Chapter III: Preface (3)

At the court of Giangaleazzo meanwhile Isabella must have felt as if bitterness stifled her--bitterness and the sick despair of any creature conscious suddenly that it is trapped. Everybody remembered that when the real heir to the duchy had been born two years before, there had been less extravagance and formality than for the entry of the Regent's infant. And when a week later Isabella also went to bed and brought a second child into the world, the torture of the body must have been little in comparison to the torture of the mind that knew its children already marked out for disinheritance. Even her confinement became a convenience to Ludovico, who was able to inform the ambassadors that the rejoicings were for a double joy, though the statement was not made with any intention to deceive. The thin end of the wedge had been driven in, and Ludovico desired men to grow prepared and seasoned for what would one day be thrust upon them as an accomplished policy.

When both duchesses had recovered, ceremonies of thanksgiving were organized. They drove together in wonderful clothes and as part of a gorgeous procession to the church of St. Maria della Grazie. Beatrice may have uttered some light gratitude as she knelt, but to Isabella the day must have been a burning anguish, wearying to the very fibre of her nature. She and Beatrice sat side by side, and their dresses were almost equally extravagant. The public only saw two bejewelled and magnificent figures, but one of the two women already hated the other, with a heart swollen by the wrongs she did not dare to utter.

From this day forward Isabella's life is ill to think of; for Ludovico's plans were soon no longer secret. The King of the Romans was to marry his niece--Giangaleazzo's sister--and to receive with her an immense dowry. In return he was to give Ludovico the investiture of Milan. On paper this change of dukes did not read as a flagrant usurpation. Giangaleazzo had been cleverly thrust into the position of sinner. It was seemingly abruptly discovered that he had no right to the dukedom at all without the consent of Maximilian. The Viscontis held it in fief from the empire. When they died it should have passed back into the keeping of Germany. The duchy belonged to the emperor, and the Sforzas holding it on their own authority made them nothing less than adventurers. Il Moro, confirmed as duke by the King of the Romans, would possess the duchy upon legal and unimpeachable grounds, and have only dispossessed therefore a creature without any rights to hold it at any time, and incapable into the bargain.

Isabella fought with an impassioned fury for her child and her position. It was brave, heart-rending, and useless. Giangaleazzo could not be made even to understand Ludovico's treachery. In a fit of temper he could beat his wife, as a child strikes what offends it. But he could not grasp any more than a child that a person, who had never given it an unkind word, should nevertheless intend to do it evil. Sometimes driven beyond control, Isabella would fix the story of Ludovico's coming usurpation into his wandering attention. For a moment her burning phrases stimulated some dim perception. But presently Ludovico and the boy would meet, and Giangaleazzo, in reality bewildered and helpless without the support of this capable, pleasant relative he had leant on since infancy, would blurt out all his wife's accusations and come back to her soothed into the implicit faith of before. Not a soul that would, had the capacity to help her, whilst the crowd had gone over to the light-hearted, triumphant duchess who was stepping remorselessly into her place.

Of all the women of the Renaissance there are none more piteous and more innocently forlorn than this girl Isabella, married to the futile son of a madman and pitted against the unrighteous cravings of a Ludovico. He and Beatrice between them made her life a nightmare, but they never abased her courage. The letter to her father, given by Corio as hers, but generally looked upon as worded by the historian, shows the noble fierceness that ran through her body. In burning phrases she laid bare the unjust misery of her position. Giangaleazzo was of age, and should have succeeded some time back to the duchy of his father. But so far was this from being the case that even the bare necessities of existence were doled out to them by Ludovico, who not only enjoyed all political power, but who kept them practically both helpless and unbefriended. The bitter hurt she endured through Beatrice came out in the mention of the latter's son and the royal honours paid to him at birth, while she and her children were treated as of no importance. In truth she added--and there is something so hot, so passionately and recklessly sincere in the whole letter that it is difficult to believe that anybody but Isabella herself wrote it--they remained at the palace in actual risk of their lives, the deadly envy of Ludovico aching to make her a widow. But her letter, for all its despair and anger, was imbued with an unbreakable spirit. When she had laid bare the danger, the loneliness, and humiliation of her position, explaining that she lacked even one soul she dared speak openly to, since all her attendants were provided by Ludovico, she closed with a brave and defiant statement that in spite of everything her courage still endured unshaken.

Beatrice, it is true, does not show bravely in this one matter. True, from the worldly standpoint of the time, it was not as ugly as it seems to-day. Position during the Renaissance was legitimately to those indomitable enough to seize it. But the private intuitions of the heart do not alter greatly at any period, and in these Beatrice was not by nature deficient. She had strong affections and abundant fundamental graces of temperament--laughter, courage, insight, whole-heartedness, multiplicity of talents. But during the first years of her married life she had too many happinesses at once. There was nothing in her life to quicken the spiritual qualities, nor to foster the more delicate undergrowths of character--pity, compassion, the living sense of other sorrows. She lived too quickly, and there was no time for conscience to hurt her. That she could be tender there are little incidents to bear witness. Her motherhood, for instance, was both charming and childlike. She wrote to her mother, in sending the baby's portrait, that though it was only a week since the picture had been painted, the baby was already bigger, but that she dared not send his exact height because everybody told her that if she measured him he would never grow properly.

