THE TALES OF

THE HEPTAMERON

OF

Margaret, Queen of Navarre

_Newly Translated into English from the Authentic Text_

OF M. LE ROUX DE LINCY WITH

AN ESSAY UPON THE HEPTAMERON

BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M. A. 

Also the Original Seventy-three Full Page Engravings

Designed by S. FREUDENBERG

And One Hundred and Fifty Head and Tail Pieces

By DUNKER

_IN FIVE VOLUMES_

VOLUME THE FIRST

LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILISTS

MDCCCXCIV

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

[Margaret, Queen of Navarre, from a crayon drawing by Clouet, preservedat the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]

[Illustration: Titlepage]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 

Preface

Memoir of Margaret of Angoulême

Essay on the Heptameron

Dedications and Preface to the Original Editions

of the Heptameron

The Prologue

FIRST DAY. 

Tale I. The pitiful history of a Proctor of Alençon, named St. Aignan, and of his wife, who caused her husband to assassinate her lover, theson of the Lieutenant-General

II. The fate of the wife of a muleteer of Amboise, who suffered herselfto be killed by her servant rather than sacrifice her chastity

III. The revenge taken by the Queen of Naples, wife to King Alfonso, forher husband's infidelity with a gentleman's wife

IV. The ill success of a Flemish gentleman who was unable to obtain, either by persuasion or force, the love of a great Princess

V. How a boatwoman of Coulon, near Nyort, contrived to escape from thevicious designs of two Grey Friars

Tale VI. How the wife of an old valet of the Duke of Alençon's succeededin saving her lover from her husband, who was blind of one eye

VII. The craft of a Parisian merchant, who saved the reputation of thedaughter by offering violence to the mother

Appendix to the First Day

ENGRAVINGS

To face page Queen Margaret of Navarre. Frontispiece. 

Prologue: The Story-tellers in the Meadow near The Gave. By S. Freudenberg

FIRST DAY. 

Tale I. Du Mesnil learns his Mistress's Infidelity from her Maid. By S. Freudenberg

II. The Muleteer's Servant attacking his Mistress. By S. Freudenberg

III. The King Joking upon the Stag's Head being A fitting Decoration. ByS. Freudenberg

IV. The Princess's Lady of Honour hurrying to her Mistress's Assistance. By S. Freudenberg

V. The Boatwoman of Coulon outwitting the Friars. By S. Freudenberg

VI. The Wife's Ruse to secure the Escape of her Lover. By S. Freudenberg

VII. The Merchant transferring his Caresses from the Daughter to theMother. By S. Freudenberg

PREFACE. 

The first printed version of the famous Tales of Margaret of Navarre, issued in Paris in the year 1558, under the title of "Histoires desAmans Fortunez, " was extremely faulty and imperfect. It comprised butsixty-seven of the seventy-two tales written by the royal author, andthe editor, Pierre Boaistuau, not merely changed the order of thosenarratives which he did print, but suppressed numerous passages in them, besides modifying much of Margaret's phraseology. A somewhat similarcourse was adopted by Claude Gruget, who, a year later, produced whatclaimed to be a complete version of the stories, to which he gave thegeneral title of the _Heptameron_, a name they have ever since retained. Although he reinstated the majority of the tales in their propersequence, he still suppressed several of them, and inserted others intheir place, and also modified the Queen's language after the fashionset by Boaistuau. Despite its imperfections, however, Gruget's versionwas frequently reprinted down to the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, when it served as the basis of the numerous editions of the_Heptameron_ in _beau langage_, as the French phrased it, which thenbegan to make their appearance. It served, moreover, in the one or theother form, for the English and other translations of the work, and downto our own times was accepted as the standard version of the Queenof Navarre's celebrated tales. Although it was known that variouscontemporary MSS. Were preserved at the French National Library inParis, no attempt was made to compare Gruget's faulty version with theoriginals until the Société des Bibliophiles Français entrusted thisdelicate task to M. Le Roux de Lincy, whose labours led to some mostvaluable discoveries, enabling him to produce a really authentic versionof Margaret's admired masterpiece, with the suppressed tales restored, the omitted passages reinstated, and the Queen's real language given forthe first time in all its simple gracefulness. 

It is from the authentic text furnished by M. Le Roux de Lincy that thepresent translation has been made, without the slightest suppression orabridgment. The work moreover contains all the more valuable notes tobe found in the best French editions of the _Heptameron_, as well asnumerous others from original sources, and includes a _résumé_ of thevarious suggestions made by MM. Félix Frank, Le Roux de Lincy, PaulLacroix, and A. De Montaiglon, towards the identification of thenarrators of the stories, and the principal actors in them, withwell-known personages of the time. An Essay on the _Heptameron_ from thepen of Mr. George Saintsbury, M. A. , and a Life of Queen Margaret, are also given, as well as the quaint Prefaces of the earlier Frenchversions; and a complete bibliographical summary of the various editionswhich have issued from the press. 

It may be supposed that numerous illustrated editions have beenpublished of a work so celebrated as the _Heptameron_, which, besides furnishing scholars with a favourite subject for research andspeculation, has, owing to its perennial freshness, delighted so manygenerations of readers. Such, however, is not the case. Only two fullyillustrated editions claim the attention of connoisseurs. The firstof these was published at Amsterdam in 1698, with designs by the Dutchartist, Roman de Hooge, whose talent has been much overrated. To-daythis edition is only valuable on account of its comparative rarity. Verydifferent was the famous edition illustrated by Freudenberg, a Swissartist--the friend of Boucher and of Greuze--which was published inparts at Berne in 1778-81, and which among amateurs has long commandedan almost prohibitive price. 

The Full-page Illustrations to the present translation are printed fromthe actual copperplates engraved for the Berne edition by Longeuil, Halbou, and other eminent French artists of the eighteenth century, after the designs of S. Freudenberg. There are also the one hundred andfifty elaborate head and tail pieces executed for the Berne edition byDunker, well known to connoisseurs as one of the principal engravers ofthe _Cabinet_ of the Duke de Choiseul. 

The Portrait of Queen Margaret placed as frontispiece to the presentvolume is from a crayon drawing by Clouet, preserved at the BibliothèqueNationale, Paris. 

Ernest A. Vizetelly. 

London, 1893. 

_Explanation of the Initials appended to the Notes_. 

B. J. . . Bibliophile Jacob, i. E. Paul Lacroix. 

D. . . . . F. Dillaye. 

F. . . . . Félix Frank. 

L. . . . . Le Roux de Lincy. 

M. . . . . Anatole de Montaiglon. 

Ed. . . . E. A. Vizetelly. 

_MARGARET OF ANGOULÊME, QUEEN OF NAVARRE. _

I. 

 _Louise of Savoy; her marriage with the Count of Angouleme-- Birth of her children Margaret and Francis--Their father's early death--Louise and her children at Amboise--Margaret's studies and her brother's pastimes--Marriage of Margaret with the Duke of Alençon--Her estrangement from her husband-- Accession of Francis I. --The Duke of Alençon at Marignano-- Margaret's Court at Alençon--Her personal appearance--Her interest in the Reformation and her connection with Clement Marot--Lawsuit between Louise of Savoy and the Constable de Bourbon. _

In dealing with the life and work of Margaret of Angouleme (1) it isnecessary at the outset to refer to the mother whose influence andcompanionship served so greatly to mould her daughter's career. 

 1 This Life of Margaret is based upon the memoir by M, Le Roux de Lincy prefixed to the edition of the _Heptameron_ issued by the Société des Bibliophiles Français, but various errors have been rectified, and advantage has been taken of the researches of later biographers. 

Louise of Savoy, daughter of Count Philip of Bresse, subsequently Dukeof Savoy, was born at Le Pont d'Ain in 1477, and upon the death of hermother, Margaret de Bourbon, she married Charles d'Orléans, Count ofAngoulême, to whom she brought the slender dowry of thirty-five thousandlivres. (1) She was then but twelve years old, her husband being sometwenty years her senior. He had been banished from the French Court forhis participation in the insurrection of Brittany, and was living instraitened circumstances. Still, on either side the alliance was anhonourable one. Louise belonged to a sovereign house, while the Countof Angoulême was a prince of the blood royal of France by virtue of hisdescent from King Charles V. , his grandfather having been that monarch'ssecond son, the notorious Duke Louis of Orleans, (2) who was murdered inParis in 1417 at the instigation of John the Bold of Burgundy. 

 1 The value of the Paris livre at this date was twenty sols, so that the amount would be equivalent to about L1400. 

 2 This was the prince described by Brantôme as a "great débaucher of the ladies of the Court, and invariably of the greatest among them. "--_Vies des Dames galantes_ (Disc. I. ). 

Louise, who, although barely nubile, impatiently longed to become amother, gave birth to her first child after four years of weddedlife. "My daughter Margaret, " she writes in the journal recording theprincipal events of her career, "was born in the year 1492, the eleventhday of April, at two o'clock in the morning; that is to say, the tenthday, fourteen hours and ten minutes, counting after the manner ofthe astronomers. " This auspicious event took place at the Château ofAngoulême, then a formidable and stately pile, of which nowadays thereonly remains a couple of towers, built in the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies. Soon afterwards Cognac became the Count of Angoulême'sfavourite place of residence, and it was there that Louise gave birth, on September 12th, 1494, to her second child, a son, who was christenedFrancis. 

Louise's desires were now satisfied, but her happiness did not longremain complete. On January 1st, 1496, when she was but eighteen yearsold, she lost her amiable and accomplished husband, and forthwithretiring to her Château of Romorantin, she resolved to devote herselfentirely to the education of her children. The Duke of Orleans, who, on the death of Charles VIII. In 1498, succeeded to the throne as LouisXII. , was appointed their guardian, and in 1499 he invited them andtheir mother to the royal Château of Amboise, where they remained forseveral years. 

The education of Francis, who had become heir-presumptive to the throne, was conducted at Amboise by the Marshal de Gié, one of the King'sfavourites, whilst Margaret was intrusted to the care of a venerablelady, whom her panegyrist does not mention by name, but in whom hestates all virtues were assembled. (1) This lady took care to regulatenot only the acts but also the language of the young princess, who wasprovided with a tutor in the person of Robert Hurault, Baron of Auzay, great archdeacon and abbot of St. Martin of Autun. (2) This divineinstructed her in Latin and French literature, and also taught herSpanish and Italian, in which languages Brantôme asserts that she becameproficient. "But albeit she knew how to speak good Spanish and goodItalian, " he says, "she always made use of her mother tongue for mattersof moment; though when it was necessary to join in jesting and gallantconversation she showed that she was acquainted with more than her dailybread. " (3)

 1 Sainte-Marthe's _Oraison funèbre de la Royne de Navarre_, p. 22. Margaret's modern biographers state that this lady was Madame de Chastillon, but it is doubtful which Madame de Chastillon it was. The Rev. James Anderson assumes it was Louise de Montmorency, the mother of the Colignys, whilst Miss Freer asserts it was Anne de Chabannes de Damniartin, wife of James de Chastillon, killed in Italy in 1572. M. Franck has shown, in his edition of the _Heptameron_, that Anne de Chabannes died about 1505, and that James de Chastillon then married Blanche de Tournon. Possibly his first wife may have been Margaret's governess, but what is quite certain is that the second wife became her lady of honour, and that it is she who is alluded to in the _Heptameron_. 

 2 Odolant Desnos's _Mémoires historiques sur Alençon_, vol. Ii. 

 3 Brantôme's _Rodomontades espagnoles_, 18mo, 1740, vol. Xii. P. 117. 

Such was Margaret's craving for knowledge that she even wished toobtain instruction in Hebrew, and Paul Paradis, surnamed Le Canosse, aprofessor at the Royal College, gave her some lessons in it. Moreover, a rather obscure passage in the funeral oration which Sainte-Marthedevoted to her after her death, seemingly implies that she acquiredfrom some of the most eminent men then flourishing the precepts of thephilosophy of the ancients. 

The journal kept by Louise of Savoy does not impart much information asto the style of life which she and her children led in their new abode, the palatial Château of Amboise, originally built by the Counts ofAnjou, and fortified by Charles VII. With the most formidable towers inFrance. (1)

 1 The Château of Amboise, now the private property of the Count de Paris, is said to occupy the site of a Roman fortress destroyed by the Normans and rebuilt by Foulques the Red of Anjou. When Francis I. Ascended the French throne he presented the barony of Amboise with its hundred and forty-six fiefs to his mother, Louise of Savoy. 

Numerous authorities state, however, that Margaret spent most of hertime in study with her preceptors and in the devotional exercises whichthen had so large a place in the training of princesses. Still she wasby no means indifferent to the pastimes in which her brother and hiscompanions engaged. Gaston de Foix, the nephew of the King, WilliamGouffier, who became Admiral de Bonnivet, Philip Brion, Sieur deChabot, Fleurange, "the young adventurer, " Charles de Bourbon, Countof Montpensier, and Anne de Montmorency--two future Constables ofFrance--surrounded the heir to the throne, with whom they practisedtennis, archery, and jousting, or played at soldiers pending the timewhen they were to wage war in earnest. (1)

Margaret was a frequent spectator of these pastimes, and took a keeninterest in her brother's efforts whenever he was assailing or defendingsome miniature fortress or tilting at the ring. It would appear alsothat she was wont to play at chess with him; for we have it on highauthority that it is she and her brother who are represented, thusengaged, in a curious miniature preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationalein Paris. (2) In this design--executed by an unknown artist--only theback of Francis is to be seen, but a full view of Margaret is supplied;the personage standing behind her being Artus Gouffier, her own and herbrother's governor. 

 1 Fleurange's _Histoire des Choses mémorables advenues du Reigne de Louis XII. Et François I_. 

 2 Paulin Paris's _Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du Roi_, &c. , Paris, 1836, vol. I. Pp. 279-281. The miniature in question is contained in MS. No. 6808: _Commentaire sur le Livre des Échecs amoureux et Archiloge Sophie_. 

Whatever time Margaret may have devoted to diversion, she was certainlya very studious child, for at fifteen years of age she already had thereputation of being highly accomplished. Shortly after her sixteenthbirthday a great change took place in her life. On August 3rd, 1508, Louise of Savoy records in her journal that Francis "this day quittedAmboise to become a courtier, and left me all alone. " Margaretaccompanied her brother upon his entry into the world, the young couplerepairing to Blois, where Louis XII. Had fixed his residence. Therehad previously been some unsuccessful negotiations in view of marryingMargaret to Prince Henry of England (Henry VIII. ), and at this periodanother husband was suggested in the person of Charles of Austria, Countof Flanders, and subsequently Emperor Charles V. Louis XII. , however, had other views as regards the daughter of the Count of Angoulême, forhe knew that if he himself died without male issue the throne would passto Margaret's brother. Hence he decided to marry her to a prince of theroyal house, Charles, Duke of Alençon. 

This prince, born at Alençon on September 2nd, 1489, had been broughtup at the Château of Mauves, in Le Perche, by his mother, the pious andcharitable Margaret of Lorraine, who on losing her husband had resolved, like Louise of Savoy, to devote herself to the education of herchildren. (1)

 1 Hilarion de Coste's _Vies et Éloges des Dames illustres_, vol. Ii. P. 260. 

It had originally been intended that her son Charles should marry Susan, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon--the celebrated Peter andAnne de Beaujeu--but this match fell through owing to the death of Peterand the opposition of Anne, who preferred the young Count of Montpensier(afterwards Constable de Bourbon) as a son-in-law. A yet higher alliancethen presented itself for Charles: it was proposed that he should marryAnne of Brittany, the widow of King Charles VIII. , but she was manyyears his senior, and, moreover, to prevent the separation of Brittanyfrom France, it had been stipulated that she should marry either herfirst husband's successor (Louis XII. ) or the heir-presumptive to thethrone. Either course seemed impracticable, as the heir, Francis ofAngoulême, was but a child, while the new King was already married toJane, a daughter of Louis XI. Brittany seemed lost to France, when LouisXII. , by promising the duchy of Valentinois to Cæsar Borgia, prevailedupon Pope Alexander VI. To divorce him from his wife. He then marriedAnne of Brittany, while Charles of Alençon proceeded to perfect hisknightly education, pending other matrimonial arrangements. 

In 1507, when in his eighteenth year, he accompanied the army which theKing led against the Genoese, and conducted himself bravely; displayingsuch courage, indeed, at the battle of Agnadel, gained over theVenetians--who were assailed after the submission of Genoa--that LouisXII. Bestowed upon him the Order of St. Michael. It was during thisItalian expedition that his mother negotiated his marriage with Margaretof Angoulême. The alliance was openly countenanced by Louis XII. , and the young Duke of Valois--as Francis of Angoulême was nowcalled--readily acceded to it. Margaret brought with her a dowry ofsixty thousand livres, payable in four instalments, and Charles, who wason the point of attaining his twenty-first year, was declared a majorand placed in possession of his estates. (1) The marriage was solemnisedat Blois in October 1509. 

 1 Odolant Desnos's _Mémoires historiques sur Alençon_, vol. Ii. P. 231

Margaret did not find in her husband a mind comparable to her own. Differences of taste and temper brought about a certain amount ofcoolness, which did not, however, hinder the Duchess from fulfillingthe duties of a faithful, submissive wife. In fact, although but littlesympathy would appear to have existed between the Duke and Duchessof Alençon, their domestic differences have at least been singularlyexaggerated. 

