TALE LXVI.

The Duke of Vendome and the Princess of Navarre, whilst resting together one afternoon, were surprised by an old serving-woman, who took them for a prothonotary and a damsel between whom she suspected some affection; and, through this fine justicement, a matter, of which intimates were ignorant, was made known to strangers.

In the year when the Duke of Vendome married the Princess of Navarre, (1) the King and Queen, their parents, after feasting at Vendome, went with them into Guienne, and, visiting a gentleman’s house where there were many honourable and beautiful ladies, the newly married pair danced so long in this excellent company that they became weary, and, withdrawing to their chamber, lay down in their clothes upon the bed and fell asleep, doors and windows being shut and none remaining with them.

1 It was in October 1548, some eighteen months after Henry II. had succeeded Francis I., that Anthony de Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, who after the King’s children held the first rank in France, was married at Moulins to Margaret’s daughter Jane of Navarre.  The Duke was then thirty and Jane twenty years old.  “I never saw so joyous a bride,” wrote Henry II. to Montmorency, “she never does anything but laugh.”  She was indeed well pleased with the match, the better so, perhaps, as her husband had settled 100,000 livres on her, a gift which was the more acceptable by reason of her extravagant tastes and love of display.  Ste. Marthe, in his Oraison Funebre on Queen Margaret, speaks of her daughter’s marriage as “a most fortunate conjunction,” and refers to her son-in-law as “the most valiant and magnanimous Prince Anthony, Duke of Vendome, whose admirable virtues have so inclined all France to love and revere him, that princes and nobles, the populace, the great and the humble alike, no sooner hear his name mentioned than they forthwith wish him and beg God to bestow on him all possible health and prosperity.”—­Ed

Just, however, when their sleep was at its soundest, they were awakened by their door being opened from without, and the Duke drew the curtain and looked to see who it might be, suspecting indeed that it was one of his friends who was minded to surprise him.  But he perceived a tall, old bed-chamber woman come in and walk straight up to their bed, where, for the darkness of the room, she could not recognise them.  Seeing them, however, quite close together, she began to cry out—­

“Thou vile and naughty wanton!  I have long suspected thee to be what thou art, yet for lack of proof spoke not of it to my mistress.  But now thy vileness is so clearly shown that I shall in no sort conceal it; and thou, foul renegade, who hast wrought such shame in this house by the undoing of this poor wench, if it were not for the fear of God, I would e’en cudgel thee where thou liest.  Get up, in the devil’s name, get up, for methinks even now thou hast no shame.”