Henri II: His Court and Times (23 page)

M. Guiffrey is, however, wrong in affirming that there
is absolutely no confirmation by contemporary writers of
Contarini's allegation. A curious work, entitled
le Fort inexpugnable de l'honneur du sexe feminin
, by François de
Billon, published in 1555, contains the following passage:

"A king could not be more effectually persuaded to show
clemency than by the sweet and opportune intervention of a
wise princess or of some other lady . . . a thing which might
easily be proved by several examples in every Court; and
particularly in that of France, where the noble and very
prudent Duchesse de Valentinois
¹⁰
has clearly given evidence
of this in the case of
two
kings, . . . with whom she had
enjoyed so much honour and favour, that not only has she
several times saved life by means of her grace and sweetness,
but has also several times caused great benefits to be accorded."

After all, such testimony proves nothing more than that a
rumour was current during the reign of Henri II that his
father had preceded him in the favour of Diane, as well as
upon the throne. But in 1854 a learned French archivist,
Ludovic Lalanne, announced that he had discovered unmistakable
evidence of the amours of Diane and François, in a
packet of seventeen letters of a very tender nature addressed to
that gallant monarch by an anonymous mistress, and preserved
in the Bibliothèque Impériale.
¹¹
These epistles had already been published by Aimé Champollion, in
his
Poésies de François I
^er
et de Louise de Savoie
, which
appeared in 1847; but neither that writer nor Sainte-Beuve, who had carefully
examined the letters before reviewing Champollion's book in
the
Journal des Savants
, considered that there was sufficient
evidence to attribute their authorship to Diane, although a
note by an unknown hand in the margin of one of them stated
that she was the writer. Lalanne, however, had no doubts at
all about the matter, basing his conclusion chiefly on the
similarity between the handwriting of François's unknown
correspondent and that of the letters of the Grand Sénéchale
with which he had compared them; and both Michelet and
Haureau, who had already discovered the germ of the supposed
liaison in the Saint-Vallier affair, were of the same opinion.

Twelve years after Lalanne wrote, Guiffrey published his
Lettres inédites de Dianne de Poytiers
, in which he pointed out
that not only the handwriting of the fair
inconnue
, but the style
and the orthography also, bore a much closer resemblance to
those of Madame de Chateaubriand than to Diane's, and that
one of them, moreover, contained a passage in which there is
an allusion to the father-in-law of the writer, who is spoken of
as if he were still alive.
¹²
Well, the father of Louis de Brézé
died in 1494, five years before Diane was born, so that the
letters could not possibly have been written by her. Madame
de Chateaubriand's father-in-law, on the other hand, however,
lived until 1530.

Quite apart, however, from the lack of evidence to support
Contarini's allegation, there is a very excellent reason for
believing it to be merely an idle rumour, or a deliberate
calumny manufactured by the enemies of the favourite.

At the date of the supposed liaison, Madame d'Étampes was
in possession of the royal heart, and, from what we are told of
this lady, we may be very sure that she would not have failed
to resent in the most vigorous fashion any encroachment upon
her privileges. On the other hand, Diane was a woman who
would not have condescended to accept a secondary position
or rest content with secret favours. From the clashing of
these two ambitious natures some scandal would have been
bound to result, which would have been recorded in the
memoirs and correspondence of the time, whereas we hear
nothing of any open rivalry between them until after the
Grande Sénéchale became the Dauphin's mistress.

D
IANE DE
P
OITIERS
D
UCHESS DE
V
ALENTINOIS
FROM THE PAINTING IN ENAMEL BY LÉONARD
LIMOSIN IN THE MUSÉE CONDÉ, CHANTILLY

Diane, then, may fairly be acquitted of any tender relations
with François I. But Contarini, it will be remembered,
accuses her of having had other lovers; "she was loved and
tasted," he writes, "by the King François I
and by others also
."

No confirmation of this charge is to be found in the
writings of her contemporaries, nor, indeed, until more than a
century and a half after her death, when the Abbé Lenglet-Dufresnoy published his edition of the works of Clément
Marot.
¹³
This
personage, we may observe, who, before
becoming a man of letters, had been successively a diplomatist
and a government spy, was a writer of really remarkable
erudition and of great independence — he probably holds the
record for sojourns in the Bastille, having been sent there on
at least ten occasions — but he was very little scrupulous as to
the use he made of the knowledge which he garnered, and
"fell into gross errors, which certain critics attribute to
interested bad faith rather than to ignorance."
¹⁴
In the preface and notes to the work in question, he exhausts himself in
subtle arguments to prove that romantic relations had existed
between Diane and Marot. If we are to believe him, the affair
took place between 1523 and 1525, and it was the lady who
made the first advances. The poet was far from insensible to
the Sénéchale's charms, but, "instead of coming to the point
which she regarded as the most essential, the only decisive,
one in love," was so maladroit as to confine his responses to
vain elegies and useless madrigals. Diane, angered by his
timidity, which she mistook for indifference, changed from
love to hatred, and denounced the unfortunate Gascon to the
Sorbonne "for having eaten bacon in Lent," with the result
that he was promptly arrested and imprisoned in the Châtelet.
And the proofs of his story Dufresnoy claims to have found in
five epigrams, which in most of the early editions of Marot's
poems bear the title of
les Amours de Diane
, in the reproaches
addressed by the poet to an unfaithful mistress, whom he calls
Isabeau, and in the rancour which he displays against a
mysterious personage named Luna, who appears to have been
his evil genius.

