CHAPTER IV
A KING'S MISTRESS
It is the 20th of May, and we ask our readers to go with us to the Louvre at Paris, and to the apartments of the wife of the Great Seneschal, Madame de Brézé, Duchesse de Valentinois, commonly called Diane de Poitiers. Nine o'clock in the morning has just struck on the great clock of the château. Madame Diane, all in white, in a decidedly coquettish negligé, is leaning or half reclining on a bed covered with black velvet. King Henri, already dressed in a magnificent costume, is sitting on a chair at her side.
Let us glance a moment at the scene and the dramatis personæ.
The apartment of Diane de Poitiers was resplendent with all the magnificence and taste which that fair dawning of art called the Renaissance had had the skill to lavish upon a king's chamber. Paintings signed "Le Primatice" represented various incidents of the hunting field, wherein the Huntress Diane, goddess of woods and forests, naturally figured as the principal heroine. The gilded and colored medallions and panels repeated on all sides the intertwined armorial bearings of François I. and Henri II. In like manner were memories of father and son intertwined in the heart of the fair Diane. The emblems were no less historical and full of meaning, and in twenty places was to be seen the crescent of Phœbus-Diane, between the Salamander of the conqueror of Marignan, and Bellerophon overthrowing the Chimæra, a device adopted by Henri II. after the taking of Boulogne from the English. This fickle crescent appeared in a thousand different forms and combinations which did great credit to the decorators of the time: here the royal crown was placed above it, and there four H's, four fleurs de lis, and four crowns together made a superb setting for it; again it was threefold, and then shaped like a star. The mottoes were no less varied, and most of them were written in Latin. "Diana regum venatrix" (Diana, huntress of kings),—was that a piece of impertinence or of flattery? "Donec totum impleat orbem" can be translated in two ways,—"The crescent is to become a full moon," or "The king's glory will fill the whole world." "Cum plena est, fit æmula solis," can be freely translated, "Beauty and royalty are sisters." And the lovely arabesques which enclosed devices and mottoes, and the superb furnishings on which they were reproduced,—all these, if we should attempt to describe them, would not only put our magnificence of the present day to the blush, but would lose too much in the description.
Now let us cast our eyes upon the king.
History tells us that he was tall, supple, and strong. He had to resort to regular diet and daily exercise to combat a certain tendency to stoutness; and yet in the chase he left the swiftest far behind, and carried away the palm from the strongest at the jousts and tourneys. His hair and beard were black, and his complexion very dark, which gave him so much more animation, if we may believe contemporary memoirs. He wore, at the time we make his acquaintance, as indeed he always did, the colors of the Duchesse de Valentinois,—a coat of green satin slashed with white, glistening with pearls and diamonds; a double chain of gold, to which was suspended the medal of the order of Saint Michael; a sword chased by Benvenuto; a collar of white point de Venise; a velvet cloak dotted with golden lilies hung gracefully from his shoulders. It was a costume of singular richness, and suitable to a cavalier of exquisite elegance.
We have said in brief that Diane was clad in a simple white peignoir of a singularly thin and transparent stuff. To paint her divine loveliness would not be so easy a matter; and it would be hard to say whether the black velvet cushion on which her head lay, or the dress, startling in its purity, by which her form was enveloped, served best to set off the snows and lilies of her complexion. And surely it was such a perfect combination of delicate outlines as to drive Jean Goujon himself to despair. There is no more perfect piece of antique statuary; and this statue was alive, and very much alive too, if common report is to be believed. As for the graceful motion with which these lovely limbs were instinct, we must not attempt to describe it. It can no more be reproduced than can a ray of sunlight. As for age, she had none. In this point, as in so many others, she was like the immortals; but by her side the youngest and most blooming seemed old and wrinkled. The Protestants babbled about philters and potions, to which they said that she had recourse to enable her to remain always sixteen. The Catholics replied that all she did was to take a cold bath every day, and wash her face in ice water even in winter. Her prescription has been preserved; but if it be true that Jean Goujon's "Diane au Cerf" was carved from this royal model, that prescription has no longer the same effect.
A King's Mistress.