Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/131

116 seventeen, was, doubtless, made to feel herself a very poor alliance for the heir of France. "They have smirched the Valois lilies with a mercantile alliance!" cried the Emperor. Henry was ashamed of his wife, and did not love her. As time went on, and the plain, bourgeoise, unlovely girl did not even give him an heir, he began to think of a divorce. But all the pride and all the real love of Catherine's heart arose and pleaded against him with King Francis. And Henry was finally brought to reason by a very great lady with whom he was in love, Diana of Poictiers, the widow of the great Seneschal of Normandy, and the daughter of that Saint Vallier who had nearly perished for the conspiracy of Bourbon. This most important and almost princely personage, though she called Catherine a daughter of shopkeepers, persuaded Henry to treat her better, and even to reward her with a moderate affection.

"It is wonderful how Madame la Sénéschale has made another man of him," says Marcus Cavalli. "He used not to love his wife at all, but was vain and full of mockery."

For Diana of Poictiers had an almost boundless influence over Henry. She was no longer young. At the time when Montmorency brought her and Henry together in his house at Écouen she was thirty-eight and he not quite eighteen years old. Everyone said that Henry would never fall in love; but Montmorency divined better. He determined to attach the young Prince to this woman, twenty years his senior, who was of Montmorency's party—a Catholic among Catholics, a Conservative, hating the Turco-Huguenot alliance, and hating Spain also, though filled with the spirit of Spain. Diana was still a very beautiful