Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 14
THE HEPTAMERON.—II.
I have not yet noticed the claim of Charles Nodier to give the Heptameron to Bonaventure Desperriers. For, indeed, I believe this claim has very few supporters, and that it would be impossible to prove its justice. On the other side, on the side of Margaret, is ranked all past tradition, all modern authority. Brantôme, whose grandmother held the ink-horn for the Queen; Claude Gruget, who copied the unfinished text and gave the Heptameron, written for the Court, to the world at large; and in modern days Michelet Génin, the bibliophile Jacob, Monsieur Roux de Lincy, with all Margaret's historians and editors, affirm the book to be written by her hand. Miss Freer, to whom Margaret's Heptameron appears
The first fleck's fall on her wonder of white,
would gladly accept the theory of Nodier; but, with the best will in the world, she cannot be convinced. Indeed, he has a hard case to prove. Desperriers left so very little authentic work behind him that the argument of similarity of style goes for almost nothing. We know less of Desperrier's style than of Margaret's, and the style of the Heptameron is a woman's style. We have absolutely no direct evidence that Desperriers had any share in the book. He was a valet de chambre to the Queen of Navarre; but so were most of the men of letters of his age. The untrustworthy testimony of the Abbé Goujet, who relates that Bonaventure Desperriers helped the Queen in her novels and her poems, is all that Nodier can find to support him. He is too shrewd to believe that Desperriers, an avowed atheist, and of a fanatic scepticism, had a hand in the mystical rhodomontade of Les Marguerites de la Marguerite. But he is, in truth, scarcely better justified in attributing the Heptameron to an unbeliever. The bursts of Lutheran eloquence, the tendency to round off all discussion with a text, the tone of somewhat unctuous, mystical piety—all these are eminently characteristic of Margaret. They could scarcely be considered likely attributes of "le joyeux Bonaventure."
Dismissing, then, this theory of Nodier's, let us consider the merits of the Heptameron itself. To-day it is scarcely a work that one would choose to read from end to end for pleasure. This is not only on account of its grossness; for it is infinitely less indecent than many works of the Sixteenth Century which are certainly well read at present. Putting aside such writers as Brantôme, Rabelais, or Bandello, it is less coarse than much of Shakespeare. But, on reading this book, one becomes poignantly aware that it falls short, not only of our standard of decency, but of our idea of pathos, of humour, of interest. There is none of the genius which sees the human being and not the apparel; none of the passion, the poetry, the wide and human wisdom, which have saved greater writers for the pleasures of an altered age. Its virtues, as well as its faults, are merely of the time, and not particular, and it is well that the Heptameron should be merely the delight of students and the treasure of antiquarians.
There is, to begin with, but one truly pathetic situation in the book. It is in the second novel, where the Queen's muleteer, returning from Amboise, sees, stretched across the doorway of his house, a bier, with the white-covered corpse of the wife whom he left well and safe two days ago, and who has been foully outraged, since then, and murdered. Singularly little is made of this poignant moment. What interested Margaret and her courtly readers is no longer interesting to the taste of to-day, at once much simpler and far more subtle. Yet, not to be unfair to a very famous book, I have translated two extremely characteristic stories; and, as the conversations in between the novels are by far the liveliest and most vigorous part of the Heptameron, I have chosen two that follow each other.
Novel LXIV.
A gentleman, disdained in marriage, enters a monastery, wherefore his lady does as much for him.
In the town of Valencia there lived a gentleman who, during five or six years, had loved a lady so perfectly that neither of them was hurt in honour nor in conscience thereby; for his intention was to make her his wife—and reasonably enough, as he was handsome, rich, and of a noble house, and he had not placed himself at her service without first making known his desire to arrange a marriage with the good will of her friends; and these, being assembled for that purpose, found the match in every way fitting, if the girl herself should be of their mind. But she, either hoping to find a better, or wishing to hide the love she had for the youth, discovered an obstacle; so the company was broken up, not without regretting that she could not give the affair a better ending, seeing that on both sides the match was good. But, above all assembled, the poor gentleman was wroth, who could have borne his misfortune patiently had he believed the fault to lie with her friends and not with her; but, knowing the truth (to believe which was more bitter than death), he returned home, without a word to his lady-love or to any other there; and, having put some order in his affairs, he went away into a desolate place, where he sought with pains and trouble to forget this affection, and to turn it wholly to the love of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, to which affection he was, without comparison, the more obliged. And during this time he never heard either from his lady or from her friends; therefore he resolved, having failed in the happiest life he could have hoped, to take and choose the most austere and disagreeable; and, full of this sad thought, which one might call despair, he went to become a monk at a Franciscan monastery, close to which lived several of his friends. These, having heard of his despair, made every effort to hinder his resolve; but so firmly was it rooted in his heart, they could not turn him from it. Nevertheless, knowing his ailment, they thought to find the medicine, and went to her who was the cause of his sudden devotion, finding her much bewildered and astonished at their news, for she had meant her refusal, which was but for a time, to test the true love of her lover, and not to lose it for ever; and, seeing the evident danger of this, she sent him an epistle, which, rudely rendered, runs as follow:—
"Because, unless it well be proven, Love
For strong and loyal no one can approve,
I wished to wait till proven to my mind
Was that I longed so ardently to find.
A husband full of perfect love it was
That I desired, a love that would not pass;
And so I begged my parents not to haste,
Still to delay, let one year, two years, waste
Before I played the game that must endure
Till death, which many a one repents, for sure.
I never said I would not have your love;
So great I loss I was not dreaming of,
For, certes, none but you I loved at all—
None other would I lord and husband call.
Ah me! my love; what bitterness to say,
That thou without a word art gone away!
A narrow cell, in convent life austere—
These are your choice; O misery to hear!
Now must I change my office, pleading so,
As once in guileless words you used to do—
Requiring that which was of me required,
Acquiring him by whom I was acquired.
Nay, now, my love, life of the life of me,
I do not care to live bereft of thee.
Ah! turn again thy distant eyes to mine;
Turn on thy steps, if so thy will incline.
Leave thou the cowl of grey, the life austere;
All of my love and all my heart are here,
By thee so many times, so much desired.
Time hath not changed my heart—it hath not tired.
For thee, for thee alone, I keep my heart,
And that must break if thou must keep apart.
Come, then, again, return; believe thy Dear;
Consider in thy mind how many a year
We might be happy, joined in holy marriage;
And me believe, and not thy cruel courage.
Be sure I never meant to say or do
A word to wound, I deed to make thee rue.
I meant to make you happy, Dear, enough,
When I had full assurance of your love.
And now, indeed, my heart is fixed and sure;
Thy firmness, faith and patience to endure,
And, over all, thy love, I know and see,
And they have gained me wholly, Dear, to thee.
Come, now, and take the thing that is thine own,
For thine am I, and thou be mine alone."
This letter, carried by one of his friends, along with all possible remonstrance, was received by the gentleman Franciscan with a very mournful countenance, and with so many sighs and tears, it seemed as though he meant to burn or drown the poor little letter; but he made no answer to it, telling the messenger that the mortification of his extreme passion had cost him so dear that now he neither cared to live nor feared to die; wherefore he begged her who had been the occasion of his grief, since she had not chosen to content the passion of his great desires, not to torment him now that he was quit of them, but to content herself with the evil done, for which he could find no other remedy than the choice of this rude life, whose continual penance put his sorrow out of mind, and, by fasts and discipline, enfeebled his body so that the remembrance of Death had become his sovereign consolation; and, above all, he prayed her never to let him hear any news of her, for even the memory of her name had become an insupportable purgatory to him. The gentleman returned with this mouthful answer, delivering it to her, who could not hear it without incredible regret. But Love, which lets not the spirit fail until it is in extremity, put it into her fancy that, if she could only see him, the sight of her and the voice of her would have more force than writing. Wherefore, accompanied by her father and the nearest of her kin, she set out for the monastery where he dwelt, having left nothing in her tire-closet that could heighten the