Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/132

Rh woman. Her abundant hair, jet-black and curly (sometimes she dyed it red), made a frame for a pallid delicate face, beautiful with that peculiar Renaissance beauty, so illustrious and strange, which affects the imagination more strongly than the senses. Her lids were a little tight over the eyes; the small, close-shutting lips tight also; the straight, small nose prominent in profile; the delicate eyebrows arched and tense above the well-set eyes; the forehead round; the neck beautiful but slender; the whole face secret, unemotional, unexpressive, yet most provoking to the imagination.

The whiteness of her pale complexion was a special beauty of la grande Sénéschale. In some sort, her life was devoted to preserve it. Every morning she arose at early dawn, and bathed herself, winter and summer alike, with icy water. Then, by the light of the daybreak, she went riding through the fields round Paris, or in the woods at Fontainebleau. Before the world awoke she was at home again, reading in her bed till noon. Then began her regular life of a great lady at Court, resolved to marry well her little daughters, resolved to keep her power as a beauty, to make herself a power in politics. Later on, we know that all the secrets of the State were debated in her house at Anet. Even then, we may be sure, no secret of the Catholic party was kept from her; and as soon as she became the mistress of Henry, she devoted herself to be his counsellor, his adviser, giving him wise instruction, and even lending him her money.

Catherine, seventeen years old, plump, merry, affectionate, had not known how to win her husband's love. It was different with Diana. The charm of an elder woman, her refined sweetness and delicate superiority,