The innocent foolishness of this disarms harsh judgment. And in judging Beatrice's relations to Isabella of Milan there is no need to deduce a bad disposition from one bad action. No individuality stands clear from some occasional unworthinesses. In this one matter Beatrice was inexcusable, heartless, driven by nothing but an unjust ambition. But in others she was charming, affectionate, thoughtful, and moreover, under circumstances of colossal temptations and a great deal too much wealth, she remained a devoted wife, a faithful friend, and a woman capable in the end of a sorrow deep enough, practically, to kill her. In addition, it was harder for Beatrice than for most people to be really very saintly. She had too much of everything--vitality, intelligence, charm of person--and the call of life in consequence became too loud and too insistent. It is partly because of this that one loves her. For she had enough grace to be lovable, but not enough to be above the need of a regretful compassion and understanding. It is, of course, possible to be extraordinarily robust--to feel life _sing_ in one's body through sheer physical well-being--and yet be all aflame in spirit also. But it is certain that when for a woman considerable personal fascination is added, this extreme vitality makes it much harder to retain only a sweet and limpid thinking. Each actual moment becomes too engrossing and sufficient.

There is, of course, no use in denying that from the time Ludovico was immersed in disreputable politics, Beatrice knew a great deal about them. To help, in fact, in their fulfilment she was herself presently sent as envoy to Venice. The Venetians were reluctant to fit in with Il Moro's intentions, and it was realized at Milan that what may be lost by argument may be won by unuttered persuasion. In any case, a pretty woman, all gaiety, tact, and responsiveness, could only be a pleasant incident for a party of elderly gentlemen. So Beatrice, with all the clothes that most became her, went to Venice, where she set the teeth of the women on edge with the wicked excess of her personal splendour. But though the feminine society of Venice did not love her, Beatrice knew that her business was with men, and that to fascinate, therefore, she must give out the charm the eye perceives immediately.

During her visit she wrote long letters to her husband, telling him everything save the information not wise to trust on paper. She even gave a description of the clothes she wore on each occasion. The fact is interesting, because nothing could constitute a clearer revelation of the closeness of their married relationship. Only when a husband and wife are on the tenderest terms of comradeship does a man care to hear what his wife wears, and even then he must possess what might be called the talent for domesticity.

The wedding of Bianca, sister of Giangaleazzo, became the next step in Ludovico's policy. It was during the pageants organized to show the greatness of the match that the Duchess Isabella made her last brave show in public. She knew exactly what lay at the back of the marriage, but maintained to the end the fine endurance of good breeding. Through all the ceremonies that preceded Bianca's departure into Germany, Isabella outwardly bore herself as any tranquil-hearted woman, who was the first lady of Milan, should do. Later on, some at least of the anguish surging within was to overflow in a sudden torrent. But in public nothing broke her wonderful composure. Not until Charles VIII. came to see her privately did her accumulated sorrows openly express themselves.

Previously to this Louis XII., then Duke of Orleans, had been sent into Italy, to discuss plans with Ludovico. Nobody thought much then of the man who was later to destroy Il Moro. A contemporary wrote sneeringly that his head was too small to hold much in the way of brains, and that Ludovico would find it easy enough to outwit him. Charles followed, when Beatrice and her court journeyed from Milan to Asti in order to fascinate and amuse him. Beatrice even danced for his pleasure, and she was an exquisite dancer. As a result Charles metaphorically fell at her pretty feet, which was only natural, considering that her appearance must have been gay and young enough--in a dress of vivid green and with a bewildering blaze of jewels--to have fascinated anybody.

Coming after a duchess all radiance and light-heartedness, Isabella, on the other hand, empty of everything but desolation, could only appear a disagreeable interlude. Giangaleazzo was already ill at Pavia when Charles VIII. crossed into Italy, but after Ludovico and Beatrice had done everything possible to amuse the French king, he passed on to the town of Pavia. Here the real duke lay in bed, and it was Isabella who received the king and Ludovico at the entrance to the Castello, dramatically beautiful in her forlorn observance of social obligations. Commines gives a detailed account of Isabella's sudden outcry against the downfall being prepared for her house. In this account he says that the king told him that he would like to have warned Giangaleazzo had he not feared the consequences with Ludovico. Commines adds that, disregarding the Duke of Bari's presence, Isabella threw herself on her knees before the French king, and piteously besought him to have pity on her father and brother, in answer to which, the situation being a very awkward one for him, he could only beg her to think of her husband and herself, she being still so young and lovely a woman.

That Charles pitied these two, as lambs lying in the paws of a wolf, is very clear from Commines' statement.

And a few days later Giangaleazzo died. His life had been useless, but he took leave of it with an arresting gentleness. After a serious illness he had rallied, taken a fair amount of nourishment, and slept a little. That same evening he asked to see two horses Ludovico had sent him, and they were brought into the great stone hall, out of which his room opened. He talked of Ludovico, his confidence remaining childlike and unshaken to the end. His uncle, he said, would have been sure, would he not, to come and see him, if the French business had not swallowed up attention? As he grew weaker, he asked his favourite attendant--much as a woman might ask about her lover, for the pleasure of the answer--if he thought his uncle loved him, and grieved at his serious illness. Satisfied, he begged to see his greyhounds, and then, all his little interests tranquillized, quietly fell asleep. He was dead next morning, and Ludovico's path was made easier than before. He was, in fact, instantly proclaimed head of Milan. Guicciardini says of it, "It was proposed by the heads of the council that, considering the importance of the duchy, and the dangerous times dawning for Italy, it would be extremely undesirable that a child not yet five years old should succeed his father.... Ambition getting the better of honesty, the next morning, after some pretence of reluctance, he accepted the name and arms of the Duke of Milan."

