DUCHESS RENÉE IN A SCRAPE.
"To them, enter" hurriedly and noisily the Duke in high wrath, and at his heels, opera–stage fashion, a sufficient impersonation of "la force publique."
A rapid glance of the angry eye indicates to those active officers the duty in hand. And M. Charles d'Espeville, alias John Calvin, and the luckless poet turned theologian, are marched off, with a very tolerable prospect of martyrdom before them. "And as for you, Madame! ... &c."
Calvin and Marot were marched off under escort to Bologna. But the terrible marital lecture, which it has been left to the competent reader's imagination to supply, did not so terrify Renée as to prevent her from promptly and secretly dispatching certain trustworthy emissaries, who, overtaking the escort on their road,[51] liberated the prisoners, and set them free to make the best of their way across the Alps.
This incident made a serious difference in the condition of the Duchess. Constant suspicion and severity seem to have henceforth made her life at Ferrara a very unhappy one. And the following lines[52] addressed by Clement Marot to Marguerite, the sister of Francis I., speak touchingly enough the forlorn misery of her life:—
"Ah, Marguerite! list to the bitter smart,
That fills Renée of France her noble heart;
And sisterlike some better aid impart
Than hope alone.
Thou knowest how she left her native shore,
Leaving there friends and kin for evermore;
But what in that strange land she doth endure
Thou dost not know.