Early in her career, Henry made Diana Duchesse de Valentinois.  So powerful did she become that Sieur de Bayard, secretary of state, having referred in jest to her age (she was twenty years the king’s senior), was deprived of his office, thrown into prison, and left to die.  In her management of Queen Catherine, Diana was most politic; she never interfered, but constituted herself “the protectress of the legitimate wife, settling all questions concerning the newly born,” for which she received a large salary.  When, while the king was in Italy, the queen became ill, she owed her recovery to the watchful care of the mistress.  The latter appointed to the vacant estates and positions members of her house—­that of Guise.  In time, this house gained such an ascendency that it conceived the project of setting aside all the princes of the blood royal.

Having (through one of her favorites) gained control of the royal treasury, Diana appropriated everything—­lands, money, jewels.  Her influence was so astonishing to the people that she was accused of wielding a magic power and bewitching the king who seemed, verily, to be leading an enchanted existence; he had but one thought, one aim—­that of pleasing and obeying his aged mistress.  To make amends for his adultery, he concluded to extirpate heretics.  Such a combination of luxury and extravagance with licentiousness and brutality, such wholesale murder, persecution, and burning at the stake have never been equalled, except under Nero.

Michelet reveals the character of Diana in these words:  “Affected by nothing, loving nothing, sympathizing with nothing; of the passions retaining only those which will give a little rapidity to the blood; of the pleasures preferring those that are mild and without violence—­the love of gain and the pursuit of money; hence, there was absence of soul.  Another phase was the cultivation of the body, the body and its beauty uniquely cared for by virile treatment and a rigid regime which is the guardian of life—­not weakly adored as by women who kill themselves by excessive self-love.”  M. Saint-Amand continues, after quoting the above:  “At all seasons of the year, Diana plunges into a cold bath on rising.  As soon as day breaks, she mounts a horse, and, followed by swift hounds, rides through dewy verdure to her royal lover to whom—­fascinated by her mythological pomp—­she seems no more a woman but a goddess.  Thus he styles her in verses of burning tenderness: 

  “’Helas, mon Dieu! combien je regrette
  Le temps que j’ai perdu en ma jeunesse! 
  Combien de fois je me suis souhaite
  Avoir Diane pour ma seule maitresse. 
  Mais je craignais qu’elle, qui est deesse,
  Ne se voulut abaisser jusque la.’”

[Alas, my God! how much I regret the time lost in my youth!  How often have I longed to have Diana for my only mistress!  But I feared that she who is a goddess would not stoop so low as that.]