During the first five years of her married life Margaret lived insomewhat retired style in her duchy of Alençon, while her husband tookpart in various expeditions, and was invested with important functions. In 1513 he fought in Picardy against the English and Imperialists, commanded by Henry VIII. , being present at the famous "Battle of Spurs;"and early in 1514 he was appointed Lieutenant-General and Governor ofBrittany. Margaret at this period was not only often separated from herhusband, but she also saw little of her mother, who had retired to herduchy of Angoulême. Louise of Savoy, as mother of the heir-presumptive, was the object of the homage of all adroit and politic courtiers, butshe had to behave with circumspection on account of the jealousy ofthe Queen, Anne of Brittany, whose daughters, Claude and Renée, weredebarred by the Salic Law from inheriting the crown. Louis XII. Wishedto marry Claude to Francis of Angoulême, but Anne refusing her consent, it was only after her death, in 1514, that the marriage was solemnised. 

It now seemed certain that Francis would in due course ascend thethrone; but Louis XII. Abruptly contracted a third alliance, marryingMary of England, the sister of Henry VIII. Louise of Savoy soon deemedit prudent to keep a watch on the conduct of this gay young Queen, andtook up her residence at the Court in November 1514. Shortly afterwardsLouis XII. Died of exhaustion, as many had foreseen, and the hopes ofthe Duchess of Angoulême were realised. She knew the full extent of herempire over her son, now Francis I. , and felt both able and ready toexercise a like authority over the affairs of his kingdom. 

The accession of Francis gave a more important position to Margaret andher husband. The latter was already one of the leading personages of thestate, and new favours increased his power. He did not address the Kingas "Your Majesty, " says Odolant Desnos, but styled him "Monseigneur"or "My Lord, " and all the acts which he issued respecting his duchy ofAlençon began with the preamble, "Charles, by the grace of God. "Francis had scarcely become King than he turned his eyes upon Italy, andappointing his mother as Regent, he set out with a large army, aportion of which was commanded by the Duke of Alençon. At the battleof Marignano the troops of the latter formed the rearguard, and, onperceiving that the Swiss were preparing to surround the bulk of theFrench army, Charles marched against them, overthrew them, and by hisskilful manouvres decided the issue of the second day's fight. (1) Theconquest of the duchy of Milan was the result of this victory, and peacesupervening, the Duke of Alençon returned to France. 

 1 Odolant Desnos's _Mémoires historiques sur Alençon_, vol. Ii. P. 238. 

It was at this period that Margaret began to keep a Court, which, according to Odolant Desnos, rivalled that of her brother. We knowthat in 1517 she and her husband entertained the King with a series ofmagnificent fêtes at their Château of Alençon, which then combined botha palace and a fortress. But little of the château now remains, as, after the damage done to it during the religious wars between 1561and 1572, it was partially demolished by Henry IV. When he and Bironcaptured it in 1590. Still the lofty keep built by Henry I. Of Englandsubsisted intact till in 1715 it was damaged by fire, and finally in1787 razed to the ground. 

The old pile was yet in all its splendour in 1517, when Francis I. Wasentertained there with jousts and tournaments. At these gay gatheringsMargaret appeared apparelled in keeping with her brother's love ofdisplay; for, like all princesses, she clothed herself on importantoccasions in sumptuous garments. But in every-day life she wasvery simple, despising the vulgar plan of impressing the crowd bymagnificence and splendour. In a portrait executed about this period, her dark-coloured dress is surmounted by a wimple with a double collarand her head covered with a cap in the Bearnese style. This portrait (1)tends, like those of a later date, to the belief that Margaret's beauty, so celebrated by the poets of her time, consisted mainly in thenobility of her bearing and the sweetness and liveliness spread over herfeatures. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were very large, but although shehad been violently attacked with small-pox while still young, she hadbeen spared the traces which this cruel illness so often left in thosedays, and she even preserved the freshness of her complexion until latein life. (2)

 1 It is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where it will be found in the _Recueil de Portraits au crayon par Clouett Dumonstier, &c_, fol. Xi. 

 2 Referring to this subject, she says in one of her letters: "You can tell it to the Count and Countess of Vertus, whom you will go and visit on my behalf; and say to the Countess that I am sorely vexed that she has this loathsome illness. However, I had it as severely as ever was known. And if it be that she has caught it as I have been told, I should like to be near her to preserve her complexion, and do for her what Ï did for myself. "--Génin's _lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême_, Paris, 1841, p. 374. 

Like her brother, whom she greatly resembled, she was very tall. Hergait was solemn, but the dignified air of her person was tempered byextreme affability and a lively humour, which never left her. (1)

 1 Sainte-Marthe says on this subject: "For in her face, in her gestures, in her walk, in her words, in all that she did and said, a royal gravity made itself so manifest and apparent, that one saw I know not what of majesty which compelled every one to revere and dread her. In seeing her kindly receive every one, refuse no one, and patiently listen to all, you would have promised yourself easy and facile access to her; but if she cast eyes upon you, there was in her face I know not what of gravity, which made you so astounded that you no longer had power, I do not say to walk a step, but even to stir a foot to approach her. "-- _Oraison-funèbre, &c_, p. 53. 

Francis I. Did not allow the magnificent reception accorded to him atAlençon to pass unrewarded. He presented his sister with the duchy ofBerry, where she henceforward exercised temporal control, though shedoes not appear to have ever resided there for any length of time. In 1521, when her husband started to the relief of Chevalier Bayard, attacked in Mézières by the Imperial troops, she repaired to Meaux withher mother so as to be near to the Duke. Whilst sojourning there sheimproved her acquaintance with the Bishop, William Briçonnet, who hadgathered around him Gerard Roussel, Michael d'Arande, Lefèvre d'Etaples, and other celebrated disciples of the Reformation. The effect ofLuther's preaching had scarcely reached France before Margaret had begunto manifest great interest in the movement, and had engaged in a longcorrespondence with Briçonnet, which is still extant. Historians areat variance as to whether Margaret ever really contemplated a change ofreligion, or whether the protection she extended to the Reformers wassimply dictated by a natural feeling of compassion and a horror ofpersecution. It has been contended that she really meditated a changeof faith, and even attempted to convert her mother and brother; and thisview is borne out by some passages in the letters which she wrote toBishop Briçonnet after spending the winter of 1521 at Meaux. 

Whilst she was sojourning there, her husband, having contributed to therelief of Mézières, joined the King, who was then encamped at Fervacqueson the Somme, and preparing to invade Hainault. It was at this juncturethat Clement Marot, the poet, who, after being attached to the personof Anne of Brittany, had become a hanger-on at the Court of Francis I. , applied to Margaret to take him into her service. (1)

 1 Epistle ii. : _Le Despourveu à Madame la Duchesse d'Alençon_, in the _OEuvres de Clément Marot_, 1700, vol. I. P. 99. 

Shortly afterwards we find him furnishing her with informationrespecting the royal army, which had entered Hainault and was fightingthere. (1)

 1 Epistle iii. : _Du Camp d' Attigny à ma dite Dame d' Alençon, ibid. _, vol. I. P. 104. 

Lenglet-Dufresnoy, in his edition of Marot's works, originated thetheory that the numerous poems composed by Marot in honour of Margaretsupply proofs of an amorous intrigue between the pair. Other authoritieshave endorsed this view; but M. Le Roux de Lincy asserts that in thepieces referred to, and others in which Marot incidentally speaks ofMargaret, he can find no trace either of the fancy ascribed to her forthe poet or of the passion which the latter may have felt for her. Likeall those who surrounded the Duchess of Alençon, Marot, he remarks, exalted her beauty, art, and talent to the clouds; but whenever it is toher that his verses are directly addressed, he does not depart fromthe respect he owes to her. To give some likelihood to his conjectures, Lenglet-Dufresnoy had to suppose that Marot addressed Margaret incertain verses which were not intended for her. In the epistlespreviously mentioned, and in several short pieces, rondeaux, epigrams, new years' addresses, and epitaphs really written to or for the sisterof Francis I. , one only finds respectful praise, such as the humblecourtier may fittingly offer to his patroness. There is nothingwhatever, adds M. Le Roux de Lincy, to promote the suspicion that apassion, either unfortunate or favoured, inspired a single one of thesecompositions. 

The campaign in which Francis I. Was engaged at the time when Marot'sconnection with Margaret began, and concerning which the poet suppliedher with information, was destined to influence the whole reign, sinceit furnished the occasion of the first open quarrel between FrancisI. And the companion of his childhood, Charles de Bourbon, Count ofMontpensier, and Constable of France. Yielding too readily on thisoccasion to the persuasions of his mother, Francis intrusted toMargaret's husband the command of the vanguard, a post which theConstable considered his own by virtue of his office. He felt mortallyoffended at the preference given to the Duke of Alençon, and from thatday forward he and Francis were enemies for ever. 

Whilst the King was secretly jealous of Bourbon, who was one of thehandsomest, richest, and bravest men in the kingdom, Louise of Savoy, although forty-four years of age, was in love with him. The Constable, then thirty-two, had lost his wife, Susan de Bourbon, from whom hehad inherited vast possessions. To these Louise of Savoy, finding herpassion disregarded, laid claim, as being a nearer relative of thedeceased. A marriage, as Chancellor Duprat suggested, would have servedto reconcile the parties, but the Constable having rejected the proposedalliance--with disdain, so it is said--the suit was brought before theParliament and decided in favour of Louise. Such satisfaction as shemay have felt was not, however, of long duration, for Charles de Bourbonleft France, entered the service of Charles V. , and in the followingyear (1524) helped to drive the French under Bonnivet out of Italy. 

II. 

 _The Regency of Louise of Savoy--Margaret and the royal children--The defeat of Pavia and the death of the Duke of Alençon--The Royal Trinity--"All is lost save honour"-- Margaret's journey to Spain and her negotiations with Charles V. --Her departure from Madrid--The scheme to arrest her, and her flight on horseback--Liberation of Francis I. -- Clever escape of Henry of Navarre from prison--Margaret's secret fancy for him--Her personal appearance at this period--Marriage of Henry and Margaret at St. Germain. _

The most memorable events of Margaret's public life date from thisperiod. Francis, who was determined to reconquer the Milanese, atonce made preparations for a new campaign. Louise of Savoy was againappointed Regent of the kingdom, and as Francis's wife, Claude, wasdying of consumption, the royal children were confided to the care ofMargaret, whose husband accompanied the army. Louise of Savoy at firstrepaired to Lyons with her children, in order to be nearer to Italy, but she and Margaret soon returned to Blois, where the Queen wasdying. Before the royal army had reached Milan Claude expired, and soonafterwards Louise was incapacitated by a violent attack of gout, whilethe children of Francis also fell ill. The little ones, of whom Margarethad charge, consisted of three boys and three girls, the former beingFrancis, the Dauphin, who died in 1536, Charles, Duke of Orleans, whodied in 1545, and Henry, Count of Angoulême, who succeeded his father onthe throne. The girls comprised Madeleine, afterwards the wife ofJames V. Of Scotland, Margaret, subsequently Duchess of Savoy, and thePrincess Charlotte. The latter was particularly beloved by her auntMargaret, who subsequently dedicated to her memory her poem _Le Miroirde l'Ame Pécheresse_. While the other children recovered from theirillness, little Charlotte, as Margaret records in her letters to BishopBriçonnet, was seized "with so grievous a malady of fever and flux, "that after a month's suffering she expired, to the deep grief of heraunt, who throughout her illness had scarcely left her side. 

This affliction was but the beginning of Margaret's troubles. Soonafterwards the Constable de Bourbon, in conjunction with Pescaraand Lannoy, avenged his grievances under the walls of Pavia. On thisoccasion, as at Marignano, the Duke of Alençon commanded the Frenchreserves, and had charge of the fortified camp from which Francis, listening to Bonnivet, sallied forth, despite the advice of his bestofficers. The King bore himself bravely, but he was badly wounded andforced to surrender, after La Palisse, Lescun, Bonnivet, La Trémoïlle, and Bussy d'Amboise had been slain before his eyes. Charles of Alençonwas then unable to resist the advice given him to retreat, and thus savethe few Frenchmen who had escaped the arms of the Imperialists. Withfour hundred lances he abandoned the camp, crossed the Ticino, andreaching France by way of Piedmont, proceeded to Lyons, where he foundLouise of Savoy and Margaret. 

It has been alleged that they received him with harsh reproaches, andthat, unable to bear the shame he felt for his conduct, he died only afew days after the battle. (1)

 1 See Garnier's _Histoire de France_, vol. Xxiv. ; Gaillard's _Histoire de France, &c_. Odolant Desnos, usually well informed, falls into the same error, and asserts that when the Duke, upon his arrival, asked Margaret to kiss him, she replied, "Fly, coward! you have feared death. You might find it in my arms, as I do not answer for myself. "--_Mémoires historiques_, vol. Ii. P. 253. 

There are several errors in these assertions, which a contemporarydocument enables us to rectify. The battle of Pavia was fought onFebruary 14th, 1525, and Charles of Alençon did not die till April 11th, more than a month after his arrival at Lyons. He was carried off in fivedays by pleurisy, and some hours before his death was still able to riseand partake of the communion. Margaret bestowed the most tender careupon him, and the Regent herself came to visit him, the Duke findingstrength enough to say to her, "Madam, I beg of you to let the King knowthat since the day he was made a prisoner I have been expecting nothingbut death, since I was not sufficiently favoured by Heaven to share hislot or to be slain in serving him who is my king, father, brother, andgood master. " After kissing the Regent's hand he added, "I commend toyou her who has been my wife for fifteen years, and who has been as goodas she is virtuous towards me. " Then, as Louise of Savoy wished to takeMargaret away, Charles turned towards the latter and said to her, "Donot leave me. "

The Duchess refused to follow her mother, and embracing her dyinghusband, showed him the crucifix placed before his eyes. The Duke, having summoned one of his gentlemen, M. De Chan-deniers, instructed himto bid farewell on his part to all his servants, and to thank them fortheir services, telling them that he had no longer strength to see them. He asked God aloud to forgive his sins, received the extreme unctionfrom the Bishop of Lisieux, and raising his eyes to heaven, said"Jesus, " and expired. (1)

Whilst tending her dying husband, Margaret was also deeply concernedas to the fate of her captive brother, for whom she always evinced thewarmest affection. Indeed, so close were the ties uniting Louiseof Savoy and her two children that they were habitually called the"Trinity, " as Clement Marot and Margaret have recorded in their poems. (2)

 1 From a MS. Poem in the Bibliothèque Nationale entitled _Les Prisons_, probably written by William Philander or Filandrier, a canon of Rodez. 

 2 See _OEuvres de Clément Marot_, 1731, vol. V. P. 274; and A. Champoîlion-Figeac's _Poésies de François Ier, &c_. , Paris, 1847, p. 80. 

In this Trinity Francis occupied the highest place; his mother calledhim "her Cæsar and triumphant hero, " while his sister absolutelyreverenced him, and was ever ready to do his bidding. Thus theintelligence that he was wounded and a prisoner threw them intoconsternation, and they were yet undecided how to act when they receivedthat famous epistle in which Francis wrote--not the legendary words, "All is lost save honour, " but--"Of all things there have remained to mebut honour and life, which is safe. " After begging his mother and sisterto face the extremity by employing their customary prudence, the Kingcommended his children to their care, and expressed the hope that Godwould not abandon him. (1) This missive revived the courage of theRegent and Margaret, for shortly afterwards we find the latter writingto Francis: "Your letter has had such effect upon the health of Madame[Louise], and of all those who love you, that it has been to us as aHoly Ghost after the agony of the Passion. . . . Madame has felt so greata renewal of strength, that whilst day and evening last not a moment islost over your business, so that you need have no grief or care aboutyour kingdom and children. " (2)

 1 See extract from the Registers of the Parliament of Paris (Nov. 10, 1525) in Dulaure's _Histoire de Paris_, Paris, 1837, vol. Iii. P. 209; and Lalanne's _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_, Paris, 1854, p. 234. The original of the letter no longer exists, but the authenticity of the text cannot be disputed, as all the more essential portions are quoted in the collective reply of Margaret and Louise of Savoy, which is still extant. See Champollion-Figeac's Captivité de François Ier, pp. 129, 130. 

 2 Génin's _Nouvelles Lettres de la Peine de Navarre_, Paris, 1842, p. 27. 

Louise of Savoy was indeed now displaying courage and ability. Newsshortly arrived that the King had been transferred to Madrid, andthat Charles demanded most onerous conditions for the release of hisprisoner. At this juncture Francis wrote to his mother that he was veryill, and begged of her to come to him. Louise, however, felt that sheought not to accede to this request, for it would be jeopardisingthe monarchy to place the Regent as well as the King of France inthe Emperor's hands; accordingly she resolved that Margaret should goinstead of herself. 

