The book of the ladies

This beauty, so real, so solid, which had so little need of borrowed charms, had, like all her being, its fantasticalities and its superstition. I have said already that she frequently disguised her rich, brown hair, preferring a blond wig, “more or less charmingly fashioned.” Her beautiful face was presented to view “all painted and stained.” She took such care of her skin that she spoiled it with washes and recipes of many kinds, which gave her erysipelas and pimples. In fact, she was the model and eke the slave of the fashions of her time; and as she survived those days she became in the end a species of preserved idol and curiosity, such as may be seen in a show-case. The great Sully, when he one day reappeared at the Court of Louis XIII. with his ruff and his costume of the time of Henri IV., gave that crowd of young courtiers something to laugh at; and so, when Queen Marguerite, having returned from Usson to Paris, showed herself at the remodelled Court of Henri IV. she produced the same effect on that young century, which smiled at beholding this solemn survival of the Valois.

Like all those Valois, a worthy granddaughter of François I., she was learned. To the Poles who harangued in Latin she showed that she understood them by replying on the spot, eloquently and pertinently, without the help of an interpreter. She loved poetry and wrote it, and had it written for her by salaried poets whom she treated as friends. When she had once begun to read a book she could not leave it, or pause till she came to the end, “and very often she would lose both her eating and drinking.” But let us not forestall the time. She herself tells us that this taste for study and reading came to her for the first time during a previous imprisonment in which Henri III. held her for several months in 1575, and we are still concerned with her cloudless years.

She was married, in spite of her objections as a good Catholic, to Henri, King of Navarre, six days before the Saint-Bartholomew (August, 1572). She relates with much naïveté and in a simple tone the scenes of that night of horror, of which she was ignorant until the last moment. We see in her narrative that wounded and bleeding gentleman pursued through the corridors of the Louvre, and taking refuge in Marguerite’s chamber, and flinging himself with the cry “Navarre! Navarre!” upon her; shielding his own body from the murderers with that of his queen, she not knowing whether she had to do with a madman or an assailant. When she did know what the danger was she saved the poor man, keeping him in bed and dressing his wounds in her cabinet until he was cured. Queen Marguerite, so little scrupulous in morality, is better than her brothers; of the vanishing Valois she has all the good qualities and many of their defects, but not their cruelty.

After this half-missed blow of the Saint-Bartholomew, which did not touch the princes of the blood, an attempt was made to unmarry her from the King of Navarre. On a feast day when she was about to take the sacrament, her mother asked her to tell her under oath, truly, whether the king, her husband, had behaved to her as yet like a husband, a man, and whether there was not still time to break the union. To this Marguerite played the ingénue, so she asserts, apparently not comprehending. “I begged her,” she says, “to believe that I knew nothing of what she was speaking. I could then say with truth as the Roman lady said, when her husband was angry because she had not warned him his breath was bad, ‘that she had supposed all men were alike, never having been near to any one but him.’”

Here Marguerite wishes to have it understood that she had never, so far, made comparison of any man with another man; she plays the innocent, and by her quotation from the Roman lady she also plays the learned; which is quite in the line of her intelligence.

It would be a great error of literary judgment to consider these graceful Memoirs as a work of nature and simplicity; it is rather one of discrimination and subtlety. Wit sparkles throughout; but study and learning are perceptible. In the third line we come upon a Greek word: “I would praise your work more,” she writes to Brantôme, “if you had praised me less; not wishing that the praise I give should be attributed to philautia rather than to reason;” by philautia she means self-love. Marguerite (she will remind us of it if we forget it) is by education and taste of the school of Ronsard, and a little of that of Du Bartas. During her imprisonment in 1575, giving herself up, as she tells us, to reading and devotion, she shows us the study which led her back to religion; she talks to us of the “universal page of Nature;” the “ladder of knowledge;” the “chain of Homer;” and of “that agreeable Encyclopædia which, starting from God, returns to God, the principle and the end of all things.” All that is learned, and even transcendental.

She was called in her family Venus-Urania. She loved fine discourses on elevated topics of philosophy or sentiment. In her last years, during her dinners and suppers, she usually had four learned men beside her, to whom she propounded at the beginning of the meal some topic more or less sublime or subtile, and when each had spoken for or against it and given his reasons, she would intervene and renew the contest, provoking and attracting to herself at will their contradiction. Here Marguerite was essentially of her period, and she bears the seal of it on her style. The language of her Memoirs is not an exception to be counted against the mannerism and taste of her time; it is only a more happy employment of it. She knows mythology and history; she cites readily Burrhus, Pyrrhus, Timon, the centaur Chiron, and the rest. Her language is by choice metaphorical and lively with poesy. When Catherine de’ Medici, going to see her son, the Duc d’Anjou, travels from Paris to Tours in three days and a half (very rapid in those times, and the journey put that poor Cardinal de Bourbon, little accustomed to such discomfort, entirely out of breath), it is because the queen-mother is “borne,” says Marguerite, “on the wings of desire and maternal affection.”

Marguerite likes and affects all comparisons borrowed from fabulous natural history, and she varies them with reminiscences of ancient history. When, in 1582, they recall her to the Court of France, taking her from her husband and from Nérac, where she had then been three or four years, she perceives a project of her enemies to blow up a quarrel between herself and her husband during this absence. “They hoped,” she says, “that separation would be like the breaking of the Macedonian battalion.” When the famous Phalanx was once broken entrance was easy. This style, so ornate and figurative, usually delicate and graceful, has also its outspokenness and firmness of tone. Speaking of the expedition projected by her brother, the Duc d’Alençon, in Flanders, she explains it in terms of energetic beauty, representing to the king that “it is for the honour and aggrandizement of France; it will prove an invention to prevent civil war, all restless spirits desirous of novelty having means to pass into Flanders and blow off their smoke and surfeit themselves with war. This enterprise will also serve, like Piedmont, as a school for the nobility in the practice of arms; we shall there revive the Montlucs and Brissacs, the Termes and the Bellegardes, and all those great marshals who, trained to war in Piedmont, have since then so gloriously and successfully served their king and their country.”

One of the most agreeable parts of these Memoirs is the journey in Flanders, Hainault, and the Liège country which Marguerite made in 1577; a journey undertaken ostensibly to drink the waters of Spa, but in reality to gain partisans for her brother d’Alençon, in his project of wrenching the Low Countries from Spain. The details of her coquettish, and ceremonial magnificence, so dear to ladies, are not omitted: —

“I went,” says Marguerite, “in a litter with columns covered with rose-coloured Spanish velvet, embroidered in gold and shaded silks with a device; this litter was enclosed in glass, and each glass also bore a device, there being, whether on the velvet or on the glass, forty different devices about the sun and its effects, with the words in Spanish and Italian.”

Those forty devices and their explanation were an ever fresh subject of gallant conversation in the towns through which she passed. Amid it all, Marguerite, then in the full bloom of her twenty-fourth year, went her way, winning all hearts, seducing the governors of citadels, and persuading them to useful treachery. On this journey she meets with charming Flemish scenes which she pictures delightfully. Take, for example, the gala festival at Mons, where the beautiful Comtesse de Lalain (Marguerite, Princesse de Ligne), whose beauty and rich costume are described most particularly, has her child brought to her in swaddling-clothes and suckles it before the company; “which,” remarks Marguerite, “would have been an incivility in any one else; but she did it with such grace and simplicity, like all the rest of her actions, that she received as much praise as the company did pleasure.”

Leaving Namur, we have at Liège a touching and pathetic story of a poor young girl, Mlle. de Tournon, who dies of grief for being slighted and betrayed by her lover, to whom she was going in the utmost confidence; and who himself, coming to a better mind too late, rushes to console her, and finds her coffin on arrival. We have here from Queen Marguerite’s pen the finished sketch of a tale in the style of Mme. de La Fayette, just as above we had the drawing of a perfect little Flemish picture. On her return from this journey, the scenes Marguerite passes through at Dinant prove her coolness and presence of mind, and present us with another Flemish picture, but not so graceful as that of Mons and the beautiful nursing countess; this time it is a scene of public drunkenness, grotesque burgher rioting, and burgomasters in their cups. A painter need only transfer and copy the very lines which Marguerite has so happily traced, to make a faithful picture.

After these journeys, being now reunited at her house of La Fère in Picardy with her dear brother d’Alençon, she realizes there for nearly two months, “which were to us” she says, “like two short days,” one of those terrestrial paradises which were at all times the desire of her imagination and of her heart. She loved beyond all things those spheres of enchantment, those Fortunate Isles, alike of Urania and of Calypso, and she was ever seeking to reproduce them in all places and under all forms, whether at her Court at Nérac or amid the rocks of Usson, or, at the last, in that beautiful garden on the banks of the Seine (which to-day is the Rue des Petits-Augustins) where she strove to cheat old age.

“O my queen! how good it is to be with you!” exclaims continually her brother d’Alençon, enchanted with the thousand graceful imaginations with which she varied and embellished this sojourn at La Fère. And she adds naïvely, mingling her Christian erudition with sentiment: “He would gladly have said with Saint Peter: ‘Let us make our tabernacle here,’ if the regal courage he possessed and the generosity of his soul had not called him to greater things.” As for her, we can conceive that she would gladly have remained there, prolonging without weariness the enchantment; she would willingly have arranged her life like that beautiful garden at Nérac of which she constantly speaks, “which has such charming alleys of laurel and cypress,” or like the park she had made there, “with paths three thousand paces long beside the river;” the chapel being close at hand for morning mass, and the violins at her orders for the evening ball.

Whatever ability and shrewdness Queen Marguerite may have shown in various political circumstances in the course of her life, we nevertheless perceive plainly that she was not a political woman; she was too essentially of her sex for that. There are very few women who, like the Princess Palatine [Anne de Gonzaga] or the illustrious Catherine of Russia, know how to be libertine yet sure of themselves; able to establish an impenetrable partition between the alcove and the cabinet of public affairs. Nearly all the women who have mingled in the intrigues of politics have introduced and confused with them their intrigues of heart or senses. Consequently, whatever intelligence they may have, they elude or escape at a certain moment, and unless there be a man who holds the tiller and gives them with decision their course, we find them unfaithful, treacherous, not to be relied on, and capable at any moment of colloguing through a secret window with an emissary of the opposite side. Marguerite, with infinite intelligence and grace, was one of those women. Distinguished but not superior, and wholly influenced by passions, she had wiles and artifices of a passing kind, but no views, and still less stability.

One of the remarkable features of her Memoirs is that she does not tell all, nor even the half of all, and in the very midst of the odious and extravagant accusations made against her she sits, pen in hand, a delicate and most discreet woman. Nothing can be less like confession than her Memoirs. “We find there,” says Bayle, “many sins of omission; but could we expect that Queen Marguerite would acknowledge the things that would blast her? Such avowals are reserved for the tribunal of confession; they are not meant for history.” At the most, when enlightened by history and by the pamphlets of the period, we can merely guess at certain feelings of which she presents to us only the superficial and specious side. When she speaks of Bussy d’Amboise she scarcely restrains her admiration for that gallant cavalier, and we fancy we can see in the abundance of that praise that her heart overflows.

Even the letters that we have from her say little more. Among them are love letters addressed to him whom at one time she loved the most, Harlay de Chanvalon. Here we find no longer the charming, moderately ornate, and naturally polished style of the Memoirs; this is all of the highest metaphysics and purest fustian, nearly unintelligible and most ridiculous. “Adieu, my beauteous sun! adieu, my noble angel! fine miracle of nature!” those are the most commonplace and earthly of her expressions; the rest mount ever higher till lost in the Empyrean. It would really seem, from reading these letters, as if Marguerite had never loved with heart-love, only with the head and the imagination; and that, feeling truly no love but the physical, she felt herself bound to refine it in expression and to petrarchize in words, she, who was so practical in behaviour. She borrows from the false poetry of her day its tinsel in order to persuade herself that the fancy of the moment is an eternal worship. A practical observation is quoted of her which tells us better than her own letters the secret of her life. “Would you cease to love?” she said, “possess the thing beloved.” It is to escape this quick disenchantment, this sad and rapid awakening, that she is so prodigal of her figurative, mythological, impossible expressions; she is trying to make herself a veil; the heart counts for nothing. She seems to be saying to love: “Thy base is so trivial, so passing a thing, let us try to support it by words, and so prolong its image and its play.”

Her life well deduced and well related would make the subject of a teeming and interesting volume. Having obtained, after the persecutions and troubles, permission to rejoin her husband in Gascogne (1578), she remained there three and a half years, enjoying her liberty and leaving him his. She counts these days at Nérac, mingled, in spite of the re-beginning wars, with balls, excursions, and “all sorts of virtuous pleasures,” as an epoch of happiness. Henri’s weaknesses and her own harmonized remarkably, and never clashed. But Henri soon crossed the limit of license, and she, on her side, equally. It is not for us to hold the balance or enter here into details which would soon become indelicate and shameful. Marguerite, who had gone to spend some time in Paris at her brother’s Court (1582, 1583) did not return to her husband until after an odious scandal had made public her frailty.

From that time forth her life did not retain its early, smiling joyfulness. She was now past thirty; civil wars were lighted, never to be extinguished until after the desperate struggles and total defeat of the League. Marguerite, becoming a queen-adventuress, changed her abode from time to time, until she found herself in the castle of Usson, that asylum of which I have spoken, where she passed no less than eighteen years (1587-1605). What happened there? Doubtless many common frailties, but less odious than are told by bitter and dishonourable chroniclers, the only authorities for the tales they put forth.

During this time Queen Marguerite did not entirely cease to correspond with her husband, now become King of France. If the conduct of the royal pair leaves much to be desired with regard to each other, and also with regard to the public, let us at least recognize that their correspondence is that of honourable persons, persons of good company, whose hearts are much better than their morals. When reasons of State determined Henri to unmarry himself, to break a union which was not only sterile but scandalous, Marguerite agreed without resistance, – seeming, however, to be fully conscious of what she was losing. To accomplish the formalities of divorce, the pope delegated certain bishops and cardinals to interrogate separately the husband and wife. Marguerite expresses the desire, inasmuch as she must be questioned, that this may be done “by more private and familiar” persons, her courage not being able to endure publicly so great a diminution; “fearing that my tears,” she writes, “may make these cardinals think I am acting from force or constraint, which would injure the effect the king desires” (Oct. 21, 1599). King Henri was touched by the feelings she showed throughout this long negotiation. “I am very satisfied,” he writes, “at the ingenuousness and candour of your procedure; and I hope that God will bless the remainder of our days with fraternal affection, accompanied by the public good, which will render them very happy.” He calls her henceforth his sister; and she herself says to him: “You are father, brother, and king to me.” If their marriage was one of the least noble and the most bourgeois, their divorce, at any rate, was royal.

[Here Sainte-Beuve does not keep strictly to history. Henri IV. had long urged Marguerite to consent to a divorce; but she, aware that he was taking steps to divorce Gabrielle d’Estrées from her husband, in order to marry her, and feeling the indignity of such a marriage, firmly refused, and continued to do so until the sudden death of Gabrielle in Paris during Holy Week of 1599; on which Marguerite consented at once to the divorce, and Henri married Marie de’ Medici, December 17 of the same year.

Five years later (1605) Marguerite returned from the castle of Usson and held her Court in Paris at the hôtel de Sens (which still exists) and at her various châteaux in Languedoc; no longer, alas! the Reine Margot of our ill-regulated affections, and somewhat open to the malicious comments of Tallemant des Reaux, but appearing at times with all her wonted spirit and regal dignity. These were the days when she kept a brigade of golden-haired footmen who were shorn for the wigs; and the story goes that her gowns were made with many pockets, in each of which she kept the mummied heart of a lover. But such tales must be taken for what they are worth, and a better chronicler than the satirists of the Valois has given us ocular proof of her last majestic presence at a public ceremony five years before her death.

In 1610, Henri IV. preparing to leave France for the war in Germany, and wishing to appoint Queen Marie de’ Medici regent, it became necessary to have the latter crowned. This was done in the cathedral of Saint-Denis, May 13, 1610. The Queen of Navarre, as Marguerite, daughter of France and first princess of the blood, was required to be present at the ceremony. Rubens’ splendid picture (reproduced in this volume) gives the scene. Marie de’ Medici, kneeling before the altar, is being crowned by Cardinal de Joyeuse, assisted by his clergy and two other cardinals; beside the queen are the dauphin (Louis XIII.) and his sister, Élisabeth, afterwards Queen of Spain. The Princesse de Conti and the Duchesse de Montpensier carry the queen’s train; the Duc de Ventadour, his back to the spectator, bears the sceptre, and the Chevalier de Vendôme the sword of Justice. To the left, leading the cortège of princesses and nobles, is the Queen of Navarre, easily recognized by her small closed crown, all the other princesses wearing coronets. In the background, to right, in a gallery, sits Henri IV. viewing the ceremony. As he did so he turned with a shudder to the man behind him and said: “I am thinking how this scene would appear if this were the Last Day and the Judge were to summon us all before Him.” Henri IV. was killed by Ravaillac the following morning, while his coach stood blocked in the streets by the crowds who were collecting for the public entry of Marie de’ Medici into Paris.

The young Élisabeth, eldest daughter of the king and Marie de’ Medici, who appears at the coronation of her mother, was afterwards wife of Philip IV. of Spain, and mother of the Infanta Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV, also of Carlos II., at whose death Louis XIV. obtained the crown of Spain for his grandson, the Duc d’Anjou, Philip V. This Élisabeth of France, Queen of Spain, is the original of Rubens’ magnificent portrait reproduced in this chapter. – Tr.]

Queen Marguerite returned from Usson to Paris in 1605; and here we find her in her last estate, turned slightly to ridicule by Tallemant, the echo of the new century. Eighteen years of confinement and solitude had given her singularities, and even manias; they now burst forth in open day. She still had adventures both gallant and startling: an equerry whom she loved was killed at her carriage door by a jealous servant, and the poet Maynard, a young disciple of Malherbe, one of Marguerite’s beaux-esprits, wrote stanzas and plaints about it. During the same period Marguerite had many sincere thoughts that were more than fits of devotion. With Maynard for secretary, she had also Vincent de Paul, young in those days, for her chaplain. She founded and endowed convents, all the while paying learned men to instruct her in philosophy, and musicians to amuse her during divine service and at hours more profane. She gave many alms and gratuities and did not pay her debts. It was not precisely good sense that presided over her life. But amidst it all she was loved. “On the 27th day of the month of March” (1615), says a contemporary, “died in Paris Queen Marguerite, sole remains of the race of Valois, – a princess full of kindness and of good intentions for the good and the peace of the State, who did no harm to any but herself. She was greatly regretted. She died at the age of sixty-two.”

Certain persons have attempted to compare her for beauty, for misfortunes, for intellect, with Marie Stuart. Certainly, at a point of departure there was much in common between the two queens, the two sisters-in-law, but the comparison cannot be maintained historically. Marie Stuart, who had in herself the wit, grace, and manners of the Valois, who was scarcely more moral as a woman than Marguerite, and was implicated in acts that were far more monstrous, had, or seemed to have, a certain elevation of heart, which she acquired, or developed, in her long captivity crowned by her sorrowful death. Of the two destinies, the one represents definitely a great cause, and ends in a pathetic legend of victim and martyr; the reputation of the other is spent and scattered in tales and anecdotes half smutty, half devout, into which there enters a grain of satire and of gayety. From the end of one comes many a tearful tragedy; from that of the other nought can be made but a fabliau.

That which ought to be remembered to Marguerite’s honour is her intelligence, her talent for saying the right word; in short, that which is said of her in the Memoirs of Cardinal de Richelieu: “She was the refuge of men of letters; she loved to hear them talk; her table was always surrounded by them, and she learned so much from their conversation that she talked better than any other woman of her time, and wrote more elegantly than the ordinary condition of her sex would warrant.” It is in that way, by certain exquisite pages which form a date in our language, that she enters, in her turn, into literary history, the noble refuge of so many wrecks, and that a last and a lasting ray shines from her name.