aspect of her beauty; and sure she felt that, if he could but see her once and hear her speak, it would be impossible that the flame, so long continued in their hearts, should not light up again, and stronger than before. Therefore, entering the monastery about the end of Vespers, she had him called to a chapel in the cloisters. He, who knew not who was asking for him, went to fight the hardest battle he had ever fought. And when she saw him, all pale and undone, so that she scarcely knew him again, yet filled none the less with a grace no less amiable than before, then Love constrained her to stretch out her arms, thinking to embrace him; but the pity of seeing him in such a state sent such a sudden weakness to her heart that she fell down fainting. Then the poor monk, who was not destitute of brotherly charity, lifted her up and sate her on a seat there was in the chapel. And he himself, who no less needed succour, made as if he felt no passion, strengthening his heart in the love of his God against the opportunity that tempted him, so that he seemed, from his countenance, to ignore that which he saw. She, coming to life again, turned on him her eye, that were so beautiful and piteous they would have softened stone, and began to tell him all the thoughts she had to draw him from that place; to which he answered in the most virtuous manner that he could. But in the end the poor monk, feeling his heart melt before the abundant tears of his darling (as one who sees Love, the cruel archer, whose wound he has long suffered from, make ready his golden arrow to strike him in a fresh and mortal part), even so he fled away from Love and his Beloved, as though the only force left to him lay in flight. And being shut in his chamber, not wishing to let her go without some resolution taken, he wrote to her a few words in Spanish, which I have found so excellent in substance that I have not chosen to diminish their grace by any rendering of mine; and these words he sent to her by a little novice, who found her still in the chapel, in such despair that, had it been lawful for her to take the veil in that monastery, she would have stayed. But, on seeing the writing, which said, "Volvete don venísti, anima mi, que en las tristas vidas es la mia," she, knowing by these words that all her hopes had failed, determined to believe the counsel of him and of her friends, and returned to her own home, to lead there as melancholy a life as her lover spent austerer in his monastery.
"Thus you see, ladies, the vengeance this gentleman took on his hard-hearted love, who, thinking to make an experiment of his truth, drove him to despair, in such a manner that, when she would, she could not have him again."
"I am sorry," said Nomerfide, "that he did not doff his cowl to go and marry her, for then, methinks, there would have been a perfect marriage."
"Of a truth," said Simontault, "I think he was very wise; for who has well considered the marriage state will not esteem it less vexatious than an austere devotion, and he, so greatly weakened by fasts and abstinences, feared to take upon him such a life-long burden."
"It seems to me," said Hircan, "she did very wrong to so weak a man in trying to tempt him with marriage: that is too much for the strongest man in the world. But had she only spoken of love and friendship, with no other bondage than that of will, there is no cord would not have been broken nor knot untied; yet, seeing that for escape from purgatory she offered him Hell, I think he had good reason to refuse."
"I' faith," said Émarsuitte, "there are many who, intending to do better than others, do worse, or, at least, the very reverse of what they would."
"Truly," said Guebron, "you put me in mind, à propos of nothing, of one who did the opposite of her intention, and therefrom came a great tumult in the Church of St. John of Lyons."
"Prithee, then," said Parlamente, "take my place and tell us the tale."
"My tale," said Guebron, "will neither be so long nor so piteous as that of Parlamente."
Novel LXV.
In the Church of St. John of Lyons there was a very dark chapel, and within it a stone sepulchre, carved in high relief with images as large as life, and all round the sepulchre the likeness of many men-at-arms lay as if asleep. A soldier, strolling one day about the church during the great heat of summer, felt drowsy with the warmth, and, looking at the dark, cool chapel, he thought he would go to the sepulchre and sleep there among the other men-at-arms; and so he lay down beside the images. Now, it happened that a good old woman, very pious, came to the chapel as he lay fast asleep; and, after she had said her prayers, holding a candle in her hand, she meant to fix it against the sepulchre; and, finding nearest her the sleeping man, she would have stuck it to his forehead, behaving him a stone image; but against this stone the wax would not hold. The good woman, thinking it was because the image was so chill, held the flame against his brow to make it warm enough for her candle to stick there; but the image, which was not insensible, began to call out; at which the woman, nearly out of her mind with fear, took to crying, "A miracle! a miracle!" and so loud that all who were in the church began to run, some to ring the bells and some to see the miracle. And the good woman led them to see the image which had moved, which gave occasion for laughter to many present; but several priests could not content themselves so easily, for they had hoped in their hearts to turn this sepulchre to good account and make money out of it.
"Look you, therefore, ladies, to what saints you give your candles."
"'Tis a great thing to know," said Hircan, "that, whatever they set about, women always must do wrong."
"Is it doing wrong," said Nomerfide, "to carry candles to a sepulchre?"