The Baron of St. Blancard, general of the King's galleys, who hadpreviously offered to rescue Francis while the latter was on his way toSpain, received orders to make the necessary preparations for Margaret'svoyage, of which she defrayed the expense, as is shown by a letter shewrote to John Brinon, Chancellor of Alençon. In this missive she statesthat the Baron of St. Blancard has made numerous disbursements onaccount of her journey which are to be refunded to him, "so that he mayknow that I am not ungrateful for the good service he has done me, forhe hath acquitted himself thereof in such a way that I have occasion tobe gratified. " (1)

 1 Génin's _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_. , p. 193. --Génin's Notice, _ibid_. , p. 19. 

Despite adverse winds, Margaret embarked on August 27th, 1525, atAigues-Mortes, with the President de Selves, the Archbishop of Embrun, the Bishop of Tarbes, and a fairly numerous suite of ladies. The Emperorhad granted her a safe-conduct for six months, and upon landing in Spainshe hurried to Madrid, where she found her brother very sick both inmind and body. She eagerly caressed and tended him, and with a goodresult, as she knew his nature and constitution much better than thedoctors. To raise his depressed spirits she had recourse to religiousceremonies, giving orders for an altar to be erected in the room wherehe was lying. She then requested the Archbishop of Embrun to celebratemass, and received the communion in company of all the French retainersabout the prisoner. It is stated that the King, who for some hours hadgiven no sign of life, opened his eyes at the moment of the consecrationof the elements, and asked for the communion, saying, "God will cure me, soul and body. " From this time forward he began to recover his health, though he remained fretful on account of his captivity. 

It was a difficult task to obtain his release. The Court and the Emperorwere extremely polite, but Margaret soon recognised the emptiness oftheir protestations of good-will. "They all tell me that they love theKing, " she wrote, "but I have little proof of it. If I had to do withhonest folks, who understand what honour is, I should not care, but itis the contrary. " (1)

 1 _Lettres de Marguerite, &c. _, p. 21. 

She was not the woman to turn back at the first obstacle, however;she began by endeavouring to gain over several high personages, and onperceiving that the men avoided speaking with her on serious business, she addressed herself to their mothers, wives, or daughters. In a letterto Marshal de Montmorency, then with the King, she thus refers to theDuke del Infantado, who had received her at his castle of Guadalaxara. "You will tell the King that the Duke has been warned from the Courtthat if he wishes to please the Emperor neither he nor his son is tospeak to me; but the ladies are not forbidden me, and to them I willspeak twofold. " (1)

Throughout the negotiations for her brother's release Margaret alwaysmaintained the dignity and reserve fitting to her sex and situation. Writing to Francis on this subject she says: "The Viceroy (Lannoy) hassent me word that he is of opinion I should go and see the Emperor, butI have told him through M. De Senlis that I have not yet stirred from mylodging without being asked, and that whenever it pleases the Emperor tosee me I shall be found there. " (2)

 1 _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_. , p. 197. 

 2 _Captivité de François Ier_, p. 358. 

Margaret was repeatedly admitted to the Imperial council to discussthe conditions of her brother's ransom. She showed as much ability asloftiness of mind on these occasions, and several times won Charles V. Himself and the sternest of his Ministers to her opinion. (1)

 1 Brantôme states that the Emperor was greatly impressed and astonished by her plain speaking. She reproached him for treating Francis so harshly, declaring that this course would not enable him to attain his ends. "For although he (the King) might die from the effects of this rigorous treatment, his death would not remain unpunished, as he had children who would some day become men and wreak signal vengeance. " "These words, " adds Brantôme, "spoken so bravely and in such hot anger, gave the Emperor occasion for thought, insomuch that he moderated himself and visited the King and made him many fine promises, which he did not keep, however. " With the Ministers Margaret was even more outspoken; but we are told that she turned her oratorical powers "to such good purpose that she rendered herself agreeable rather than odious or unpleasant; the more readily as she was also good-looking, a widow, and in the flower of her age. "--_OEuvres de Brantôme_, 8vo, vol. V. (_Les Dames illustres_). 

She highly favoured the proposed marriage between Francis and hisrival's sister, Eleanor of Austria, detecting in this alliance the mostcertain means of a speedy release. Eleanor, born at Louvain in 1498, had in 1519 married Emanuel, King of Portugal, who died two yearsafterwards. Since then she had been promised to the Constable deBourbon, but the Emperor did not hesitate to sacrifice the latter to hisown interests. 

He himself, being fascinated by Margaret's grace and wit, thought ofmarrying her, and had a letter sent to Louise of Savoy, plainly settingforth the proposal. In this missive, referring to the Constable deBourbon, Charles remarked that "there were good matches in France inplenty for him; for instance, Madame Renée, (1) with whom he might verywell content himself. " (2) These words have led to the belief that therehad been some question of a marriage between Margaret and the Constable;however, there is no mention of any such alliance in the diplomaticdocuments exchanged between France and Spain on the subject of theKing's release. These documents comprise an undertaking to restore theConstable his estates, and even to arrange a match for him in France, (3) but Margaret is never mentioned. She herself, in the numerousletters handed down to us, does not once refer to the famous exile, andthe intrigue described by certain historians and romancers evidentlyrests upon no solid foundation. (4)

 1 Renée, the younger daughter of Louis XII. And Anne of Brittany, subsequently celebrated as Renée of Ferrara. 

 2 This letter is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Béthune MSS. , No. 8496, fol. Xiii. 

 3 _Captivité de Francois Ier, &c_. , pp. 167-207. 

 4 Varillas is the principal historian who has mentioned this supposed intrigue, which also furnished the subject of a romance entitled _Histoire de Marguerite, Reine de Navarre, &c. _, 1696. 

After three months of negotiations, continually broken off and renewed, Margaret and her brother, feeling convinced of Charles V. 's evilintentions, resolved to take steps to ensure the independence of France. By the King's orders Robertet, his secretary, drew up letters-patent, dated November 1525 by which it was decreed that the young Dauphinshould be crowned at once, and that the regency should continue in thehands of Louise of Savoy, but that in the event of her death the samepower should be exercised by Francis's "very dear and well-beloved onlysister, Margaret of France, Duchess of Alençon and Berry. " (1) However, all these provisions were to be deemed null and void in the event ofFrancis obtaining his release. 

It has been erroneously alleged that Margaret on leaving Spain tookthis deed of abdication with her, and that the Emperor, informed ofthe circumstance, gave orders for her to be arrested as soon asher safe-conduct should expire. (2) However, it was the Marshal deMontmorency who carried the deed to France, and Charles V. In orderingthe arrest of Margaret had no other aim than that of securing anadditional hostage in case his treaty with Francis should not befulfilled. 

 1 _Captivité de François 1er, &c. _, p. 85. 

 2 Génin's Notice in the _Lettres de Marguerite, &c. _, p. 25. 

Margaret, pressed by her brother, at last asked for authorisation toleave Spain. By the manner in which the permission was granted sheperceived that the Emperor wished to delay rather than hasten herjourney. During November she wrote Francis a letter in which thisconviction was plainly expressed, and about the 19th of the month sheleft Madrid upon her journey overland to France. 

At first she travelled very leisurely, but eventually she receiveda message from her brother, advising her to hasten her speed, as theEmperor, hoping that she would still be in Spain in January, when hersafe-conduct would expire, had given orders for her arrest. Accordingly, on reaching Medina-Celi she quitted her litter and mounted on horseback, accomplishing the remainder of her journey in the saddle. Nine or tendays before the safe-conduct expired she passed Perpignan and reachedSalces, where some French nobles were awaiting her. 

Soon after her return to France she again took charge of the royalchildren, who once more fell ill, this time with the measles, asMargaret related in the following characteristic letter addressed to herbrother, still a prisoner in Spain:--

"My Lord, --The fear that I have gone through about your children, without saying anything of it to Madame (Louise of Savoy), who was alsovery ill, obliges me to tell you in detail the pleasure I feel at theirrecovery. M. D'Angoulême caught the measles, with a long and severefever; afterwards the Duke of Orleans took them with a little fever; andthen Madame Madeleine without fever or pain; and by way of company theDauphin without suffering or fever. And now they all are quite cured andvery well; and the Dauphin does marvels in the way of studying, minglingwith his schooling a hundred thousand other occupations. And there is nomore question of passions, but rather of all the virtues; M. D'Orléansis nailed to his book, and says that he wants to be good; but M. D'Angoulême does more than the others, and says things that are to beesteemed rather as prophecies than childish utterances, which you, mylord, would be amazed to hear. Little Margot resembles myself; she willnot be ill; but I am assured here that she has very graceful ways, andis getting prettier than ever Mademoiselle d'Angoulême (1) was. "

 1 Génin's _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_, p. 70. The Mademoiselle d'Angoulême alluded to at the end of the letter is Margaret herself. 

Francis having consented to the onerous conditions imposed by CharlesV. , was at last liberated. On March 17th, 1526, he was exchanged for histwo elder sons, who were to serve as hostages for his good faith, andset foot upon the territory of Beam. He owed Margaret a deep debt ofgratitude for her efforts to hasten his release, and one of his firstcares upon leaving Spain was to wed her again in a fitting manner. Heappears to have opened matrimonial negotiations with Henry VIII. OfEngland, (1) but, fortunately for Margaret, without result. She, itseems, had already made her choice. There was then at the French Courta young King, without a kingdom, it is true, but endowed with numerouspersonal qualities. This was Henry d'Albret, Count of Beam, andlegitimate sovereign of Navarre, then held by Charles V. In defiance oftreaty rights. Henry had been taken prisoner with Francis at Pavia andconfined in the fortress there, from which, however, he had managed toescape in the following manner. 

Having procured a rope ladder in view of descending from the castle, heordered Francis de Rochefort, his page, to get into his bed and feignsleep. Then he descended by the rope, the Baron of Arros and a valetfollowing him. In the morning, when the captain on duty came to seeHenry, as was his usual custom, he was asked by a page to let the Kingsleep on, as he had been very ill during the night. Thus the trick wasonly discovered when the greater part of the day had gone by, and thefugitives were already beyond pursuit. (2)

 1 _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_, p. 31. 

 2 Olhagaray's _Histoire de Faix, Beam, Navarre, &c_, Paris, 1609. P. 487. 

As the young King of Navarre had spent a part of his youth at the FrenchCourt, he was well known to Margaret, who apparently had a secret fancyfor him. He was in his twenty-fourth year, prepossessing, and extremelybrave. (1) There was certainly a great disproportion of age betweenhim and Margaret, but this must have served to increase rather thanattenuate her passion. She herself was already thirty-five, andjudging by a portrait executed about this period, (2) in which sheis represented in mourning for the Duke of Alençon, with a longveil falling from her cap, her personal appearance was scarcelyprepossessing. 

The proposed alliance met with the approval of Francis, who behavedgenerously to his sister. He granted her for life the enjoyment ofthe duchies of Alençon and Berry, with the counties of Armagnac and LePerche and several other lordships. Finally, the marriage was celebratedon January 24th, 1527, at St. Germain-en-Laye, where, as Sauvai records, "there were jousts, tourneying, and great triumph for the space of eightdays or thereabouts. " (3)

 1 He was born at Sanguesa, April 1503, and became King of Navarre in 1517. 

 2 This portrait is at the Bibliothèque Nationale in the _Recueil de Portraits au crayon_ by Clouet, Dumonstier, &c. (fol. 88). 

 3 _Antiquités de Paris_, vol. Ii. P. 688. 

III. 

_The retirement of King Henry to Beam--Margaret's intercourse withher brother--The inscription at Chambord--Margaret's adventure withBonnivet--Margaret's relations with her husband--Her opinions upon loveand conjugal fidelity--Her confinements and her children--The Court inBeam and the refugee Reformers--Margaret's first poems--Her devices, pastorals, and mysteries--The embellishment of Pau--Margaret at tableand in her study--Reforms and improvements in Beam--Works of defence atNavarreinx--Scheme of refortifying Sauveterre. _

Some historians have stated that in wedding his sister to Henryd'Albret, Francis pledged himself to compel Charles V. To surrender hisbrother-in-law's kingdom of Navarre. This, however, was but a politicalproject, of which no deed guaranteed the execution. Francis no doubtpromised Margaret to make every effort to further the restitution, andshe constantly reminded him of his promise, as is shown by severalof her letters. However, political exigencies prevented Francis fromcarrying out his plans, and in a diplomatic document concerning therelease of the children whom Charles held as hostages the followingclause occurs: "Item, the said Lord King promises not to help or favourthe King of Navarre (although he has married his only and dear belovedsister) in reconquering his kingdom. " (1)

The indifference shown by Francis for the political fortunes of hisbrother-in-law, despite the numerous and signal services the latterhad rendered him, justly discontented Henry, who at last resolved towithdraw from the Court, where Montmorency, Brion, and several otherpersonages, his declared enemies, were in favour. Margaret apparentlyhad to follow her husband in his retirement, for Sainte-Marthe remarks:"When the King of Navarre, disgusted with the Court, and seeing none ofthe promises that his brother-in-law had made him realised, resolved towithdraw to Beam, Margaret, although the keen air of the mountainswas hurtful to her health, and her doctors had threatened her with apremature death if she persevered in braving the rigours of the climate, preferred to put her life in peril rather than to fail in her duty bynot accompanying her husband. " (2)

 1 Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. No. 8546 (Béthune), fol. 107. 

 2 _Oraison funèbre_, &c, p. 70. 

Various biographers express the opinion that this retirement took placein 1529, shortly after the Peace of Cambray, and others give 1530 as theprobable date. Margaret, we find, paid a flying visit to Beam with herhusband in 1527; on January 7th, 1528, she was confined of her firstchild, Jane, at Fontainebleau, and the following year she is found withher little daughter at Longray, near Alençon. In 1530 she is confined atBlois of a second child, John, Prince of Viana, who died at Alençon onChristmas Day in the same year, when but five and a half months old. Then in 1531 her letters show her with her mother at Fontainebleau; andLouise of Savoy being stricken with the plague, then raging inFrance, Margaret closes her eyes at Gretz, a little village betweenFontainebleau and Nemours, on September 22nd in that year. 

It was after this event that the King and Queen of Navarre determinedto proceed to Beam, but so far as Margaret herself is concerned, it iscertain that retirement was never of long duration whilst her brotherlived. She is constantly to be found at Alençon, Fontainebleau, andParis, being frequently with the King, who did not like to remainseparated from her for any length of time. He was wont to initiate herinto his political intrigues in view of availing himself of her keenand subtle mind. Brantôme, referring to this subject, remarks that herwisdom was such that the ambassadors who "spoke to her were greatlycharmed by it, and made great report of it to those of their nation ontheir return; in this respect she relieved the King her brother, forthey (the ambassadors) always sought her after delivering the chiefbusiness of their embassy, and often when there was important businessthe King handed it over to her, relying upon her for its definiteresolution. She understood very well how to entertain and satisfy theambassadors with fine speeches, of which she was very lavish, and alsovery clever at worming their secrets out of them, for which reason theKing often said that she helped him right well and relieved him of agreat deal. " (1)

 1 _OEuvres de Brantôme_, 8vo, vol. V. P. 222. 

Margaret's own letters supply proof of this. She is constantly to befound intervening in state affairs and exercising her influence. Shereceives the deputies from Basle, Berne, and Strasburg who came to Parisin 1537 to ask Francis I. For the release of the imprisoned Protestants. She joins the King at Valence when he is making preparations for afresh war against Charles V. ; then she visits Montmorency at the camp ofAvignon, which she praises to her brother; next, hastening to Picardy, when the Flemish troops are invading it, she writes from Amiens andspeaks of Thérouenne and Boulogne, which she has found well fortified. 

Francis, however, did not value her society and counsel solelyfor political reasons; he was also fond of conversing with her onliterature, and at times they composed amatory verses together. According to an oft-repeated tradition, one day at the Château ofChambord, whilst Margaret was boasting to her brother of the superiorityof womankind in matters of love, the King took a diamond ring from hisfinger and wrote on one of the window panes this couplet:--

 "Souvent femme varie, Bien fol est qui s'y fie. " (1)

Brantôme, who declares that he saw the inscription, adds, however, thatit consisted merely of three words, "Toute femme varie" (all women arefickle), inscribed in _large_ letters at the side of the window. (2) Hesays nothing of any pane of glass (all window panes were then extremely_small_) or of a diamond having been used; (3) and in all probabilityFrancis simply traced these words with a piece of chalk or charcoal onthe side of one of the deep embrasures, which are still to be seen inthe windows of the château. 

 1 "Woman is often fickle, Crazy indeed is he who trusts her. "

 2 _Vies des Dames galantes_, Disc. Iv. 

 3 The practice of cutting glass with diamonds does not seem to have been resorted to until the close of the sixteenth century. See _Les Subtiles et Plaisantes Inventions de J. Prévost_, Lyons, 1584, part i. Pp. 30, 31. 

Margaret carried her complaisance for her brother so far as to excusehis illicit amours, and she was usually on the best of terms with hisfavourites. (1) It has been asserted that improper relations existedbetween the brother and sister, but this charge rests solely uponan undated letter from her to Francis, which may be interpreted in avariety of ways. Count de la Ferrière, in his introduction to Margaret'srecord of her expenditure, (2) expresses the opinion that it was pennedin 1525, prior to her hasty departure from Spain; while M. Le Roux deLincy assigns it to a later date, remarking that it was probably writtenduring one of the frequent quarrels which arose between Margaret'sbrother and her husband. However, they are both of opinion that theletter does not bear the interpretation which other writers have placedupon it. (3)

 1 E. Fournier's _L'Esprit dans l'Histoire_, Paris, 1860, p. 132 _et seq_. 

 2 _Livre de Dépenses de Marguerite d'Angoulême, &c_. (Introduction). 

