The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (38 page)

Henri II had ordered new robes for his coronation. To the astonishment of all the assembled dignitaries, his robes were embroidered in tiny pearls with Diane’s symbols—her quiver, bows, and arrows, her interlaced crescents and the double “D” attached within the letter “H.” The same symbols were embroidered on his black velvet doublet, which prompted one ambassador to exclaim that these represented “the two spirits of two lovers.” From now on, these would be the symbols of his reign. Many recognized the crescent as Diane’s symbol, but others thought it was adopted by the new king as the opposite of the emperor’s symbol of the sun. It was the defiant gesture of a man in love who was
able at last to reveal to the world, with pride, how his life was entwined with that of Diane de Poitiers, and had been for at least the past ten years.

Nowhere was there a sign to be seen of the queen’s crowned letter “C,” although Henri’s monogram could be read ambiguously as a crescent “C” but the queen knew it was Diane’s symbol and not hers. She suffered, but her shame remained private. The serpent would Hate and Wait. Her time would come. Seated on his golden throne, the king received the symbols of his office: the magnificent ring with which he married the kingdom, the scepter, the orb, and the hand of justice. Later, according to the Venetian ambassador Matteo Dandolo, Henri confided to Diane he had prayed that if his reign was good and worthy of his people, God should make it last a long time. If not, He should cut it short.

The moment that the closed, heavy gold crown of Charlemagne was placed on the head of the twenty-eight-year-old king, the heralds shouted, “
Vivat rex in aeternum
.” The congregation responded with a loud “
Vive le roi! Vive le roi!
” The cry was taken up by the crowds outside the church and resonated through the streets.
Vive le roi! Vive le roi!
Two dozen silver trumpets played an
intrada
within the cathedral, and from the upper galleries a shower of a thousand gold and silver coronation coins rained down on the congregation. Henri turned and smiled at his queen, but even in that most sacred of moments, he did not forget Diane and shared his smile with her. The
sacre
was followed by a sung High Mass, and afterward there was a great banquet in the archbishop’s palace at which each of the thirty courses was announced by a fanfare of trumpets.

At the archbishop’s palace, the king exchanged the heavy gold crown for a new, lighter one he had commissioned using precious stones out of his treasury, and he put on more comfortable clothes. As his father had done before him, Henri then left for a nine-day retreat in the Abbey of Corbény. There in the chapel, in accordance with tradition, he laid his hands on some poor souls with scrofula who dutifully claimed they had been healed.

Diane took part in the solemn ritual as the principal lady in attendance on Catherine de’ Medici. It is recorded that while the new queen’s robes of crimson velvet and white satin were festooned in gold
and jewels, Diane was no less bejeweled and drew as many eyes. Her habitual deep, wide décolleté, draped with pearls from one shoulder to the other, was of black velvet, setting off to perfection her white skin and fair coloring. Her long black velvet skirt opened in front to reveal a white satin panel covered in gold and silver embroidery. She wore great pear-drop pearls in her ears and her hair was as always
à l’escoffion
, in a snood of trellised black velvet ribbon studded with pearls. On the top of her forehead, she wore a diamond crescent as her crown. Many people continued to believe (as did the chronicler Ronsard, who described her as a “good, wise, kind lady … the perfect friend”) that Diane de Poitiers was a cherished older friend of the king’s. And yet the Italian ambassador wrote that after the banquet, Henri withdrew into his quarters, but that instead of sleeping, he “went to find the Sénéchale.”

_____________________

1
. The new appointees to the Privy Council were Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, uncle to the king through his marriage to Marguerite; the duc de Vendôme; Charles de Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims, soon to be cardinal; his brother; the comte Claude d’Aumale, son of the duc de Guise; the comte d’Harcourt; Jacques d’Albon de Saint-André; Robert IV de la Marck, duc de Bouillon and son-in-law of Diane; and Jean II d’Humières, governor of the royal children (and a cousin of Diane’s).

2
. R. J. Knecht in
Franics I
cites A. Castan,
La Mort de François Ier
, “Memoires de la Société d’Emulations du Doubs.” Fifth series, iii (1878), page 446 and
Calendar of State Papers, Spanish
, edited by G. Bergenroth, P. de Gayangos, and M. A. S. Hume (London, 1863–1895), volume ix, pages 73–77.

