the two kingdoms, between Irun and Andaye.
Lannoy put the king on board, and received in exchange, from the hands of
Marshal Lautrec, the little princes Francis and Henry. The king gave his
children his blessing, and reached the French side whilst they were being
removed to the Spanish; and as soon as he set foot on shore, he leaped
upon a fine Turkish horse, exclaiming, as he started at a gallop for
Bayonne, where his mother and his sister awaited him, "So now I am king
again!"

On becoming king again, he fell under the dominion of three personal
sentiments, which exercised a decisive influence upon his conduct, and,
consequently, upon the destiny of France joy at his liberation, a
thirsting for revenge, we will not say for vengeance, to be wreaked on
Charles V., and the burden of the engagement he had contracted at Madrid
in order to recover his liberty, alternately swayed him. From Bayonne he
repaired to Bordeaux, where he reassembled his court, and thence to
Cognac, in Saintonge, where he passed nearly three months, almost
entirely abandoning himself to field-sports, galas, diversions, and
pleasures of every kind, as if to indemnify himself for the wearisomeness
and gloom in which he had lived at Madrid. "Age subdues the blood,
adversity the mind, risks the nerve, and the despairing monarch has no
hope but in pleasures," says Tavannes in his Memoires: "such was Francis
I., smitten of women both in body and mind. It is the little circle of
Madame d'Etampes that governs." One of the regent's maids of honor, Anne
d'Heilly, whom Frances I. made Duchess of Etampes, took the place of the
Countess of Chateaubriant as his favorite. With strange indelicacy
Francis demanded back from Madame de Chateaubriant the beautiful jewels
of gold which he had given her, and which bore tender mottoes of his
sister Marguerite's composition. The countess took time enough to have
the jewels melted down, and said to the king's envoy, "Take that to the
king, and tell him that, as he has been pleased to recall what he gave
me, I send it back to him in metal. As for the mottoes, I cannot suffer
any one but myself to enjoy them, dispose of them, and have the pleasure
of them." The king sent back the metal to Madame de Chateaubriant; it
was the mottoes that he wished to see again, but he did not get them.

At last it was absolutely necessary to pass from pleasure to business.
The envoys of Charles V., with Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples,