King René d'Anjou and His Seven Queens. Staley Edgcumbe
cordially welcomed in his royal castle of Montpellier, which the two mother-Queens, Marie and Yolanda, had indicated as the trysting-place. There the royal Court was established, whilst d’Agout and de Morien were despatched, with a lordly following, to Perpignan and across the frontier of Aragon to greet, at the Castle of Gerona, the two Yolandas—who were already on their way from Barcelona—and thence escort them to their Sovereign’s presence.
The young “Queen” was quite as anxious to meet her affianced husband as he was to embrace her, and no undue delay hindered the resumption of the queenly progress. It was a notable cortège, for Queen Yolanda, holding as she did tenaciously that her daughter was, at least, titular Queen of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, travelled in extravagant royal state. Besides the great chariot, with its tapestries and furniture of richest Hispano-Moorish origin, were others almost as sumptuous for the lords and ladies of the suite. All these had their guards of honour—trusty veterans of King Juan’s time, and devoted to their “Queen.” Great tumbrils, laden with costly products of Zaragoza, Barcelona, and Valencia—the royal trousseau and magnificent offerings for King Louis and his widowed mother—accompanied by well-mounted cavalry, rolled heavily along the ancient Roman road to France.
The whole of Languedoc agreed to pay honour to the royal travellers, and they revelled in the floral games and fêtes galants offered by every town and castle by the way. From Toulouse, the birthplace of the bridegroom-elect, came quite appropriately a phalanx of maintaineurs to Montpellier to recite and sing poems and melodies of the “Gaya Ciencia.” The green rolling hills of Languedoc gave back in sweetly echoing refrains the tuneful music of the shell-sown shores of the rolling sea, the sun-kissed Mediterranean: all sang the “Loves of Louis and Yolanda.”
There is a quaint and suggestive story anent the meeting of the august young couple which calls to mind the adventures of King Juan at the Court of Bar-le-Duc. The young King had timely warning of the approach of his royal bride-elect, and, hastily donning the guise of a simple knight, he mingled in the throng of enthusiastic citizens, unrecognized, at the entrance of the town. Both Queens leaned forward in their chariot to acknowledge the loyal greetings; and the bride—arrayed in golden tissue of Zaragoza, and wearing Anjou lilies in her hair—smiled and laughed and clapped her hands in ecstasy, the animation adding immensely to her charms of face and figure. King Louis was enraptured, and, falling head over ears in love, approached the royal carriage; and kneeling on his berretta, he seized the youthful Queen’s white, shapely hand, and implanted thereupon one ardent kiss. The impact sent the hot blood coursing through his veins, and it was as much as his esquire could do to drag his master back and hurry him to the palace in time to change his costume and receive his royal guests with courtly etiquette. The young Queen was conscious of this outburst of love; she, too, coloured, and tried in vain to penetrate the disguise of her impassioned lover. The mother-Queen instinctively guessed who he was, and quietly remarked: “You will meet your gallant knight again, and soon—and no mistake.”
Montpellier was all too small to accommodate such a numerous and such a distinguished company, so King Louis gave his royal visitors barely time to recover from the fatigues of the long coach-ride out of Spain when he hurried on the royal train to Arles, in Provence. Queen-Duchess Marie was already waiting at the great Archiepiscopal Palace to give the royal visitors a cordial greeting. After having waved her son adieu from the boudoir-balcony of the Castle of Angers, she, too, set out for the south. She had chosen Arles for the royal nuptials, as being the capital of the third great kingdom of Europe and the most considerable city in her son’s dominions.
No better choice could have been made from a psychological point of view, for have not the Arlésiennes been noted for all time for their perfect figures—Venus di Milo was one of them—their graceful carriage, and surpassingly good looks? They, with their menfolk, animated and merry, have always eaten well and well drunk. The delicious pink St. Peray is a more generous wine than all the vintages of Champagne. Physical charms and fin bouquets were ever incentives to love and pleasure, and Mars of Aragon yielded up his arms to Venus of Arles. Arles—la belle Grecque aux yeux Sarrazines! Perhaps the becoming, close-fitting black velvet chapelles, or bonnets, and the diaphanous white gauze veils, did much to express la grâce fière aux femmes!
