Henry M. Baird · 88 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · The king's infatuation.

Diana of Poitiers, daughter of Monsieur de St. Vallier, and widow of De Brezé, Grand Seneschal of Normandy, had in her youth been celebrated for her beauty, by which she had first captivated Francis the First, and afterward made Henry forget the claims of his Florentine bride upon his affections. But she was now a matron of forty-seven years of age, and the public wondered as they saw the undiminished devotion of the new monarch to a woman nearly a score of years older than himself. It is true that the courtier's pen of Brantôme ascribes to her all the freshness of youth even at the close of the reign of Henry the Second. His eulogium, however, is scarcely more worthy of credit than Homer's praise of the undiminished personal beauty of Helen, when, twenty years subsequently to the departure of the expedition to Troy, the Ithacan prince found her reigning again at Sparta. But of the influence which Diana possessed over Henry there could be no doubt. By the vulgar it was attributed to the use of charms and love-potions. The infatuation of the monarch knew no bounds. He loaded her with gifts; he entrusted her with the crown jewels; he conferred upon her the dignity of a duchess of Valentinois. In her apartments he spent hours daily, in company with his most intimate courtiers. Through love for her he adopted her favorite colors, and took for his device the crescent, with the words, "Totum donec compleat orbem." The public edifices of his time, it is said, still bear testimony to this dishonorable attachment, in the initials or emblems of Henry and Diana sculptured together upon their façades; and the Venetian Soranzo, at a later period in Henry's reign, magnifying her influence upon every department of the administration, affirms, in particular, that the dispensation of ecclesiastical offices was in her hands. It is not surprising that, being of an avaricious character, she soon accumulated great wealth.