children who some day would grow up and | summary settlements of political differwould signally avenge it. ences has passed away, and the meeting This bravery, far from angering the never takes place. Nevertheless, Robertgloomy and austere Charles, fascinated, son dates the rising of duelling, which enamored him. He softened the rigors of was carried to such terrible excesses durhis captive's imprisonment, made love, but ing the remainder of the sixteenth and the without result, to the fair pleader, and greater portion of the seventeenth cenwould have married her could he have won tury, from the countenance which this her consent. Yet, nevertheless he became | kingly indiscretion gave to such encounmore moderate in his terms, moved thereto also by the alliance of England with France, and the growing jealousy of Europe of his power. Yet let us not rob sweet Marguerite of her meed, for she did more to effect her brother's liberation than all other causes.

ters.*

The sufferings he endured both in body and mind during his Spanish captivity seem to have blighted all Francis's great powers, to have extinguished his fire and energy, and, above all, that self-confidence so indispensable to success. Thereafter we find him continually violating the most solemn treaties and obligations; eternally warring against the empire, but irresolutely, shiftily, blunderingly, and quite overshadowed by the ever-expanding genius of his great rival.

But let us leave these miserable wars, minute accounts of which may be found in any history, and return to that inner life of the court wherein lay all the springs of action. The queen-mother had conquered her old rival in the king's confidence, the Comtesse de Châteaubriand † whose empire was lost from the time of his captivity by providing another sultana for her son's pleasure, in the person of Anne de Pisseleu, one of her maids of honor. This lady, grateful to her patroness, was content to leave politics to her greater wisdom, and to rule only the pleasures of her royal lover. She loved splendor of all kinds, she loved poetry and poets, paintings and painters, she loved the society of

On January 14, 1526, after nearly one year's captivity, Francis signed the treaty of Madrid, whereby he gave up the Duchy of Burgundy to Charles, renounced all claims upon Italy, promised to restore the constable to his estates and honors, marry the emperor's sister, Eleanor of Portugal, etc., etc., and his two sons were to be given up as hostages for the fulfilment of the conditions. Before putting his hand to the document, he secretly, in the presence of his councillors, made a solemn protest against it as wrung from him by tyrannous and foul means, and as such it should be considered null and void. It was but a specimen of the political conscience of the day, but nevertheless it is the barrier which divides the chivalrous king of his youth from the debauché and tyrant of his age. The sages of Europe, however, never believed he intended to observe such stipulations, after the cruel and ungenerous treatment he had received, and they were right. Now came "the holy league" of France, England, Venice, Florence, Milan and the pope who had absolved Francis from his oath -the success of the imperialists, the sack of Rome, the death of the constable, the rout of the French army before Naples, mutual exhaustion on both sides, and the treaty of Cambray, wherein Francis paid two mil-spoken of, brought her to court by a stratagem. She lion crowns for the ransom of his sons, renounced all sovereign rights over Flanders and Artois, and all Italian claims, while Charles on his part ceded his pretensions to Burgundy. Once more during these events we hear the fierce voice of the Middle Ages rising from the tomb. Charles, by his ambassador, denounces the French king as a base violator of the public faith and a stranger to honor and integrity; upon which Francis by his herald, gives the emperor the lie and challenges him to single combat. Charles accepts the defiance; but the age for such

It must be borne in mind that the single combats of the Middle Ages were sanctioned by law, were solemn appeals to the god of justice, and totally differed from the private duel.

†The following romantic and tragic story is told by one of the old chroniclers concerning this lady. The Comte de Châteaubriand, not desiring that his wife should be seen at court, kept her a captive in an old château in Brittany. Francis, who had heard her appeared at Amboise, and everybody was dazzled by her beauty. The king no sooner beheld her than he was fascinated. But on his return from Spain he had countess, unable to endure this disgrace, returned to forgotten her in the attraction of other beauties. The her husband, who since her flight had shut himself up again made her a prisoner in a chamber hung with in his château. No sooner did she return than he black; he permitted her to see no one except her daughter, a child seven years old. Soon afterwards this child died, and from that hour the count gave himself up to thoughts of vengeance. One day six men masked and two surgeons entered her chamber, seized her, opened her veins, and then left her to expire. in those days; but Brantôme, who gives numerous instances of such in his "Dames Galantes," makes no mention of this, and even mentions the countess as being at court after the date assigned to her murder. The story, however, has been generally received.