It was indeed a gorgeous function at which the royal couple were united in the bonds of matrimony, that morrow of All Saints, 1399. The ancient basilica of St. Trophimus was one vast nave, no choir—that the royal brothers Louis and René built a generation later—but it was too circumscribed for the marriage ritual; consequently, under a gold and crimson awning, slung on ships’ masts beyond the deeply recessed chief portal, with its weird sculptures, the clergy took up their station to await the bridal pageant. The Cardinal-Archbishop, Nicholas de Brancas, joined the two young hands in wedlock, and Cardinal Adreano Savernelli, the Papal Legate, gave the blessing of Peter, whilst the two mother-Queens looked on approvingly.
The royal bride—in white, of course—had an over-kirtle, or train, of gemmed silver tissue—a thing of wonderment and beauty worn by her royal mother, and her mother, Marie de France, before her, and coming from the Greco-Flemish trousseau of the famous Countess Iolande. Her abundant brown-black hair was plaited in two thick ropes, with pearls and silver lace reaching far below the jewelled golden cincture that encompassed her well-formed bust. Upon her thinly covered bosom reposed the kingly medallion of her father, King Juan, with its massive golden chain of Estate, the emblem of her sovereign rank. Upon her finger she wore the simple ruby ring of betrothal, now to be exchanged for the plain golden hoop of marriage.
“Yolande is one of the most lovely creatures anybody could imagine.” So wrote grim old Juvenal des Ursins, the chatty chronicler of Courts. She brought to her royal spouse a rich dowry—much of the private wealth of her father and many art treasures, among them great lustred dishes and vases of Hispano-Moorish potters’ work, with the royal arms and cipher thereon. Four baronies, too, passed to the Sicily-Anjou crown: Lunel in Languedoc—famed for vintages of sweet muscatel wines—Berre, Martignes, and Istres, all bordering the salt Étang de Berre, in Provence, each a Venice in miniature, and rich in salt, salt-dues, and works. The royal bride’s splendid marriage-chests were packed full of costly products of King Juan’s kingdoms: table services in gold from Zaragoza and finely-cut gems; delicate glass arruxiados, or scent-sprinklers, and crystal tazzas from Barcelona—more famous than Murano; great brazen vessels from Valencia and richly-woven textiles.
The same veracious historian has painted a picture in words of the youthful Yolande. “Tall,” he says, “slim, erect, well proportioned in her frame, her features of a Spanish cast, dark lustrous hair, the Queen-Duchess has an intrepid heart and an elevated spirit, which give animation and distinction to her charming personality. She is remarkable for decision, and commands obedience by her authoritative manner.”
The Court did not tarry long at Arles, for, in spite of the beauty of the women and the gallantry of the men and its other notable attractions, it was, after all, somewhat of a dull, unhealthy place. A move was accordingly made—before, indeed, the festivities were quite exhausted—to the comfortable and roomy manoir of Tarascon, a very favourite country residence of all the Provence Princes. The gardens were famous, and laid out in the Italian manner, and the extensive park and fresh-water lakes were well stocked with game and fish. The fêtes galants of Louis XV. and “La Pompadour” here had their model. The bridal couple, with their guests and retainers—often as not in the guise of shepherds and shepherdesses—thus kept there state for three merry months, until the warmer spring weather hurried them off to Angers, in the north.
FAVOURITE RECREATIONS
1. A DIGNIFIED MUSIC PARTY.
2. HAND-BALL AND CHESS
Both from Miniatures in MS., Fourteenth Century, “Valeur Maxime”
British Museum
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The pretty legend of St. Martha of Bethany appealed to the young Queen-Duchess. In the crypt of the principal