Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/19

Rh Medici was Regent for ten years. In 1571 the next son, Charles, was old enough to mount the throne. He was twenty-two years old, tall and thin, weak on his legs, with a stooping position and sickly pale complexion. Thus he was painted by François Clouet, called Janet, a famous painting which is now in possession of the Duke of Aumale. While a young prince, he received the very best education. His teachers were Amyot and Henri Estienne, with whom he read Plotin, Plato, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus, Polybius and Machiavelli. Amyot's translation of Plutarch's Lives delighted the entire court. "The princesses of the House of France," Brantôme relates, "together with their ladies-in-waiting and maids-of-honor, took the greatest pleasure in the sayings of the Greeks and Romans which have been preserved by sweet Plutarch." Thus literature came into its own even in this court life. But they did not merely do homage to the old classical literature, all of them were also versed in the art of the sonnet, and were able to rhyme graceful love songs as well as Ronsard. Charles IX. himself wrote poetry and translated the Odes of Horace into French. His effeminate nature, at one moment given to humiliating excesses and in the next consumed by pangs of conscience, was fond of graceful and frivolous poetry. But there was also some good in this movement. Whereas the French language had been officially designated in 1539 as the Language of Law, to be used also in lectures, Charles IX. now gave his consent in 1570 for the founding of a Society to develop and purify the language. But even in this respect the honest de Thou denounced "this depraved age" and spoke of "the poisoning of women by immoral songs." This worthy man himself wrote Latin, of course. A time of disorder was now approaching, the revolts of the Huguenots were sweeping through France. But these very disorders and dangers encouraged a certain bold carelessness and recklessness. Murder was slinking through the streets. It was the year of St. Bartholomew's Eve. The Duke of Anjou himself relates that he feared to be stabbed by his own brother king, Charles