XXIII. Mariage de Convenance ASCANIO I THE TRAFFICKER IN HIS OWN HONOR It was the day on which Colombe was to be presented to the queen. The whole court was assembled in one of the state apartments at the Louvre. After hearing mass the court was to depart for Saint-Germain, and they were awaiting the coming of the king and queen to go to the chapel. Except a few ladies who were seated, everybody was moving about from place to place, laughing and talking. There was the rustle of silks and brocades, and the clash of swords; loving and defiant glances were exchanged, together with arrangements for future meetings, of amorous or deadly purport. It was a dazzling, bewildering scene of confusion and splendor; the costumes were superb, and cut in the latest style; among them, adding to the rich and interesting variety, were pages, dressed in the Italian or Spanish fashion, standing like statues, with arms akimbo, and swords at their sides. It was a picture overflowing with animation and magnificence, of which all that we could say would be but a very feeble and colorless description. Bring to life all the dandified, laughing cavaliers, all the sportive easy-mannered ladies who figure in the pages of Brantôme and the "Heptameron," put in their mouths the crisp, clever, outspoken, idiomatic, eminently French speech of the sixteenth century, and you will have an idea of this seductive court, especially if you recall the saying of François I.: "A court without women is a year without spring, or a spring without flowers." The court of François I. was a perpetual spring, where the loveliest and noblest of earthly flowers bloomed. After the first bewilderment caused by the confusion and uproar, it was easy to see that there were two hostile camps in the throng: one, distinguished by lilac favors, was that of Madame d'Etampes; the other, whose colors were blue, hoisted the flag of Diane de Poitiers. Those who secretly adhered to the Reformed religion belonged to the first faction, the unadulterated Catholics to the other. Among the latter could be seen the dull, uninteresting countenance of the Dauphin; the intelligent, winning, blonde features of Charles d'Orléans, the king's second son, flitted here and there through the ranks of the faction of Madame d'Etampes. Conceive these political and religious antipathies to be complicated by the jealousy of women and the rivalry of artists, and the result will be a grand total of hatred, which will sufficiently explain, if you are surprised at them, a myriad of scornful glances and threatening gestures, which all the courtier-like dissembling in the world cannot conceal from the observation of the spectator.