Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/29

Rh leave the courts of justice, put down their robe and their four-cornered hat and take up a sword. Immediately the king bestowed the distinction upon them without their ever having gone to war. This has happened to Monsieur de Montaigne, who would have done better to remain at his trade and continue to write his essays rather than exchange his pen for a sword which was not nearly so becoming.")

Henri II. pardoned him his unmannerly behavior, but the king's rooms were closed to him. Then the Duke of Alençon wished to gain his allegiance and appointed him chamberlain, thereby rewarding him for the intimate relationship which had existed between them ever since 1579. The duke was the leader of the dissatisfied and so this fault-finder was quite welcome to him. The book of Fair and Gallant Ladies is the direct result of the conversations at the Court of Alençon, for we hear that Brantôme soon wrote a few discourses which he dedicated to the prince. Brantôme sold himself to Alençon, which is almost to be taken literally. Then Alençon died. Brantôme's hopes were now completely crushed.

What was he to do now? He was angry at the king. His boundless anger almost blinded him. Then the Guises approached him and tried to induce him to swear allegiance to the enemies of the Valois. He was quite ready to do this and was at the point of committing high treason, for the King of Spain was behind the Guises, to whom he swore allegiance. But the outbreak of the war of the Huguenots, which resulted in a temporary depreciation of all estates, prevented him from carrying out his plans immediately. He could not sell anything, and without money life in Spain was impossible. But this new state of affairs gave him new energy and new life. He walked about with "sprightly vigor." He later described his feelings in the Capitaines français (Ch. IV, 108): "Possible que, si je fusse venu au bout de vies attantes et propositions, J'eusse faut plus de mal a ma patrie que jamais n'a faict renegat d'Alger a'la sienne, dont J'en fusse