3
. In 1553, the duchy and title of Etampes was given to Diane de Poitiers. Catherine’s son Charles IX gave both title and estate back to Anne and her husband in 1565. When he died the same year, Etampes reverted to the crown.

4
. Queen Eleonore had always been kind to Henri and he invited her to remain in France, but the dowager-queen left for Flanders. In 1556, she moved to Spain to be near her brother. She died in February 1558 in Talavera, aged sixty.

5
. Henri gave Diane the key to his strong room—she could take her pick of its treasures at will.

6
. The case was only finally resolved in Diane’s favor in July 1553.

7
. Louis XI had brought the silk industry to France from Italy in 1470. The Lyons silk factory was established and by the end of the century was a major producer. The demand for silk in England was so heavy that James I ordered his Lords Lieutenant to import over 1 million trees. Unfortunately, they ordered the wrong kind. As a result there is almost no seventeenth-century house in England without one or more fruit producing mulberry trees (including the author’s own three old trees in Gloucestershire). Diane introduced Henri and Catherine to the first silk stockings made in France, which all three wore thereafter.

8
.
Paille-maille
, or Pall-mall, was a sort of croquet played on a pitch, from which several straight roads in London derive their name.

9
. Although the bridge was begun under Diane’s ownership, it was far from complete by 1559. The gallery was built twenty years later.

10
. Thereafter she signed herself “
Diane, Legitimée de France
.”

11
. The marriage was not formally celebrated until February 1552.

12
. Sumptuary laws were originally designed to limit personal extravagant expenditure, especially in food and dress.

13
. To this day, a
coup de Jarnac
in French means a lucky or devious blow by the underdog.

14
. Out of all the gifts given by French kings, only those of Henri II and his son Henri III survived pillage and destruction during the Revolution. They are now in the Louvre.

15
. I am grateful to Professor R. J. Knecht for this explanation.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The King’s Mistress

T
he family obsession with Italy had not faded with François I’s death. Like his father before him, Henri needed to make an ally of the pope and demonstrate the strength of the Faith by stamping out heresy. He also inherited his father’s dilemma of having to choose between his genuine desire to nourish and foster the intellectual climate of the time and his conviction that the new heresy of the reformed church had to be eradicated. But, even more than François I, Henri II believed in the perniciousness of heresy and that it was allied to treason. At his coronation, the king had been urged by the newly created cardinal, Charles de Lorraine, to rid France of heresy and become the saviour of the Catholic Church. Diane also encouraged Henri in this mission.

A few months after Henri’s coronation, the
Parlement
established a special court solely for the trial of heretics. It quickly became known as the “
Chambre ardente
” because of the number of people sent from there to the flames. In the first two months, five hundred heretics were sentenced to death. Of all those condemned for crimes against the state, heretics were given the worst punishment—to be burned at the
stake
au petit feu
—very slowly. If too many faggots were lit at once, the smoke would usually kill their victims and spare them from the horror of the flames. A small fire would ensure they suffered a slow and painful death. Within the Holy Roman Empire, heretics fared even worse as they were often tied to a seesaw dipped in and out of the flames to prolong their agony. Although Diane was accused of being responsible for the increase in the persecutions, the Guise brothers and the Constable were the instigators of the infamous “
Chambre ardente
.”

O
N November 12, 1547, at Fontainebleau, Catherine gave birth to her third child, a daughter named Claude. This child became sneeringly known at court as “Mademoiselle d’Anet” because that is where she had been conceived—in the temple of Diana. As she did with Henri’s other children, Diane welcomed Claude with love and tenderness. Diane continued to be in charge of the royal children’s lives and upbringing, and Henri dubbed her the “Titular Genius of the Royal Nursery.” It was Diane, not Catherine, who advised when the royal nursery should be moved to another château if an epidemic was rumored to be approaching. Diane, not Catherine, chose the wet nurses and made sure they were clean and healthy, and some of them were first trained by Diane at Anet. When she heard that the baby Charles was rejecting his nurse’s milk, Diane made her drink cider or beer to “refresh” it. It was Diane who decided when to wean the babies and what to feed them. The chief physician, Jean Fernel, wrote that Diane chose the “wise and prudent governesses; while she caused them [the children] to be instructed by good and learned preceptors, as much in virtue and wise precepts, as in love and fear of God.” Diane was sanguine about childhood illnesses and remained cool and calm when they developed coughs and colds. She preferred to trust her own judgment rather than that of the doctors—except for Jean Fernel. The wife of the children’s governor, Madame d’Humières, had given birth to eighteen children, and Diane trusted in her experience to help her make decisions.

