she conformed to. It is possible, in fact, that the people of her entourage were originally chosen without intention of offence, from sheer obtuseness to perceive unsuitability. Then when it became evident that they caused annoyance to Ercole, it may have become a sulky pleasure to retain them.
Ercole and Renée were two personalities that ought never to have come together. Both were capable of pleasant relations with other people, but there existed between them the instinctive and intractable antipathy which almost every nature experiences against some one person in the world. It is an emotion outside the reach of argument and very nearly beyond control. And no person can flower into the best possibilities of character when confronted with another fundamentally antagonistic. In the presence of a mind closed to perceive any kind of graciousness and merit, only the worst of nature will rise uppermost, flung out in a despairing perversity, distress, and irritation. For the actual sweetness of their souls no two people capable only of mutual repugnance should even make an effort to live together. Good—bewildered and assaulted—shrivels like a frozen plant under the chilling air of interminable disparagement.
Renée, less than a year after her marriage, already wrote unhappy letters to France. She spoke in one of them of being badly treated, but of not expecting that the real truth about the matter would ever reach the king and queen. She mentioned that both her husband and her father-in-law nourished some grievance against her. Soon afterwards she fell ill, and for a short time Ercole’s repugnance lulled into vague compassion. He sent two bulletins every day to Paris, and mentioned, almost with a hint of pleasure, when she was well enough to leave her bed for a little while daily. Even after her recovery no quarrels are mentioned for some time. The duchess had become enceinte, and the fact in itself, where an heir was so urgently needed, yielded sufficient pleasure to bring about temporary toleration.
Nevertheless, irritation between husband and wife must have smouldered unceasingly, and after the birth of a daughter in November, 1531, contention flared once more into an open blaze between them. Madame de Soubise represented the duke’s new object of denunciation. A good deal of the turmoil of Renée’s existence, in fact, arose from the influence of her former governess. She was old enough to be the girl’s mother, and had lived sufficiently long in the world to know all the needful facts about life and character. Renée clung to her as the one friend familiar from childhood, and the older woman was in a position to have incalculably helped a rather dense nature in the first crucial months of marriage.
For reasons difficult to understand, she did exactly the opposite. Ercole loathed her, and at any cost desired to have her back in Paris. Under ordinary circumstances this would have been a simple matter, but the position of Madame de Soubise was not so straightforward as it seemed. The Ferrarese authorities knew perfectly that she acted as secret agent to the French king. Owing to this fact, dismissal was unpolitic: Ferrara could not afford to offend France. It is to Ercole’s credit that Madame de Soubise did not die a sudden death. The temptation to bring about an untimely ending must have been extraordinarily insistent.
To add to Ercole’s domestic discomfort, Madame de Soubise’s daughter was also among Renée’s ladies-in-waiting. About this time, in fact, she married Monsieur Pons, another member of the household, and the man whose later friendship with Renée was to fleck the solemnity of her character with an incongruous suggestion of scandal.
During the time that husband and wife were bitterly fighting out the question of Madame de Soubise, Renée gave birth to another child—the son so necessary to the welfare of the house. A second lull in hostilities followed. For the first time since she had come to Italy, Ercole’s wife had done a truly desirable and conciliatory thing—she had given an heir to the dukedom. A feeling of pleasure lightened the constant tension of Ercole’s establishment. Even the mother, conscious of being at last approved of, yielded to the warmth of a fugitive commendation and became almost frivolous. Her clothes, during the rejoicings that followed, were for once so sumptuous that all Ferrara talked of them.
Not long afterwards the old Duke Alphonso died, and Ercole became reigning Duke of Ferrara. Concerning his accession a curious incident is reported. After the religious ceremony of his inauguration, Renée met him at the entrance to the palace, where, it is said, in an outburst of mutual excitement and satisfaction, they fell into each other’s arms. For a moment the interests of husband and wife were identical. The motive for this passing concord was in itself unworthy enough, but it is curiously interesting as an example of how intensely married people are fortified, by the very nature of marriage itself, into some sort of fellowship and good feeling. The immense number of mutual interests should be in themselves sufficient to save any but the really vicious or abnormally unsuited from total disunion and antipathy.
But the impulse of an exultant moment rapidly chilled in the case of Ercole and his duchess. Madame de Soubise’s secret labours prevented any but the briefest pacification. And Ercole had not long been duke when he came to the conclusion that, even at the price of a break with France, the daily infliction of her person was no longer supportable. With as much tact as the circumstances permitted, he wrote to Francis I. upon the subject, and in the end received authority for her departure. But even so, difficulties arose about the actual journey, and she still continued long enough in Ferrara to negotiate one last unpleasantness for Ercole.
He went away for a short time, and during his absence Madame de Soubise subtly arranged with the French royalties that Renée should at last go on a visit to her own country. Ercole returned to find the invitation waiting for him. He was placed by it in a very awkward position. An unhappy wife, quivering to tell a tale of misery and ill-treatment, was not a politic person to send to her own people when, should it suit them, they possessed the power to make affairs very difficult for the husband. On the other hand, to refuse might be to rouse suspicion and displeasure.