a widow ten years ago. A twenty-three-year-old beauty married to one of the richest and ugliest men in France. Shame! To give a lovely young girl of fifteen to a middle-aged widower! But Jean de Poitiers, with three daughters to marry, had thought the Grand Sénéschal of Normandy a good match for young Diane. She had been docile and borne the old fellow― two girls, was it? He thought so. He had been interested in her at the time. He had been interested then in every beautiful woman in his kingdom― duchess, grande sénéschale, or wine-keeper’s daughter, it mattered not! He was ready to welcome all to his bed―
and hardly one of them able to refuse him! But Diane was one who had refused.
As he watched the calm face and sensed her hidden alarm at what she
believed to be his renewed attack upon her virtue, he saw her again, a frightened woman kneeling before him, begging him to spare her father’s life. The old fool had been in the Constable of Bourbon’s conspiracy, and was at the time in a dungeon at Loches awaiting execution. And Diane had come to plead for his life with a monarch who was ever susceptible to the pleas of beautiful women. She had wept, but had kept her wits sharp; and he guessed that she had understood that bit of badinage which had passed between them. Inconsequently was his wont, the King had fallen in love with the pleader. He had said that as she would become his very good friend, he must grant her request, for there was nothing he enjoyed be bestowing favours on his very good friends.
And afterwards, when the old man’s life was spared, and he had looked for appreciation of his generosity, those eyes had been opened wide in horror, those damask cheeks flushed scarlet; worse still, she had wept. She feared she had been foolish; she had not understood the King, she declared. Was he suggesting that he had spared the father’s life in exchange for the daughter’s honour?
Those bitter tears! That respectful distaste! She was very clever, of course; and next to beauty in a woman he admired cleverness. What could he do? She had won. She had fooled him. He bade her depart. ‘Your beauty enchanted me, Diane,’ he had said, ‘but your wit has outstripped me. Go back to your husband.
I hope he appreciates your worth.’
He bore no malice; there was little malice in his nature; he saw her now and then, for she was one of his Queen’s women; she was so demure in the black-and-white mourning she wore for her departed husband.
But how could he resist the joy of teasing her! He would her to expect the worst― or the best. The rape of chaste Diane by the satyr King of France! And then he would let her down suddenly, so that she would be angry even though she would pretend to be relieved.
‘I have thought of you since that day you went to tell your father that his life was saved. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, Sire. I remember.’
‘How gaily you went! Did you tell your noble father you bought his life
with― counterfeit coin?’
She said clearly: ‘My father would not have understood had I told him. He was half crazed after his imprisonment in that dank dungeon of Loches. Four stone walls and only a small window, through which his food was passed, to give him light. And then― on the scaffold― to be told that his life saved, but must be lived in a dungeon. I had thought you had said, “A pardon”. I did not understand it was to be imprisonment.’
‘There was much we did not understand― you of me, I of you, my chaste
Diane.’
‘And there he remained, Sire, a prematurely old man.’
‘Traitors may not live like loyal men,’ said Francis coolly, ‘even though they possess beautiful daughters. And alack, if the daughters are virtuous as well as beautiful, that can indeed be a sorry thing for traitors.’
She was silent, but he knew that she was very much afraid. ‘And your father now?’ he asked.
‘You will graciously remember that he was released a little while ago,
1796-1874 Agnes Strickland, 1794-1875 Elizabeth Strickland, Rosalie Kaufman