THE TWO PAGES
(1580)
Yes, I have seen changes. When I first served at court, whither I went in the year 1579—seven years after the St. Bartholomew—the King received all in his bedchamber, and there every evening played primero with his intimates, until it was time to retire; Rosny and Biron, and the great men of the day, standing, or sitting on chests round the chamber. If he would be more private he had his cabinet; or, if the matter were of prime importance, he would take his confidants to an open space in the garden—such as the white-mulberry grove, encircled by the canal at Fontainebleau; where, posting a Swiss guard who did not understand French, at the only bridge that gave access to the place, he could talk without reserve.
In those days the court rode, or if sick, went in litters. Coaches were only coming into fashion, Henry, who feared nothing else, having so invincible a distaste for them that he was wont to turn pale if the coach in which he travelled swayed more than usual. Ladies, the Queen's mother and her suite excepted, rode sideways on pads, their feet supported by a little board; and side-saddles were rare. At great banquets the fairest and noblest served the tables. We dined at ten in the country and eleven in Paris; instead of at noon, as is the custom now.
When the King lay alone, his favourite pages took it by turns to sleep at his feet; the page on duty using a low truckle bed that in the daytime fitted under the King's bed, and at night was drawn out. Not seldom, however, and more often if the times were troublous, he would invite one of his councillors to share his couch, and talk the night through with him; a course which in these days might seem undignified. Frequently he and the Queen received favourite courtiers before they left their beds; particularly on New Year's morning it was the duty of the Finance Minister to wait on them, and awaken them with a present of medals struck for the purpose.
And I recall many other changes. But one thing, which some young sparks, with a forwardness neither becoming in them nor respectful to me, have ventured to suggest, even in my presence—that we who lived in the old war time were a rougher breed and less dainty and chivalrous than the Buckinghams and Bassompierres of to-day—I roundly deny. On the contrary, I would have these to know that he who rode in the wars with Henry of Guise—or against him—had for his example not only the handsomest but the most courtly man of all times; and has nothing to learn from a set of pert fellows who, unable to acquire the stately courtesy that becomes a gentleman, are fain to air themselves in a dandified-simpering trim of their own, with nought gallant about them but their ribbons and furbelows.
That such are stouter than the men of my day, no one dare maintain. I have seen Crillon, whom veterans called the brave; and I have talked with La Nouë of the Iron Arm; for the rest, I can tell you of one—he was a boy fourteen years old—known to me in my youth, who had it not in him to fear.
He was page, along with me, to the King of Navarre; a year my junior, and my rival. At riding, shooting and fencing he was the better; at paume and tennis he always won. But naturally, being the elder, I had the greater strength, and when the sharp sting of his wit provoked me, I could drub him, and did so more than once. No extremity of defeat, however, no, nor any severity of punishment could wring from Antoine a word of submission; prostrate, with bleeding face, he was as ready to fly at my throat as before I laid hand on him. And more, though I was the senior, he was the life and soul and joy of the ante-chamber; the first in mischief, the last in retreat; the first to cry a nick-name after a burly priest who chanced to pass us as we lounged at the gates—and the first to be whipped when it turned out that the King had a mind to please the clergy.
It followed that from the first I viewed him with a strange mixture of rivalry and affection; ready at one moment to quarrel with him and beat him for a misword, and the next to let him beat me if it pleased him. At this time the King of Navarre had his court sometimes at Montauban, sometimes at Nerac; and there were rumours of a war between him and the King of France; to be clear, it was this year, that in the hope of maintaining the peace, the latter's mother, the Queen Catherine, came with a glittering train of ladies to Nerac, and paid her court to our King, and there were ball and pageants and gay doings by day and night. But the Huguenots were not lightly taken in, and under this fair mask suspected treachery, and not without reason; for one night, during a ball, Catherine's friends seized a strong town, and but for Henry's readiness—who took horse that moment and before daylight had surprised a town of France to set against it—they would have gained the advantage. So in the event Catherine did little, no one trusting her, and in the end she returned to Paris wiser than she came; but for the time the visit lasted the court gaieties continued, and there were masques and dances, and the thought of war was seemingly far from the minds of all.