Women of Modern France (Illustrated): Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 7 (of 10)Thieme, Hugo P. (Hugo Paul)
History
Women of Modern France (Illustrated): Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 7 (of 10)
Thieme, Hugo P. (Hugo Paul)
France -- Social life and customs; Women -- France
"A few hours before her agony, Jeanne dictated the provisions of her
will. She recommended her son to remain faithful to the religion
in which she had reared him, never to permit himself to be lured by
voluptuousness and corruption, and to banish atheists, flatterers, and
libertines.... She begged him to take his sister, Catherine, under his
protection and to be, after God, her father. 'I forbid my son ever
to use severity towards his sister; I wish, to the contrary, that he
treat her with gentleness and kindness; and that--above all--he have
her brought up in Béarn, and that she shall never leave there until
she is old enough to be married to a prince of her own rank and
religion, whose morals shall be such that the spouses may live happily
together in a good and holy marriage.'" D'Aubigné wrote of her:
"A princess with nothing of a woman but sex--with a soul full of
everything manly, a mind fit to cope with affairs of moment, and a
heart invincible in adversity."
It was in deep mourning that her son, then King of Navarre, arrived at
Paris; the eight hundred gentlemen who attended him were all likewise
in mourning. "But," says Marguerite de Valois, "the nuptials took
place in a few days, with triumph and magnificence that none others,
of even my quality, had ever beheld. The King of Navarre and his troop
changed their mourning for very rich and fine clothes, I being dressed
royally, with crown and corsage of tufted ermine all blazing with
crown jewels, and, the grand blue mantle with a train four ells long
borne by three princesses. The people down below, in their eagerness
to see us as we passed, choked one another." (Thus quickly was Jeanne
d'Albret forgotten.) The ceremonies were gorgeous, lasting four days;
but when Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot leader, was struck in the hand
by a musket ball, the festive aspect of affairs suddenly changed.
On the second day after the wounding of Coligny, and before the
excitement caused by that act had subsided, Catherine accomplished
the crowning work of her invidious nature, the tragedy of Saint
Bartholomew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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