(When Aubeterre died in 1593 these posts were returned to the family Bourdeille.)
(Other reasons which angered Brantôme were less serious. Thus he could not bear Montaigne because the latter was of more recent nobility. He himself has shown that a man of the sword could very well take up the pen to pass the time. But he could not understand that the opposite might happen, and a sword given to a man of the pen. He was appointed a knight in the Order of St. Michael. But this did not satisfy his ambition very much when he looked around and saw that he had to share this distinction with many other men. He wished to have it limited to the nobility of the sword. Now his neighbor, Michel de Montaigne, received the same order. Brantôme writes regarding this: “We have seen councillors leave the courts of justice, put down their robe and their four-cornered hat and take up a sword. Immediately the king bestowed the distinction upon them without their ever having gone to war. This has happened to Monsieur de Montaigne, who would have done better to remain at his trade and continue to write his essays rather than exchange his pen for a sword which was not nearly so becoming.”)
Henri II. pardoned him his unmannerly behavior, but the king’s rooms were closed to him. Then the Duke of Alençon wished to gain his allegiance and appointed him chamberlain, thereby rewarding him for the intimate relationship which had existed between them ever since 1579. The duke was the leader of the dissatisfied and so this fault-finder was quite welcome to him. The book of Fair and Gallant Ladies is the direct result of the conversations at the Court of Alençon, for we hear that Brantôme soon wrote a few discourses which he dedicated to the prince. Brantôme sold himself to Alençon, which is almost to be taken literally. Then Alençon died. Brantôme’s hopes were now completely crushed.
What was he to do now? He was angry at the king. His boundless anger almost blinded him. Then the Guises approached him and tried to induce him to swear allegiance to the enemies of the Valois. He was quite ready to do this and was at the point of committing high treason, for the King of Spain was behind the Guises, to whom he swore allegiance. But the outbreak of the war of the Huguenots, which resulted in a temporary depreciation of all estates, prevented him from carrying out his plans immediately. He could not sell anything, and without money life in Spain was impossible. But this new state of affairs gave him new energy and new life. He walked about with “sprightly vigor.” He later described his feelings in the Capitaines français (Ch. IV, 108): “Possible que, si je fusse venu an bout de vies attantes et propositions, J’eusse faut plus de mal a ma patrie que jamais n’a faict renegat d’Alger a’la sienne, dont J’en fusse este mandict a perpetuite, possible de Dieu et des hommes.”
Then a horse that he was about to mount, shied, rose up and fell, rolling over him, so that all his ribs were broken. He was confined to his bed for almost four years; crippled and lame, without being able to move because of pain.
When he was able to rise again the new order of things was in full progress, and when the iron hand of Henri IV., this cunning Navarrese and secret Huguenot, swept over France, the old court life also disappeared. Brantôme was sickly and when the old Queen-mother Medici also died (1590) he buried himself completely in his abbey and took no interest henceforth in the events of his time.
“Chaffoureur du papier”—this might be the motto of his further life. Alas, writing was also such a resignation for Brantôme, otherwise he would not have heaped such abuse upon it. But we must not imagine that his literary talent only developed after his unfortunate fall. Naturally he made quite different and more extensive use of it under these conditions than he otherwise would have done. Stirring up his old memories became more and more a means of mastering the sterile life of that period. Literature is a product of impoverished life. It is the opium intoxication of memory, the conjuring up of bygone events. The death-shadowed eyes of Alençon had seen the first fragments of the book of Fair and Gallant Ladies. The Rondomontades Espagnoles must have been finished in 1590, for he offered them to the Queen of Navarre in the Castle of Usson in Auvergne. But beginning in 1590 there was a conscious exchange of the sword for the pen. He knew himself well. On his bed of pain the recollections of his varied life, his sufferings and the complaints of his thwarted ambitions became a longed-for distraction. He died July 15, 1614, and was buried in the Chapel of Richemond.
