Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe by Leslie Carroll Read Free Book Online Page B

daughter Elisabeth (to be renamed Isabel de la Paz—Isabel of the Peace) becoming queen of Spain, Catherine was furious with the terms of the treaty. She blamed the unfavorable provisions for France on Diane’s malevolent influence upon Henri.
    One day when Diane entered the queen’s presence, Catherine happened to be reading a book, and the duchesse inquired as to its subject.
    “I am reading The Chronicles of France , and I find that in every era there was a time when the affairs of Kings have been governed by whores,” Catherine replied.
    The unpopular Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis was fully ratified during the first week of April in 1559. With one stroke of the quill, France was compelled to return all of the territories she had won during the past sixty-five years, the reigns of the last four kings. Henri could now direct his attention to pressing domestic concerns, the largest of which was the issue of, in his words, the “Protestant vermin” overrunning his realm.
    During this time, he also remained unfaithful to Catherine, and more frequently strayed from the bed of the fifty-eight-year-old maîtresse en titre as well, enjoying brief, casual liaisons. Diane turned an elegant blind eye to these infidelities. Catherine, too, was less unnerved by them than she was by Diane’s impenetrable influence upon her husband. Although Henri and Diane remained passionately devoted to each other, the sexual element of their relationship may have ended by 1558, if a phrase in a letter of Henri’s, dated August 10 of that year, offers any clue to the nature of their romance at the time. Despite any of his present, relatively meaningless flings, in that letter the king urged Diane never to forget the one who always had and always would love her.
    The queen refused to allow her husband’s maîtresse en titre to come anywhere near the king after his horrific jousting accident on June 30, 1559. Although Henri called Diane’s name and asked to see her several times during the final ten days of his life, Catherine willfully denied his request. The lovers never got to say good-bye. Ironically, the mortal wound had been dealt by Gabriel de Montgomery, the son of a former admirer of Diane de Poitiers who had always hoped to wed her.
    On July 8, Henri slipped into a coma. Diane received a messenger from the queen demanding the return of the crown jewels. “Is the king dead?” asked the duchesse de Valentinois. When the messenger shook his head, Diane refused to hand over the treasure. “So long as there remains a breath of life in him, I wish my enemies to know I do not fear them,” she said firmly. “As yet there is no one who can command me. I am still of good courage. But when he is dead, I do not want to live after him; and all the bitterness that one could wish me will be but sweetness beside my great loss.” So many years his senior, Diane had genuinely believed she’d be the first to go.
    Henri died on July 10 from septicemia. The following day, the royal family moved into the Louvre Palace. The Guises, Mary, Queen of Scots’s family on her mother’s side, appropriated the rooms that had been given to Diane de Poitiers during the late king’s lifetime. Throughout her marriage Catherine had been robbed of her husband “by Diane de Poitiers in the sight and knowledge of everyone,” as she termed it. Now dowager queen of France, Catherine immediately began redoing the HD ciphers so that Diane’s crescent moons more clearly resembled the letter C.
    Diane, who was pointedly not invited to her former lover’s funeral, returned the jewels that had been crown property. Then the dowager queen dismissed her from court. Diane retired to the countryside, primarily to the Château d’Anet. After the king’s death she and Catherine never saw each other again. Diane was also compelled to forfeit another treasure to Catherine: her beloved Château de Chenonceau. She had always wanted to wrest Chenonceau from Diane, and the