At the time Ludovico was almost universally credited with having murdered Giangaleazzo, but the accusation has since fallen to the ground. Practically it was based upon the fact that the moment of the duke's passing was too opportune to wear an air of naturalness. In spite, moreover, of what men thought, nothing dared be uttered openly, and Ludovico, blazing in cloth of gold, rode to the church of St. Ambrozio to give public thanks for his accession. The wind was with him for the moment. Beatrice, too, had become the first lady of Milan, and her soul stood in a more perilous state than ever. She had reached the place of her desire by ways too shady for loveliness of thought to have had much hold in her.

Isabella meanwhile, from this time onwards, passes into a desolate private existence. But there is an incident which occurred first that remains very difficult to penetrate. Literally at Ludovico's mercy after her husband's death, she still bore herself bravely. For a time she refused to leave Pavia. When she did, we are told that Beatrice drove out to meet her, and that when they came together, some two miles from town, she got out of her own carriage and entered Isabella's, both women sobbing bitterly as she did so. That Isabella should cry was natural; she was weak with the weariness of sorrow. But Beatrice's was not the nature to weep either easily or falsely. Clearly face to face with the price paid for her own position, it beat back upon her for a moment as an utter heaviness, and she cried because Isabella was the living expression of despair, and they had once been intimate and companionable. God knows what they said to each other in this drive together, or whether through the passing grace of a sudden penitence Beatrice found anything the widow could hear without a sense of nausea. For how dire Isabella felt her life to have become is revealed in a singularly tender reference made to her by the court jester Barone, who wrote that she was so changed, and so thin and grief-stricken, that the hardest heart could not have seen her without compassion.

But the Duchy of Milan was to yield little happiness to the two who had acquired it so shabbily. Charles' Italian campaign soon thrust Ludovico into both difficulty and danger. At the commencement of it he had been a great man. But when one Italian town after another became as a doormat for Charles to walk over, he perceived suddenly the flaw in his French invasion policy. Ferrante of Naples wrecked was one thing; Italy given over to Charles VIII. another.

He was not even personally safe with Louis of Orleans at Asti. A league was formed, in which the Pope, the King of the Romans, the King and Queen of Spain, Henry VII. of England, the Signory of Venice, and the Duke of Milan all combined. Isabella D'Este's husband was made captain, with the express duty of cutting off Charles' triumphant return into France. This fight against the king, so cajoled at the beginning, and the subsequent peace patched up between him and Ludovico, is purely a matter of history. In the attack against Asti, made by Louis of Orleans, however, Beatrice showed a magnificent and practical courage. Ludovico's own astuteness had died in a sickly terror, and he had rushed back to his fortified castle at Milan. At the time there is little doubt that he was suffering from nervous exhaustion; but it was Beatrice whose courageous eloquence roused Milan, and it was Beatrice who ordered the steps necessary to defend the town and Castello.

It was about this time, also, that she showed a disarming and warm-hearted rightness of feeling. Among the booty her sister Isabella's husband, Francesco, had acquired from the French were some hangings that had belonged to Charles VIII.'s own tent. They were originally forwarded to Isabella, but presently Francesco asked her to send them back, as he wished to give them to Beatrice. That made Isabella angry. She had some degree of reason, but her expression of it was repellantly ungracious. The hangings, notwithstanding, were sent to Beatrice. Happily, she would not have them. As keenly as Isabella, she loved beautiful and notable things, but with the simple statement that, under the circumstances she felt she ought not to have them, she returned the draperies to her sister. In doing so she was beginning to practise the little niceties that help to keep existence lovable. Had she lived, she would almost surely have weathered the over-eager selfishnesses of her married life. They were after all largely due to the absorption that all youth suffers during the first unsettled, uncertain period, when life is still all newness and personal excitements. But her time was short, and after the settling of peace with France, the end drew horribly near to her.

For five years she had been happy. Ludovico constituted the integral part of heaven for her, and after the first fierce struggle she had lived in the soft security of an equal affection. Nature had given her brains and seductiveness. To have both in one person, and then, as crowning grace, to possess a genius for light-heartedness, was more than most women can rely upon in the unceasing labour of retaining a husband's affectionateness. But Beatrice was bolstered by even more than this. The tastes of husband and wife were similar--Ludovico had no hobbies outside the radius of her understanding. Nevertheless, at twenty she stumbled upon the disheartenment that for most wives lurks about the forties. She could not keep her husband from the charm of other women. She had been everything, but the time had come when a pretty face was to sweep her peace down like a house of flimsy cardboard.

She had grown stale--observation, dulled by familiarity, could receive no fresh impression. The very years they had handled life together worked not for, but against, her. All her ways had grown a parrot-cry; those of other women were new and half mysterious. Further, she was at that time physically in a peculiarly defenceless condition. When Ludovico's last passion swept him away from her, Beatrice was once more expecting to be a mother.

Among the members of her household at this time there had been included the daughter of a Milanese nobleman, a girl called Lucrezia Crivelli. This Lucrezia Crivelli was far too beautiful to be a safe person in the house of any man susceptible to all precious or lovely objects. Could anything, indeed, be more exquisite than her face as painted by Leonardo da Vinci? At the same time, to look for long at the beautiful oval is to see that its meekness is purely a sham expression. The eyes too, so gentle, undisturbed, observant, are just a little, though illusively, unscrupulous. It is essentially the face of a young girl with all the delicate finenesses and sweet, reliant placidities of inexperience; but it is also a face already rich in power, reservations, and a silent deliberateness of conduct. In addition to all this, her hair was golden, her head almost perfectly outlined. In any court she must have created a sensation--she was so dazzling, and yet so quiet, so self-contained, and so demurely and subtly dignified. The temperament was probably cold. There is more thought than feeling in its gracious quietude--thought and a dim suggestion of pain, not in the present, but for the future. Small wonder she drew Ludovico. To be young, beautiful--a sweet wonder to look at--and, in addition, to strain at men's heartstrings by just a hint of wistfulness, is to be dangerous beyond bearing.

Ludovico's admiration became rapidly unmistakable. From being constantly pin-pricked, Beatrice saw the friendship between the two spring suddenly into something mortal to her heart. The two were thrown hourly into each other's society--the man with the inflammable response to beauty, and the girl with the discreet and tantalizing loveliness. It was a tense drama of three. For Beatrice was always there as the tortured third. From the commencement nothing was spared her. Each day some new incident shook her with unutterable anticipations. Slowly existence, as she watched these two, became a solidifying terror. There must have been some scenes at the commencement. No woman could accept a crisis such as this and not cry out for mercy. But Beatrice, with the innate wisdom that so soon grew strong in her, quickly realized that to plead was like a voice trying to be heard above a tempest. Ludovico was infatuated. Everybody knew, and talked of the affair, both at the Court of Milan and beyond it. In 1496, a Ferrarese ambassador wrote that the latest news from Milan was the duke's infatuation for one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting, with whom he passed the greater part of his time--a fact which was widely condemned there.

That same autumn Ludovico's natural daughter, whom Beatrice had adopted when she came to Milan, and whom she loved dearly, died. Only a few months back she had been married to the Galeazzo di Sanseverino, who had helped so largely to keep Beatrice merry in the first months of her marriage. Her name was Bianca, and in her portrait by Ambrogio da Predis--a portrait sometimes said to be of Beatrice D'Este--she looks adorable. Her death struck Beatrice when she was already heartsick. A dozen times between daylight and bedtime Lucrezia and Ludovico had acquired the power to drive the blood to her temples. Muralto, who mentions Il Moro making the girl his mistress, says, with the simplicity characteristic of the period when touching anything emotional, that though it caused Beatrice bitter anguish of mind, it could not alter her love for him. It is very evident that Beatrice dared nothing against this later mistress. With an admirable wisdom--the wisdom of an intelligence which had deepened upon the facts of experience--she did not struggle, after five years of married life, against the fever of this tempestuous passion. But a passionate restlessness wore her out. She looked upon days unending and unbearable. In a few weeks her manner changed entirely. She, who had been like an embodied joy for years, grew to have tears always near the surface. In the end she became too weary to control them; for there is no weakness like that brought about by a forlornness constantly goaded into fresh sensations. Both her ladies and her courtiers, in the inevitable publicity of court habits, saw her eyes frequently blinded by silent tears. But she said nothing, and they could not be certain whether they fell because of her husband's conduct or because of the death of Bianca.

To some extent she had become abruptly absorbed by a new outlook. All her life previously she had been a frank materialist; the question of death had loomed too distant to need attention. But suddenly life had betrayed her, and in the bitter knowledge of its cruelties the soul stirred to tragic wakefulness.

The Renaissance, as far as she was concerned, had shown itself inadequate. It had promised, with artistic and philosophic culture, to bring happiness. But in practice it provided nothing for the heart of women. It could not make men faithful, nor help the warm and simple ways of domesticity from the denudations of instability. There remained only the question of the afterlife to fall back upon, and Beatrice, enfevered and tortured, tried to fix her mind upon this prospect. Bianca had been buried in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, and during the last months of her existence Beatrice formed the habit of going constantly to her tomb, and of staying there for hours at a time. In fact, shipwrecked as far as life was concerned, and brought by her approaching motherhood to the nearness and possibility of death, her soul sprung at last into a quivering alertness, drawing her to silent introspections in the dark and restful church, where the girl who had been alive a short time back, now lay quietly buried. Only the most unshaken agnostics can come close to death and not suddenly feel an overwhelming necessity for some preparatory equipment--some consciousness of a clean and justified existence. And Beatrice, whose manner hinted to those about her the possession of a secret foreboding of what was coming, had reached very close to the moment when this peace, both of remembrance and of hope, would be tragically necessary.

On January 2, 1497, she drove as usual to the church of St. Maria delle Grazie. She remained there for hours, as if only in this one sombre place could she obtain a little respite and tranquillity. Her ladies--who probably disliked these outings beyond expression--had difficulty in coaxing her at last from the building. They got her home, and she seemed much as usual until about eight o'clock in the evening, when the agony of child-birth suddenly commenced in her.

