The book of the ladies: Illustrious Dames: The Reign and Amours of the Bourbon RégimeBrantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
History
The book of the ladies: Illustrious Dames: The Reign and Amours of the Bourbon Régime
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
France -- Biography; France -- Court and courtiers; Queens; Women -- Biography
Her face was handsome, her hair and eyes so shaded her complexion and
made it the more attractive that I have heard say in Spain that the
courtiers dared not look upon her for fear of being taken in love and
causing jealousy to the king, her husband, and, consequently, running
risk of their lives.
The Church people did the same from fear of temptation, they not having
strength to command their flesh to look at her without being tempted.
Although she had had the small-pox, after being grown-up and married,
they had so well preserved her face with poultices of fresh eggs (a very
proper thing for that purpose) that no marks appeared. I saw the queen,
her mother, very much concerned to send her by many couriers many
remedies; but this of the egg-poultice was sovereign.
Her figure was very fine, taller than that of her sisters, which made
her much admired in Spain, where such tall women are rare, and for that
the more esteemed. And with this figure she had a bearing, a majesty, a
gesture, a gait and grace that intermingled the Frenchwoman with the
Spaniard in sweetness and gravity; so that, as I myself saw, when she
passed through her Court, or went out to certain places, whether
churches, or monasteries, or gardens, there was such great press to see
her, and the crowd of persons was so thick, there was no turning round
in the mob; and happy was he or she who could say in the evening, “I saw
the queen.” It was said, and I saw it myself, that no queen was ever
loved in Spain like her (begging pardon of the Queen Isabella of
Castile), and her subjects called her _la reyna de la paz y de la
bondad_, that is to say, “the queen of peace and kindness;” but our
Frenchmen called her “the olive-branch of peace.”
A year before she came to France to visit her mother at Bayonne, she
fell ill to such extremity that the physicians gave her up. On which a
little Italian doctor, who had no great vogue at Court, presenting
himself to the king, declared that if he were allowed to act he would
cure her; which the king permitted, she being almost dead. The doctor
undertook her and gave her a medicine, after which they suddenly saw the
colour return miraculously to her face, her speech came back, and then,
soon after, her convalescence began. Nevertheless the whole Court and
all the people of Spain blocked the roads with processions and comings
and goings to churches and hospitals for her health’s sake, some in
shirts, others bare-footed and bare-headed, offering oblations, prayers,
orisons, intercessions to God, with fasts, macerations of the body, and
other good and saintly devotions for her health; so that every one
believes firmly that these good prayers, tears, vows, and cries to God
were the cause of her cure, rather than the medicine of that doctor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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