"Yes," said Hircan, "when they set fire to men's foreheads; for no good thing can call itself good when it is done badly. Fancy! the poor woman thought she was making God a fine present of her little candle!"
"God does not regard," said Oisille, "the value of a gift, but the heart that gives it. It may be this good woman had more love for God than those who give him their great torches, for, as the Scripture says, she hath cast in of her need, even all her substance."
"Yet I will not believe," said Saffredant, "that God, Who is sovereign wisdom, can take pleasure in the foolishness of women; for, let simplicity please Him as it will, I see in the Scripture He makes no account of the ignorant; and, if He commands us to be simple as the dove, He commands no less the wisdom of the serpent."
"As for me," said Oisille, "I esteem her not ignorant who carries to God her candle or lighted taper, carrying it as one who recants her sin, kneeling on the ground, torch in hand, before her Sovereign Saviour, to Whom, confessing her damnation, she appeals in a sure hope for mercy and salvation."
"Would to God," said Dagoucin, "that everyone understood the matter as well as you! But I believe these poor simpletons have no such meaning in their deeds."
Oisille answered him, "Those who least know how to tell it are often these who feel the must the Love of God and of His Will; wherefore we should judge no one but ourself."
Émarsuitte, in laughing, added, "It is not so strange a thing to have frighted a sleeping clown; for women as low-born as she have made great princes afraid, and without setting fire to their foreheads."
"I am sure," said Dagoucin, "that you know some story you will tell us; wherefore you will take my place, if you please."
"The story will not be long," said Émarsuitte; "but, if I can tell it as it happened, you will have no need to weep about it."
The first of these stories gives a good idea of the romantic side of the Heptameron; all the pathetic tales are much the same. It is impossible, to-day, to care for Florinde and Amadour: for all the various true lovers, who see each other, fall in raptures, are parted, and retire each to a separate monastery. This is Margaret's stock idea of the heartrending; and the people of the Heptameron cherish this ideal of pathos (as perhaps the ideal is always cherished) in defiance of the conduct of actual life. Not one of them would allow a daughter to marry for love. "You may say what you will," says Oisille; "none the less we must recognise paternal authority; for, if people married at pleasure, what unhappy marriages would there not be! Is it to be expected that a young man and a girl from twelve to fifteen years of age can understand what is really their good? And, if you consider, those who have married for love come off far worse, as a rule, than those who are married by force; for young men, not knowing what is fit for them, take the first they find, without consideration; then they discover their error, and go from bad to worse; whereas a forced marriage is generally made by those who have more judgment and experience than those whom it chiefly concerns; so that when these discover all the benefits they did not understand, they savour and embrace these with the greater affection." Thus discourses Oisille, in dialogue with her companions, thinking, no doubt, a little bitterly of the rebellious conduct of Mademoiselle d'Albret. And this is the real opinion of the whole society. But let any one of them begin on a pathetic tale, and we shall have the old puppets, the sentimental youth, the heartbroken young lady; and the whole company will melt into tears for a suffering which, safely off the stage of the ideal, would elicit only their anger or their contempt. But we, of a later generation, listen with cheeks unwet. This artificiality grates upon us. These broken hearts are all too much alike.
When the story takes a humorous turn, new difficulties arise. Queen Margaret certainly shows more spirit and vigour in this direction; her satire is often shrewd; she has a certain enjoyment of life, of pleasure, of adventure, and even of grossness, which is at all events better than the pointless pretence of her pathos. It at least is real; and it is very characteristic of her, of her nation, and of her time. It has a certain historical value, this free, loose, reckless gaiety of hers. And though there is, intrinsically, little humour in it, there is much humour in the reader's mind who notes the odd conjunction of this Rabelaisian fancy with the mystical piety of Oisille. It gives his imagination a certain humorous shock to realise that these moods are perfectly compatible with each other.
But the real value of the Heptameron lies in a certain direct actuality in the description of life and of manners in such a town as Alençon or Amboise at that period. We can frame a fair idea of the relative position of classes, of the all-pervading wealth and comfort, the great amount of time given to idleness and pleasure, and also of the thousand sad incongruities which France presented then. In this sense the Heptameron is really interesting. We rummage among its out-dated gallantry and strangely-fashioned piety, and forgotten in the medley, we find a handful of the life of the past. We feel it in our hands, as we had never hoped to feel it; and for its sake we pardon a multitude of sins.
