abode was shortly afterwards
enhanced by an auspicious domestic incident. In 1517 the Duchess of
Bourbon was confined there of a son, a blessing for some time past
unhoped for. The delighted constable determined to make of the child's
baptism a great and striking event; and he begged the king to come and be
godfather, with the dowager Duchess of Bourbon as godmother. Francis I.
consented and repaired to Moulins with his mother and nearly all his
court. The constable's magnificence astonished even the magnificent king
"five hundred gentlemen, all clad in velvet, and all wearing a chain of
gold going three times round the neck," were in habitual attendance upon
the duke; "the throng of the invited was so great that neither the castle
of Moulins nor the town itself sufficed to lodge them; tents had to be
pitched in the public places, in the streets, in the park." Francis I.
could not refrain from saying that a King of France would have much
difficulty in making such a show; the queen-mother did not hide her
jealousy; regal temper came into collision with feudal pride. Admiral
Bonnivet, a vassal of the constable and a favorite of the king, was
having built, hard by Chatellerault, a castle so vast and so magnificent,
"that he seemed," says Brantome, "to be minded to ride the high horse
over the house of M. de Bourbon, in such wise that it should appear only
a nest beside his own." Francis I., during a royal promenade, took the
constable one day to see the edifice the admiral was building, and asked
him what he thought of it. "I think," said Bourbon, "that the cage is
too big and too fine for the bird." "Ah!" said the king, "do you not
speak with somewhat of envy?" "I!" cried the constable; "I feel envy of
a gentleman whose ancestors thought themselves right happy to be squires
to mine!" In their casual and familiar conversations the least pretext
would lead to sharp words between the Duke of Bourbon and his kingly
guest. The king was rallying him one day on the attachment he was
suspected of having felt for a lady of the court. "Sir," said the
constable, "what you have just said has no point for me, but a good deal
for those who were not so forward as I was in the lady's good graces."
[At this period princes of the blood, when speaking to the king, said
Monsieur; when they wrote to him, they called him Monseigneur.] Francis
I., to whom this scarcely veiled allusion referred, was content to reply,
"Ah! my dear co