Her pains only lasted three hours. Then she gave birth to a still-born child, and shortly after midnight she died. For a short hour she lay in her canopied bed, worn in body and uncomforted in soul. Then she died, and whom Ludovico loved or did not love mattered not one whit to her.

But her death had been brutal, unexpected, sudden, and acted upon Ludovico like a douche of icy water. Passion for Lucrezia died brusquely through the shock. Beatrice, had she known it, had never been profoundly discarded, and the thought of life without her had not formed part of the Lucrezia madness.

And suddenly she was dead. There had been no reconciliation. In the abruptness of her collapse, there had not been an interval in which to endear her back to joy. She had suffered great pain, and then, in a forlorn and piteous weakness, passed from existence.

Ludovico's grief became intense. His passionate prostration was so unusual in the callousness of the period, that every one talked about it. He refused to have her name mentioned in his presence, and when most widowers of that time would have been thinking of a second wife, he was still spoken of as caring nothing any longer for his children, or his state, or for anything on earth.

Seven months after her death he continued still apparently a changed man. He had become religious, recited daily offices, observed fasts, and lived "chastily and devoutly." His rooms were still draped in black, he took all his meals standing, and every day went for a time to his wife's tomb in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie.

His last action in connection with Beatrice has a certain moving sentimentality. It was when the miserable end of his adventure had commenced, and he was obliged to escape from Milan with all the haste he could. His safety depended upon his swiftness. Knowing this, he nevertheless stopped at the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, and stayed so long by the tomb of his wife that the small group with him became anxious for their own skins as well as his. He came out at last with the tears streaming down his face, and three times, as he rode away, he looked back towards the church, as if all his heart held dear lay there behind him.

Not long afterwards he was captured, and his captivity at Loches is one of the few inexcusable stains upon Louis XII.'s character.

ANNE OF BRITTANY

1476-1514

With Anne of Brittany the Renaissance entered France. She herself, though she had her little fastidiousnesses, hardly belongs to it. No artistic strain ran through her temperament. She was an intelligent, but excessively practical woman, who twice married men of opposite dispositions from her own. Anne, it is certain, never glowed at the thought of a beautiful thing in her life, but both her husbands did, and both, as a result of their Italian campaigns, brought into France a variety of new and educative lovelinesses. Charles VIII., Anne's first husband, and Louis XII., her second, gave the primary impulse to the Renaissance movement in France.

As for Anne herself, though in the end she appeals through a colossal weight of sorrow, one feels her chiefly as a warning. Almost every quality a woman ought to spend her strength in avoiding, she hugged unconsciously to her soul, and every quality a woman needs as the basis of her personality, she had not got. A woman should be indulgence itself, and Anne indulged nobody; a woman should be as a brimming receptacle of sympathy, toleration, and forgiveness, and Anne forgave no one, and tolerated nothing that went against her. A woman should be--it is without exaggeration her great essential--good to live with, cosy, accommodating, an insidious wheedler, almost without premeditation, not only into happiness, but into righteousness of living. Now, Anne could never have been cosy, and it is doubtful whether, once safely married for the second time, she would have condescended to wheedle any one. She had not sufficient love to have a surplus for distribution. Duties of some kinds she could observe excellently, but there was no sub-conscious sense that in marrying she was accepting one of the subtlest posts of influence in the world. She had not the capacity for understanding that it is a woman's adorable privilege to be _in herself_ so much, that the atmosphere of the house she controls must in the end express principally her personality. And nothing was more remote from Anne's intelligence than the secret triumph of realizing how greatly the building up of character is the charge intrusted to her sex by destiny.

It was not her gift to make any house feel warmer when she entered it. Her second husband loved her--contrast is a frequent motive for falling in love--but she could do nothing for temperament. Character is not upheaved by violences, and Anne was all imperatives and despotism. Practical organizations are often admirably conducted with these methods, and as a housewife Anne attained considerable proficiency; but the more immaterial achievements are beyond the reaching power of a chill autocracy.

Born in 1476, she was the daughter of Francis II. of Brittany, enemy of Louis XI. of France. Her mother, Marguerite de Foix, died when she was little more than a baby, and the first thing one hears about the child Anne was, as usual, concerned with the question of marriage. At eight years old more than one suitor already desired her hand. The English Prince of Wales had been accepted, when his murder put an end to the engagement. Then the widowed Archduke of Austria, Maximilian, was seriously considered, and for a short time Louis, Duke of Orleans, subsequently her second husband, numbered among those said to be possibly acceptable. He was married already to Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI., but his dislike to the woman forced upon him by her sinister parent had never been disguised. A dispensation from the Pope could at any time make another marriage possible.

The notion did not hold attention long, but the man and the child, after all one day to come together, were excellent friends during the period when Anne was in the schoolroom. Louis of Orleans, restless and discontented, could bear anything better than the presence of his own wife. Jeanne, who was not only deformed but hideous, had wrung from her own father on one occasion the remark, "I did not know she was so ugly." Curtained behind physical ungainliness, her nature was white as snow and soft as the breast of a bird; but though every thought that came to her fused into tenderness, she lacked the common gaieties needful for ordinary existence. She had wanted to be a nun, and instead they made her the wife of a boy who felt for her nothing but an uncontrollable physical repulsion.

