the position of Francis I. was a
good one. He had triumphed over conspiracy and invasion; the conspiracy
had not been catching, and the invasion had failed on all the frontiers.
If the king, in security within his kingdom, had confined himself to it,
whilst applying himself to the task of governing it well, he would have
obtained all the strength he required to make himself feared and deferred
to abroad. For a while he seemed to have entertained this design: on the
25th of September, 1523, he published an important ordinance for the
repression of disorderliness and outrages on the part of the soldiery in
France itself; and, on the 28th of December following, a regulation as to
the administration of finances established a control over the various
exchequer-officers, and announced the king's intention of putting some
limits to his personal expenses, "not including, however," said he, "the
ordinary run of our little necessities and pleasures." This singular
reservation was the faithful exponent of his character; he was licentious
at home and adventurous abroad, being swayed by his coarse passions and
his warlike fancies. Even far away from Paris, in the heart of the
provinces, the king's irregularities were known and dreaded. In 1524,
some few weeks after the death [at Blois, July 20, 1524] of his wife,
Queen Claude, daughter of Louis XII., a virtuous and modest princess more
regretted by the people than by her husband, Francis made his entry into
Manosque, in Provence. The burgesses had the keys of their town
presented to him by the most beautiful creature they could find within
their walls; it was the daughter of Antony Voland, one of themselves.
The virtuous young girl was so frightened at the king's glances and the
signs he made to his gentry, evidently alluding to her, that, on
returning home, she got some burning sulphur and placed herself for a
long while under the influence of its vapor, in order to destroy the
beauty which made her run the risk of being only too pleasing to the
king. Francis, who was no great or able captain, could not resist the
temptations of war any more than those of the flesh. When Bourbon and
the imperial army had evacuated Provence, the king loudly proclaimed his
purpose of pursuing them into Italy, and of once more going forth to the
conquest of Milaness, and perhaps also of the kingdom of Naples, that
incurable craze of French kings in the sixteenth century. In vain did
his most ex