There was not one in the whole company who did not lavish praise and estimate her beauty highly, and who did not say that the mother was worthy of the daughters and the daughters of the mother.  And this beauty remained her portion through life, while married and while widowed, until her death; not that she had the freshness of her more blooming and younger years, but still she remained well preserved, always agreeable, always desirable.

Besides she was very good company, always of a good humour; loving any becoming exercise, such as dancing, in which she exhibited great grace and dignity.

She also greatly loved hunting; about which I heard a lady of the Court tell this tale:  King Francis having chosen and gathered a few of his Court whom he called “the little band of Court ladies,” which included the handsomest, daintiest and most favoured, often escaped from the Court and went to other estates to hunt deer and while away the time, sometimes staying thus in retreat eight days, ten days, sometimes more, sometimes less, just as the humour took him.

Our Queen (who was then simply Madame la Dauphine) seeing that such parties were made up without her, and that even Mesdames her sisters-in-law were included while she was left at home, begged the King to always take her with him, and to further honour her by never allowing her to go about without being accompanied by him.

It’s said that she, who was always shrewd and clever, did this as much or more to watch the King’s movements and to learn his secrets and to be able to hear and know all that went on, as she did it from pure liking for the chase.

King Francis was so pleased with this request, showing, as it seemed, the love she had for his company, that he heartily granted her request.  He loved her more now than ever before and showed delight in giving her the pleasures of the hunt, which she followed, riding at full speed and ever by his side.

She was a good and fearless horseback rider, sitting her horse with easy grace, and was the first to ride with the leg around the pommel, which was more graceful and becoming than the former mode of sitting with feet upon a board.  She loved to ride horseback even up to the time she was sixty years old and over, and when her growing feebleness prevented her riding she pined for it.  It was one of her greatest pleasures to ride far and fast, though she had many falls, even breaking her leg and bruising her head so severely that it had to be trepanned.  After she became a widow and had charge of the King and the kingdom, she accompanied the King everywhere and took all her children with her; and when the King, her husband, was still living she generally accompanied him to the stag and other hunts.  If he played pall-mall she often watched him, and sometimes played herself.  She was also fond of shooting baked clay balls with a cross-bow, and she shot well too; so that she always took with her her cross-bow when riding, in order if any game was seen she could shoot it.  When she was kept indoors by bad weather she was forever devising some new dance or beautiful ballet.  She invented games as well and passed her time by these devices, being quite unreserved, but knowing how to be grave and austere when occasion demanded it.