Louis, when he fled to Brittany, did not take her with him, and every writer is agreed that the pretty, precocious child whom he found there, and the dissatisfied husband, became the best of comrades. One chronicler mentions that Anne was flattered by the _hommage_ paid to her by Louis, but it is very much in keeping with his character to have been amused by a little creature with all the airs and graces, and all the feminine obstreperousnesses, that Jeanne did not possess. Louis admired character, and even at nine years old Anne must have required no trifling efforts to manage.

In 1488, her father, worsted at last by the French, was obliged to come to terms with them. Almost immediately afterwards he died, and Anne, at twelve years old, became Duchess of Brittany.

It was, under the circumstances, a tragic position for any child to be placed in, and Anne's little baby face and thin childish voice, at the head of so forlornly placed a duchy, becomes suddenly pathetic. She was no sooner proclaimed her father's successor, moreover, than France sent to state that, since there were differences of opinion concerning their respective rights to Brittany, she should, pending the decision of arbitrators, not take the title of duchess. The reply--firm but cautious--amounted to the statement that Anne had already convoked the states of Brittany, in order to have the recent treaty made by her father with France ratified.

This answer the child probably had nothing to do with, but, in the vital question of her marriage, she suddenly revealed herself very definitely the authoritative head of her own dominions. All her ministers desired a marriage with the Comte D'Albret, thought to be in a position to help Brittany against the claws of its enemy. D'Albret was a widower, old, ugly, bad tempered, and the father of twelve children. Anne hated him--he is said to have had a spotty face--and the shrinking antipathy of children is not controllable by reasons. Primarily she must have felt a little frightened when both her governess, and the great bearded men who controlled affairs, informed her that, whatever her feelings, the marriage must take place. Happily, she was not timid, and she understood perfectly that she had succeeded to the power of her father. She refused point-blank to marry D'Albret. They argued, coaxed, laboured with interminable explanations, but the girl merely became mulish. When their importunities allowed no other outlet, she declared that sooner than marry him she would enter a nunnery and become a nun. Obstinacy such as this, when the child owed subjection to nobody, was a thing to gasp at. The tempers of her ministers must have been sorely tested, but the D'Albret marriage had in the end to be abandoned.

Maximilian was then brought forward once more--a suitor towards whom Anne appears to have been more tractable. It was necessary to marry somebody. Maximilian she had never seen, and therefore could regard to some extent optimistically. At the worst he would be better than D'Albret, and there was the chance that he might be actually charming. Once she had consented they gave her no time to change her mind. Maximilian sent his favourite, Baron de Polhain, to Brittany, and a marriage by proxy, according to the German fashion, took place there. The bride, having been dressed in her best frock, was placed in her canopied bed, with the best pillows at her head, and the best counterpane over her small person, and in the presence of the necessary witnesses, Polhain bared one leg to the knee and introduced it into the bed. This brief and simple ceremony rendered Anne a married woman, wife of the King of Germany. For a year afterwards in all proclamations she was called Queen, and Maximilian Duke, of Brittany.

Had he been rich, Maximilian might have kept his wife and changed history. He was, however, too poor to send assistance, and France inordinately wanted Brittany. Anne's position, therefore, grew month by month more desperate, until, after the town of Nantes had fallen, ultimate defeat became inevitable. Brittany, unaided, was a pigmy standing up to a colossus. What facts the little duchess's childish mind grew to understand during the two years she ruled in Brittany are hard to imagine. Every night her people put her to bed knowing that the enemy crept, hour by hour, nearer to her person. Every morning fresh perplexities of state were tumbled into her strained, embittered understanding. She learnt by heart the cheerless vicissitudes of life before she knew its kindling compensations. And by nature Anne was proud, obstinate, prematurely intelligent. This little thing was no dazed creature propped up as a mere figure-head of state by powerful officials. No one knew better than Anne the value of her own position. If she cried when the lugubriousness of her household grew more patent, she cried, not from terror, but from the bitter knowledge of utter powerlessness. The mere thought of being conquered roused a tempest in the fiery spirit of the child-duchess.

She was fourteen when a compromise saved her. Charles VIII., to settle matters more securely than could be done by any temporary conquest, proposed to marry his past antagonist. When the proposal was first laid before her, Anne naturally refused with a sickened fury and vehemence. No extremity should drive her to think submissively of the man whose ambition had been the bane of her short existence. She argued, moreover, that she was already the wife of King Maximilian of Germany. But Brittany was in sore distress, and once more all those with power to persuade urged her to consider this proposal as a godsend to her country. She would not listen; every nerve in her body revolted against this man, whose very proposal carried a threat behind it. Finally a priest was called upon to help the troubled counsellor, and the poor girl, whose happiness throughout had been the one thing nobody considered, was informed that the Holy Church demanded this sacrifice for the welfare of her people. She gave in then; there remained no alternative open to her. An interview took place, when the enemies of yesterday fumbled with reluctant courtesies. Three days later they were betrothed, the Duke of Orleans being among the witnesses of the ceremony.

