Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/231

216 former time. The young Princess Jeanne, at this time a handsome and piquante brunette of seventeen, was living at the court of Francis. Fond of splendour and gaiety, extravagant and wilful, she maintained an almost royal establishment in Paris. Her mother's letters are frequent to M. d'Izernay, the governor of Jeanne's household, and in all of them she beseeches him to check the ruining course of her thoughtless girl's expenditure; "for the King of Navarre and I do find it insupportable, and deem that it is impossible it should continue long, since we have not the means to defray it; and the said lord has told me that, being at Paris, he found the expenses of my daughter marvellously great, wherefore I warned you of it, as I do again, beseeching you, M. d'Izernay, to stay your hand; for, with the expenses that I have already, I could not find the means to support this extra charge."

Jeanne, however, does not appear to have made any retrenchments, for, in the ten months of the next year her housekeeping absorbed the whole of her mother's yearly pension, £25,000 Tournois (about £2,100 English), without counting her pin-money (£3,250), and the cost of her trousseau (£5,213). To the gay, high-spirited, charming girl at court, ambitious, and one of the prettiest princesses of her age, the remonstrances of her mother appeared ignorant and ill-founded. Of course, down in Nérac it was difficult to understand the necessary expenses of a royal princes in Paris. So Jeanne attempted to persuade her mother, assuring Margaret that she could not spare one of the officers of her household, for her state was only the legitimate splendour of a fille à la suite de la cour.

Meanwhile, the very continuance of this pension which Jeanne was so amply spending was yet