 3 See _Lettres de Marguerite, &c. _, p. 246. 

The only really well-authenticated love intrigue in which Margaret wasconcerned--and in that she played a remarkably virtuous part--was heradventure with the Admiral de Bonnivet, upon which the fourth story ofthe _Heptameron_ is based. (1) She was certainly unfortunate in both hermarriages. Her life with the Duke of Alençon has already been spoken of;and as regards her second union, although contracted under apparentlyfavourable auspices, it failed to yield Margaret the happiness she hadhoped for. But four years after its celebration she wrote to the Marshalde Montmorency: "Since you are with the King of Navarre, I have no fearbut that all will go well, provided you can keep him from fallingin love with the Spanish ladies. " (2) And again: "My nephew, I havereceived the letters you wrote to me, by which I have learnt that youare a much better relation than the King of Navarre is a good husband, for you alone have given me news of the King (Francis) and of him, without his being willing to give pleasure to a poor wife, big withchild, by writing a single word to her. " (3)

 1 Particulars concerning this adventure will be found in the notes to Tale iv. , and also in the Appendix to the present volume (C). 

 2 _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_. , p. 246. 

 3 _Ibid. _, p. 248. 

In another letter written to the Marshal at the same period she says:"If you listen to the King of Navarre, he will make you commit so manydisorders that he will ruin you. " (1) Perhaps these words should notbe taken literally; still they furnish cause for reflection when itis remembered that they were written by a woman just turned fortyconcerning her husband who was not yet thirty years old. 

Margaret's views upon love and the affinity of souls were somewhatsingular, but they indicate an elevated and generous nature. In severalpassages of the _Heptameron_ she has expressed her opinion on thesematters, ardently defending the honour of her sex and condemningthose wives who show themselves indulgent as regards their husbands'infidelities. (2) She blames those who sow dissension between husbandsand wives, leading them on to blows; (3) and when some one asked herwhat she understood perfect love to be, she made answer, "I call perfectlovers those who seek some perfection in the object of their love, beit beauty, kindness, or good grace, tending to virtue, and who have suchhigh and honest hearts that they will not even for fear of death do basethings that honour and conscience blame. "

 1 _Lettres de Marguerite, &c_, p. 251. 

 2 Epilogue of Tale xxxvii. 

 3 Epilogue of Tale xlvi. 

In reference to this subject of conjugal fidelity a curious story istold of Margaret. One day at Mont-de-Marsan, upon seeing a young manconvicted of having murdered his father being led to execution, sheremarked to those about her that it was very wrong to put to death ayoung fellow who had not committed the crime imputed to him. Itwas pointed out to her that the judges had only condemned him uponconclusive proofs and the acknowledgments that he himself had made. Margaret, however, persisted in her remark, whereupon some of herintimates begged of her to justify it, for it seemed to them at leastsingular. "I do not doubt, " she replied, "that this poor wretch killedhis mother's husband, but he certainly did not kill his own father. " (1)

Besides being unfortunate as regards her husbands, Margaret was alsodenied a mother's privileges. She experienced great suffering at herconfinements, (2) and on two occasions she was delivered of still-borninfants of the female sex. 

 1 Gabriel de Minut's _De la Beauté, Discours divers, &c. _, Lyons, 1587. P. 74. 

 2 _Nouvelles Lettres de Marguerite_, pp. 84 and 93. 

She had centred many hopes upon her little boy, John, of whom she wasconfined without accident, but he died, as already stated, in infancy, and this misfortune was a great shock to her, though she tried toconceal it by having the Te Deum sung at the funeral in lieu of theordinary service, and by setting up in the streets of Alençon theinscription, "God gave him, God has taken him away. " However, from thattime forward she never laid aside her black dress, though later onshe wore it trimmed with marten's fur. Her best known portrait (1)represents her attired in this style with the quaint Bearnese cap, whichshe had also adopted, set upon her head. 

 1 Bibliothèque Nationale, _Recueil de Portraits au crayon, &c. _, fol. 46. 

Not only did Margaret lose her son by death, but she was prevented fromenjoying the companionship of her daughter Jane. Francis, who never oncelost sight of his own interests, deemed it advisable to possess himselfof this child, who was the heiress to the throne of Navarre. Accordinglywhen Jane was but two years old she was sent by the King to the Châteauof Plessis-lès-Tours, where she was carefully brought up in strictseclusion. 

To the fact that Margaret was never really happy with either of herhusbands, and that she was precluded from discharging a mother's duties, one may ascribe, in part, her fondness for gathering round her a Courtin which divines, scholars, and wits prominently figured. The greatinterest which she took in religious matters, as is shown by so many ofher letters, (1) led her to shelter many of the persecuted Reformers inBeam; others she saved from the stake, and frequently in writing tothe King and Marshal de Montmorency she begs for the release of someimprisoned heretic. 

 1 One of these letters, written by her either to Philiberta of Savoy, Duchess of Nemours, or to Charlotte d'Orléans, Duchess of Nemours, both of whom were her aunts, may be thus rendered in English: "My aunt, on leaving Paris to escort the King, Monsieur de Meaux (Bishop Briçonnet), sent me the Gospels in French, translated by Fabry, word for word, which he says we should read with as much reverence and as much preparation to receive the Spirit of God, such as He has left it us in His Holy Scriptures, as when we go to receive it in the form of Sacrament. And inasmuch as Monsieur de Villeroy has promised to deliver them to you, I have requested him to do so, for these words (the Gospels) must not fall into evil hands. I beg, my aunt, that if by their means God grants you some grace, you will not forget her who is above all else your good niece and sister, Margaret. " Fabry's translation of the Gospels was made in 1523-24. 

Margaret's religious views frequently caused dissension between her andher husband, in whose presence she abstained from giving expression tothem. Hilarion de Coste mentions that "King Henry having one day beeninformed that a form of prayer and instruction contrary to that ofhis fathers was held in the chamber of the Queen, his wife, entered itintending to chastise the minister, and finding that he had been hurriedaway, the remains of his anger fell upon his wife, who received a blowfrom him, he remarking, 'Madam, you want to know too much about it, ' andhe at once sent word of the matter to King Francis. "

It was at Nérac that most of the divines protected by Margaret found arefuge from the persecutions of the Sorbonne. Here she kept court ina castle of which there now only remains a vaulted fifteenth-centurygallery formerly belonging to the northern wing. Nérac has, however, retained intact a couple of quaint mediaeval bridges, which Margaretmust have ofttimes crossed in her many journeyings. Moreover, thetownsfolk still point out the so-called Palace of Marianne, said to havebeen built by Margaret's husband for one of his mistresses, and also theold royal baths, which the Queen no doubt frequented. 

It was at the castle of Nérac that Margaret's favourite protégé, thevenerable Lefèvre d'Étaples, died at the age of one hundred and one, inthe presence of his patroness, to whom before expiring he declared thathe had never known a woman carnally in his life. However, he regretfullyadded that in his estimation he had been guilty of a greater sin, forhe had neglected to lay down his life for his faith. Another partisan ofthe Reform, Gerard Roussel, whom Margaret had almost snatched from thestake and appointed Bishop of Oloron, had no occasion to express anysuch regret. His own flock speedily espoused the doctrines of theReformation, but when he proceeded to Mauléon and tried to preach there, the Basques refused to listen to him, and hacked the pulpit to pieces, the Bishop being precipitated upon the flagstones, and so grievouslyinjured that he died. 

Beside the divines who sought an asylum at Nérac, there were variousnoted men of letters, foremost among whom we may class the Queen's twosecretaries, Clement Marot, the poet, and Peter Le Maçon, the translatorof Boccaccio's _Decameron_. This translation was undertaken at theQueen's request, as Le Maçon states in his dedication to her, and ithas always been considered one of the most able literary works of theperiod. With Marot and Le Maçon, but in the more humble capacity ofvalet, at the yearly wages of one hundred and ten livres, there came thegay Bonaventure Despériers, the author of _Les Joyeux Devis_; (1) otherwriters, such as John Frotté, John de la Haye and Gabriel Chapuis, werealso among Margaret's retainers. 

 1 _Livre de Dépenses de Marguerite d'Angoulême_. 

She herself had long practised the writing of verses. It was in 1531, and at Alençon, that she issued her first volume of poems, the _Miroirde l'Ame Pécheresse_, (1) which created a great stir at the time, forwhen it was re-issued in Paris by Augereau in 1533 (2) the Sorbonnedenounced it as unorthodox, and Margaret would have been branded asa heretic if Francis had not intervened and ordered the Rector of theSorbonne to withdraw the decree censuring his sister's work. Nor didthat content the King, for he caused Noël Béda, the syndic of theFaculty of Theology, to be arrested and confined in a dungeon at MontSt. Michel, where he perished miserably. 

 1 Brunet's _Manual_, 4th ed. , vol. Iii. P. 275. 

 2 A second edition also appeared at Alençon in the same year. 

Margaret thus gained the day, but the annoyance she had been subjectedto doubtless taught her to be prudent, for although she steadily wenton writing, sixteen years elapsed before any more of her poems werepublished. In the meantime various manuscript copies, some of which arestill in existence, were made of them, notably one of the poem called"Débat d'Amour" by Margaret, and re-christened "La Coche" by hersecretary, John de la Haye, when he subsequently published it in the_Marguerites de la Marguerite_. This manuscript is enriched with elevencurious miniatures, the last of which represents the Queen handingthe volume bound in white velvet (1) to the Duchess of Etampes, herbrother's mistress, whose qualities the poem extols. The Queen ofNavarre was on the best of terms with this favourite, to whom in one ofher letters she recommends certain servants. 

Margaret was not only given to versifying, but was fond of' framingdevices, which she inscribed upon her books and furniture. At one timeshe adopted as her device a marigold turning towards the sun's rays, with the motto, "Non inferiora secutus, " implying that she turned"all her acts, thoughts, will, and affections towards the great Sun ofJustice, God Almighty. " (2)

 1 From the Queen's _Livre de Dépenses_, published by M. De la Ferrière, we learn that this MS. , with the miniatures and binding, cost Margaret fifty golden crowns. It was formerly in the possession of M. Jérôme Pichon, and was afterwards acquired by M. Didot, at the sale of whose library it realised £804. The MS. Was recently in the possession of M. De La Roche-la-Carelle. 

 2 Claude Paradin's _Dévises héroïques_, Lyons, 1557, p. 41. 

In her _Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse_, previously referred to, therefigures another device composed merely of the three words "Ung pourtout;" and in the manuscript of "La Coche" presented to the Duchess ofEtampes, the motto "Plus vous que moys" is inscribed beneath each of theminiatures. Margaret also composed a series of devices for some jewelswhich her brother presented to his favourite, Madame de Châteaubriant. Respecting these Brantôme tells the following curious anecdote:--

"I have heard say, and hold on good authority, that when King Francis I. Had left Madame de Châteaubriant, his favourite mistress, to take Madamed'Etampes, as one nail drives out another, Madame d'Etampes begged theKing to take back from the said Madame de Châteaubriant all the finestjewels that he had given her, not on account of their cost and value, for pearls and precious stones were not then so fashionable as they havebeen since, but for the love of the fine devices that were engraved andimpressed upon them; which devices the Queen of Navarre, his sister, hadmade and composed, for she was a mistress in such matters. 

"King Francis granted the request, and promised that he would do it. Having with this intent sent a gentleman to Madame de Châteaubriant toask for the jewels, she at once feigned illness, and put the gentlemanoff for three days, when he was to have what he asked for. However, outof spite, she sent for a goldsmith, and made him melt down all thesejewels without exception, and without having any respect for thehandsome devices engraved upon them. And afterwards, when the saidgentleman returned, she gave him all the jewels converted into goldingots. 

"'Go, ' said she, 'and take these to the King, and tell him that sincehe has been pleased to take back from me that which he had given meso freely, I restore it and send it back in golden ingots. As for thedevices, I have impressed them so firmly on my mind and hold themso dear in it, that I could not let any one have and enjoy them savemyself. '

"When the King had received all this, the ingots and the lady's remark, he only said, 'Take her back all. What I did was not for the value, forI would have restored her that twofold, but for the love of the devices, and since she has thus destroyed them, I do not want the gold, and sendit back. She has shown in this matter more courage and generosity thanit would have been thought could come from a woman. '" (1)

Besides writing verses and framing devices, Margaret, as Brantôme tellsus, "often composed comedies and moralities, which were in those daysstyled pastorals, and which she had played by the young ladies of herCourt. " (2)

 1 _OEuvres de Brantôme_, 8vo, vol. Vii. P. 567. 

 2 _Ibid. _, 8vo, vol. V. P. 219. 

Hilarion de Coste states, moreover, that "she composed a tragi-comictranslation of almost the whole of the New Testament, which she causedto be played before the King, her husband, having assembled with thisobject some of the best actors of Italy; and as these buffoons are onlyborn to give pleasure and make time pass away, in order to amuse thecompany they invariably introduced _rondeaux_ and _virelais_ against theecclesiastics, especially the monks and village priests. " (1)

 1 M. Le Roux de Lincy points out that this statement is exaggerated, for Margaret, instead of turning the whole of the New Testament into verse, merely wrote four Mysteries which mainly dealt with the childhood of Christ. 

These performances took place at the Château of Pau, which Margaret andher husband seem to have preferred to that of Nérac, though politicalreasons often compelled them to fix their abode at the latter. Pau, however, possessed the advantage of a mild climate, necessary forMargaret's health, besides being delightfully situated on the BearneseGave, the view from the château extending over a fertile valley limitedby the snow-capped Pyrenees. There had been a château at Pau as earlyas the tenth century, but the oldest portions of the structure nowsubsisting date from the time of Edward III. , when Pau was the capitalof the celebrated Gaston-Phoebus. The château was considerably enlargedand embellished in the fifteenth century, but it was not until afterMargaret's marriage with Henry d'Albret that the more remarkabledecorative work was executed. Upon leaving Nérac to reside at Pau, Margaret summoned a number of Italian artists and confided theembellishment of the château to them. (1)

It was not, however, merely the château which Margaret beautifiedat Pau. Already at Alençon she had laid out a charming park, which acontemporary poet called a terrestrial paradise, (2) and upon comingto reside at Pau she transformed the surrounding woods into delightfulgardens, pronounced to be the finest then existing in Europe. (3)

 1 Some of the doors and windows of the château are elaborately ornamented in the best style of the Renaissance, whilst the grand staircase, although dating from Margaret's time, has vaulted arches, sometimes in the Romanesque and at others in the Gothic style. Entwined on the friezes are the initials H and M (Henry and Margaret), occasionally accompanied by the letter R, implying _Rex_ or _Regina_. On the first floor of the chateau is the bedroom occupied by Margaret's husband, remarkable for its Renaissance chimney- piece, and also a grand reception hall, now adorned with tapestry made for Francis I. In Flanders. It was in this latter room that the Count of Montgomery--the same who had thrust out the eye of Henry II. At a tournament, and thereby caused that monarch's death--acting at the instigation of Margaret's daughter Jane, assembled the Catholic noblemen of Beam on August 24, 1569, and, after entertaining them with a banquet, had them treacherously massacred. Bascle de Lagrèze's _Château de Pau_, Paris, 1854. 

 2 _Le Recueil de l'Antique pré-excellence de Gaule, &c. _, by G. Le Roville, Paris, 1551 (fol. 74). 

 3 Hilarion de Coste's _Vies et Éloges des Dames illustres, &c. _, vol. Ii. P. 272. 

Some idea of their appearance may be gained from a couple of theminiatures adorning a curious manuscript catechism composed for Margaretand now in the Arsenal Library at Paris. (1)

 1 _Manuscrits théologiques français_, No. 60, _Initiatoire Instruction en la Religion chrétienne, &c_. In one of these miniatures the Saviour is represented carrying the cross, followed by Henry of Navarre, his brother Charles d'Albret, Margaret, and other personages, all of whom bear crosses, whilst in the background are some pleasure-grounds with a castle, a little waterfall, and a lake. Another miniature in the same manuscript shows King Henry of Navarre with a flower in his hand, which he seems to be offering to the Queen, who stands in the background among a party of courtiers. The King wears a surtout of cloth of gold, edged with ermine, over a blue jerkin, and a red cap with a white feather. Margaret is also arrayed in cloth of gold, but with a black cap and wimple. She is standing in a garden enclosed by a railing, and adorned with a fountain in the form of a temple which rises among groves and arbours. Beyond a white crenellated wall is a castle which has been identified with that of Pau. On fol. 1 of the same MS. The artist has depicted Queen Margaret's escutcheon, by which we find that she quartered the arms of France with those of Navarre, Aragon, Castile, Leon, Beam, Bigorre, Evreux, and Albret. 

The Court which Margaret kept in turns at Alençon, Nérac, and Pau doesnot appear to have been so sumptuous and gay as some of her biographersassert. Brantôme mentions that the Queen's two tables were always servedwith frugality, and Sainte-Marthe states that "she talked at dinner andsupper now of medicine, of food wholesome or unwholesome for the humanbody, and of objects of nature with Masters Schyron, Cormier, andEsterpin, her expert and learned doctors, who carefully watched her eatand drink, as is done with princes; now she would speak of history or ofthe precepts of philosophy with other very erudite personages, with whomher house was never unfurnished; at another time she would enter intoconversation on her faith and the Christian religion with MonsieurGerard, Bishop of Oloron. Altogether there was not a single momentthat was not employed by her in honest, pleasant, and usefulconversation. " (1)

The same panegyrist tells us of Margaret's favourite occupations, mentioning that when she was alone in her room she more often held abook in her hand than a distaff, a pen than a spindle, and the ivory ofher tablets than a needle. He then adds: "And if she applied herself totapestry or other needlework, such as was to her a pleasant occupation, she had beside her some one who read to her, either from a historian ora poet, or some other notable and useful author; or else she dictatedsome meditation which was written down. " (2)

 1 _Oraison funèbre, &c. _, p. 60. 