Anne at this time was, it is said, a pretty, fresh-looking girl, with an admirable carriage, for all that one leg was slightly shorter than the other. Charles VIII., on the other hand, could hardly have been uglier. His head was too big for his body, his eyes were prominent and expressionless, his lips flabby. There was nothing in his lethargic appearance to disarm Anne's sullen misery, and during their first poignant meeting one can feel with certainty that she did nothing to render easier the polite apologies stammered out by the uneasy lover. But Charles's manner was gentleness and simplicity itself. Even Commines, who considered him futile and childish, says of it, "No man was ever more gentle and kindly in speech. Truly I think he never in his life said a thing to hurt any one; small of body and ill-made, but so good, a better creature it would be impossible to find."

The marriage once accomplished, Anne and her husband started upon a triumphal journey through Brittany. The marriage had been a brutal necessity, and, for all her determination, the girl of fourteen was in it only the tool of the men and women who called themselves her subjects. But once married, Charles showed the utmost tactfulness. In the "History of the Dukes of Brittany" we read, "The king, having against his will, as it were, become her husband, omitted nothing that could assuage the unhappiness their marriage had caused her, behaving so well that in the end she was quite satisfied with her new life, and felt for this prince the greatest love and tenderness." But to have hated Charles would seem to have been impossible. All writers are unanimous as to the sweetness of his character in personal intercourse.

A good deal is known about Anne's equipment for her first journey as a married woman. Her travelling dress was of black velvet trimmed with zebeline, and her gown for best occasions of gold material lined with ermine. Among the furniture also were two beds--a serviceable one, draped with black, white, and velvet cloth; and another hung with gold brocade and bordered with a heavy fringing of black.

During the journey Anne received innumerable wedding presents, and at the gates and squares of every town plays were acted for the two young people. Most of these were mystery plays, but a certain number of farces were introduced for variety. What these comic plays were like can be gathered from the _Farce du Cuvier_, famous a little later. It deals with a hen-pecked husband, whose wife had provided a written list of his household duties in order to jog his harried memory.

One day, while washing the linen, his wife fell into the copper. The conversation between them is the dramatic moment of the play. I quote it as given in Mr. Van Laun's interesting "History of French Literature."

_Wife_ (_in the copper_). Good husband, save my life. I am
already quite fainting; give me your hand a while.

_Jacquemet._ It is not in my list....

_Wife._ Alas! oh, who will hear me? Death will come and take me
away.

_Jac._ (_reading his list_). "To bake, to attend to the oven, to
wash, to sift, to cook."

_Wife._ My blood is already quite changed. I am on the point of
death.

_Jac._ (_continuing to read_). "To rub, to mend, to keep bright
the kitchen utensils ..."

_Wife._ Come quickly to my assistance.

_Jac._ "To come, to go, to bustle, to run ..."

_Wife._ Never shall I pass this day.

_Jac._ "To bake the bread, to heat the oven ..."

_Wife._ Ah, your hand; I am approaching my last moment.

_Jac._ "To bring the corn to the mill ..."

_Wife._ You are worse than a mastiff.

_Jac._ "To make the bed early in the morning ..."

_Wife._ Oh, you think this is a joke.

_Jac._ "And then to put the pot on the fire ..."

_Wife._ Oh, where is my mother, Jacquette?

_Jac._ "And to keep the kitchen clean...."

_Wife._ Go and fetch the priest.

_Jac._ My paper is ended, but I tell you, without more ado, that
it is not on my list.

In the end, having wrung from her a promise of docility, he helped her out. The farce concluded with the joyful murmur, "For the future, then, I shall be master, for my wife allows it."

But the great day of Anne's youth was the day of her coronation in France. No toy lay so dear to her heart as a crown, and no one could have felt more unspeakably proud and great when, before an immense crowd of nobles and people, her crowning took place at the church of St. Denis. She wore a gown of pure white satin, and hung her hair--which was long and beautiful--in two great plaits over her shoulders. St. Gelais de Montluc said of her at this time, "It did one good to look at her, for she was young, pretty, and so full of charm that it was a pleasure to watch her."

Afterwards followed the unavoidable reaction, when the ordinary routine of existence had to be confronted. Anne's position, once the glamorous days of public functions were over, revealed innumerable drawbacks. She was a little girl in a strange country, surrounded by persons unwilling to surrender either power or precedence. Anne of Beaujeu, the former Regent--harsh, efficient, domineering--was the first power with whom Anne suffered combat. Small questions of precedence kindled the tempers of both. The elder Anne loved power as much as the younger, and was a woman few people cared to defy. But the juvenile bride had been modelled a little bit after the same pattern; she also possessed indomitable qualities, and had no intention of being a queen for nothing. The Regent--her surprise must have been overwhelming--found herself worsted. Sensible as well as proud, she retired before any pronounced unseemliness had occurred, and left the two young people to manage the kingdom for themselves.

But the period of domesticity between Charles and Anne did not continue long. There was a little love-making, a little house decorating, and then came the momentous first invasion of Italy. Commines, a shrewd and plain-spoken observer, says a good deal about this Italian campaign, which he accompanied. Both he and the Italian historian Guicciardini refer with pronounced contempt to Charles's mismanagement of it, while Commines goes so far as to state practically that nothing but the grace of God kept the army from annihilation.