Well, these so-called proofs are no proofs at all. Marot was
certainly arrested and imprisoned in February 1526, but on
a more serious charge than that of having contravened the
dietary laws of the Church; and the Sorbonne had been
keeping a watchful eye on him for some time past. As for the
Diane of the epigrams, there is no reason to identify her with
the Grande Sénéchale, for Diane was a common name
enough; and, even supposing that they are identical, was
it not the bounden duty of a Court poet to profess himself in
love with all the high-born beauties about him, or might they
not have been written at the order of the Dauphin to express
the feelings to which he was himself unable to give poetic
utterance, just as, in later times, Henri IV employed Malherbe
to address verses to his inamoratas? There is still less reason
for believing that by the perfidious Isabeau he intended to
indicate Diane — while Dreux du Radier is of opinion that
Luna is not a woman at all, but the Sorbonne. In short,
Dufresnoy's ingenious conjectures will no more stand the test
of examination than the calumny of Regnier de la Planche, the
anecdote of Brantôme, or the gossip of Contarini.
¹⁵

There is, indeed, no proof of any kind that Diane's conduct
during her husband's lifetime, and for the first five years of her
widowhood, was not entirely beyond reproach. That she was
a faithful wife scarcely admits of a doubt. Notwithstanding
the disparity in age, she appears to have been sincerely attached
to Louis de Brézé. When he died in July 1531, she erected a
magnificent tomb to his memory in Rouen Cathedral, with an
epitaph which breathes undying affection;
¹⁶
in August 1534, she arranged for the payment of an annual sum to the Chapter,
in consideration of a high and low Mass being said every day
for the repose of her husband's soul; in 1541 — several years
after she had become the mistress of the future Henri II — we
read of her writing to the clergy to remind them of their
obligation; in 1558, she had a memorial service celebrated
for him; and, at a date which is uncertain, but which was
undoubtedly during the period of her favour, she had a marble
plaque placed on the facade of the Château of Anet, "which
attests," observes Niel, "a more durable regret than widows,
even the most inconsolable, are accustomed to display":

Finally, she wore mourning for the rest of her life, and black
and white became her colours.

But, if during the first five years of her widowhood the
Grande Sénéchale continued the irreproachable conduct which
had marked her married life, we are inclined to believe that,
greedy as she subsequently showed herself for both money
and power, she would have been willing enough to accept the
exalted post of
maîtresse en titre
to François I, had it been
offered her. But it happened to be already filled, and its
occupant, Madame d'Étampes, had secured so firm a hold
upon his Majesty's affections, that to attempt to supplant her
would have been to court failure and humiliation. If, therefore,
the conquest of the King was ever contemplated by
Diane, the project must have been soon abandoned for one
which presented a less remote chance of success.

The beginning of the long liaison between Diane and the
Dauphin, as we have already said, almost certainly dates from
the last months of 1536, when the prince was seventeen and the
lady thirty-seven. Some historians are disposed to place it a
year or two earlier, but to this there is a very serious objection.
Up to the late summer of 1536 Henri was only second in the
line of succession, and, as there was every probability that
the then Dauphin would soon marry and have children, his
position and prospects were scarcely such as to appeal to so
haughty and ambitious a lady as the Grande Sénéchale. But
when, in August of that year, his elder brother died and he
became heir to the throne, the situation was altogether different,
and it did not take Diane long to decide that he had now
become an object worthy of her attention. It was true that
François was only forty-two, and that, in the ordinary course
of Nature, many years must elapse ere she could realize more
than a very small part of her ambitions; but she knew, or at
least suspected, that the King's health was already undermined
by the excesses of his youth, and that it might not be so very
long before the sceptre passed to another. And, in the meantime, if her position as the Dauphin's mistress would bring her
few of the material advantages which Madame d'Étampes
enjoyed, it would, at any rate, assure her a consideration which
would be very gratifying to her vanity. For which reasons,
she dressed her batteries and brought them to bear upon the
young prince.

It is related, and the anecdote has been accepted by such
authorities as Niel and Bouchot, that, annoyed at the melancholy humour and uncouth manners of his heir, François had,
so to speak, thrown the lady into the Dauphin's arms, with
instructions to polish him a little. "They say," writes Le
Laboureur, "that, one day after the death of the Dauphin
François, the King having expressed to her [Diane] his displeasure at the little animation which he saw in this Prince
Henri, she told him that he must be made to fall in love, and
that she would make him her gallant."
¹⁷

If this anecdote be true, it confirms the supposition that
the affair could not have begun until Henri had become heir
to the throne; and some verses of Clément Marot seem to
establish the fact that the date was the last months of 1536.
On New Year's Day, 1537, Marot, according to his custom,
presented poetic
étrennes
to a number of the Court ladies, the
only kind of coin of which he was never short. Diane's,
which was not without a spice of malice, though, at the same
time, it constitutes an additional testimony to the lady's
previous good conduct, was as follows:

The conquest of the Dauphin once resolved upon, Diane
pursued it with inflexible determination and with marvellous
adroitness. To assure a greater and more durable ascendency,
she was in no hurry to complete his subjugation, but posed
before every one as the mentor of youth and inexperience, the
guide of the future King of France towards noble thoughts
and generous actions; encouraging the taciturn, reserved lad
to converse freely with her — a thing which it is doubtful if
he had ever done before with any human being — to express
opinions to which he had never yet dared to give utterance, to
open his mind to her and make her the confidante of his
hopes and fears.