 2 _Ibid. _, p. 68. 

Margaret's time was far from being wholly occupied in this manner, for she actively assisted her husband in carrying out improvements andreforms in Beam. The result was that the country, naturally good andfertile, but left in bad condition, uncultivated and sterile through thecarelessness of its inhabitants, soon changed its appearance owing tothe efforts of Henry and his wife. From all the provinces of Francelabourers were attracted who settled there and improved and fertilisedthe fields. (1)

 1 _Vies el Éloges des Dames illustres_, vol. Ii. P. 272. 

Henry d'Albret also devoted himself to the placing of the country in aproper state of defence, and fortified several of the towns. Navarreinx, commanding the valley of the Gave of Oloron, was virtually rebuilt byhim and transformed into a perfect stronghold, as was evidenced duringthe religious wars, when it successfully withstood the artilleryof Terrade, the Catholic commander. Long afterwards, when Vaubaninaugurated his new system of fortification, he came to Navarreinx, andon seeing the ramparts raised by Margaret's husband was so favourablyimpressed, that instead of levelling them to the ground he contentedhimself with adding to them and making various improvements. Henryd'Albret was also anxious to refortify Sauveterre, which the Prince ofOrange, with one of the Imperial armies, had captured in 1523, when hehalf-demolished the old castle of Montreal, then the most formidablecitadel in Beam. However, as time and money were lacking, Henry had toabandon his plans, and the ruins left by the Imperialists, the ivy-cladkeep, and mutilated bridge over the Gave soon fell into irremediabledecay. (1)

 1 M. Paul Perret's _Pyrénées françaises_, vol. Ii. P. 303. 

IV. 

 _Margaret's attachment to her daughter--Refusal of Jane to marry the Duke of Clevés--Intervention of Margaret--The wedding at Châtelherault and the fall of the Constable de Montmorency--Margaret and her husband at Caulerets--The "Heptameron"--Illness and death of Francis I. --Margaret's anxiety and grief--Her "Marguerites de la Marguerite"--Jane d'Albret's second marriage--Death of Margaret at Odos or Audaux----Her funeral at Lescar--Destruction of her tomb_. 

Whilst Margaret was living amongst divines and scholars at Pau andNérac, her mind, as her letters indicate, constantly turned to herdaughter Jane, whom Aimée de la Fayette, wife of the Bailiff of Caen, was bringing up at Plessis-lès-Tours. Margaret was only able to see Janeat rare intervals during some of her trips to France, and she was mainlyindebted to sympathising friends for news of the little Princess'scondition and health. All her maternal tenderness was concentrated onthis daughter, and whenever the child was ailing she became distracted. 

Sainte-Marthe records that in December 1537, while Margaret wassojourning in Paris, her daughter, then scarcely nine years old, fellseriously ill at the royal house of Plessis-lès-Tours; and as itwas rumoured amongst the Court, then at Paris, that the Princess wasthreatened with death, her virtuous mother, Margaret, at about fouro'clock in the evening, ordered her litter to be brought, saying thatshe would go and see her daughter, and that all her people shouldprepare to start. There was nothing ready, the officials and servantswere absent, and scattered about the town of Paris and the neighbouringvillages. It was already dark, for this was during the shortest daysof the year, the weather too was adverse on account of the rain, andneither her litter nor her baggage mules were at hand. Seeing this, thecourageous Queen borrowed the litter of Madame Margaret, her niece, (1)got in it, and contenting herself with scant escort, started from Parisand went as far as Bourg-la-Reine. 

 1 The daughter of Francis I. , subsequently Duchess of Savoy. 

"When they had arrived there she did not alight at her lodgings, butwent straight to the church, which she at once entered, saying tothose about her, that her heart told her I know not what concerning herdaughter's fate, and affectionately begging them all to withdraw andleave her alone for an hour in the church. All obeyed and in greatuneasiness waited for their mistress at the church door; the Sénéchalede Poitou, (1) a very faithful lady, and very solicitous about Margaret, alone entering with her. Margaret having gone in, kneels down beforethe image of Jesus crucified, prays to God from the depths of her heart, sighs, weeps, confesses all her transgressions, and laying to herselfalone the cause of her daughter's illness, humbly asks pardon, and begsthat the sufferer's restoration to health may be granted. After thisact of faith Margaret felt relieved, and she had scarcely arrived ather lodgings when the Bishop of Mende came to announce to her that herdaughter was in the way of recovery. " (2)

 1 Brantôme's grandmother. 

 2 Oraison funèbre, &c, p. 38. 

When Jane was barely twelve years old Charles V. Asked her in marriagefor his son Philip, but Francis, who was by no means anxious to see theSpaniards established on the northern side of the Pyrenees, preferredthat the girl should marry William III. , Duke of Cleves. It hasfrequently been asserted that Francis on this occasion exercisedcompulsion not only upon his niece, but also upon the King and Queen ofNavarre, who vainly protested against this abuse of power. The truthis, that Margaret not only favoured the marriage, but threatened to haveJane whipped if she persisted in her refusal. Moreover, the little bridehaving declared to Francis I. That she protested against the alliance, Margaret wrote to her brother as follows:--

"My Lord, in my extreme desolation, I have only one single comfort, itis that of knowing with certainty that neither the King of Navarre normyself have ever had any other wish or intention than that of obeyingyou, not only as regards a marriage, but in whatever you might order. But now, my lord, having heard that my daughter, neither recognising thegreat honour you do her in deigning to visit her, nor the obedience thatshe owes you, nor that a girl should have no will of her own, has spokento you so madly as to say to you that she begged of you she might not bemarried to M. De Cleves, I do not know, my lord, either what I ought tothink of it, or what I ought to say to you about it, for I am grieved tothe heart, and have neither relative nor friend in the world from whomI can seek advice or consolation. And the King of Navarre is on hispart so amazed and grieved at it that I have never seen him before soprovoked. I cannot imagine whence comes this great boldness, of whichshe had never spoken to us. She excuses herself towards us in that sheis more intimate with you than with ourselves, but this intimacy shouldnot give rise to such boldness, without ever as I know seeking advicefrom any one, for if I knew any creature who had put such an idea intoher head, I would make such a demonstration that you, my lord, wouldknow that this madness is contrary to the will of the father and mother, who have never had, and never will have, any other than your own. " (1)

The rebellion of Jane did not prevent the marriage, which was solemnisedat Châtelherault on July 15th, 1540. According to some authorities, Francis was so determined upon the alliance that he required the Dukeof Cleves to enter his bride's bed in the presence of witnesses, so thatthe marriage should be deemed beyond annulment. (2)

 1 _Nouvelles Lettres, &c. _, p. 176. 

 2 Henri Martin's _Histoire de France_. The marriage, however, was not really consummated (_Nouvelles Lettres, &c. _, pp. 236, 237), and it was eventually annulled by Pope Paul III. , to whom Francis applied for a divorce when the Duke of Cleves deserted his cause for that of Charles V. 

It was at Châtelherault on this occasion that Margaret triumphed overthe Constable de Montmorency, who in earlier years had been herclose friend, and with whom she had carried on such a voluminouscorrespondence. Montmorency had requited her good services withingratitude, repeatedly endeavouring to estrange Francis from her. Brantôme gives an instance of this in the following passage:--"I haveheard related, " he says, "by a person of good faith that the Constablede Montmorency, then in the highest favour, speaking of this matterof religion one day with the King, made no difficulty or scruple abouttelling him, that 'if he really wished to exterminate the hereticsof his kingdom, he ought to begin at his Court and with his nearestrelatives, mentioning the Queen his sister, ' to which the King replied, 'Do not speak of her; she loves me too much. She will never believeanything save what I believe, and will never take up a religionprejudicial to the State. '" (1)

 1 _OEuvres de Brantôme_, 8vo, vol. V. (_Dames illustres_), p. 219. 

As soon as Margaret became aware of Montmorency's conduct she ceasedall correspondence with him and steadily endeavoured to effect hisoverthrow, which was brought about on the occasion of Jane's marriage. "It was necessary to carry the little bride to the church, " saysBrantôme, "as she was laden with jewels and a dress of gold and silver, and owing to this and the weakness of her body, was not able to walk. Sothe King ordered the Constable to take his little niece and carry her tothe church, at which all the Court were greatly astonished, for at sucha ceremony this was a duty little suited and honourable for a Constable, and might very well have been given to another. However, the Queen ofNavarre was in no way displeased, but said, 'Behold! he who wished toruin me with the King my brother now serves to carry my daughter tochurch. ' The Constable, " adds Brantôme, "was greatly displeased at thetask, and sorely vexed to serve as such a spectacle to every one; and hebegan to say, 'It is now all over with my favour. Farewell to it. 'Thus it happened, for after the wedding festival and dinner he had hisdismissal and left at once. " (1)

After the marriage of her daughter Margaret returned to Paris, andthence repaired to Mont-de-Marsan to spend the winter of 1540-41. Latein the following spring she went to Cauterets in the Pyrenees to takethe baths. Writing during Lent to her brother she states that herhusband having had a fall will repair to Cauterets by the advice of hisdoctors, (2) and that she intends to accompany him to prevent him fromworrying and to transact his business for him, "for when one is at thebaths one must live like a child without any care. " (3)

 1 _OEuvres de Brantôme_, 8vo, vol. V. (_Dames illustres_), p. 220. 

 2 Henry d'Albret had already undergone treatment at the Pyrenean baths after his escape from Pavia, when, however, he stayed at Eaux-Bonnes. 

 3 Génin's _Nouvelles Lettres, &c. _, p. 189. 

This was not her only motive in going to Cauterets apparently, for ina letter to Duke William of Cleves, her daughter's husband, dated April1541, she states that as she is suffering from a _caterre_ which "hasfallen upon half her neck, " and compels her to keep her bed, the doctorshave advised her to take "the natural baths, " and hope that she willbe cured by the end of May, providing she follows all theirprescriptions. (1)

 1 A. De Ruble's _Mariage de Jeanne d' Albret_, Paris, 1877, p. 86, et seq. 

That this visit to Cauterets left a deep impression upon the mind ofMargaret is evidenced by the work upon which her literary fame rests. The scene selected for the prologue of the _Heptameron_ is Cauteretsand the surrounding country; still it is evident that the book was notcommenced upon the occasion referred to, for in the prologue Margaretalludes to historical events which took place in 1543 and 1544, and shespeaks of them as being of recent occurrence at her time of writing. Nowwe know that in April 1544 she met her brother at Alençon, and made along stay in the duchy, and the probability is that she commenced the_Heptameron_ at that time. It was the work of several years, penned in adesultory style whilst Margaret was travelling about her northern duchyor her southern kingdom. Like all persons of high station, she journeyedin a litter, and Brantôme informs us that her equipage was a modest one, for "she never had more than three baggage-mules and six for her twolitters, though she had two, three, or four chariots for her ladies. " (1)Brantôme--who it may be mentioned was brought up at Margaret's Courtunder the care of his grandmother, Louise de Daillon, wife of Andrew deVivonne, Seneschal of Poitou--also states that the Queen composed the_Heptameron_ mainly "in her litter, while journeying about, for she hadmore important occupations when she was at home. I have thus heard itrelated by my grandmother, who always went with her in her litter as herlady of honour, and held the escritoire with which she wrote, and sheset them (the stories) down in writing as speedily and skilfully as ifthey had been dictated to her, if not more so. " (2)

 1 Lalanne's _OEuvres de Brantôme_, 1875, vol. Ii. P. 214. 

 2 _Ibid_. , vol. Viii. P. 226. 

In 1545 and 1546 we find Margaret in Beam, whence she addresses New Yearepistles to her brother expressing her sorrow at being separatedfrom him. In the spring of the latter year she visits him atPlessis-lès-Tours. The King of France--contrary to all tradition--enjoysat this period as good health as the most robust man in his kingdom. (1)In 1547 Margaret repairs to a convent at Tusson in the Angoumois tospend Lent there, and soon afterwards is despatching courier aftercourier to the Court at Rambouillet for news of Francis, who is dying. Such is her anguish of suspense that she exclaims, "Whoever comes tomy door to announce to me the cure of the King my brother, were such amessenger weary, tired, muddy, and dirty, I would embrace and kiss himlike the cleanest prince and gentleman in France; and if he lacked a bedand could not find one to repose upon, I would give him mine, and wouldsleep on the floor for the sake of the good news he brought me. " (2)

 1 _Lettres de Marguerite, &c. _, p. 473. 

 2 _OEuvres de Brantôme_, 8vo, vol. V. P. 233. 

No one, however, had the courage to tell her the truth. It was a poormaniac who by her tears gave her to understand that the King was nolonger alive. Sainte-Marthe records the incident as follows: "Now theday that Francis was taken away from us (Margaret herself has since toldme so), she thought whilst sleeping that she saw him looking pale, andcalling for her in a sad voice, which she took for a very evil sign; andfeeling doubtful about it, she sent several messengers to the Court toascertain the condition of the King her brother, but not a single one ofthem returned to her. One day, her brother having again appeared to herwhile she was asleep (he had already been dead fifteen days), (1) sheasked the members of her household if they had heard any news of theKing. 

 1 Francis I. Died March 31, 1547. 

"They replied to her that he was very well, and she then went to thechurch. On her way there she summoned Thomas le Coustellier, a young manof good intelligence and her secretary, and as she was telling him thesubstance of a letter that she wished to write to a Princess of theCourt, to obtain from her some news of the King's health, she heard onthe other side of the cloister a nun, whose brain was somewhat turned, lamenting and weeping loudly. Margaret, naturally inclined to pity, hastened to this woman, asked her why she was weeping, and encouragedher to tell her whether she wished for anything. Then the nun began tolament still more loudly, and looking at the Queen, told her that shewas deploring her ill-fortune. When Margaret heard these words sheturned towards those who were with her, and said to them, 'You werehiding the King's death from me, but the Spirit of God has revealed itto me through this maniac. ' This said, she turned to her room, kneltdown, and humbly thanked the Lord for all the goodness He was pleased toshow her. " (1)

After losing her brother, Margaret remained in retirement at the conventof Tusson. She stayed there, says Brantôme, for four months, leadinga most austere life and discharging the duties of abbess. She stillcontinued in retirement on her return to Beam, mainly occupying herselfwith literary work. It was in 1547, subsequent to the death of Francis, that John de la Haye, her secretary, published at Lyons her _Margueritesde la Marguerite_, poems which she had composed at various periods, andwhich De la Haye probably transcribed at her dictation. (2)

 1 _Oraison funèbre, &c. _, p. 103. 

 2 Sainte-Marthe states that she would sit with two secretaries, one on either side, and dictate poetry to the one and letters to the other. 

Margaret's daughter Jane was at this period at the Court of France, living in extravagant style, as is shown by the letters in whichMargaret declares that the Princess's expenditure is insupportable. Sheherself spent but little money upon personal needs, though she devotedconsiderable sums to charity. In October 1548 she emerged from herseclusion to attend the second marriage of her daughter, who now becamethe wife of Anthony de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme. From Moulins, where theceremony took place, Margaret repaired to the Court at Fontainebleau. Here all was changed: there was a new King, and Diana of Poitiersoccupied the position of the Duchess of Etampes. After returning to Beamfor Christmas, Margaret spent the Lent of 1549 in retreat at Tusson, where she apparently divided her time between prayer and literarylabour. She was still writing the _Heptameron_, as is shown by thesixty-sixth tale, which chronicles an adventure that befell her daughterand Anthony de Bourbon on their marriage trip during the winter of1548-49. It may be noted, too, that the scene of the sixty-ninth storyis laid at the Castle of Odos near Tarbes, and as Margaret came toreside at the castle in the autumn of 1549, this tale was probablywritten during her sojourn there. Whilst adding fresh stories to the_Heptameron_, she was not neglecting poetry, for from this period alsodates the _Miroir de Jésus Christ crucifié_, which Brother Olivierpublished in 1556, stating that it was the Queen's last work, and thatshe had handed it to him a few days before her death. 

Margaret had long been in failing health and was growing extremely weak. Brantôme, on the authority of his grandmother, states that when herapproaching death was announced to her, she found the monition a verybitter one, saying that she was not yet so aged but that she might livesome years longer. She was then in her fifty-eighth year. Sainte-Martherelates that shortly before her death she saw in a dream a verybeautiful woman holding in her hand a crown of all sorts of flowerswhich she showed to her, telling her that she would soon be crowned withit. (1)

 1 _Oraison funèbre, &c. _, p. 104. 

She interpreted this dream as signifying that her end was near, and fromthat day forward abandoned the administration of her property to theKing of Navarre, refusing to occupy herself with any other matter thanthat of her approaching end. After dictating her will she fell into herfinal illness, which lasted twenty days according to some authorities, and eight according to others. It seized her one night at Odos whilstshe was watching a comet, which it was averred had appeared to notifythe death of Pope Paul III. "It was perhaps to presage her own, " naivelyremarks Brantôme, who adds that while she was looking at the comet hermouth suddenly became partially paralysed, whereupon her doctor, M. D'Escuranis, led her away and made her go to bed. Her death took placeon December 21st, 1549, and just before expiring she grasped a crucifixthat lay beside her and murmured, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. " (1)

Although the King of Navarre had not always lived in perfect accord withhis wife, he none the less keenly felt the loss he had sustained by herdeath. Olhagaray represents him when deprived of Margaret as no longershowing the same firm purpose of life, but as sad, discontented, andaltering his plans at every trifle. (2) He gave orders that Margaret'sremains should be interred in the Cathedral of Lescar, some four and ahalf miles from the Château of Pau, with which it is said to havebeen at that time connected by a subterranean passage. Several of theNavarrese sovereigns had already been buried there, for the See was akind of primacy, the Bishops being _ex-officio_ presidents of the Statesof Beam. (3)

 1 M. Lalanne, in his edition of Brantôme's works, maintains that Margaret did not die at Odos, near Tarbes, but at Audaux, near Orthez, basing this contention on the fact that Brantôme calls the castle "Audos in Beam, " and that Odos is in Bigorre. Tradition, however, has always pointed to the latter locality, though, on the other hand, it is stated that less than half a century after Margaret's death Odos was nothing but a ruin, and had long been in that condition. In 1596 Henry IV. Gave the property to John de Lassalle, by whose descendants the château was restored (Bascle de Lagrèze's _Chateau de Pau, &c. _). 

 2 _Histoire de Foix et de Béarn, &c. _, p. 506. 

 3 Lescar having ceased to be a bishopric since 1790, its church, which still exists, no longer ranks as a cathedral. 

It was in this quaint old cathedral church, dating, so archaeologistsassert, from the eleventh century, that Margaret's remains were interredwith all due pomp and ceremony. The Duchess of Estouteville headed theprocession, followed by the Duke of Montpensier, the Duke of Nevers, the Duke of Aumale, the Duke of Etampes, the Marquis of Maine, and M. DeRohan. Then came the _grands deuils_ or chief mourners, led by the Dukeof Vendôme, and three lords carrying the crown, sceptre, and hand ofjustice. The Viscount of Lavedan officiated as grand master of theceremonies, and special seats were assigned to the States of Navarre, Foix, Beam, and Bigorre, and to the chancellor, counsellors, and baronsof the country; whilst on a platform surrounded by lighted tapersthere was displayed an effigy of the Queen robed in black. (1) After theceremony a banquet was served in accordance with Bearnese custom, thechief mourners being invited to the Duke of Vendôme's table, whilst theothers were served in different rooms. (2)

 1 _Lettres de Marguerite (Pièces justificatives_. No. Xi. ). 

 2 Bascle de Lagrèze's _Château de Pau, &c. _

A few years later--in June 1555--the remains of King Henry, Margaret'shusband, were in turn brought to Lescar for burial. The tombs of husbandand wife, however, have alike vanished, having been swept away duringthe religious wars, when Lescar was repeatedly stormed and sacked, whenHuguenot and Catholic, in turn triumphant, vented their religious frenzyupon the graves of their former sovereigns; and to-day the only tombsto be found in the old cathedral are those of personages interred theresince the middle of the seventeenth century. 

January 1893. 

ON THE HEPTAMERON, WITH SOME NOTICE OF PRECEDENT COLLECTIONS OF TALES IN FRANCE, OF THEAUTHOR, AND OF HER OTHER WORKS. 

It is probable that every one who has had much to do with the study ofliterature has conceived certain preferences for books which he knowsnot to belong absolutely to the first order, but which he thinks to havebeen unjustly depreciated by the general judgment, and which appeal tohis own tastes or sympathies with particular strength. One of such booksin my own case is _THE HEPTAMERON_ of Margaret of Navarre. I have readit again and again, sometimes at short intervals, sometimes at longer, during the lapse of some five-and-twenty years since I first met withit. But the place which it holds in my critical judgment and in myprivate affections has hardly altered at all since the first reading. I like it as a reader perhaps rather more than I esteem it as a critic;but even as a critic, and allowing fully for the personal equation, Ithink that it deserves a far higher place than is generally accorded toit. 

Three mistakes, as it seems to me, pervade most of the estimates, critical or uncritical, of the _Heptameron_, the two first of old date, the third of recent origin. The first is that it is a comparativelyfeeble imitation of a great original, and that any one who knowsBoccaccio need hardly trouble himself to know Margaret of Navarre. Thesecond is that it is a loose if not obscene book, disgraceful for a ladyto have written (or at least mothered), and not very creditable forany one to read. The third is that it is interesting as the gossip ofa certain class of modern newspapers is interesting, because it tellsscandal about distinguished personages, and has for its interlocutorsother distinguished personages, who can be identified without muchdifficulty, and the identification of whom adds zest to the reading. Allthese three seem to me to be mistakes of fact and of judgment. Inthe first place, the _Heptameron_ borrows from its original literallynothing but plan. Its stories are quite independent; the similarity ofname is only a bookseller's invention, though a rather happy one; andthe personal setting, which is in Boccaccio a mere framework, has hereconsiderable substance and interest. In the second place, the accusationof looseness is wildly exaggerated. There is one very coarse but notin the least immoral story in the _Heptameron_; there are several broadjests on the obnoxious cloister and its vices, there are many taleswhich are not intended _virginibus puerisque_, and there is a pervadingflavour of that half-French, half-Italian courtship of married womenwhich was at the time usual everywhere out of England. The manners arenot our manners, and what may be called the moral tone is distinguishedby a singular cast, of which more presently. But if not entirely a bookfor boys and girls, the _Heptameron_ is certainly not one which Southeyneed have excepted from his admirable answer in the character of authorof "The Doctor, " to the person who wondered whether he (Southey) couldhave daughters, and if so, whether they liked reading. "He hasdaughters: they love reading: and he is not the man I take him for ifthey are not 'allowed to open' any book in his library. " The last error, if not so entirely inconsistent with intelligent reading of the book asthe first and second, is scarcely less strange to me. For, in the firstplace, the identification of the personages in the framework of the_Heptameron_ depends upon the merest and, as it seems to me, the idlestconjecture; and, in the second, the interest of the actualtittle-tattle, whether it could be fathered on A or B or not, is theleast part of the interest of the book. Indeed, the stories altogetherare, as I think, far less interesting than the framework. 

Let us see, therefore, if we cannot treat the _Heptameron_ in asomewhat different fashion from that in which any previous critic, evenSainte-Beuve, has treated it. The divisions of such treatment are notvery far to seek. In the first place, let us give some account of theworks of the same class which preceded and perhaps patterned it. Inthe second, let us give an account of the supposed author, of her otherworks, and of the probable character of her connection with this one. Inthe third, without attempting dry argument, let us give some sketch ofthe vital part, which we have called the framework, and some generalcharacteristics of the stories. And, in the fourth and last, let usendeavour to disengage that peculiar tone, flavour, note, or whateverword may be preferred, which, as it seems to me at least, at oncedistinguishes the _Heptameron_ from other books of the kind, andrenders it peculiarly attractive to those whose temperament andtaste predisposes them to be attracted. For there is a great deal ofpre-established harmony in literature and literary tastes; and I have akind of idea that every man has his library marked out for him when hecomes into the world, and has then only got to get the books and readthem. 

Margaret herself refers openly enough to the example of the _Decameron_, which had been translated by her own secretary, Anthony le Maçon, amember of her literary coterie, and not improbably connected with thewriting or redacting of the _Heptameron_ itself. Nor were later Italiantale-tellers likely to be without influence at a time when French wasbeing "Italianated" in every possible way, to the great disgust of someFrenchmen. But the Italian ancestors or patterns need not be dealt withhere, and can be discovered with ease and pleasure by any one who wishesin the drier pages of Dunlop, or in the more flowery and starry pages ofMr. Symonds' "History of the Renaissance in Italy. " The next few pageswill deal only with the French tale-tellers, whose productions beforeMargaret's days were, if not very numerous, far from uninteresting, andwhose influence on the slight difference of _genre_ which distinguishesthe tales before us from Italian tales was by no means slight. 

In France, as everywhere else, prose fiction, like prose of all kinds, was considerably later in production than verse, and short tales of thekind before us were especially postponed by the number, excellence, andpopularity of the verse _fabliaux_. Of these, large numbers have comedown to us, and they exactly correspond in verse to the tales of the_Decameron_ and the _Heptameron_ in prose, except that the satiricalmotive is even more strongly marked, and that touches of romanticsentiment are rarer. This element of romance, however, appearsabundantly in the long prose versions of the Arthurian and otherlegends, and we have a certain number of short prose stories of thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of which the most famous is thatof _Aucassin et Nicolette_. These latter, however, are rather shortromances than distinct prose tales of our kind. Of that kind the firstfamous book in French, and the only famous book, besides the one beforeus, is the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_. The authorship of this bookis very uncertain. It purports to be a collection of stories told bydifferent persons of the society of Louis XI. , when he was but Dauphin, and was in exile in Flanders under the protection of the Duke ofBurgundy. But it has of late years been very generally assigned(though on rather slender grounds of probability, and none of positiveevidence), to Anthony de la Salle, the best French prose writer ofthe fifteenth century, except Comines, and one on whom, with an oddunanimity, conjectural criticism has bestowed, besides his acknowledgedromance of late chivalrous society, _Petit Jehan de Saintré_ (a workwhich itself has some affinities with the class of story before us), notonly the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, but the famous satirical treatiseof the _Quinze Joyes du Mariage_, and the still more famous farce of_Pathelin_. Some of the _Nouvelles_, moreover, have been putativelyfathered on Louis XI. Himself, in which case the royal house of Francewould boast of two distinguished taletellers instead of one. Howeverthis may be, they all display the somewhat hard and grim but keen andpractical humour which seems to have distinguished that prince, whichwas a characteristic of French thought and temper at the time, and whichperhaps arose with the misfortunes and hardships of the Hundred Years'War. The stories are decidedly amusing, with a considerably greater, though also a much ruder, _vis comica_ than that of the _Heptameron_;and they are told in a style unadorned indeed, and somewhat dry, lackingthe simplicity of the older French, and not yet attaining to thegraces of the newer, but forcible, distinct, and sculpturesque, if notpicturesque. A great license of subject and language, and an enjoymentof practical jokes of the roughest, not to say the most cruel character, prevail throughout, and there is hardly a touch of anything likeromance; the tales alternating between jests as broad as those of theReeve's and Miller's tales in Chaucer (themselves exactly correspondingto verse _fabliaux_, of which the _Cent Nouvelles_ are exact prosecounterparts, and perhaps prose versions), and examples of what has beencalled "the humour of the stick, " which sometimes trenches hard uponthe humour of the gallows and the torture-chamber. These characteristicshave made the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ no great favourites of late, but their unpopularity is somewhat undeserved. For all their coarseness, there is much genuine comedy in them, and if the prettiness of romanticand literary dressing-up is absent from them, so likewise is theinsincerity thereof. They make one of the most considerable prosebooks of what may be called middle French literature, and they had muchinfluence on the books that followed, especially on this of Margaret's. Indeed, one of the few examples to be found between the two, the _GrandParagon de Nouvelles Nouvelles_ of Nicolas de Troyes (1535), obviouslytakes them for model. But Nicolas was a dull dog, and neither profitedby his model nor gave any one else opportunity to profit by himself. 

Rabelais, the first book of whose _Pantagruel_ anticipated the _Paragon_by three years, while the _Gargantua_ coincided with it, was a greatauthority at the Court of Margaret's brother Francis, dedicated oneof the books (the third) of _Pantagruel_ to her, before her death, inhigh-flown language, as _esprit abstrait, ravy et ecstatic_, and mustcertainly have been familiar reading of hers, and of all the ladies andgentlemen, literary and fashionable, of her Court. But there is littleresemblance to be found in his style and hers. The short stories whichMaster Francis scatters about his longer work are, indeed, models ofnarration, but his whole tone of thought and manner of treatment arealtogether alien from those of the "ravished spirit" whom he praises. Hisdeliberate coarseness is not more different from her deliberate delicacythan his intensely practical spirit from her high-flown romanticism(which makes one think of, and may have suggested, the Court of LaQuinte), and her mixture of devout and amatory quodlibetation from hiscynical criticism and all-dissolving irony. But there was a contemporaryof Rabelais who forms a kind of link between him and Margaret, whosework in part is very like the _Heptameron_, and who has been thought tohave had more than a hand in it. This was Bonaventure Despériers, a manwhose history is as obscure as his works are interesting. Born in orabout the year 1500, he committed suicide in 1544, either during a fitof insanity, or, as has been thought more likely, in order to escapethe danger of the persecution which, in the last years of the reign ofFrancis, threatened the unorthodox, and which Margaret, who hadmore than once warded it off from them, was then powerless to avert. Despériers, to speak truth, was in far more danger of the stake thanmost of his friends. The infidelity of Rabelais is a matter of inferenceonly, and some critics (among whom the present writer ranks himself) seein his daring ridicule of existing abuses nothing inconsistent with aperfectly sound, if liberally conditioned, orthodoxy. Despériers, likeRabelais, was a Lucianist, but his modernising of Lucian (the remarkablebook called _Cymbalum Mundï_), though pretending to deal with ancientmythology, has an almost unmistakable reference to revealed religion. It is not, however, by this work or by this side of his character at allthat Despériers is brought into connection with the work of Margaret, who, if learned and liberal, and sometimes tending to the new ideas inreligion, was always devout and always orthodox in fundamentals. Besidesthe _Cymbalum Mundi_, he has left a curious book, not published, likethe _Heptameron_ itself, till long after his own death, and entitled_Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis_. The tales of which it consistsare for the most part very short, some being rather sketches or outlinesof tales than actually worked-out stories, so that, although thereare no less than a hundred and twenty-nine of them, the whole book isprobably not half the bulk of the _Heptameron_ itself. But they areextremely well written, and the specially interesting thing about themis, that in them there appears, and appears for the first time (unlesswe take the _Heptameron_ itself as earlier, which is contrary to allprobability), the singular and, at any rate to some persons, veryattractive mixture of sentiment and satire, of learning and a love ofrefined society, of joint devotion to heavenly and earthly love, ofvoluptuous enjoyment of the present, blended and shadowed with asense of the night that cometh, which delights us in the prose of the_Heptameron_, and in the verse not only of all the Pléiade poets inFrance, but of Spenser, Donne, and some of their followers in England. The scale of the stories, which are sometimes mere anecdotes, is sosmall, the room for miscellaneous discourse in them is so scanty, andthe absence of any connecting links, such as those of Margaret's ownplan, checks the expression of personal feeling so much, that it isonly occasionally that this cast of thought can be perceived. But itis there, and its presence is an important element in determining thequestion of the exact authorship of the _Heptameron_ itself. 

It can hardly be said that, except translations from the Italian (ofwhich the close intercourse between France and Italy in the days of thelater Valois produced many), Margaret had many other examples beforeher. For such a book as the _Propos Rustiques_ of Noël du Fail, though published before her death, is not likely to have exercised anyinfluence over her; and most other books of the kind are later thanher own. One such (for, despite its _bizarre_ title and its distinctintention of attacking the Roman Church, Henry Estienne's _Apologiepour Hérodote_ is really a collection of stories) deserves mention, notbecause of its influence upon the Queen of Navarre, but because of theQueen of Navarre's influence upon it. Estienne is constantly quoting the_Heptameron_, and though to a certain extent the inveteracy withwhich the friars are attacked here must have given the book a specialattraction for him, two things may be gathered from his quotations andattributions. The first is that the book was a very popular one; thesecond, that there was no doubt among well-informed persons, of whom andin whose company Estienne most certainly was, that the _Heptameron_ wasin more than name the work of its supposed author. 

From what went before it Margaret could, and could not, borrow certainwell-defined things. Models both Italian and French gave her the schemeof including a large number of short and curtly, but not skimpingly, told stories in one general framework, and of subdividing them intogroups dealing more or less with the same subject or class of subject. She had also in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on thatperennial and somewhat facile source of laughter--the putting togetherof incidents and phrases which even by those who laugh at them areregarded as indecorous. But of this expedient she availed herself ratherless than any of her forerunners. She had further the example of agenerally satirical intent; but here, too, she was not content merely tofollow, and her satire is, for the most part, limited to the corruptionsand abuses of the monastic orders. It can hardly be said that any of theother stock subjects, lawyers, doctors, citizens, even husbands (for sheis less satirical on marriage than encomiastic of love), are dealt withmuch by her. She found also in some, but chiefly in older books of theChartier and still earlier traditions, and rather in Italian than inFrench, a certain strain of romance proper and of adventure; but ofthis also she availed herself but rarely. What she did not find inany example (unless, and then but partially, in the example of her ownservant, Bonaventure Des-périers) was first the interweaving of a greatdeal not merely of formal religious exercise, but of positive religiousdevotion in her work; and secondly, the infusing into it of the peculiarRenaissance contrast, so often to be noticed, of love and death, passionand piety, voluptuous enjoyment and sombre anticipation. 

But it is now time to say a little more about the personality and workof this lady, whose name all this time we have been using freely, andwho was indeed a very notable person quite independently of her literarywork. Nor was she in literature by any means an unnotable one, quiteindependently of the collection of unfinished stories, which, afterreceiving at its first posthumous publication the not particularlyappropriate title of _Les Amants Fortunés_, was more fortunatelyre-named, albeit by something of a bull (for there is the beginningof an eighth day as well as the full complement of the seven), the_Heptameron_. 

Few ladies have been known in history by more and more confusing titlesthan the author of the _Heptameron_, the confusion arising partly fromthe fact that she had a niece and a great-niece of the same charmingChristian name as herself. The second Margaret de Valois (the mostappropriate name of all three, as it was theirs by family right) was thedaughter of Francis I. , the patroness of Ronsard, and, somewhat latein life, the wife of the Duke of Savoy--a marriage which, as the bridecarried with her a dowry of territory, was not popular, and brought somecoarse jests on her. Not much is said of her personal appearance afterher infancy; but she inherited her aunt's literary tastes, if not herliterary powers, and gave Ronsard powerful support in his early days. The third was the daughter of Henry II. , the "Grosse Margot" of herbrother, Henry III. , the "Reine Margot" of Dumas' novel, the idol ofBrantôme, the first wife of Henry IV. , the beloved of Guise, La Mole, and a long succession of gallants, the rival of her sister-in-lawMary Stuart, not in misfortunes, but as the most beautiful, gracious, learned, accomplished, and amiable of the ladies of her time. ThisMargaret would have been an almost perfect heroine of romance (for shehad every good quality except chastity), if she had not unluckily livedrather too long. 

Her great-aunt, our present subject, was not the equal of hergreat-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by aportentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a verycurious expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face isone which can be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in thenot very attractive portraiture of the time, and her actual attractionsare attested by her contemporaries with something more than thehomage-to-order which literary men have never failed to pay to ladieswho are patronesses of letters. Besides Margaret of Valois, she isknown as Margaret of Angoulême, from her place of birth and her father'stitle; Margaret of Alençon, from the fief of her first husband; Margaretof Navarre, of which country, like her grand-niece, she was queen, byher second marriage with Henry d'Albret; and even Margaret of Orleans, as belonging to the Orleans branch of the royal house. She was not, like her nieces, Margaret of France, as her father never reigned, andBrantôme properly denies her the title, but others sometimes give it. When it is necessary to call her anything besides the simple "Margaret, "Angoulême is at once the most appropriate and the most distinctivedesignation. She was born on the 11th or 12th of April 1492, her fatherbeing Charles, Count of Angoulême, and her mother Louise of Savoy. Shewas their eldest child, and two years older than her brother, the futureKing Francis. According to, and even in excess of, the custom of theage, she received a very learned education, acquiring not merely thethree tongues, French, Italian, and Spanish, which were all in commonuse at the French Court during her time, but Latin, and even a littleGreek and a little Hebrew. She lived in the provinces both before andafter her marriage, in 1509, to her relation, Charles, Duke of Alençon, who was older than herself by three years, and though a fair soldierand an inoffensive person, was apparently of little talents and notparticularly amiable. The accession of her brother to the throneopened a much more brilliant career to her. She and her mother jointlyexercised great influence over Francis; and the Duchess of Alençon, towhom her brother shortly afterwards gave Berry, was for many years oneof the most influential persons in the kingdom, using her influencealmost invariably for good. Her husband died soon after Pavia, andin the same year (September 1525) she undertook a journey to Spain onbehalf of her captive brother. This journey, with some expressions inher letters and in Brantôme, has been wrested by some critics in orderto prove that her affection for Francis was warmer than it ought to havebeen--an imputation wanton in both senses of the word. 

She was sought in marriage by or offered in marriage to diversdistinguished persons during her widowhood, and this was also the timeof her principal diplomatic exercise, an office for which--odd as it nowseems for a woman--she had, like her mother, like her niece Catherine ofMedicis, like her namesake Margaret of Parma, and like other ladies ofthe age, a very considerable aptitude and reputation. When she at lastmarried, the match was not a brilliant one, though it proved, contraryto immediate probability, to be the source of the last and the mostglorious branch of the royal dynasty of France. The bridegroom boreindeed the title of King of Navarre and possessed Beam, but his kingdomhad long been in Spanish hands, and but for his wife's dowry of Alençonand appanage of Berry (to which Francis had added Armagnac and a largepension) he would have been but a lackland. Furthermore, he was elevenyears younger than herself, and it is at least insinuated that theaffection, if there was any, was chiefly on her side. At any rate, this earlier Henry of Navarre seems to have had not a few of thecharacteristics of his grandson, together with a violence and brutalitywhich, to do the _Vert Galant_ justice, formed no part of his character. The only son of the marriage died young, and a girl, Jane d'Albret, mother of the great Bourbon race of the next two centuries, was takenaway from her parents by "reasons of state" for a time. The domestic lifeof Margaret, however, concerns us but little, except in one way. Herhusband disliked administration, and she was the principal ruler intheir rather extensive estates or dominions. Moreover, she was able ather quasi-Court to extend the literary coteries which she had alreadybegun to form at Paris. The patronage to men of letters for which herbrother is famous was certainly more due to her than to himself; and toher also was due the partial toleration of religious liberty which for atime distinguished his reign. It was not till her influence was weakenedthat intolerance prevailed, and she was able even then for a time tosave Marot and other distinguished persons from persecution. It israther a moot-point how far she inclined to the Reformed doctrines, properly so called. Her letters, her serious and poetical work, andeven the _Heptameron_ itself, show a fervently pietistic spirit, and occasionally seem to testify to a distinct inclination towardsProtestantism, which is also positively attested by Brantôme and others;but this Protestantism must have been, so far as it was consistent anddefinite at all, the Protestantism of Erasmus rather than of Luther, ofRabelais rather than of Calvin. She had a very strong objection tothe coarseness, the vices, the idleness, the brutish ignorance of thecloister; she had aspirations after a more spiritual form of religionthan the ordinary Catholicism of her day provided, and as a strongpolitician she may have had something of that Gallicanism which hasalways been well marked in some of the best Frenchmen, and which atone time nearly prevailed with her great-great-grandson, Louis XIV. But there is no doubt that, as her brother said to the fanaticalMontmorency, she would always have been and always was of his religion, the religion of the State. The side of the Reformation which musthave most appealed to her was neither its austere morals, nor its bareritual, nor its doctrines, properly so called, but its spiritual pietismand its connection with profane learning and letters; for of literatureMargaret was an ardent devotee and a constant practitioner. 

Her best days were done by the time of her second marriage. After theKing's return from Spain persecution broke out, and Margaret's influencebecame more and more weak to stop it. As early as 1533 her own _Miroirde l'Ame Pécheresse_, then in a second edition, provoked the fanaticismof the Sorbonne, and the King had to interfere in person to protecthis sister's work and herself from gross insult. The Medici marriageincreased the persecuting tendency, and for a time there was even anattempt to suppress printing, and with it all that new literature whichwas the Queen's delight. She was herself in some danger, but Francis hadnot sunk so low as to permit any actual attack to be made on her. Yetall the last years of her life were unhappy, though she continued tokeep Court at Nérac in Pau, to accompany her brother in his progresses, and, as we know from documents, to play Lady Bountiful over a wide areaof France. Her husband appears to have been rather at variance withher; and her daughter, who married first, and in name only, the Dukeof Cleves in 1540, and later (1548) Anthony de Bourbon, was also noton cordial terms with her mother. By the date of this second marriageFrancis was dead, and though he had for many years been anything butwholly kind, Margaret's good days were now in truth done. Her nephewHenry left her in possession of her revenues, but does not seem to havebeen very affectionately disposed towards her; and even had shebeen inclined to attempt any recovery of influence, his wife and hismistress, Catherine de Medici and Diana of Poitiers, two women asdifferent from Margaret as they were from one another, would certainlyhave prevented her from obtaining it. As a matter of fact, however, shehad long been in ill-health, and her brother's death seems to have dealther the final stroke. She survived it two years, even as she had beenborn two years before him, and died on the 21 st December 1549, at theCastle of Odos, near Tarbes, having lived in almost complete retirementfor a considerable time. Her husband is said to have regretted her deadmore than he loved her living, and her literary admirers, such of themas death and exile had spared, were not ungrateful. _Tombeaux_, orcollections of funeral verses, were not lacking, the first being inLatin, and, oddly enough, nominally by three English sisters, Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, nieces of Henry VIII. 's queen and EdwardVI. 's mother, with learned persons like Dorât, Sainte-Marthe, and Baïf. This was re-issued in French and in a fuller form later. 

Some reference has been made to an atrocious slur cast without a shredof evidence on her moral character. There is as little foundation formore general though milder charges of laxity. It is admitted that shehad little love for her first husband, and it seems to be probable thather second had not much love for her. She was certainly addressed ingallant strains by men of letters, the most audacious being ClementMarot; but the almost universal reference of the well-known anddelightful lines beginning--

"Un doux nenny avec un doux sourire, "

to her method of dealing not merely with this lover but with others, argues a general confidence in her being a virtuous coquette, ifsomewhat coquettishly virtuous. It may be added that the whole tone ofthe _Heptameron_ points to a very similar conclusion. 

Her literary work was very considerable, and it falls under threedivisions: letters, the book before us, and the very curious andinteresting collection of poems known by the charming if fantastic titleof _Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses_, a play on themeanings, daisy, pearl, and Margaret, which had been popular in theartificial school of French poetry since the end of the thirteenthcentury in a vast number of forms. 

The letters are naturally of the very first importance for determiningthe character of Margaret's life as a woman of business, a diplomatist, and so forth. They show her to us in all these capacities, and also inthat of an enlightened and always ready patroness of letters and of menof letters. Further, they are of value, though their value is somewhataffected by a reservation to be made immediately, as to her mental andmoral characteristics. But they are not of literary interest at allequal to that of either of the other divisions. They are, if not spoilt, still not improved, by the fact that the art of easy letter-writing, in which Frenchwomen of the next century were to show themselves suchproficients, had not yet been developed, and that most of them arecouched in a heavy, laborious, semiofficial style, which smells, as faras mere style goes, of the cumbrous refinements of the _rhétoriqueurs_, in whose flourishing time Margaret herself grew up, and which concealsthe writer's sentiments under elaborate forms of ceremonial courtesy. Something at least of the groundless scandal before referred to isderived in all probability, if not in all certainty, from the lavishuse of hyperbole in addressing her brother; and generally speaking, the rebuke of the Queen to Polonius, "More matter with less art, " isapplicable to the whole correspondence. 

Something of the same evil influence is shown in the Marguerites. Itmust be remembered that the writer died before the Pléiade movement hadbeen fully started, and that she was older by five years than Marot, the only one of her own contemporaries and her own literary circle whoattained to a poetic style easier, freer, and more genuine than thecumbrous rhetoric, partly derived from the allegorising style of the_Roman de la Rose_ and its followers, partly influenced by corruptfollowing of the re-discovered and scarcely yet understood classics, partly alloyed with Flemish and German and Spanish stiffness, of whichChastellain, Crétin, and the rest have been the frequently quoted andthe rarely read exponents to students of French literature. The contentsof the _Marguerites_, to take the order of the beautiful edition ofM. Félix Frank, are as follows: Volume I. Contains first a long andsingular religious poem entitled _Le Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse_, inrhymed decasyllables, in which pretty literal paraphrases of a largenumber of passages of Scripture are strung together with a certainamount of pious comment and reflection. This is followed (after ashorter piece on the contest in the human soul between the laws of thespirit and of the flesh) by another poem of about the same length as the_Miroir_, and of no very different character, entitled _Oraison de L'AmeFidèle à son Seigneur Dieu_, and a shorter _Oraison à Notre SeigneurJésus Christ_ completes the volume. The second volume yields fourso-called "comedies, " but really mysteries on the old mediæval model, only distinguishable from their forerunners by slightly more modernlanguage and a more scriptural tone. The subjects are the Nativity, theAdoration of the Three Kings, the Massacre of the Innocents, and theFlight into Egypt. The third volume contains a third poem in thestyle of the _Miroir_, but much superior, _Le Triomphe de l'Agneau_, aconsiderable body of spiritual songs, a miscellaneous poem or two, and some epistles, chiefly addressed to Francis. These last begin thesmaller and secular division of the _Marguerites_, which is completedin the fourth volume by _Les Quatre Dames et les Quatre Gentilhommes_, composed of long monologues after the fashion of the Froissart-Chartierschool, by a "_comédie profane_, " a farce entitled _Trop, Prou [much], Peu, Moins_; a long love poem, again in the Chartier style, entitled _LaCoche_, and some minor pieces. 

Opinion as to these poems has varied somewhat, but their merit has neverbeen put very high, nor, to tell the truth, could it be put high by anyone who speaks critically. In the first place, they are written for themost part on very bad models, both in general plan and in particularstyle and expression. The plan is, as has been said, taken from thelong-winded allegorical erotic poetry of the very late thirteenth, thefourteenth, and the fifteenth centuries--poetry which is now among themost difficult to read in any literature. The groundwork or canvas beingtransferred from love to religion, it gains a little in freshness anddirectness of purpose, but hardly in general readableness. Thus, forinstance, two whole pages of the _Miroir_, or some forty or fifty lines, are taken up with endless playings on the words _mort_ and _vie_ andtheir derivatives, such as _mortifiez, and mort fiez, mort vivifiée andvie mourante_. The sacred comedies or mysteries have the tediousnessand lack of action of the older pieces of the same kind without their_naïveté_; and pretty much the same may be said of the profane comedy(which is a kind of morality), and of the farce. Of _La Coche_, what hasbeen said of the long sacred poems may be said, except that here wego back to the actual subject of the models, not on the whole withadvantage: while in the minor pieces the same word plays and frigidconceits are observable. 

But if this somewhat severe judgment must be passed on the poemsas wholes, and from a certain point of view, it may be considerablysoftened when they are considered more in detail. In not a few passagesof the religious poems Margaret has reached (and as she had no examplesbefore her except Marot's psalms, which were themselves later than atleast some of her work, may be said to have anticipated) that grave andsolemn harmony of the French Huguenots of the sixteenth century, whichin Du Bartas, in Agrippa d'Aubigné, and in passages of the tragedianMontchrestien, strikes notes hardly touched elsewhere in Frenchliterature. The _Triomphe de l'Agneau_ displays her at her best in thisrespect, and not unfrequently comes not too far off from the apocalypticresonance of d'Aubigné himself. Again, the _Bergerie_ included in theNativity comedy or mystery, though something of a Dresden _Bergerie_ (touse a later image), is graceful and elegant enough in all conscience. But it is on the minor poems, especially the Epistles and the _ChansonsSpirituelles_, that the defenders of Margaret's claim to be a poet restmost strongly. In the former her love, not merely for her brother, butfor her husband, appears unmistakably, and suggests graceful thoughts. In the latter the force and fire which occasionally break through thestiff wrappings of the longer poems appear with less difficulty and infuller measure. 

It is, however, undoubtedly curious, and not to be explained merely bythe difference of subject, that the styles of the letters and of thepoems, agreeing well enough between themselves, differ most remarkablyfrom that of the _Heptameron_. The two former are decidedly open tothe charges of pedantry, artificiality, heaviness. There is a greatsurplusage of words and a seeming inability to get to the point. The_Heptameron_ if not equal in narrative vigour and lightness to Boccacciobefore and La Fontaine afterwards, is not in the least exposed tothe charge of clumsiness of any kind, employs a simple, natural, andsufficiently picturesque vocabulary, avoids all verbiage and roundaboutwriting, and both in the narratives and in the connecting conversationdisplays a very considerable advance upon nearly all the writers of thetime, except Rabelais, Marot, and Despériers, in easy command of thevernacular. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there has, at differenttimes (rather less of late years, but that is probably an accident), been a disposition if not to take away from Margaret all the credit ofthe book, at any rate to give a share of it to others. In so far as thisshare is attempted to be bestowed on ladies and gentlemen of her Courtor family there is very little evidence for it; but in so far as the penmay be thought to have been sometimes held for her by the distinguishedmen of letters just referred to (there is no reason why Master Francishimself should not have sometimes guided it), and by others only lessdistinguished, there is considerable internal reason to favour the idea. At all times and in all places--in France perhaps more than anywhereelse--kings and queens, lords and ladies, have found no difficulty (weneed not use the harsh Voltairian-Carlylian phrase, and say in gettingtheir literary work "buckwashed, " but) in getting it pointed andseasoned, trimmed and ornamented by professional men of letters. Theform of the _Heptameron_ lends itself more than any other to suchassistance; and while I should imagine that the setting, with its strongcolour, both of religiosity and amorousness, is almost wholly Margaret'swork, I should also think it so likely as to be nearly certain that insome at least of the tales the hands of the authors of the _CymbalumMundi_ and the _Adolescence Clémentine_, of Le Maçon and Brodeau, mayhave worked at the devising, very likely re-shaped and adjusted by theQueen herself, of the actual stories as we have them now. 

The book, as we have it, consists of seven complete days of ten novelseach, and of an eighth containing two novels only. The fictitious schemeof the setting is somewhat less lugubrious than that of the _Decameron_, but still not without an element of tragedy. On the first of September, "when the hot springs of the Pyrenees begin to enter upon their virtue, "a company of persons of quality assembled at Cauterets, we are told, andabode there three weeks with much profit. But when they tried to return, rain set in with such severity that they thought the Deluge had comeagain, and they found their roads, especially that to the French side, almost entirely barred by the Gave de Béarn and other rivers. So theyscattered in different directions, most of them taking the Spanishside, either along the mountains and across to Roussillon or straight toBarcelona, and thence home by sea. But a certain widow, named Oisille, made her way with much loss of men and horses to the Abbey of Notre Damede Serrance. Here she was joined by divers gentlemen and ladies, whohad had even worse experiences of travel than herself, with bears andbrigands, and other evil things, so that one of them, Longarine, hadlost her husband, murdered in an affray in one of the cut-throat innsalways dear to romance. Besides this disconsolate person and Oisille, the company consisted of a married pair, Hircan and Parlamente; twoyoung cavaliers, Dagoucin and Saffredent; two young ladies, Nomerfideand Ennasuite; Simontault, a cavalier-servant of Parlamente; andGeburon, a knight older and discreeter than the rest of the companyexcept Oisille. (1)

 1 These names have been accommodated to M. Le Roux de Lincy's orthography, from MS. No. 1512; but for myself I prefer the spellings, especially "Emarsuitte, " more usual in the printed editions. --G. S. 

