and referring to the mythologic Diana. He caused his royal H to be entwined with her patrician D upon the sculptured façade of the Louvre and upon the frescoes at Fontainebleau. The constraint in which the young queen was compelled to live during the reign of Diana, the habit of reserve and dissimulation which she acquired during the long triumph of her rival, are believed to have contributed to form the terrible Machiavelian character which has made Catherine de Medicis so infamous in history.

In the year 1548, the king bestowed upon Diana the duchy of Valentinois, with the right to assume the title. He also gave her a privilege known as the "right of confirmation," which empowered her to renew, upon his accession to the throne, and upon the payment of certain sums, the tenures of all those who held office under the crown. Francis I. had accorded this privilege to his mother; and the subjects of Henry murmured somewhat at his very different bestowment of the revenue. Diana applied the funds accruing from this source to the embellishment of her patrimonial estate of Anet, a lovely country seat which the poets of her time celebrated under the name of Dianet. Philibert Delorme was her architect, and his sumptuous taste soon rendered the seigneurial château worthy of what it soon became a royal residence. The pope, desirous of paying court to the young king, sent presents at this period both to Catherine and Diana, making, however, a delicate discrimination in his choice of gifts to Catherine he gave a blessed rose, and to Diana a string of costly pearls. The latter strove to deserve the pontifical favor by the zeal which she exhibited against the heretics; and more than once contemplated, in company with her cruel and intolerant lover, the heroic martyrdom of Lutherans at the stake. She was an ardent Catholic, and all the Calvinistic writers of the period attribute to her influence a large portion of the persecutions which the Protestants endured.

Diana had now entered her fiftieth year; her empire over

the king had suffered no diminution, and her charms were still those of a woman of twenty-five. To account for a fact so extraordinary, her enemies invented a story to the effect that she dealt in the black art, and that she was indebted for her perennial youth to potions compounded by unholy hands. One or two historians of the time, who have left works otherwise worthy of credit, have not hesitated to assert their belief in this singular superstition. But Diana's magic was one which any lady may practise without endangering her soul-the magic of amiability, regular habits and vigorous exercise.

She has been thus described by a historian of the reign of Francis I. "Her features were regular and classical; her complexion was faultless; her hair of a rich purple black, which took a golden tint in the sunshine; while her teeth, her ankles, her hands and arms, and her bust, were each in their turn the theme of the court poets. That the extraordinary and almost fabulous duration of her beauty was in a great degree due to the precautions which she adopted, there can be little doubt, for she spared no effort to secure it. She was jealously careful of her health, and in the most severe weather bathed in cold water; she suffered no cosmetic to approach her, denouncing every compound of the kind as worthy only of those to whom nature had been so niggardly as to compel them to complete her imperfect work. She rose every morning at six o'clock, and had no sooner left her chamber than she sprang into the saddle, and after having galloped a league or two, returned to bed, where she remained until mid-day, engaged in reading. The system appears a singular one; but in her case it undoubtedly proved successful. It is certain, however, that the magnificent Diana owed no small portion of the extraordinary and unprecedented constancy of the king to the charms of her mind and the brilliancy of her intellect."

Diana, who had borne two daughters to her husband, is said to have had one by King Henry. It is also alleged that the king

wished to take the necessary steps for acknowledging the infant, but that Diana prevented him by saying: "I was born to have legitimate children by you; I have been your mistress because I loved you; but I will not suffer any decree to declare me so." On the 10th of July, 1559, a tournament took place at Paris, in honor of a royal marriage celebrated there by proxy. Henry, who in all exercises requiring bodily strength and personal address had no superior at court, insisted on breaking a lance with the Count de Montgomery, the most skillful jouster among his subjects. Montgomery entered the lists with apparent, indeed confessed, reluctance. Henry wore, as usual, the colors of Diana. The lance of the count broke against the king's helmet, whereupon he renewed the assault with the stump. It entered Henry's right eye, instantly depriving him of sight, speech, and consciousness. The monarch was conveyed to his palace, where he remained insensible for eleven days. When it was evident that he could Lot survive, Catherine de Medicis sent a message to Diana to quit the palace and return to her the crown jewels in her possession. "Is the king dead?" asked Diana of the messenger. The latter replied that he was not, but that he could not live through the day. "I have no master yet, then," she replied; "let my enemies know that I fear them not; when the king dies, I shall be too much occupied in my grief at his loss to pay heed to the insults which they may heap upon me." The king expired that evening, and Diana, knowing full well that her credit and position fell with him, retired gracefully to Anet, where she lived tranquilly during the remainder of her life. Catherine, content with having driven her from the court, abstained from any further persecution. The exiled favorite spent her time and her means in deeds of charity and beneficence. She founded hospitals for the sick, and an asylum for widows and orphans. She died in April, 1566, at the age of sixty-seven She retained her beauty to the last. "Six months

years.

before her death," says Brantôme, "I saw her so handsome, that no heart of adamant could have been insensible to her charms, though she had some time before broken one of her limbs upon the paved stones of Orleans. She had been riding on horseback, and kept her seat as dexterously and well as she had ever done. One would have thought that the pain of such an accident would have made some alteration in her lovely face; but this was not the case; she was as beautiful, as graceful, and handsome in every respect as she had ever been."

Diana was the only royal favorite to whom numismatic honors were paid by the mints of France. The city of Lyons, where she was much beloved, struck a medal to her memory; upon one side was her profile, with the words, DIANA, DUX VALENTINORUM CLARISSIMA; and on the reverse her device, OMNIUM VICTOREM VICI. This has been erroneously supposed to refer to Henry II., but it is not likely that Diana would have strained the language of compliment so far as to style her very unwarlike lord "the conqueror of the world." It is to be otherwise interpreted. She had assumed the sym

bols of Diana at the commencement of her liaison with the prince, and proclaimed defiance to malice by adopting a motto which asserted her to be, like her prototype, invulnerable to the shafts of that other warrior and conqueror, Cupid. She thus intimated her scorn of terrestrial love. It was this construction which the engravers of Lyons intended to be placed upon the inscription. Diana succeeded, by her high birth, exalted connections, her ardent orthodoxy, and, more than all, by her matronly age, at least in overawing reproach, if not in silencing slander. Her reply to the king, in regard to the public acknowledgment of their daughter, shows her to have been conscious of the innate superiority of virtue over vice. Her life was a remarkable tribute, rendered by one whose celebrity and position were due to her frailty, to the dignity of recti tude and the supremacy of moral worth.