But the latter part of her existence nobly atoned for the dispirited uselessness of the beginning. She took mass, and professed to be a humble and obedient daughter of the Pope when there was no alternative between that and being driven out of Montargis. But continuously, hourly, and unhesitatingly, she helped all those who came to her.
At the time of her death she was sixty-four, though long before that time she had looked a hundred. All her friends died before she did. Even Calvin, who from the day she left Ferrara, had been the real prop of her existence, passed out of life twelve years earlier.
Though almost all that was best of the Renaissance seemed gathered into the stretch of Renée’s existence, it is difficult to remember her association with it. Tintoretto, Titian, Correggio, and Raphael were the joy of Italy during her lifetime. Ariosto, Tasso, Montaigne, all belong to this period—Ariosto dying when she was twenty-three, while Tasso outlived her by many years. She passed the whole of her married life in a court of impassioned connoisseurs, and never rose above a taste for cheap majolica. Her niche was in a convent, a hospital, or a training school for orphans, not in a centre of artistic and literary efflorescence.
She was unfortunate all her life, and even after death it remained her tragic fate to be a nuisance. Her son, Alphonso III., found difficulty in coming to a decision as to what behaviour to observe about the circumstance. She had been his mother, but she had also been a heretic. In the end he compromised, ordering mourning for a brief period, but omitting any mourning services. They buried her at Montargis, and on her tomb made no mention of Italy, or of her discomforted connection with the House of Ferrara. The inscription merely bore the words—
“Renée de France, Duchesse de Chartres, Comtesse de Gisors et Madame de Montargis.
May many daughters of France yet rise to emulate the example of her faith, patience, and charity.”
At a brief glance only the last virtue appears appropriate. But the grace of Renée’s life lies in the fact that she used it for development. The self-engrossed, unfriendly girl who fought with Ercole, slowly but momentously learned from experience. Handicapped both by nature and circumstances, she yet issued from the tempestuous stumblings of youth into an old age, still clumsy enough to an eye seeing only in a dull moment, but exquisite to a consciousness aware how the soul had continuously developed through every untoward incident of existence. As a girl Renée had been too querulous to circumvent her own ugliness. But as an old woman she rendered it of no account. Surely—though probably unconsciously—she learnt at last that it is what a nature gives from within that is the ultimate test of value, and that to a great heart there are no denials, and cannot be—in the world’s colossal and unceasing need of sympathy—anything but welcome and appreciation.
INDEX
[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [Z]