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"Monsieur de Créquy," I said, "madame has received ill news, and it is necessary for her to see the King at once. Madame will start for Fontainebleau in an hour that will suit you, madame?" And I turned to La Valentinois. "Yes." "You will kindly make the necessary arrangements at once, monsieur and the Queen's guards will supply the escort. Monsieur de Lorgnac and I accompany madame."
Instantly Louis's Court in Milan was thronged by all whom Cesare had offended and they made up by now a goodly crowd, for a man may not rise so swiftly to such eminence without raising a rich crop of enemies. Meanwhile, however, Valentinois in the Montefeltre Palace at Urbino remained extremely at ease. He was not the man to be without intelligences.
Another, less far-seeing than Valentinois, might have made capital out of Urbino's late rebellion, and pillaged the country to provide for pressing needs. But that would have been opposed to Cesare's policy, of fostering the goodwill of the people he subjected.
When the Counts of Valentinois had succeeded to the fiefs of the Counts of Die, Gregory X. became so weary of the constant wars, that he suppressed the bishopric, and united it to Valence in 1275; but the canons, who were not suppressed, raised a mercenary army and carried on the struggle.
Surprised by the rigour of the season, with no houses for protection and no trees for fuel, as the peasants had destroyed both beforehand, the Duke of Valentinois was forced to raise the siege and take up his winter quarters in the neighbouring towns, in order to be quite ready for a return next spring; for Caesar could not forgive the insult of being held in check by a little town which had enjoyed a long time of peace, was governed by a mere boy, and deprived of all outside aid, and had sworn to take his revenge.
The palace, though spoilt by a gaudy modern restoration, is externally a fine specimen of Italian Renascence work, its court painted all over with arabesques of a rough Caravaggio order, while the State-rooms within have a thoroughly French air, as if to embody the double character of their occupants, at once Lords of Monaco and Ducs de Valentinois.
"Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis XII. He did a great deal for the cathedral.
Madame de Valentinois came to me with tears in her eyes to repeat the cruel remark of the princess; the marechale de Mirepoix, who heard her, sought to console her by assurances, that it would in no degree affect her interest at court. "Never mind, my good friend," said she; "the pretty bird merely warbles the notes it learns from its keeper la Vauguyon, and will as quickly forget as learn them.
Bentivaglio should separate his fortunes from the Vitelli and Orsini; He should furnish the Duke of Valentinois with a hundred men-at-arms and a hundred mounted archers for eight years; He should pay 12,000 ducats per annum to Caesar, for the support of a hundred lances;
D'Auton, too, bears witness to this wholesale violation of the women, "which," he adds, "is the very worst of all war's excesses." He informs us further that "the foot-soldiers of the Duke of Valentinois acquitted themselves so well in this, that thirty of the most beautiful women went captive to Rome," a figure which is confirmed by Burchard. "What an opportunity was not this for Guicciardini!
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