In the royal nursery, as everywhere else, Diane’s word, not the queen’s, held sway. As the careful guardian of France’s children, Diane de Poitiers’ influence would reach beyond her own time. The king and queen agreed to abide totally by her decisions. The children’s routine consisted of Fontainebleau during winter; Blois, Amboise, and Tours in the Loire Valley during the spring; La Muette or Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the summer; and Compiègne for the autumn months. No matter where they were based, all orders for the children’s welfare were made by Diane. She organized the doctors, and arranged for the medications to be made under her supervision. As the king and queen were often traveling in the kingdom, Diane arranged for portraits of the children to be sent to them. Sadly, all of the children, except the last, Margot, had serious physical defects, large jowls, and the “Medici snout.” None would bring the queen any joy or esteem.

Were Catherine a typical mother, it might have been difficult for her to renounce the care of her children, especially to her husband’s mistress. But if Catherine ever had any maternal feelings, she must have
weaned herself of them rapidly because she only showed an interest in her children when they were much older. The queen almost died giving birth to her sixth child, and during that time she briefly forgot her animosity and relied on Diane’s expertise and experience. “Without your wisdom, diligence and goodness of heart,” wrote the king’s physician afterward, “the queen would have been without hope in her last illness.” While Catherine pretended to tolerate the royal
ménage à trois
, just as Louise de Savoie had tolerated her husband’s mistresses, privately she seethed with hatred at the woman who occupied
her
rightful place by her husband’s side and in his heart.

H
ENRI the king was very unlike Henri the prince. The change was remarkable. He became more affable, more open and friendly to all comers; he smiled often and laughed. His coronation had a mystical effect on him as well, and he carried himself with a new dignity and pride. Naturally affectionate, he was sentimental, honest in word and deed, and faithful to his friends. He was a contemplative man, who loved to read; he was steady, moderate, profound, and rather silent, yet the members of the court recognized his goodness of heart. Henri was a romantic knight from the days of chivalry, quietly going about his business and focusing on his goal with a steadfastness akin to obsession. That obsession was Diane and her glory, just as hers was his.

Henri wished to demonstrate his love for his mistress in every possible way. Soon their cipher was to be carved in stone on all his palaces, and her arms were to share his motto. His first commission to his architects was to rebuild and extend his favorite palace, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, by adding two semicircular wings at either end of the long straight building, forming the shape of a “D.” The vast palace lay in the midst of a forest teeming with game. A real tennis court had been installed in the hollow of a dry moat. At one end of the court, a little gallery was built with a cloth cover fixed to the walls. Here Diane and the ladies of the court could watch the game protected from the afternoon sun.

In Paris, with the help of his architect Pierre Lescot, Henri tore
down and replaced two wings of the ancient Louvre Palace, carving the “HD” cipher large in the stone of the pediments above his own crowned “H.” This is still clearly visible today. Inside, the goddess Diana was depicted everywhere, in the plaster walls and on the ceilings in low relief. Perhaps it was to escape from all these “Dianas” that Catherine later on built the Palace of the Tuileries opposite the Louvre on the other side of the city wall.

Diane’s symbols came from mythology: the crescent moon, the triangular
delta
(the Greek letter for D), the bows and arrows of the huntress, and the new king emblazoned his reign with them. Diane de Poitiers’ crescent rose like that of the moon. With the accession of Henri II, Venus, goddess of love and symbol of François I’s devotion to Italian art, ceased to be the dominant female deity of the French Renaissance and was replaced by Diana, goddess of the moon and the chase. The worship of Diana led quite naturally
into the cult of Diane, mistress of Henri II, and she and the goddess merged inexorably in the people’s imagination.

A year after his coronation, when Diane was forty-eight, Henri begged her to accept and wear a ring “for love of me. May it always remind you of one who has never loved and never will love another but thee.”

In all that he wrote to his mistress, his love was touchingly full of humility: