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days later the king gave them a publicaudience. He received them in a large hall whose high ceiling was decorated with the lilies of France. Tapestries covered the walls. Half the room was taken up by an elevated stage several feet higher than the floor. A second platform rising from this stage, at the extreme end of the room, held the throne—a chair covered with cloth of gold under a trailing canopy of gold brocade. King Francis was seated on his throne, wearing a sumptuous silver robe embroidered in flowers and lined entirely in Spanish heron feathers. His feet rested on a cushion of cloth of gold; the dais was carpeted in violet-colored velvet ornamented in lilies. On the stage below the king stood several ranks of great nobles and churchmen, the papal nuncio, and the foreign ambassadors resident at the French court. Far to the king’s left on a lower platform, hidden from the company in the hall by screens, were Queen Claude and the king’s mother, Louise of Savoy, and other gentlewomen.
    The English ambassadors, who had put on their richest doublets, gold chains and jeweled girdles for this reception, were preceded into the audience hall by a guard of two hundred gentlemen carrying battle axes, who brought them up the steps of the raised stage to stand below the king. Francis, who up to this point had maintained his kingly pose un-moving, responded to their deep bows with the warmest courtesy, getting up from his throne and descending to greet them each by name. Their credentials were presented and accepted, speeches of welcome and cordiality were exchanged, and finally Francis came down from his throne once more to embrace each of the English representatives in turn, exactly as Henry had embraced the French ambassadors at their audience two months earlier.
    A few days after this formal reception the two parties swore to uphold the treaty at a high mass in Notre Dame, and afterward Francis and Claude on behalf of their son espoused the Princess Mary, represented by the earl of Worcester. Throughout these proceedings Francis did his utmost to appear magnificent yet approachable—to fulfill the exalted image of sovereignty while being affable and companionable to his English guests. He took them bear hunting and stag hunting; he jousted with them and for them, and he provided food and entertainment on a scale to match and, he hoped, to surpass the ostentatious banquets at Henry’s court. In the open courtyard within the Bastille a wooden floor was built, with a huge space for dining tables and three galleries for spectators around the sides. The entire area was covered with a ceiling of blue canvas to form a pavilion, and hangings in the king’s colors of white and tawny formed the walls. Here Francis gave a splendid feast, sitting under his golden canopy and surrounded by his relatives and courtiers in order of pre-eminence. The English sent detailed accounts of the evening to Henry, describing the wonderful effect of the huge chandeliers, eachblazing with sixteen torches, throwing their light across the starry blue ceiling painted in gold with the signs of the zodiac and the planets. The food was served on plates of solid gold and silver, and some of the courses “emitted fire and flames,” to the wonder of the diners. Each dish was presented with a degree of pomp usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. A flourish of trumpets announced its approach, with guardsmen and six attendants following the trumpeters. Five heralds then proclaimed the arrival of the eight seneschals of the king’s household, who ushered in the Lord Steward; his staff of twenty-four pages of honor and two hundred guardsmen carried in the meat or fish or game.
    Six companies of masquers danced in turn after the dining tables were cleared away: boys in white satin, men in long black satin mantles and white wigs and beards, and a group in “long gowns with tall stockings and short bolstered breeches.” In the midst of the masquers Francis