Mary did not leave her courteous poet unrewarded. She contrived, though a prisoner, to send him a casket containing two thousand crowns, and a vase, on which was represented Mount Parnassus, and a flying Pegasus, with this inscription:—
A Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses.
No one understood better than Mary the value of a compliment from a beauty, and a queen; had she bestowed more precious favours with equal effect and discrimination, her memory had escaped some disparagement. Ronsard, we are told, was sufficiently a poet, to value the inscription on his vase more than the gold in the casket.
Apropos to Ronsard: the history of his loves is so whimsical and so truly French, that it must claim a place here.
Yet now I am upon French ground, I may as well take the giant's advice, and "begin at the beginning."[114] It seems at first view unaccountable that France, which has produced so many remarkable women, should scarce exhibit one poetical heroine of great or popular interest, since its language and literature assumed their present form; not one who has been rendered illustrious or dear to us by the praises of a poet lover. The celebrity of celebrated French women is, in truth, very anti-poetical. The memory of the kiss which Marguerite d'Ecosse[115] gave to Alain Chartier, has long survived the verses he wrote in her praise. Clement Marot, the court poet of Francis the First, was the lover, or rather one of the lovers, of Diana of Poictiers (mistress to the Dauphin, afterwards Henry the Second). She was confessedly the most beautiful and the most abandoned woman of her time. Marot could hardly have expected to find her a paragon of constancy; yet he laments her fickleness, as if it had touched his heart.
A DIANE.
Puisque de vous je n'ai autre visage,
Je m'en vais rendre hermite en un desert,
Pour prier Dieu, si un autre vous sert,
Qu'autant que moi en votre honneur soit sage.
Adieu, Amour! adieu, gentil corsage!
Adieu ce teint! adieu ces friands yeux!
Je n'ai pas eu de vous grand avantage,—
Un moins aimant aura peut-être mieux.
In a liaison of mere vanity and profligacy, the transition from love (if love it be) to hatred and malignity, is not uncommon—as Spenser says so beautifully,
Such love might never long endure,
However gay and goodly be the style,
That doth ill cause or evil end enure:
For Virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure!