Part 16 (1/2)
The study of Catherine is a typical example of his work. He had lived at her Court and received many favours at her hands. He now sets himself the task of answering her calumniators and paying a tribute to her memory. This spirit of chivalry is certainly admirable, albeit the results may show as more partisan than accurate. It is interesting to compare this with Honore de Balzac's more extended work, ”Sur Catherine de Medicis,” which is designated as a romance but is actually a careful historical portrait of the Queen.
Catherine's whole life may be said to have combined romance with history. She was the daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, that famous ruler of Florence for whom Machiavelli wrote his ”Prince.” Having been left an orphan at an early age, she was sent to a convent to be educated, but left there at fourteen to become the wife of the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II. of France. Her royal father-in-law was the celebrated Francis I., the life-long rival of Henry VIII.
of England, on the one hand, and the Emperor Charles V., on the other. During his reign Catherine remained in obscurity, and was even threatened with divorce, as for ten years she remained childless. On hearing that Francis was considering this decree for state reasons, she planned her first bold stroke. With Italian finesse she made her way to the King at a favourable moment, threw herself at his feet, and expressed her willingness to submit to the royal will. ”Do with me as you choose, sire,” she said; ”let me remain the dutiful wife of your son; or if it may please you to choose another, let me serve as one of her humblest attendants.”
Her speech won the heart of Francis, she was reinstated in favour, and finally had the happiness of bringing him grandchildren ere he died. This was one reason for the great veneration in which Catherine always held his memory, and to which Brantome alludes.
Indeed, the dominant trait with her throughout her long life was loyalty to her family and their interests,--a loyalty fine in the abstract, but which was to lead her along many doubtful and devious ways. It caused her to match prince against prince, party against party, religion against religion, until the culminating horror of St. Bartholomew's Ma.s.sacre was reached,--chargeable directly to her, despite the strenuous denials of Brantome. Henry IV., the royal son-in-law who suffered so much at her hands, was broad-minded enough to palliate her offences on the ground of this family loyalty. Claude Grouard quotes him as saying to a Florentine amba.s.sador in regard to Catherine: ”I ask you what a poor woman could do, left by the death of her husband, with five little children on her arms, and two families in France who were thinking to grasp the crown,--ours and the Guiges. Was she not compelled to play strange parts to deceive first one and then the other, in order to guard, as she has done, her sons who have successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman? I am only surprised that she never did worse.
Sainte-Beuve in his ”Causeries du Lundi” gives us additional glimpses of this Queen, basing his views upon those of Mezeray, author of the older ”History of France”: Mezeray, who never thinks of the dramatic, nevertheless makes known to us at the start his princ.i.p.al personages; he shows them more especially in action, without detaching them too much from the general sentiment and interests of which they are the leaders and representatives, while, at the same time, he leaves to each his individual physiognomy.... Catherine de Medici is painted there in all her dissimulation and her network of artifices, in which she herself was often caught; ambitious of sovereign power without possessing either the force or the genius for it; striving to obtain it by craft, and using for this purpose a continual system of what we should call today 'see-sawing'--'rousing and elevating for a time one faction, putting to sleep or lowering another; uniting herself sometimes with the feeblest side out of caution, lest the stronger should crush her; sometimes with the stronger from necessity; at times standing neutral when she felt herself strong enough to command both sides, but without intention to extinguish either.' Far from being always too Catholic, there are moments when she seems to lean to the Reformed religion and to wish to grant too much to that party; and this with more sincerity, perhaps, than belonged to her naturally. The Catherine de Medici, such as she presents herself and is developed in plain truth on the pages of Mezeray is well calculated to tempt a modern writer.”
It is precisely to this temptation that Balzac has yielded, in his book already mentioned. His summing-up of her character is as follows: ”Catherine de Medici has suffered more from popular error than almost any other woman... and yet she saved the throne of France, she maintained the royal authority under circ.u.mstances to which more than one great prince would have succ.u.mbed. Face to face with such leaders of the factions, and ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the Cardinals de Lorraine and the two 'Balafres,' the two Princes de Conde, Henry IV., Montmorency, the Colignys, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmans.h.i.+p, under the fire of the Calvinist press. These, at any rate, are indisputable facts. And to the student who digs deep into the history of the sixteenth century in France, the figure of Catherine de Medici stands out as that of a great king...
”Hemmed in between a race of princes who proclaimed themselves the heirs of Charlemagne, and a factious younger branch that was eager to bury the Constable de Bourbon's treason under the throne; obliged too, to fight down a heresy on the verge of devouring the monarchy, without friends, and aware of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of republicanism in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dangerous but the surest of political weapons--Craft. She determined to deceive by turns the party that was anxious to secure the downfall of the house of Valois, the Bourbons who aimed at the Crown, and the Reformers.... Indeed, so long as she lived, the Valois sat on the throne. The great M. de Thou understood the worth of this woman when he exclaimed on hearing of her death: 'It is not a woman, it is Royalty that dies in her'!”
On the contrary, if one will follow the genial Dumas through the pages of his Valois Romances, he will find a French writer who, while loyal to the kingly line, does not hesitate to paint this woman in unlovely colors. She is here the low intriguer who does not stop at a.s.sa.s.sination to gain her ends. On only one point, indeed, do historians and romancers seem to agree: she is always interesting--never commonplace. She fills a definite niche in an important period, and her personal reputation must be handled as a thing apart.
This portrait of her by Brantome is one of a series of papers comprising his ”Lives of Ill.u.s.trious Ladies,”--or as he preferred to call it, ”Book of the Ladies.” Brantome himself lived an adventurous life. Born in Perigord in 1537, he was only eighteen years younger than the queen he here discusses. His family, the de Bourdeilles, was one of the oldest and most respected in that province. ”Not to boast of myself,” he says, ”I can a.s.sert that none of my race has ever been home-keeping; they have spent as much time in travels and wars as any, no matter who they be, in France.” The young Pierre had his first experience in Court life, at the Court of Marguerite, sister of Francis I., to whom his mother was lady-in-waiting. As he was the youngest of the family, he was destined for the priesthood--which he always regarded from the militant, rather than the spiritual side--and when only sixteen King Henry II. bestowed upon him the Abbey of Brantome.
The record of his life thereafter is one of travel and adventure in many lands. It is the period of the Renaissance, when wars and conquests, intrigues and romances, poetry and song flourish,--in all of which our Abbe is equally at home! He goes with the Duc de Guise to escort the young widowed Queen, Mary, back to her Scottish throne. He visits Marguerite de Valois in her retirement and is so smitten by her beauty that he dedicates all his books to her. And during his busy, adventurous life he finds time to set down many things which he sees and hears. Some of these stories smack of the scandalous, but all undoubtedly reflect the spirit and manners of the time.
After a long life, Brantome pa.s.sed away in 1614, and although a clause in his will expressly related to the publication of his works they were left in MS. form, in his castle of Richemont, for half a century. They were finally published in Leyden, in 1665, and have been frequently reprinted since.
THE MEMOIRS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI
I have wondered a hundred times, and been astonished, that, with so many good writers as we have had in France in our day, none of them have been inquisitive enough to bring out some sketches on the life and deeds of the Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, since she has given ample material, and did as much fine work as ever was done by a queen--as once said the Emperor Charles to Paolo Giovio on his return from his triumphant voyage in the ”Goulette,” when wis.h.i.+ng to declare war against King Francis, that it was only necessary to be provided with paper and ink, to supply him with any amount of work.
True it is that this Queen cut out so much work, that any clever and industrious writer might build from it a complete Iliad; but the writers have all proven lazy or ungrateful, although she was never n.i.g.g.ardly to learned men, or those writers of her times. I could name several who derived favors from the Queen, and for this reason do I accuse them of ingrat.i.tude.
There was one, however, who did attempt to write of her, and who brought out a little book which he called ”The Life of Catherine,” but it is an imposture and not worthy of belief, since it is more full of lies than truth, as she herself said, when she saw the book. The errors are so glaring as to be apparent to all, and are thus easily noted and rejected.
The author wished her mortal harm, and was inimical to her name, to her station, to her life, to her honor and to her nature, and for this reason he should be rejected.
As for myself, I would that I could speak well, or that I had a fluent pen at my command that I might exalt and praise her as she deserves.
At any rate, be my pen what it may, I shall use it at all hazards.
This Queen is descended, on her father's side, from the race of the Medici, one of the n.o.blest and most ill.u.s.trious families, not only in Italy but in Christendom.
Whatever may be said, she was a foreigner to these parts, since the alliances of the royal houses cannot commonly be made with those within their kingdoms. Nor is it often for the best, since foreign marriages are often more advantageous than those made nearer home.
The House of the Medici has ever been allied with the Crown of France, and still bears the _fleur-de-lys_ that King Louis XI granted that house as a token of alliance and perpetual confederation.
On her mother's side she is descended from one of the n.o.blest houses of France; a house truly French in race, in heart and in affection, that great house of Boulogne and of the County of Auvergne.
Thus it is difficult to say or to decide which of these two houses is the grander, or which is the more memorable by its deeds.
Here is what is said of them by the Archbishop of Bourges, he of the house of Beaune, as great a scholar and as worthy a prelate as there is in Christendom (although there are some who say that he was a trifle unsteady in belief, and of little worth in the scales of M. Saint-Michel, who weighs good Christians for the day of judgment, or so 'tis said). It is found in the funeral oration which the Archbishop made upon the said Queen at Blois.
In the days when that great captain of the Gauls, Brennus, led his forces through Italy and Greece, there were in his troop two French n.o.bles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono, who seeing the wicked designs of Brennus to invade and desecrate the temple of Delphos, after his great conquests, withdrew their forces and pa.s.sed into Asia with their s.h.i.+ps and followers.