His manuscripts had a strange fate. They were the principal care of his last will and testament. This in itself is a monument to his pride. “J’ai bien de l’ambition,” he writes, “je la veux encore monstrer apres ma mort.” He had decided elements of greatness. The books in his library were to remain together, “set up in the castle and not to be scattered hither and thither or loaned to anyone.” He wished to have the library preserved “in eternal commemoration of himself.” He was particularly interested in having his works published. He pretended to be a knight, and a nobleman, and yet he prized most highly these six volumes beautifully bound in blue, green and black velvet. His books, furthermore, were not to be published with a pseudonym, but his own name was to be openly printed on the title-page. He does not wish to be deprived of his labors and his fame. He gave the strictest instructions to his heirs, but he was constantly forced to make additions to the will, because his executors died. He outlived too many of them and had made his will too early. The instructions regarding the printing of his books are very amusing: “Pour les faire imprimer mieux a ma fantaisie, ... y’ordonne et veux, que l’on prenne sur ma lotate heredite l’argent qu ’en pouvra valoir la dite impression, et qui ne se pouvra certes monter a beaucoup, cur j’ay veu force imprimeurs ... que s’ils out mis une foys la veue, en donneront plusoost pour les imprimer qu’ils n’en voudraient recepvoir; car ils en impriment plusierus gratis que no valent pas les mieux. Je m’en puys bien vanter, mesmes que je les ay monstrez au moins en partie, a aueuns qui les ont voulu imprimer sans rien.... Mais je n’ay voulu qu ils fussent imprimez durant mon vivant. Surtout, je veux que la dicte impression en soit en belle et gross lettre, et grand colume, pour mieux paroistre....” The typographical directions are quite modern. The execution of the will finally came into the hands of his niece, the Countess of Duretal, but on account of the offence that these books might give, she hesitated to carry out the last will of her uncle. Then his later heirs refused to have the books published, and locked the manuscripts in the library. In the course of time, however, copies came into circulation, more and more copies were made, and one of them found its way into the office of a printer. A fragment was smuggled into the memoirs of Castelnau and was printed with them in 1659. A better edition was now not far off. In 1665 and 1666 the first edition was published in Leyden by Jean Sambix. It comprised nine volumes in Elzevir. This very incomplete and unreliable edition was printed from a copy. Speculating printers now made a number of reprints. A large number of manuscripts were now in circulation which were named according to the copyists. In the 17th and 18th centuries these books were invariably printed from copies. The edition of 1822, Oeuvres completes du seigneur de Brantôme (Paris: Foucault), was the first to go back to the original manuscripts in possession of the family Bourdeille. Monmergue edited it. The manuscript of the book of Fair and Gallant Ladies was in the possession of the Baroness James Rothschild as late as 1903. After her death in the beginning of 1904, it came into possession of the National Library in Paris, which now has all of Brantôme’s manuscripts, and also plans to publish a critical revised edition of his collected works.
The two books, Vies des Dames illustres and Vies des Dames galantes, were originally called by Brantôme Premier and Second Livre des Dames. The new titles were invented by publishers speculating on the taste of the times, which from 1660 to 1670 greatly preferred the words illustre and galante. The best subsequent edition of the Fair and Gallant Ladies is that printed by Abel Ledoux in Paris, 1834, which was edited by Philarete Chasles, who also supplied an introduction and notes. On the other hand, the critical edition of his collected works in 1822 still contains the best information regarding Brantôme himself, and the remarks by the editor Monmergue are very excellent and far superior to the opinions which Philarete Chasles expresses, poetic as they may be. The crayon-drawings and copper-cuts of Famous and Gallant Ladies of the sixteenth century contained in Bouchot’s book, Les femmes de Brantôme, are very good; Bouchot’s text, however, is merely a re-hash of Brantôme himself. Neither must one over-estimate his reflections regarding the author of the Fair and Gallant Ladies.
There is a great difference between the two Livres des Dames. What is an advantage in the one is a disadvantage in the other. Undoubtedly Brantôme’s genius is best expressed in the Dames Galantes. In this book the large number of symbolical anecdotes is the best method of narration. In the other they are more or less unimportant. Of course, Brantôme could not escape the questionable historical methods of that period, but shares these faults with all of his contemporaries. Besides, he was too good an author to be an excellent historian. The devil take the historical connection, as long as the story is a good one.