“Yes, follow me, worthy friend, follow me!” King René looked behind him, smiling and nodding; his white teeth gleamed in his broad olive face; he made a grandiose gesture of invitation. Charles bowed in assent; he was somewhat taken aback but amused at the almost childlike pleasure of his royal host, who had confessed that he attached infinitely more importance to his visitor’s poetic art than to all the honorable messages from the French and English governments together.
King René opened a little door, so narrow and low that they both had to stoop. When Charles looked up, he could not repress an exclamation of amazement. He was standing in a walled courtyard filled with blossoming trees and bright flowers; paved paths traversed the garden where three fountains played. Exotic, brightly colored birds sat chained to swinging perches set among the branches of the bushes; the air was filled with their penetrating sweet fluting and twittering and with the heavy fragrance of the flowers. The walls surrounding the garden were so high that only the tops of the trees on the other side could be seen. Above the garden and the treetops arched the dazzling deep blue sky.
On one side of the little door through which Charles and René had entered, stood a pavilion without walls; above a floor of large shining tiles a canvas had been stretched between poles; it drooped to one side to temper the light. Beneath that awning stood a bench, a slanted reading desk like the one Charles used and a table heaped with boxes, cases and folio volumes. To this bower King René, still nodding mysteriously, led his guest.
Charles entered the pavilion, feeling that he had left the everyday world for one of the symbolic fairy gardens described in the Romance of the Rose. He stared enchanted at the exotic birds and flowers, at the grass and leaves suffused with a greenish glow, while King René busied himself at the table and the reading desk.
“Look here now.”
Charles gave ear to the gently urgent tone in which the request was made and turned around. King René had set out a number of small wooden panels on which were painted miniatures in brilliant jeweled colors, in the style of the Flemish masters whose work Charles had seen at the court of Burgundy. He was strongly interested; he removed his spectacles and leaned over to inspect the paintings.
“These are singularly beautiful,” he said after a while. “Who painted them, Monseigneur?”
King René had watched Charles with quiet intensity as, one by one, he took the little panels in his hand; now he began to laugh. In his large, round face his jovial black eyes glittered like stars. “Do you really find them beautiful, my friend?” he asked happily. “That pleases me. I too find them excellent. I painted them.”
“You have great skill,” said Charles, surprised. “These are real works of art.”
King René bent over the table so that his face almost touched the paintings; carefully he caressed the wood with his fingertips.
“Yes, they are beautiful, they are good,” he repeated a few times in a pleased voice. “The colors are well-mixed. Look at how lovely that blue is — that cost me a fortune in lapis lazuli. But it’s worth the cost, this beauty is worth it. I taught myself to paint when I sat in Flanders as a prisoner,” he went on, looking at Charles. “That was a pastime for me, just as poetry was for you in England.”
“Apparently you still derive much pleasure from it.” Charles smiled and pointed to the dozens of paints, the reading desk, the brushes and jars for mixing the paints. “Unfortunately, the world claims too much of my attention; I cannot dedicate myself to the thing I love.”
“The world, the world?” For the first time a shadow crossed King René’s childishly good-natured face. “What do you call the world? Conferences, affairs of state, war, diplomatic maneuvering, money worries, obligations to all the world and his wife? Do you know what the world is?” He gripped Charles’ arm and directed him to look once more at the panels: with his broad brown forefinger he pointed at the paintings: holy pictures, scenes from mythology, emblematic figures. “That is the world; there is the world for me,” he said, his voice filled with affection. “During the hours I spent on that, I felt like a completely fulfilled man for the first time in my entire life. I am never so contented, so deeply happy, so filled with gratitude to God who created me, as when I sit here with my brushes and my colors and create little creatures, small worlds, on the wood. This is the world, Monseigneur my friend, and all things outside it are only dreams and illusions, lighter than smoke. Don’t tell me that you don’t know this already.”
“I have often thought almost the same thing,” said Charles thoughtfully, still smiling. “But I was never able to express the idea so clearly as you, Monseigneur. I have never dared to suppose that poetry could constitute the meaning and the purpose of my life. I thought that I had … and have … many other responsibilities to perform. My time does not belong to me alone.”
“Friend, friend!” King René raised his hands and shook his head. His eyes began to twinkle once more. “You still have much to learn. You don’t know yourself, esteemed friend. Be honest, confess that you really only live when you are thinking of poetry, or poetically thinking. I have had the privilege of reading a few of the verses which you sent some time ago to your wife in Rodez. Ah, let us not fall into comparisons, let’s not name names, or mention Virgil or Horace whom we have learned to love and respect as great poets. The blackbird and the skylark know how to sing as well as the nightingale, and the fact that God has created them shows there must be room in the world for their song. Monseigneur, worthy friend, your songs are not the conventional rhymes which we all learn to compose at one time or another. Your heart is in them, they are warm and true as … as …” he waved his large hands back and forth, searching for the right word. Charles, still smiling, shrugged.
“It’s certainly true that if one is touched to the heart, he will write good verse,” he said lightly. He felt that he could never be able to speak so enthusiastically, so openly, as King René did.
“And what prevents you from loving with all your heart, from being overcome with delight or even with grief, if that’s the way you feel?”
Charles followed his host out of the pavilion into the blinding sunlight; they were met by the intoxicating, bittersweet fragrance of roses and oleanders.
“When Madame Bonne d’Armagnac died, I asked in verse to be dismissed from the service of Love,” Charles said, in his usual tone of jocular melancholy. “Since then I have hardly ever taken up the pen. I live under the protection of Nonchaloir — philosophical resignation, calm cool acquiescence … in that state one cannot be incessantly inspired to write verse. Although …”
He stopped and stretched his hand toward a cluster of flowers.
“In your enchanted court, my lord, I could almost imagine myself young and in love again. Yes, if I thought about that possibility long enough, I am afraid that rhymes and images would shoot up in profusion in my heart, like the flowers in his garden. I would need only to pluck them.”
“And what stops you?” René’s face was radiant with happiness. He seemed on the point of saying more, but suddenly he put his finger to his lips and nodded his head toward a flowering thicket. Out of the foliage came two white peacocks walking regally as queens; they moved their plume-crowned heads haughtily from left to right, letting their long, folded tail feathers trail behind them over the grass. When they perceived that they were being watched, they stood still and slowly opened their great snow-white fans.
“Monseigneur my friend,” whispered King René, “don’t our knights hold fast to the beautiful old custom of swearing especially solemn oaths on noble birds — herons, swans, peacocks? It seems to me that everything is conspiring to lure you away from your promise. Swear that you will not disavow the deepest desires of your heart, that you will no longer resist the muse who is our truest friend and mistress. Swear that you will no longer give yourself up to the sin of unhappiness.”