“As soon as the treaty of Madrid was signed, the emperor came to Madrid to see the king; then they went, both in one litter, to see Queen Eleanor, the emperor’s sister and the king of Portugal’s widow, whom, by the said treaty, the king was to espouse before he left Spain, which he did.” [Memoires de Martin Du Bellay, t. ii. p. 15.] After which Francis was escorted by Lannoy to Fontarabia, whilst, on the other hand, the regent Louise, and the king’s two sons who were to go as hostages to Spain, were on their way to Bayonne.  A large bark was anchored in the middle of the Bidassoa, the boundary of the two kingdoms, between Irun and Andaye.  Lannoy put the king on board, and received in exchange, from the hands of Marshal Lautrec, the little princes Francis and Henry.  The king gave his children his blessing, and reached the French side whilst they were being removed to the Spanish; and as soon as he set foot on shore, he leaped upon a fine Turkish horse, exclaiming, as he started at a gallop for Bayonne, where his mother and his sister awaited him, “So now I am king again!”

On becoming king again, he fell under the dominion of three personal sentiments, which exercised a decisive influence upon his conduct, and, consequently, upon the destiny of France joy at his liberation, a thirsting for revenge, we will not say for vengeance, to be wreaked on Charles V., and the burden of the engagement he had contracted at Madrid in order to recover his liberty, alternately swayed him.  From Bayonne he repaired to Bordeaux, where he reassembled his court, and thence to Cognac, in Saintonge, where he passed nearly three months, almost entirely abandoning himself to field-sports, galas, diversions, and pleasures of every kind, as if to indemnify himself for the wearisomeness and gloom in which he had lived at Madrid.  “Age subdues the blood, adversity the mind, risks the nerve, and the despairing monarch has no hope but in pleasures,” says Tavannes in his Memoires:  “such was Francis I., smitten of women both in body and mind.  It is the little circle of Madame d’Etampes that governs.”  One of the regent’s maids of honor, Anne d’Heilly, whom Frances I. made Duchess of Etampes, took the place of the Countess of Chateaubriant as his favorite.  With strange indelicacy Francis demanded back from Madame de Chateaubriant the beautiful jewels of gold which he had given her, and which bore tender mottoes of his sister Marguerite’s composition.  The countess took time enough to have the jewels melted down, and said to the king’s envoy, “Take that to the king, and tell him that, as he has been pleased to recall what he gave me, I send it back to him in metal.  As for the mottoes, I cannot suffer any one but myself to enjoy them, dispose of them, and have the pleasure of them.”  The king sent back the metal to Madame de Chateaubriant; it was the mottoes that he wished to see again, but he did not get them.