She had the Duc de Ferrara, who is to-day one of the handsomest princes in Italy and very wise and generous; the late Cardinal d’Est, the kindest, most magnificent and liberal man in the world (of whom I hope to speak hereafter); and three daughters, the most beautiful women ever born in Italy: Madame Anne d’Est, afterwards Mme. de Guise; Madame Lucrezia, Duchesse d’Urbino; and Madame Leonora, who died unmarried. The first two bore the names of their grandmothers: one from Anne de Bretagne on her mother’s side; the other, on the father’s side, from Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander [VI.], both very different in manners as in character, although the said lady Lucrezia Borgia was a charming princess of Spanish extraction, gifted with beauty and virtue (see Guicciardini). Madame Leonora was named after Queen Leonora. These daughters were very handsome, but their mother embellished them still more by the noble education that she gave them, making them study sciences and good letters, the which they learned and retained perfectly, putting to shame the greatest scholars. So that if they had beautiful bodies they had souls that were beautiful also. I shall speak of them elsewhere.
Now, if Madame Renée was clever, intelligent, wise, and virtuous, she was also so kind and understood the subjects of her husband so well that I never knew any one in Ferrara who was not content or failed to say all the good in the world of her. They felt above all her charity, which she had in great abundance and principally for Frenchmen; for she had this good thing about her, that she never forgot her nation; and though she was thrust far away from it, she always loved it deeply. No Frenchman passing through Ferrara, being in necessity and addressing her, ever left without an ample donation and good money to return to his country and family; and if he were ill, and could not travel, she had him treated and cured carefully and then gave him money to return to France.
I have heard persons who know it well, and an infinite number of soldiers who had good experience of it say that after the journey of M. de Guise into Italy, she saved the lives of at least ten thousand poor Frenchmen, who would have died of starvation and want without her; and among the number were many nobles of good family. I have heard some of them say that never could they have reached France without her, so great was her charity and liberality to those of her nation. And I have also heard her maître d’hôtel assert that their food had cost her more than ten thousand crowns; and when the stewards of her household remonstrated and showed her this excessive expense, she only said: “How can I help it? These are poor Frenchmen of my nation, who, if God had put a beard on my chin and made me a man, would now be my subjects; and truly they would be so now if that wicked Salic law did not hold me in check.”
She is all the more to be praised because, without her, the old proverb would be still more true, namely, that “Italy is the grave of Frenchmen.”
But if her charity was shown at that time in this direction, I can assure you that in other places she did not fail to practise it. I have heard several of her household say that on her return to France, having retired to her town and house of Montargis about the time the civil wars began to stir, she gave a refuge as long as she lived to a number of persons of the Religion [Reformers] who were driven or banished from their houses and estates; she aided, succoured, and fed as many as she could.
I myself, at the time of the second troubles, was with the forces in Gascoigne, commanded by MM. de Terridès and de Montsalès, amounting to eight thousand men, then on their way to join the king. We passed through Montargis and went, the leaders, chief captains, and gentlemen, to pay our respects to Madame Renée, as our duty commanded. We saw in the castle, as I believe, more than three hundred persons of the Religion, who had taken refuge there from all parts of the country. An old maître d’hôtel, a very honest man, whom I had known in Ferrara, swore to me that she fed every day more than three hundred mouths of these poor people.
In short, this princess was a true daughter of France in kindness and charity. She had also a great and lofty heart. I have seen her in Italy and at Court, hold her state as well as possible; and though she did not have an external appearance of grandeur, her body being weakened, there was so much majesty in her royal face and speech that she showed plainly enough she was daughter of a king and of France.
6. Mesdames Charlotte, Louise, Magdelaine, and Marguerite de France.
I have said that Madame Claude [wife of François I.] was fortunate in her fine progeny of daughters as well as of sons. First she had Mesdames Charlotte and Louise, whom death did not allow to reach the perfect age and noble fruit their tender youth had promised in sweet flowers. Had they come to the perfection of their years they would have equalled their sisters in mind and goodness, for their promise was great. Madame Louise was betrothed to the Emperor when she died. Thus are lovely rosebuds swept away by the wind, as well as full-blown flowers. Youth thus ravished is more to be regretted than old age, which has had its day and its loss is not great. Almost the same thing happened to Madame Magdelaine, their sister, who had no great time allowed her to enjoy the thing in all the world she most desired; which was, to be a queen, so proud and lofty was her heart.
She was married to the King of Scotland; and when they wanted to dissuade her—not, certainly, that he was not a brave and handsome prince, but because she thus condemned herself to make her dwelling in a barbarous land among a brutal people—she replied: “At least I shall be queen so long as I live; that is what I have always wished for.” But when she arrived in Scotland she found that country just what they had told her, and very different from her sweet France. Still, without one sign of repentance, she said nothing except these words: “Alas! I would be queen,”—covering her sadness and the fire of her ambition with the ashes of patience as best she could. M. de Ronsard, who went with her to Scotland, told me all this; he had been a page of M. d’Orléans, who allowed him to go with her, to see the world.