Margaret at once became a great favourite with the King and Queen. Her Northern vigour and sweet manners were good credentials; but, unhappily, the young bridegroom from the first took a dislike to his consort. She was never happy when he was present, and her furtive eyes searched in vain for tokens of affection and _camaraderie_. “There was no one,” wrote Philippe de Commines a few years later, “in all the world whom she dreaded more than the Dauphin.” Her life was indeed a sad one; neglected by her husband, misunderstood and disesteemed at Court, the poor young Dauphiness passed her time mostly with Queen Marie and in futile regrets for her dear, dear home in Scotland.
[Illustration: QUEENS AND JUDGES INSPECT KNIGHTS BEFORE THE “LISTS,” SAUMUR TOURNAMENT, 1446
Painted by King René. From “Le Livre des Tournois”
Her death came about most unexpectedly, for she was discovered poisoned,--rumour had it by her spouse,--in her boudoir at Sarry-le-Château, on August 16, 1444, an ill-used wife of no more than twenty years of age. Princess Margaret’s fate was as sad as sad could be--too young to die. Her last words,--the most pathetic ever uttered by an unhappy woman,--were addressed to her faithful chaperon: “A curse on life! don’t speak to me about it!” No child, perhaps happily, was born of that ill-starred marriage.
No one wept more bitterly at this mischance than tender-hearted Queen Marie. She loved her son to distraction, and he loved her as greatly in return; and she had learned to love Margaret too, but nothing that she could say moved Louis to love, honour, and comfort, his young wife. Calm, crafty, and selfish, like his father, and vindictive, Louis’s character may be succinctly stated as he himself wrote it: “The King knows not how to rule who knows not how to dissemble.… If my cap should know my thoughts, I would burn it!”
Queen Marie’s other son, Charles, Duc de Berry, the last of all her surviving children, born December 28, 1446, was a Prince of no strength of character. Easily led by others, he became involved in endless imbroglios, and aided and abetted his elder brother the Dauphin, in his unfilial conduct towards their father. Created Duke of Guienne and Duke of Normandy in 1469,--after the expulsion of the English,--he was a source of constant anxiety and trouble to his mother. The Queen of Sicily-Anjou, Isabelle de Lorraine, his godmother, with King René, took the young Prince in hand, but he did not well repay their solicitude. Immoral, dissipated, and in debt, Charles de Berry spent his time in debauches and intrigues; he was own grandson of Isabeau the Infamous. Among his many mistresses, Derouillée de Montereau, widow of Louis d’Amboise, exercised the greatest influence. She, too, was the cause of his death, for at lunch one day she placed a peach in his wineglass, and she challenged Charles to bite the fruit with her. Her half she swallowed, and she fell dead in a few minutes, whilst her royal paramour lingered in acute suffering for three whole days, and at last succumbed to the poison on May 28, 1472. Whether she caused the fruit to be poisoned we know not; most likely she knew all about it, and only followed in the steps of those whose immorality turns love to hate and sanctity to madness. This was a characteristic of society in the Renaissance, the cloven hoof of the old Adam showing beneath the sumptuous garments of the new man.