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
I also saw this our great queen at the first States-general at Blois on
the day the king, her brother, made his harangue. She was dressed in a
robe of orange and black (the ground being black with many spangles) and
her great veil of ceremony; and being seated according to her rank she
appeared so beautiful and admirable that I heard more than three hundred
persons in that assembly say they were better instructed and delighted
by the contemplation of such divine beauty than by listening to the
grave and noble words of the king, her brother, though he spoke and
harangued his best. I have also seen her dressed in her natural hair
without any artifice or peruke; and though her hair was very black
(having derived that from her father, King Henri), she knew so well how
to curl and twist and arrange it after the fashion of her sister, the
Queen of Spain, who wore none but her own hair, that such coiffure and
adornment became her as well as, or better than, any other. That is what
it is to have beauties by nature, which surpasses all artifice, no
matter what it may be. And yet she did not like the fashion much and
seldom used it, but preferred perukes most daintily fashioned.
In short, I should never have done did I try to describe all her
adornments and forms of attire in which she was ever more and more
beauteous; for she changed them often, and all were so becoming and
appropriate, as though Nature and Art were striving to outdo each other
in making her beautiful. But this is not all; for her fine accoutrements
and adornments never ventured to cover her beautiful throat or her
lovely bosom, fearing to wrong the eyes of all the world that roved upon
so fine an object; for never was there seen the like in form and
whiteness, and so full and plump that often the courtiers died with envy
when they saw the ladies, as I have seen them, those who were her
intimates, have license to kiss her with great delight.
I remember that a worthy gentleman, newly arrived at Court, who had
never seen her, when he beheld her said to me these words: “I am not
surprised that all you gentlemen should like the Court; for if you had
no other pleasure than daily to see that princess, you have as much as
though you lived in a terrestrial paradise.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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