all that was due to the constable, but the promise was not kept. The
constable did not consider it seemly to wait about; so he quitted the
court and withdrew into his own duchy, to Moulins, not openly disgraced,
but resolved to set himself, by his proud independence, above the reach
of ill-will, whether on the king's part or his mother's.

Moulins was an almost kingly residence. "The dukes," said the Venetian
traveller Andrew Navagero, in 1528, "have built there fortress-wise a
magnificent palace, with beautiful gardens, groves, fountains, and all
the sumptuous appliances of a prince's dwelling." No sooner did the
constable go to reside there than numbers of the nobility flocked thither
around him. The feudal splendor of this 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