A great many details, quite absurd and trivial, which the Queen merely introduced because they really happened, surprise and delight us. From the very first novel of all we seem plunged in a strange world of contrasts; a world of beautiful light—minded ladies, who spend their time in broidering red silk counterpanes, in reading La Belle Dame sans Merci, in devising interviews with their lovers, or in visiting the magician of the town to watch the wasting of wax effigies of those whom they would slay. Galléry was this wizard's name. It gives us a little shock to meet him in such modern and cultured society; but we find stranger flaws in this sumptuous civilisation. Torture is still used in the civic trials of Alençon, where the Duke has absolute power of life and death, like any Duke in Shakespeare's plays. Ten crowns is the proper wage for a hired assassin; and we are delighted to know the exact amount that we should pay him. Sanctuary is still given in palaces and churches; and the orthodox way to secure the ends of justice is by starving out the refugees. All this seems out of date beside the general spread of wealth and comfort. Even among the lower bourgeoisie, servants are to be found in every house: engaged by the quarter, not by the year as in England. There is abundance of rich tapestries; in the humblest households the beds, even of the servants, are finely curtained; and the lit d'honneur is large enough to hold four or five persons. It is still considered a mark of esteem to invite a distinguished guest to share the couch of the host and hostess. Yet, in other respects, there is no lack of privacy. The wives of the small burghers—of the clerks, the shopkeepers, the advocates—have dressing-rooms and parlours. Their houses have large gardens and orchards. There is plenty of room. There is, also, plenty of money. When the clerk's son goes to woo the draper's daughter, he and his mother make a great purchase of thick silks, choosing everything they like ("for, as for money, you know how little in need of that sort of drug these shopkeepers are"). The women dress in fine taffetas, in silks, even in velvet, "which once was only worn by women of good family." There is no dearth of good cheer, of comfort, even of luxury among these people, who may, none the less, be burned for heresy or witchcraft, or racked to death if they offend the law. The chief blot on this rich diffusion of wealth is the corruption of the clergy. The confessor, if all tales be true, is a real danger in every household. The convents and monasteries offered more serious perils to innocent youth than even the thoughtless world outside. Meanwhile society went smoothly on; deriving, perhaps, some satisfaction from the shortcomings of its spiritual pastors. It was a merry world, my Masters; but corrupt at the heart all the same.
The corruption, of course, is especially in evidence in the book before us; for it was Margaret's object to expose the radical dangers of a celibate priesthood, the worldliness of a Church avowedly malcontent with merely spiritual power, and the gross ignorances which the popularity of the begging friars had introduced even into the pulpit and the confessional. Margaret had it greatly at heart to reform the Catholic Church; and of course the need of reform is emphasized in her novels. But the sense of general well-being and good humour, of life and vigour and wealth, of a rising and influential bourgeoisie, these signs of prosperity are quite intrinsic, quite natural and unconsidered. Immoral, lax, irreligious as it is, this world of the Heptameron compares favourably enough with the world of the Italian novelists, full of wars, plague, cruelty, and unnatural vices; although infinitely less pure, it has superior points to the world of Cervantes's Novelas, with its violent contrasts of squalid beggars and merchants from the Indies, fabulously rich, with its gold-fever in the air, its epidemic of vagabondage, its national blight of jealousy and slavery and persecution. It is still the world of Gargantua; although at the solemn Court of the Dauphin a more decorous world is already taking shape—the orthodox world of Tartuffe.
This actuality is the true salt of the Heptameron. It is a document which instructs one in the life of France at that time; in the characters also of the rulers of France. Here one meets the King as he was in life: light-minded, chivalric in battle, picturesquely magnanimous to the traitor who would have murdered him, a traitor himself to the advocate who would have served him. Free-liver and free-lover as he was, free-thinker almost (worst crime of all), one sees in the Heptameron the dashing, effective qualities which secured to Francis the devotion of his subjects and the admiration of the world. Impetuous, impulsive, heroic at a pinch, the very qualities which made him an unsteady ruler made him a prince to adore. His reckless battles, his sudden determinations (one day for Luther, the next for the Inquisition; one day the friend of the Pope, the next of Soliman), his worship of beauty and pleasure, his public magnificence, his affable splendour, even his misfortunes, combined to give a most picturesque light and shade to his character. One can understand his popularity in a time when patriotism merely meant devotion to the Prince, in a time when the country was content to be the property of the ruler. For the Francis of the Heptameron has many popular qualities: he is brave, gallant, magnanimous, and cheerful.
