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
Then she retired, saying she had done the contrary of Dido, who looked
to the sea when Æneas left her, while she had looked to land. She
wished to lie down without eating more than a salad, and as she would
not descend into the cabin of the poop, they brought her bed and set it
up on the deck of the poop, where she rested a little, but did not cease
her sighs and tears. She commanded the steersman to wake her as soon as
it was day if he saw or could even just perceive the coasts of France,
and not to fear to call her. In this, fortune favoured her; for the wind
having ceased and the vessel having again had recourse to oars, but
little way was made during the night, so that when day appeared the
shores of France could still be seen; and the steersman not having
failed to obey her, she rose in her bed and gazed at France again, and
as long as she could see it. But the galley now receding, her
contentment receded too, and again she said those words: “Adieu, my
France; I think that I shall never see you more.”
Did she desire, this once, that an English armament (with which we were
threatened) should appear and constrain her to give up her voyage and
return to the port she had left? But if so, God in that would not favour
her wishes, for, without further hindrance of any kind we reached
Petit-Lict [Leith]. Of the voyage I must tell a little incident: the
first evening after we embarked, the Seigneur Chastellard (the same who
was afterwards executed for presumption, not for crime, as I shall
tell), being a charming cavalier, a man of good sword and good letters,
said this pretty thing when he saw them lighting the binnacle lamp:
“There is no need of that lamp or this torch to light us by sea, for the
eyes of our queen are dazzling enough to flash their fine fires along
the waves and illume them, if need be.”
I must note that the day before we arrived at Scotland, being a Sunday,
so great a fog arose that we could not see from the poop to the mast of
the galley; at which the pilot and the overseers of the galley-slaves
were much confounded,--so much so, that out of necessity we had to cast
anchor in open sea, and take soundings to know where we were. The fog
lasted all one day and all the night until eight o’clock on the
following morning, when we found ourselves surrounded by innumerable
reefs; so that had we gone forward, or even to one side, the ship would
have struck and we should have perished. On which the queen said that,
for her part, she should not have cared, wishing for nothing so much as
death; but that not for her whole kingdom of Scotland would she have
wished it or willed it for others. Having now sighted and seen (for the
fog had risen) the coast of Scotland, there were some among us who
augured and predicted upon the said fog, that it boded we were now to
land in a quarrelsome, mischief-making, unpleasant kingdom [_royaume
brouille, brouillon, et mal plaisant_].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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