It was not without grave doubts and a terrible sinking at the heart that Charles V. stepped foot upon French territory, where earth and air were, so to speak, his enemies, whose king he had treated unworthily when he was a prisoner in his hands, and whose Dauphin he had perhaps poisoned,—he was at least accused of it. Europe anticipated terrible reprisals on the part of François I. from the moment that his rival placed himself in his power. But Charles's audacity, great gambler in empires that he was, would not permit him to draw back; and as soon as he had skilfully felt the ground and paved the way, he boldly crossed the Pyrenees.
He counted upon finding devoted friends at the French court, and thought that he could safely trust to three guaranties: the ambition of Madame d'Etampes, the overweening conceit of the Connétable Anne de Montmorency, and the king's chivalrous nature.
We have seen how and for what reason the duchess chose to serve his interests. With the constable it was a different matter. The great stumbling-block in the way of statesmen of all lands and all periods is the question of alliances. Politics, which, in this matter and many others, is perforce conjectural only, is often mistaken, alas! like the science of medicine, in studying the symptoms of affinities between peoples, and in risking remedies for their animosities. Now the constable was a monomaniac on the subject of the Spanish alliance. He had got it into his head that France's salvation lay in that direction, and provided that he could satisfy Charles V., who had been at war with his master twenty years out of twenty-five, he cared but little how much he displeased his other allies, the Turks and the Protestants, or let slip the most magnificent opportunities, like that which gave Flanders to François I.
The king had blind confidence in Montmorency. In truth the constable had in the last war against the Emperor displayed a hitherto unheard of resolution, and had checked the enemy's advance. To be sure he did it at the cost of the ruin of a province, by laying the country waste before him, by devastating a tenth part of France. But what especially impressed the king was his minister's haughty roughness of manner, his inflexible obstinacy, which to a superficial mind might seem cleverness and unswerving firmness of resolution. The result was that François listened to the "great suborner of men," as Brantôme calls him, with a deference equal to the fear inspired in his inferiors by this terrible reciter of paternosters, who alternated his prayers with hangings.
Charles V. could therefore safely rely upon the persevering friendship of the constable.
He placed even more reliance upon his rival's generosity. Indeed, François I. carried magnanimity to an absurd point.
"My kingdom," he said, "has no toll-house, like a bridge, and I do not sell my hospitality." The astute Charles knew that he could trust the word of the "knightly king."
Nevertheless, when the Emperor was fairly' upon French territory, he could not overcome his apprehension and his doubts. He found the king's two sons awaiting him at the frontier, and throughout his journey they overwhelmed him with attentions and honors. But the crafty monarch shuddered as he thought that all this appearance of cordiality might conceal some deep-laid snare.
"I must say that I sleep very ill," he said, "in a foreign country."
He brought an anxious preoccupied face to the fêtes which were given him, and, as he advanced farther and farther toward the heart of the country, he became more and more sad and gloomy.