Note 1314 — Chapter XX

Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 104. It would be a great relief could we believe that inordinate fondness for the dance was the chief vice of the French court. Unfortunately the moral turpitude of the king and his favorites rests upon less suspicious grounds than the revolting stories told on hearsay by the unfriendly writer of the Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi (Edinburgi, 1574), ii. 117, 118. The "Affair of Nantouillet," occurring just about the time of the Polish ambassadors' arrival in Paris, is only too authentic. The "Prévôt de Paris," M. de Nantouillet (cf. ante, chapter xv., page 258, note), grandson of Cardinal du Prat, Chancellor of France under Francis I., offended Anjou by somewhat contemptuously declining the hand of the duke's discarded mistress, Mademoiselle de Châteauneuf. The lady easily induced her princely lover to avenge her wounded vanity. One evening Charles IX., the new king of Poland, the King of Navarre, the Grand Prior of France, and their attendants, presented themselves at the stately mansion of Nantouillet, on the southern bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre, and demanded that a banquet be prepared for them. Though the royal party was masked, the unwilling host knew his guests but too well, and dared not deny their peremptory command. In the midst of the carousal, at a preconcerted signal, the king's followers began to ransack the house, maltreating the occupants, wantonly destroying the costly furniture, appropriating the silver plate, and breaking open doors and coffers in search of money. The next day even Paris itself was indignant at the base conduct of its king. To the first president of parliament, who that day visited the palace and informed Charles of the current rumors respecting his having been present and conniving at the pillage, the despicable monarch denied their truth with his customary horrible imprecation. But when the president expressed his great satisfaction, and said that parliament would at once institute proceedings to discover and punish the guilty, Charles promptly responded: "By no means. You will lose your trouble;" and he added a significant threat for Nantouillet, that, should he pursue his attempt to obtain satisfaction, he would find that he had to do with an opponent infinitely his superior. Euseb. Phil. Dialogi, ii. 117, 118; Jean de Serres, iv., fol. 114, verso; D'Aubigné, ii. 104; De Thou, iv. (liv. lvi.) 821.