While Charles was away time passed wearily for Anne. Previously to her husband's departure, when barely fifteen years old, she had given birth to her first baby, the needful son and heir. But to make the days more empty and interminable, the child was taken from her at the beginning of hostilities. For safety's sake he remained at the castle of Amboise, strongly guarded by a hundred of the Scottish guard. So carefully was he protected, in fact, that when one of his godfathers, François de Paule, came to see him, he was only allowed to bring one other priest with him--a man born in France, and one who had never been to Naples. Unfortunately, no guards could save a life so feeble as this child's of a child-mother. Almost immediately after Charles had come back from Italy the little creature fell ill and died with tragic suddenness.

Before this, and after her husband's safe arrival, Anne is said to have been unprecedently light-hearted. To exist for months, as she had been doing, waiting hour after hour for the daily courier's arrival, was to become drained at last of every feeling except a tortured expectancy. Charles's death would not only have made her a widow, it would have taken her cherished crown away from her also. To hold both safe again relaxed even Anne's cherished decorum of manner. But the death of the Dauphin struck the newly arisen gaiety abruptly out of her. She grieved passionately, bewildered that God should do this inexplicable and bitter thing to her. How fiercely she rebelled is shown by the following incident. Her friend of childish days, Louis, Duke of Orleans, was now once more heir to the throne. In a court of mourning he struck Anne as unduly blithe and cheerful, and instantly her sore heart revolted and hated him. Commines, who mentions the circumstance, says that "for a long time afterwards they did not speak." As a matter of fact, Anne insisted upon his removal from the court circle. Louis retired to his own home at Blois, where he fell back upon the hobbies of his father, the childlike poet Louis of Bourbon, whose poems he collected while he waited for his old friend's nerves to tranquillize.

Charles meanwhile gladdened his spirit with architectural interests. He had come back deeply influenced by the beauty of Italian methods, and having brought with him a crowd of Italian artists and craftsmen.

How the tumultuous Anne struck him after the subtlety of Italian womenfolk is not mentioned. The women of the Italian Renaissance were an education in themselves. Charles had been cajoled by Beatrice, had been knelt to by Isabella of Aragon, had been flattered delicately and unceasingly. His path to Rome had been strewn with gracious ladies, all more consummate, more complex, more highly wrought, as it were, than his own house-bound countrywomen. Anne, besides, could never have been a person of irresistible daily whimsicalities. Fortunately, Charles possessed strong domestic instincts, and in justice to Anne it should be mentioned that she did not show the same indifference to personal graces usually associated with women of her practical temperament. She had a few dainty vanities--was particular about baths and washing in basins all of gold; and had shoals of little scented sachets placed between her linen and in the clothes she wore, violets being her favourite perfume.

In the April after the Italian campaign the two were at Amboise Castle, Charles, it is said, having grown from an irresponsible youth into a ruler actuated by definite tenderness for his people. And then a tragic thing happened. On the Saturday before Easter some of the household were playing tennis in the courtyard. Anne and Charles went to watch them play, but in passing through a corridor known as the _Galerie Hacquelebac_--about to be pulled down--Charles hit his head against the low frame of a doorway. The accident seemed trivial, and for some time he watched the players as if unaffected by it; but suddenly, in the middle of a phrase, he dropped mysteriously to the ground. Placed upon a mattress, he lingered until the evening, and died at eleven o'clock at night. He was then twenty-eight, and Anne, struck brusquely from placid trivialities to the supreme incident of existence, was twenty-four.

Louis of Orleans had become King of France. Anne, huddled in a darkened room at Amboise, cried for hours without ceasing. She sat forlornly on the floor, and knew the uselessness of wordy consolations. Charles had been good to her; the future would have been full of pleasant habits. Now he was dead, and there remained nobody whose interests and hers were identical. Many would be brazenly glad that she was cast down. She who yesterday had been Queen of France, was now nobody--a widow--whose crown, that salient, exalting possession, belonged to the wife of Louis. True, she was still Duchess of Brittany, but she had suffered sufficient baneful experience to know that they would soon try and wrench that honour from her also.

No efforts could appease her grief. A contemporary nobleman, writing to his wife four days after Charles's death, remarked, "The queen still continues the same mourning, and they cannot pacify her." How could they, when all that she craved had been subtracted from her life? For days she crouched upon the floor of a black-draped room, desolately rebellious against the stupid harshness of life. Hour after hour she moaned, and cried, and wrung her hands. Nevertheless, for all her stricken gestures, her brain worked well enough. She began to write letters the day after Charles's death, and as soon as she had at last been induced to eat, she signed an order to re-establish the Chancellorship of Brittany. Courage and intelligence continued intact for all the abasement of her attitude. She wept, but as she wept she thought out practical behaviour for the future.

At the same time, there is no doubt that she was genuinely disturbed and disconsolate. When, after some days, they brought her the usual charming white of royal widows, her pitiable and comfortless thoughts mutinied instinctively against its serenity and calm. She would not wear it: black was the only hue that could meet the blackness of her life--white revolted her as an equal offence and mockery. With a dogged insistence upon the hurt that tortured her, she set an undesirable fashion, and through a tumultuous intolerance of pain did away with an old prettiness of custom.

Three days after her widowhood her old friend the new king called to express condolence. Anne still repined in her darkened chamber. The only light that fell upon her came from two great candles. She had not risen when a bishop came to offer consolation, but she probably did so now, and made a grudging obeisance to the man who had suddenly climbed above her.