Such marital executions were commou occurrences

the learned, and inclined towards the Prot- | rounded by a variety of fishes of different estants. Francis married her to Jean de species, and other sea animals. The undulaBrosse, one of the accomplices of Bour- tion of the water was properly exhibited, and bon, who by this marriage got back his likewise enamelled with its true colors. The forfeited estates and a duchy into the bar- earth I represented by a beautiful female figgain, on condition he never claimed his ure, holding a cornucopia in her hand, entirely wife and kept away from her. It is the she held a little temple, the architecture of the naked, like the male figure; in her left hand first example of those mock nuptials which Ionic order, and the workmanship very nice; the fourteenth and fifteenth Louis carried this was to put pepper in. Under this female to such perfection. Truly this Francis figure I exhibited most of the finest animals was a wonderful hand at inventions. which the earth produces, and the rocks I What a debt of gratitude succeeding kings partly enamelled and partly left in gold. I owed him! So Mademoiselle de Pisseleu then fixed the work on a base of black ebony became Duchess d'Etampes. of a proper thickness; and then I placed four The old life of fêtes was by no means intended to represent Morning, Noon, Evenfigures in more than mezzo-relievo; these were interrupted by the costly and desolating ing, and Night. There were also four other wars; the troops were unpaid, the treas-figures of the four winds, of the same size, the ury drained, but there was always money workmanship and enamel of which were eleforthcoming for splendors and pleasures. gant to the last degree.

In

The Chateau d'Amboise became too small
to contain the ever-swelling court.
the depths of a wild forest was an ancient
dwelling that had been occasionally used
by the kings of France as far back as the
twelfth century. This was Fontainebleau,
and this was the spot chosen by Francis
for his new palace. The old Gothic build-
ing was demolished, and with it an adja-
cent monastery and seventeen houses;
and upon the ground they had covered,
under the superintendence of an Italian
architect, and by the hands of a host of
Italian, Flemish, and French workmen,
arose a gorgeous pile of the Renaissance.
Italy was ransacked for painters, sculptors,
and decorators of all kinds to adorn the
new palace, and among them came the
great Benvenuto Cellini. It was here he
executed some of his most beautiful works,
his great silver statues of Jupiter, Vulcan,
and Mars, and that gold salt-cellar of which
he has left so wonderful a description in
his memoirs that it is worth transcribing
to give an idea of the works executed for

this court:

It was of an oval figure, and in size about two-thirds of a cubit, being entirely of gold, and admirably engraved by the chisel. had represented the sea and the earth both in a sitting posture, the legs of one placed between those of the other, as certain arms of the sea enter the land, and certain necks of the land

jut into the sea. I put a trident into the right

hand of the figure that represented the sea, and in the left a bark of exquisite workmanship, which was to hold the salt: under this figure were its four sea-horses, the form of which, in the breast and fore feet, resembled that of a horse, and all the hind part from the middle that of a fish; the fishes' tails were entwined with each other in a manner very pleasing to the eye, and the whole group was placed in a striking attitude. This figure was sur

He also invented exquisite models for the gates and fountains, which, however, were never executed, full descriptions of which are contained in his memoirs.

But the great Florentine, who was independent and somewhat rough in manner, offended the Duchess d'Etampes by not inviting her with the king to see these models, and from that time she gave all her favor to Rosso and Primataccio, rival artists. To appease her he wrought a golden cup of exquisite workmanship, and carrying it to her lodgings begged her waiting-woman to procure him an interview.

Upon acquainting her lady with my arrival, and the present I had brought [to again quote Cellini's "Memoirs "] the latter answered disdainfully, "to tell him to wait." Hearing this, I armed myself with patience, and continued in suspense till she was going to dinner. Perceiving that it grew late, hunger provoked me to such a degree that, unable to resist its curse, and going directly to the Cardinal Lorcravings any longer, I gave the lady a hearty raine, made him a present of the cup, begging him to stand my friend with the king, and prevent me from being deprived of his good

graces.