But if the Heptameron instructs one in the character of Francis, far more striking is the portrait which it gives of Margaret herself in her later youth and middle age, very different from the exquisite profile which Michelet has etched for us, though this is true enough, no doubt, of the Margaret of Meaux. We must none the less accept this later likeness, for the artist painted herself. No delicate profile this: a full face, laughing, with shrewd humorous lips, and the great nose of Francis, grown coarser than in her girlish days. A face that has experienced many aspects of life and fortune, and has learned a tolerant clearsightedness for their pretensions. No mystic's face now, with faint, undecided features; yet with a certain wistful and religious spirit in the eyes and in the smile, making her still hope to find in Heaven the virtue she so good-humouredly misses from the earth.
In the eleventh novel of the Heptameron Margaret relates, under altered names, her adventure at the hunting-lodge of Bonnivet. She introduces herself: "A lady of so good a family that there could be no better; a widow, living with her brother who loved her dearly, who was himself a great lord and husband of a daughter of the King. This young Prince was greatly subject to his desires, loving the chace, pastimes, and dances, as youth requires; and he had a very tiresome wife (the poor, holy, neglected, consumptive Claude) whom his pastimes did not please at all. Wherefore this Prince always took about with his wife his sister, who was of a joyous life, and was the best company possible, though at the same time a good woman and respectable . . . a gay and pious lady, loving to laugh, though a princess and truly chaste. A widow, young, en bon point, and of a very good constitution . . . very strong . . . young and beautiful, living joyously in all society . . . so amiable to her admirers that she cannot complain of their insults lest she should be supposed to have encouraged them . . . Yet she goes with her head in the air, knowing the surety of her honour . . . many women (who lead a far austerer life than she) have not her virtue . . ."
All through the Heptameron the same traits recur: the light-heartedness and free manners, the real virtue, the good-nature and worldliness. Sometimes, it is true, this great lady is spoken of as frequenting religious houses, and she is always awake to the existence of a more spiritual life than her own. But, above all things, she is "forte, de bonne complexion, de joyeuse vie."
This robustness of temper, this love of life, of health, strength, joy, splendour, this absorbing delight in physical and material details, is perhaps of all attributes the most exclusively Gallic. Rabelais and Balzac exemplify it in the highest degree; it is the especial flavour and quality of France. Margaret possessed it, singularly blended with a sincere but vague mysticism. And this robust naturalness is the foundation of her whole character. All natural virtues are hers: she is kindly, affectionate, impulsively generous, and compassionate. For herself she fears suffering, so she would not let another suffer; yet, as she herself would die in torture for Francis, so, if necessary, she would exact from others a like sacrifice for him. Of abstract justice she has no ideal; neither of other abstract qualities—honour, decency, morality—virtues that have been invented, for the greater safety of the race. For all her mysticism, she has little sympathy with unembodied ideas.
It is not that she is less virtuous than her neighbours; but her virtue takes a different turn. She and the Spaniards, whose influence is spreading far and wide, take their stand on different moralities. They stab their unfaithful wives and burn their heretics in gangs. To Margaret infidelity is tolerable, but not fanaticism; murder, and not loose morals, excites her horror. Her respect for life is stronger than her respect for any moral code.
And, with all its limitations, this gift of actuality was the one most needed by the age in which she lived. Born prematurely in the Dauphin's Court, the seventeenth century was drawing on apace; the seventeenth century, with its moonstruck romance, its genius for mathematics, its conflict of science and superstition, its perversities of torture and fanaticism. Loyola is already the General of the new Society of Jesus. The Guises are already grown. Already, at the Court of the King, sits, white and black as a moon in the clouds, the relentless beauty of Diana; Diana, panoplied in her incestuous respectability; Diana the would-be disinheritor of her Huguenot children; Diana to whom form is all and nature nothing. Already, under her fair, white bosom, throbs the unnatural pulse of the age to come.