LITMIR.BIZ

      When Strozzi delivered the dowry in presence of the court he noticed some surprise on the part of the French seigneurs; they even said aloud that it was little enough for such a mesalliance (what would they have said in these days?). Cardinal Ippolito replied, saying:—

      “You must be ill-informed as to the secrets of your king. His Holiness has bound himself to give to France three pearls of inestimable value, namely: Genoa, Milan, and Naples.”

      The Pope left Sebastiano Montecuculi to present himself to the court of France, to which the count offered his services, complaining of his treatment by Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago, for which reason his services were accepted. Montecuculi was not made a part of Catherine’s household, which was wholly composed of French men and women, for, by a law of the monarchy, the execution of which the Pope saw with great satisfaction, Catherine was naturalized by letters-patent as a Frenchwoman before the marriage. Montecuculi was appointed in the first instance to the household of the queen, the sister of Charles V. After a while he passed into the service of the dauphin as cup-bearer.

      The new Duchesse d’Orleans soon found herself a nullity at the court of Francois I. Her young husband was in love with Diane de Poitiers, who certainly, in the matter of birth, could rival Catherine, and was far more of a great lady than the little Florentine. The daughter of the Medici was also outdone by Queen Eleonore, sister of Charles V., and by Madame d’Etampes, whose marriage with the head of the house of Brosse made her one of the most powerful and best titled women in France. Catherine’s aunt the Duchess of Albany, the Queen of Navarre, the Duchesse de Guise, the Duchesse de Vendome, Madame la Connetable de Montmorency, and other women of like importance, eclipsed by birth and by their rights, as well as by their power at the most sumptuous court of France (not excepting that of Louis XIV.), the daughter of the Florentine grocers, who was richer and more illustrious through the house of the Tour de Boulogne than by her own family of Medici.

      The position of his niece was so bad and difficult that the republican Filippo Strozzi, wholly incapable of guiding her in the midst of such conflicting interests, left her after the first year, being recalled to Italy by the death of Clement VII. Catherine’s conduct, when we remember that she was scarcely fifteen years old, was a model of prudence. She attached herself closely to the king, her father-in-law; she left him as little as she could, following him on horseback both in hunting and in war. Her idolatry for Francois I. saved the house of the Medici from all suspicion when the dauphin was poisoned. Catherine was then, and so was her husband, at the headquarters of the king in Provence; for Charles V. had speedily invaded France and the late scene of the marriage festivities had become the theatre of a cruel war.

      At the moment when Charles V. was put to flight, leaving the bones of his army in Provence, the dauphin was returning to Lyon by the Rhone. He stopped to sleep at Tournon, and, by way of pastime, practised some violent physical exercises—which were nearly all the education his brother and he, in consequence of their detention as hostages, had ever received. The prince had the imprudence—it being the month of August, and the weather very hot—to ask for a glass of water, which Montecuculi, as his cup-bearer, gave to him, with ice in it. The dauphin died almost immediately. Francois I. adored his son. The dauphin was, according to all accounts, a charming young man. His father, in despair, gave the utmost publicity to the proceedings against Montecuculi, which he placed in the hands of the most able magistrates of that day. The count, after heroically enduring the first tortures without confessing anything, finally made admissions by which he implicated Charles V. and his two generals, Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago. No affair was ever more solemnly debated. Here is what the king did, in the words of an ocular witness:—

      “The king called an assembly at Lyon of all the princes of his

       blood, all the knights of his order, and other great personages of

       the kingdom; also the legal and papal nuncio, the cardinals who

       were at his court, together with the ambassadors of England,

       Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others; also all the

       princes and noble strangers, both Italian and German, who were

       then residing at his court in great numbers. These all being

       assembled, he caused to be read to them, in presence of each

       other, from beginning to end, the trial of the unhappy man who

       poisoned Monseigneur the late dauphin—with all the

       interrogatories, confessions, confrontings, and other ceremonies

       usual in criminal trials; he, the king, not being willing that the

       sentence should be executed until all present had given their

       opinion on this heinous and miserable case.”