Up to a certain point there is, beyond question, an underflow of sweetness in being persecuted, especially when, besides the persecutors, there are people who realize the persecution. To show endurance is softly comforting to the soul. Character, exultant at finding itself not wholly worthless, is joyous below its pain. There are few people, indeed, who do not want to prove themselves morally better than their ordinary conduct, and who are not exalted by a sudden blaze of inner illumination when they have let the good rise triumphant over an ardent and forceful temptation. At any rate, whether Renée was, or was not, sustained by a sense of proving something finer than she had hoped for, she certainly showed such curious tranquillity that those who attended her remarked upon it. The fact puzzled everybody—she was by nature distinctly flaccid. It has since been put down to the possession of the Bull from Paul III., but the explanation is unlikely. Nothing could be more simple than a fresh Papal Bull annulling the first. Besides, what followed shows that she either made no use of it, or was quickly undeceived as to its utility.
But the crisis of her life was stalking grimly nearer every hour. Confinement leaving steadfastness intact, a rasped husband and exasperated inquisitor flung themselves upon a last extremity, and Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, was actually brought before the Ferrarese Inquisition, and tried for heresy by that body. Her answers at the trial are not given, but that she went through the ordeal at all compels admiration. She was utterly alone—hemmed in by Roman Catholics and Italians—and grievously subject to prostration and headaches. Few people thought of her save as an unmitigated nuisance. Still she continued firm. Her answers were probably stupid and reiterated, but if flustered on the surface she was stolid at the foundations. After an angry, blustering trial, during which nobody could browbeat her into helplessness, defeat had to be admitted, and a formal sentence passed against the duchess. She may have winced for a moment when it came; the indignity alone would have stung her like a blow upon the face. There was nothing in this world she felt more pride in than the fact that she was a king’s daughter; this sentence put her on the level of any refractory woman that the Church and her husband considered in need of punishment. She was to suffer perpetual solitary imprisonment, and her children and the greater part of her revenue were to be taken from her.
Still she maintained the same unaccountable self-possession. It seemed almost as if some store of inner strength placed her beyond the reach of personal sufferings. All who knew her were bewildered. For, the very morning after condemnation, she was driven from the Castello to an old building next door, to be imprisoned under guards chosen carefully by Ercole. Two servants, also picked out by him, were the only people allowed in her presence.
She held out for a week. It was too little; mere sulkiness could have endured that period. Six months would have made her sympathetic and dignified, a week rendered her previous fortitude useless. Still, it should be borne in mind that imprisonment for life with two foreigners of a different class is very cold to the heart after the first glow of resistance has faded. Renée had known her triumph. The famous Inquisitor, so proud of his infallible method, had exhausted cunning for nothing. They were obliged to shut her up for the humiliating reason that not one of them had been able to move her by a hair’s breadth. She had that victory to kindle satisfaction with for the rest of existence.
During a day or two she probably lived supported by the joy of steadfast conduct. Then gradually the meaning of a lifetime’s solitude pressed upon imagination. At any rate, by the end of seven days, everybody knew in Ferrara that the duchess had surrendered. The news reduced her to an absurdity; she had possessed sufficient courage to be maddening, and no more. Capitulation, however, was complete. She not only expressed her desire openly to attend mass, but her willingness to return to confession. By her own choice, a Jesuit confessor was sent for, and in a “flood of tears” the necessary recantation was given.
Instantly the guards were withdrawn, and her ordinary household allowed to recommence attendance. The struggle was over. Ercole could feel at last that he had tamed her, and in a few days the surface showed no signs of the immense upheaval it had suffered. Only the Protestants stood aghast. Calvin wrote bitterly when he heard of it: “What shall I say, except that constancy is a very rare virtue among the great of this world?” Olympia Morata, who had a sore place in her thoughts made by Renée, declared that she was not surprised, and that she had always said it was une tête légère.
Upon one point, notwithstanding, the duchess remained unexpectedly firm. She had surrendered a good deal. But she drew the line for the future at playing love-scenes with the man who had caused her to be tried and imprisoned like a common criminal.
From the time of her trial, Renée occupied a separate establishment, though Ercole, to whom she could do no right, made even this a grievance, and complained that “the duchess refused to return to the chamber they had shared for fifteen years, and in which they had made such beautiful children.”
With this brief, tense, and futile drama, the interest of Renée’s life evaporates. The remainder,—long and untranquil though it was,—reads like an anti-climax. She never knew a year’s serenity to the end of her lengthy and eventful existence. And yet all that followed has a certain sameness and monotony. The unhappinesses were constantly repeated; also the piteous efforts to remain firm in Protestantism only to be driven back again to the old faith of her people.
In 1559 Ercole died, and from that day Renée passed entirely out of the sphere of the Renaissance into that of the Reformation. She returned to France, and went to live at the town of Montargis, which belonged to her. Comfort she never knew again. Her castle was so constantly overcrowded that it became impossible to move in it for people. Brantome, who visited her there, says he saw “three hundred Protestant refugees,” on the occasion of his visit. Horrors, bloodshed, and persecutions became her daily preoccupations. Blood, at that period in France, made the world look red. During the massacre of St. Bartholomew, she was in Paris, and remained for nine days shut up in her rooms, before the gates of Paris were opened once more, and she was able to fly back to Montargis.