Cellini soon became disgusted with the treatment he received and went back to Italy, leaving the ornamentation of the palace to Rosso and Primataccio, artists infinitely inferior to himself.

Quand verrons-nous quelque tournoi nouveau ?
Quand verrons-nous par tout Fontainebleau
De chambre en chambre aller les mascarades?
Quand ouïrons-nous, au matin, les aubades
De divers luths mariés à voix ?
Et les cornets, les fifres, les hautbois,
Les tabourins, violons, épinettes,
Sonner ensemble avecques les trompettes ?
Quand verrons-nous comme balles voler
Par artifice un grand feu dedans l'air?

These fetes formed the models of those suppposed to have been invented a century afterwards by le grand monarque. In reading a description of the festivities which welcomed a visit of Charles the Fifth we find the original of those fantastic devices given in honor of La Vallière. When the emperor entered the forest of Fontainebleau there suddenly sprang forth from every bush and covert crowds of heathen gods and goddesses, fauns, satyrs, dryads, hamadryads, naiads, who danced around him to the sound of hautbois. Then there were masquerades in which the dancers appeared in the guise of wild beasts, vultures, eagles, griffins, and seamonsters. In all this we find a strange jumble of the old and the new, of the Gothic and neo-classic.

So, regretfully, wrote Ronsard when all | Italian artists were in his pay. It was this magnificence had passed away. fortunate for the intellectual growth of France that she was governed at this period by such a prince, one who suffered himself to be carried forward on the crest of the great tidal wave of civilization, and did not sink beneath it; he was a worthy contemporary of Pope Leo, those two Sovereigns alone,- for the brutal Tudor was too deeply sunk in sensualism, the bigot Charles in blood and fanaticism, to give any help to the great work, those two alone brought the Renaissance to perfection. Those who would study and understand this epoch, must turn to the pages of Rabelais, for there they will find its every aspect reflected as in a mirror: its grossness and licentiousness; its intellectual vigor, too frequently degenerating, however, into the verbosities and hairsplitting pedantries of the schools; its. Another novelty of the reign of Francis strange incongruities, the result of the the First, which vastly influenced the soci- great upheaval of ideas; its scepticism ety of his posterity, was the introduction and superstition, the product of effete of churchmen to court. Before this bish- forms of religion. Spite of the desolating ops and abbots had resided in their bish-wars that cast a shadow upon this reign, oprics and abbeys, scarcely acknowledging it wears an aspect of unclouded brilliance, any other authority than that of the pope. of Arcadian peacefulness, when contrastBut the concordat changed all that. Bene-ed with the darkness that followed, the fices were no longer confined to those in holy orders, and abbeys and priories were indiscriminately bestowed upon men of all conditions whom the king wished to reward. This brought the first public corruption into the Church. "Not that I have heard say," writes Brantôme, "nor read that before there were more good people or better livers, for in their bishoprics and abbeys they were as debauched as the military." Rabelais, who ought to have known, was decidedly of the same opinion.

Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne, who had Rabelais for secretary, was one of the gayest of ecclesiastics, the favorite of princesses and all the ladies of the court; he visited England, and was one of the most assiduous gallants in the train of Anne Boleyn, one of the most skilful hunters in the forest of Windsor. In 1536, Francis confided to him the defence of Paris and the lieutenant-generalship of Champagne and Picardy, and he fulfilled his trust right well. There were several such prelates in this court.

Francis was a munificent patron of art and literature, but it is possible that ostententation had as much to do as taste with this predilection. He would have gathered all the genius of the world at Fontainebleau. Leonardo da Vinci died in his arms, and some of the greatest of the

horrors of that war of creeds that raged with unmitigated ferocity during the remainder of the century, paralyzing all intellectual growth, transforming men to worse than wolves and tigers, for God has created no brute so frightful as the bigot, be he Catholic or Protestant.

Towards the close of this reign, we hear the first mutterings of the storm. Francis vacillated for some time between the two religions; he was drawn towards the reform by his sister Marguerite. But the prejudices of the nobles and the mass of the people, the ties he had formed with the Médici, the example of nearly all Europe, made up an overwhelming counterpoise in favor of the elder creed. Had the question come before him more prominently in his earlier days, he might have decided otherwise, but his once daring energy was gone, exhausted by reverses of fortune and by that horrible disease which for ten years slowly ate away body and mind. The first persecutions were brought about by the offensive zeal of certain Protestants, who affixed opprobrious reflections upon the Catholic faith against the church-doors. They courted their doom, it was a terrible one- -the stake. The massacre of the Vaudois, however, was a horrible act, which casts an eternal stain upon this king's name. Nevertheless we have many instances of

his toleration; he saved Louis Berquin, | Finding herself without friends, and the one of the most learned men of the age, king's dissolution approaching, she entered and a Protestant, from the flames, although into a clandestine correspondence with the the parliament had doomed him; and, emperor, and even betrayed to him the among others, he protected Clement Marot secrets of the State. Francis knew he and Rabelais, both enemies to the Cath- had a traitor about him, suspected his olic Church. queen, every one except the Duchess. But she gained nothing by her perfidy; after his death she sank into such obscurity that not even the date of her demise is known.

The last ten years of his life present a melancholy spectacle of decaying vigor. Upon the death of his mother and the departure of his sister for Navarre, her marriage was said to have been insisted upon by the favorite, who was jealous of her power, the Duchess d'Etampes held undisputed empire. But not to be envied, but rather to be pitied, was she, spite of her brilliant position, as companion, minister of pleasure, and nurse to this king, grown loathsome, and morose, and tyrannous in temper. In 1536, the Dauphin, Francis, a strange, melancholy, abstemious youth, died, poisoned by some water he had drunk after playing a game of tennis. Several persons were arrested, and put to the torture; the deed was reported to have been committed by agents of the emperor, but the uselessness of such a crime, which could have been instigated only by a desire to disturb the succession, the king having two other sons, quite exonerates him. The probabilities are, that it was brought about by Catherine de Médicis; she hated the prince as the obstacle which stood between her and the crown; she was jealous of his popularity, and she was well known to be on terms of close intimacy with those most deeply suspected of the deed. In fine, she and her husband were the only persons who could possibly profit by it.

Nine years afterwards, he lost his third and favorite son, Charles Duc d'Orleans, who, in his rash and chivalrous spirit, most resembled himself, and who forfeited his life by an act of stupid bravado. The plague had suddenly appeared in the camp; everybody was in consternation. To show his fearlessness, he went and lay upon the beds whence they had just removed the plague-stricken corpses. Immediately afterwards the symptoms of the disease appeared in him. He died the victim of his own folly.

During the last years, the Duchess d'Etampes, especially after the death of Louise de Savoie, the queen-mother, plunged deeply into political intrigues.

There was one loving heart, through those years of sickness, that wept and prayed for the dying king-his sister Marguerite. She had long since become the wife of the discrowned king, Henri d'Albret, and made her little court at Navarre the home of poets and artists and learned men; it was also a refuge for the persecuted Protestants she herself was accused of heresy because in a book of hers entitled "Le Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse," she "had not spoken of saints and purgatory"! In such sweet companionship, and in the exercise of her own rare abilities, she might have been happy but for the ever-approaching death of her beloved brother.

Whoever will come to my gate [said Marguerite] to announce the cure of the king my brother, such a courier, be he weary, worn out, covered with mire and all unfit, I will kiss and throw my arms around his neck as the most proper prince and gentleman of France, and should he be without a bed, and not able to find one to rest upon, I would give him mine, and sleep rather upon the ground for such good news as he would bring me.

The fatal moment came at the beginning of the year 1547. Francis was but fiftythree years of age, but for the last ten years of his life he had been regarded as an old man.

Little can be added to what I have already pictured of the character of this monarch. He was a representative min of the age in which he lived, and was imbued with all its virtues and all its vices: frank, chivalrous, generous, a lover of arts and letters; politically false, ungrateful, lascivious, and sensual. Had he not been rivalled by the superior genius of Charles the Fifth, he might in all things have anticipated Louis the Fourteenth, as he did in so many. Yet, take him for all in all, there are few kings of France I should be disposed to place before him.