Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/129

114 a hearty laugh. Still, he is, in his way, a good companion to his own friends, and loves the liveliness of his younger brother. He has a small head, large eyes looking down, thin temples, and a narrow forehead. He is brave, and loves hunting and fighting; and he is very religious, and will not ride on Sundays."

Another Venetian ambassador adds a stroke or two to the portrait:—

"He is melancholy, saying little, and devoid of repartee; but when once he has said a thing he holds to it mordicus, for he is very clear and decided as to his opinions. He has a mediocre and rather slow intelligence. He is virtuous and reputable, and spends his money liberally but wisely."

"Il est né Saturnien," says Simon Renard—and truly the star of Saturn sheds its singular and pallid radiance upon his course. As a child his father had not loved him, "Je n'aime pas," he had said, "les enfans songeards, sourdaudz et endormis." And dreamy, dull, and sleepy were still the manners of the Prince. Four years of his childhood had passed in the Spanish castle where he had been a hostage for the brilliant father who did not love him. And it was his destiny that he should henceforth detest the land of his captivity and make war upon it, while he himself was imbued with the spirit of it, while he himself should turn the volatile, spontaneous gallic character of his father's France into a thing as pallid, as precise, as decorous, as the Emperor's Spain. Under him the long reign of the Style soutenu begins in Art and Letters. He is slow, solemn, romantic, and yet conventional. In his long straight nose, his fine anxious brows, his singular large eyes, we see the evidence of a certain ideality, but no power to direct