Marot scratched his head, but Saint-Gelais anticipated him, and with extraordinary promptness and success continued:—
"Sans que tu sois un Bucéphal,
Tu portes plus grand qu'Alexandre."[12]
He was applauded on all sides, and the king, already in the saddle, waved his hand gracefully in acknowledgment of the poet's swift and happy inspiration.
Marot returned to the apartments of the Queen of Navarre, more out of sorts than ever.
"I don't know what the matter was with them at court to-day," he grumbled, "but they were all extremely stupid."
[8]It was at Villers-Cotterets, a small town in the department of Aisne, where François I. had a château, that the famous ordinance was signed, providing that the acts of sovereign courts should no longer be written in Latin, but should be drawn up in the vernacular. This château is still in existence, although sadly shorn of its pristine magnificence, and diverted from the uses for which it was originally intended. Begun by François I., who carved the salamanders upon it, it was finished by Henri II., who added his cipher and that of Catherine de Medicis. The visitor may still see those two letters, masterpieces of the Renaissance, connected,—and note this well, for the spirit of the time is epitomized in this lapidary fact,—connected by a lover's knot, which includes also the crescent of Diane de Poitiers. A charming, but, we must agree, a strange trilogy, which consists of the cipher and arms of the husband, the wife, and the mistress.
[9]Ce maraud de Marot.
I often wish that I were Phœbus,
Not for his heaven-born knowledge of herbs,
For the pain which I seek to deaden
Can be cured by no herb that grows.
Nor is it to have my abode in the firmament,
Nor for his bow to contend against Love,
For I do not choose to betray my king.
I long to be Phœbus simply for this,
To be beloved by Diane the fair.