These form the party, and it is to be noted that idle and contradictoryas all the attempts made to identify them have been (for instance, themost confident interpreters hesitate between Oisille and Parlamente, anaged widow and a youthful wife, for Margaret herself), it is not to bedenied that the various parts are kept up with much decision and spirit. Of the men, indeed, Hircan is the only one who has a very decidedcharacter, and is represented as fond of his wife, Parlamente, buta decided libertine and of a somewhat rough and ruthless generalcharacter--points which have made the interpreters sure that he must beHenry d'Albret. The others, except that Geburon is, as had been said, older than his companions, and that Simontault sighs vainly afterParlamente, are merely walking gentlemen of the time, accomplishedenough, but not individual. The women are much more distinct and show awoman's hand. Oisille is, as our own seventeenth-century ancestors wouldhave said, ancient and sober, very devout, regarded with great respectby the rest of the company, and accepted as a kind of mistress both ofthe revels and of more serious matters, but still a woman of theworld, and content to make only an occasional and mild protest againsttolerably free stories and sentiments. Parlamente, considerably younger, and though virtuous, not by any means ignorant of or wholly averse tothe devotion of Simontault, indulging occasionally in a kind of mildconjugal sparring with her husband, Hircan, but apparently devoted tohim, full of religion and romance and refinement at once, is a verycharming character, resembling Madame de Sévigné as she may have beenin her unknown or hardly known youth, when husband and lovers alike wereattracted by the flame of her beauty and charm, only to complain thatit froze and did not burn. Longarine is discreetly unhappy for herdead husband, but appears decidedly consolable; Ennasuite is a haughtydamsel, disdainful of poor folk, and Nomerfide is a pure madcap, a Catherine Seyton of the generation before Catherine herself, thefeminine Dioneo of the party, and, if a little too free-spoken forprudish modern taste, a very delightful girl. 

Now when this good company had assembled at Serrance and told each othertheir misadventures, the waters on inquiry seemed to be out more widelyand more dangerously than before, so that it was impossible to think ofgoing farther for the time. They deliberated accordingly how they shouldemploy themselves, and, after allowing, on the proposal of Oisille, anample space for sacred exercises, they resolved that every day, afterdinner and an interval, they should assemble in a meadow on the bank ofthe Gave at midday and tell stories. The device is carried out withsuch success that the monks steal behind the hedges to hear them, and anoccasional postponement of vespers takes place. Simontault begins, andthe system of tale-telling goes round on the usual plan of each speakernaming him or her who shall follow. It should be observed that nogeneral subject is, as in the _Decameron_, prescribed to the speakersof each day, though, as a matter of course, one subject often suggestsanother of not dissimilar kind. Nor is there the Decameronic arrangementof the "king. " Between the stories, and also between the days, there isoften a good deal of conversation, in which the divers characters, asgiven above, are carried out with a minuteness very different from thechief Italian original. 

From what has been said already, it will be readily perceived that thenovels, or rather their subjects, are not very easy to class in anyrationalised order. The great majority, if they do not answer exactly tothe old title of _Les Histoires des Amants Fortunés_, are devoted tothe eternal subject of the tricks played by wives to the disadvantageof husbands, by husbands to the disadvantage of wives, and sometimes bylovers to the disadvantage of both. "Subtilité" is a frequent word inthe titles, and it corresponds to a real thing. Another large division, trenching somewhat upon the first, is composed of stories to thediscredit of the monks (something, though less, is said against thesecular clergy), and especially of the Cordeliers or Franciscans, anOrder who, for their coarse immorality and their brutal antipathy tolearning, were the special black (or rather grey) beasts of the literaryreformers of the time. In a considerable number there are referencesto actual personages of the time--references which stand on a verydifferent footing of identification from the puerile guessings at thepersonality of the interlocutors so often referred to. Sometimes thesereferences are avowed: "Un des muletiers de la Reine de Navarre, " "LeRoi François montre sa générosité, " "Un Président de Grenoble, " "Unefemme d'Alençon, " and so forth. At other times the reference is somewhatmore covert, but hardly to be doubted, as in the remarkable story of a"great Prince" (obviously Francis himself) who used on his journeyingsto and from an assignation of a very illegitimate character, to turninto a church and piously pursue his devotions. There are a few curiousstories in which amatory matters play only a subordinate part or noneat all, though it must be confessed that this last is a rare thing. Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes pretty free, and thengenerally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such as thatalready noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal withremarkable trials and crimes, or merely miscellaneous matters, the bestof the last class being the capital "Bonne invention pour chasser lelutin. "

In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, itnaturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversityof tone. But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once, the combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and amystical devotion, is seldom absent for long together. The generalnote, indeed, of the _Heptameron_ is given by more than one passagein Brantôme--at greatest length by one which Sainte-Beuve has rightlyquoted, at the same time and also rightly rebuking the sceptical Abbé'sdetermination to see in it little more than a piece of _précieuse_mannerliness (though, indeed, the _Précieuses_ were not yet). Yet evenSainte-Beuve has scarcely pointed out quite strongly enough how entirelythis is the keynote of all Margaret's work, and especially of the_Heptameron_. The story therefore may be worth telling again, thoughit may be found in the "Cinquième Discours" of the _Vies des DamesGalantes_. 

Brantôme's brother, not yet a captain in the army, but a studenttravelling in Italy, had in sojourning at Ferrara, when Renée of Francewas Duchess, fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle de la Roche. Forlove of him she had returned to France, and, visiting his own countryof Gascony, had attached herself to the Court of Margaret, where shehad died. And it happened that Bourdeilles, six months afterwards, andhaving forgotten all about his dead love, came to Pau and went to payhis respects to the Queen. He met her coming back from vespers, and shegreeted him graciously, and they talked of this matter and of that. But, as they walked together hither and thither, the Queen drew him, withoutcause shown, into the church she had just left, where Mademoiselle dela Roche was buried. "Cousin, " said she, "do you feel nothing stirringbeneath you and under your feet?" But he said, "Nothing, Madame. ""Think, cousin, " then said she once again. But he said, "Madame, I havethought well, but I feel nought; for under me there is but a stone, hardand firmly set. " "Now, do I tell you, " said the Queen, leaving himno longer at study, "that you are above the tomb and the body ofMademoiselle de la Roche, who is buried beneath you, and whom you lovedso much in her lifetime. And since our souls have sense after our death, it cannot be but that this faithful one, dead so lately, felt yourpresence as soon as you came near her; and if you have not perceived it, because of the thickness of the tomb, doubt not that none the less shefelt it. And forasmuch as it is a pious work to make memory of the dead, and notably of those whom we loved, I pray you give her a _pater_ and an_ave_, and likewise a _de profundis_, and pour out holy water. Soshall you make acquist of the name of a right faithful lover and a goodChristian. " And she left him that he might do this. 

Brantôme (though he had an admiration for Margaret, whose lady ofhonour his grandmother had been, and who, according to the Bourdeillestradition, composed her novels in travelling) thought this a prettyfashion of converse. "Voilà, " he says, "l'opinion de cette bonneprincesse; laquelle la tenait plus par gentillesse et par forme de devisque par créance à mon avis. " Sainte-Beuve, on the contrary, and withbetter reason, sees in it faith, graciousness, feminine delicacy, andpiety at once. No doubt; but there is something more than this, and thatsomething more is what we are in search of, and what we shall find, nowin one way, now in another, throughout the book: something whereof thesentiment of Donne's famous thoughts on the old lover's ghost, on theblanched bone with its circlet of golden tresses, is the best knowninstance in English. The madcap Nomerfide indeed lays it down, that"the meditation of death cools the heart not a little. " But her moreexperienced companions know better. The worse side of this Renaissancepeculiarity is told in the last tale, a rather ghastly story of monkishcorruption; its lighter side appears in the story, already referredto, of the "Grand Prince" and his pious devotions on the way to notparticularly pious occupation. But touches of the more poetical andromantic effects of it are all over the book. It is to be found in thestory of the gentleman who forsook the world because of his beloved'scruelty, whereat she repenting did likewise ("he had much better havethrown away his cowl and married her, " quoth the practical Nomerfide);in that of the wife who, to obtain freedom of living with her paramour, actually allowed herself to be buried; in that (very characteristic ofthe time, especially for the touch of farce in it) of the unluckyperson to whom phlebotomy and love together were fatal; and in not afew others, while it emerges in casual phrases of the intermediateconversations and of the stories themselves, even when it is not to bedetected in the general character of the subjects. 

And thus we can pretty well decide what is the most interesting andimportant part of the whole subject. The question, What is thespecial virtue of the _Heptameron_? I have myself little hesitationin answering. There is no book, in prose and of so early a date, whichshows to me the characteristic of the time as it influenced the twogreat literary nations of Europe so distinctly as this book of Margaretof Angoulême. Take it as a book of Court gossip, and it is rather lessinteresting than most books of Court gossip, which is saying much. Takeit as the performance of a single person, and you are confronted withthe difficulty that it is quite unlike that other person's more certainworks, and that it is in all probability a joint affair. Take itsseparate stories, and, with rare exceptions, they are not of the firstorder of interest, or even of the second. But separate the individualpurport of these stories from the general colour or tone of them;take this general colour or tone in connection with the tenor of theintermediate conversations, which form so striking a characteristicof the book, and something quite different appears. It is that samepeculiarity which appears in places and persons and things so differentas Spenser, as the poetry of the Pléiade, as Montaigne, as Raleigh, as Donne, as the group of singers known as the Caroline poets. It isa peculiarity which has shown itself in different forms at differenttimes, but never in such vigour and precision as at this time. Itcombines a profound and certainly sincere--almost severe--religiositywith a very vigorous practice of some things which the religion itprofesses does not at all countenance. It has an almost morbidlypronounced simultaneous sense of the joys and the sorrows of human life, the enjoyment of the joys being perfectly frank, and the feeling ofthe sorrows not in the least sentimental. It unites a great generalrefinement of thought, manners, opinion, with an almost astonishingoccasional coarseness of opinion, manners, thought. The prevailing notein it is a profound melancholy mixed with flashes and intervals of a noless profound delight. There is in it the sense of death, to a strangeand, at first sight, almost unintelligible extent. Only when oneremembers the long night of the religious wars which was just about tofall on France, just as after Spenser, Puritan as he was, after Carewand Herrick still more, a night of a similar character was about to fallon England, does the real reason of this singular idiosyncrasy appear. The company of the _Heptameron_ are the latest representatives, at firsthand, and with no deliberate purpose of presentment, of the mediaevalconception of gentlemen and ladies who fleeted the time goldenly. Theyare not themselves any longer mediaeval; they have been taught modernways; they have a kind of uneasy sense (even though one and another ofthemselves may now and then flout the idea) of the importance of otherclasses, even of some duty on their own part towards other classes. Their piety is a very little deliberate, their voluptuous indulgence hasa grain of conscience in it and behind it, which distinguishes it notless from the frank indulgence of a Greek or a Roman than from the stillfranker naïveté of purely mediaeval art, from the childlike, almostparadisiac, innocence of the Belli-cents and Nicolettes and of thedaughter of the great Soldan Hugh in that wonderful serio-comic_chanson_ of the _Voyage à Constantinople_. The mark of modernity is onthem, and yet they are so little conscious of it, and so perfectly freefrom even the slightest touch of at least its anti-religious influence. Nobody, not even Hircan, the Grammont of the sixteenth century; noteven Nomerfide, the Miss Notable of her day and society; not even thehaughty lady Ennasuite, who wonders whether common folk can be supposedto have like passions with us, feels the abundant religious services andthe periods of meditation unconscionable or tiresome. 

And so we have here three notes constantly sounding together or inimmediate sequence. There is the passion of that exquisite _rondeau_of Marot's, which some will have, perhaps not impossibly, to refer toMargaret herself--

 En la baisant m'a dit: "Amy sans blasme, Ce seul baiser, qui deux bouches embasme, Les arrhes sont du bien tant espéré, " Ce mot elle a doulcement proféré, Pensant du tout apaiser ma grand flamme. Mais le mien cour adonc plus elle enflamme, Car son alaine odorant plus que basme Souffloit le feu qu'Amour m'a préparé, En la baisant. 

 Bref, mon esprit, sans congnoissance d'âme, Vivoit alors sur la bouche à ma dame, Dont se mouroit le corps énamouré; Et si la lèvre eust guères demouré Contre la mienne, elle m'eust succé l'âme, En la baisant. 

There is the devout meditation of Oisille, and that familiarity with theScriptures which, as Hircan himself says, "I trow we all read andknow. " And then there is the note given by two other curious stories ofBrantôme. One tells how the Queen of Navarre watched earnestly for hoursby the bedside of a dying maid of honour, that she might see whether theparting of the soul was a visible fact or not. The second tells howwhen some talked before her of the joys of heaven, she sighed and said, "Well, I know that this is true; but we dwell so long dead undergroundbefore we arise thither. " There, in a few words, is the secret of _THEHEPTAMERON_: the fear of God, the sense of death, the voluptuous longingand voluptuous regret for the good things of life and love that passaway. 

George Saintsbury. (1)

London, October 1892. 

 1 As I have spoken so strongly of the attempts to identify the personages of the _Heptameron_, it might seem discourteous not to mention that one of the most enthusiastic and erudite English students of Margaret, Madame Darmesteter (Miss Mary Robinson), appears to be convinced of the possibility and advisableness of discovering these originals. Everything that this lady writes is most agreeable to read; but I fear I cannot say that her arguments have converted me. --G. S. 

_DEDICATIONS AND PREFACE_, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST TWO EDITIONS OF THE TALES OF THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 

_To the most Illustrious, most Humble, and most Excellent Princess_, Madame Margaret de Bourbon, Duchess of Nevers, Marchioness of Illes, Countess of Eu, of Dreux, Rételois, Columbiers, and Beaufort, Lady of Aspremont, of Cham-Regnault, of Arches, Rencaurt, Monrond, and La Chapelle-d'Angylon, PeterBoaistuau surnamed Launay, offers most humble salutation and perpetualobedience. (1)

 1 This dedicatory preface appeared in the first edition of Queen Margaret's Tales, published by Boaistuau in 1558 under the title of _Histoires des Amans Fortunez_. The Princess addressed was the daughter of Charles, Duke of Vendôme; she was wedded in 1538 to Francis of Cleves, Duke of Nevers, and by this marriage became niece to the Queen of Navarre. --Ed. 

Madam, That great oracle of God, St. John Chrysostom, deplores withinfinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamityof his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity ofillustrious persons cut off from among mankind, but, what is more, theirwritings, by which the rich conceptions of their souls and the divineornaments of their minds were to have been consecrated to posterity, didnot survive them. And certainly with most manifest reason did this goodand holy man address such a complaint to the whole Christian Republic, touched as he was with just grief for an infinity of thousands of books, of which some have been lost and buried in eternal forgetfulness bythe negligence of men, others dispersed and destroyed by the cruelincursions of war, others rotted and spoiled as much by the rigourof time as by carelessness to collect and preserve them; whereofthe ancient Histories and Annals furnish a sufficient example in thememorable library of that great King of Egypt, Ptolemy Phila-delphus, which had been formed with the sweat and blood of so many notablephilosophers, and maintained, ordered, and preserved by the liberalityof that great monarch. And yet in less than a day, by the monstrous andabominable cruelty of the soldiers of Cæsar, when the latter followedPompey to Alexandria, it was burned and reduced to ashes. Zonarius, the ecclesiastical historian, writes that the same happened atConstantinople in the time of Zeno, when a superb and magnificentpalace, adorned with all sorts of manuscript books, was burnt, to theeternal regret and insupportable detriment of all those who made aprofession of letters. And without amusing ourselves too curiouslyin recounting the destruction among the ancients, we have in our timeexperienced a similar loss--of which the memory is so recent that thewounds thereof still bleed in all parts of Europe--namely, when theTurks besieged Buda, the capital of Hungary, where the most celebratedlibrary of the good King Matthias was pillaged, dispersed, anddestroyed; a library which, without sparing any expense, he had enrichedwith all the rarest and most excellent books, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, that he had been able to collect in all the most famousprovinces of the earth. 

Again, he who would particularise and closely examine things will findthat Theophrastes, as he himself declares, wrote and composed threehundred volumes, Chrysippus sixty, Empedocles fifty, Servus Sulpiciustwo hundred on civil law, Gallienus one hundred and thirty on the artof medicine, and Origenes six thousand, all of which St. Jerome attestshaving read; and yet, of so many admirable and excellent authors, therenow remain to us only some little fragments, so debased and vitiated inseveral places, that they seem abortive, and as if they had been tornfrom their author's hands by force. 

On account of which, my Lady, since the occasion has offered, I havebeen minded to present all these examples, with the object of exhortingall those who treasure books and keep them sequestered in theirsanctuaries and cabinets, to henceforth publish them and bring them tolight, not only so that they may not keep back and bury the glory oftheir ancestors, but also that they may not deprive their descendantsof the profit and pleasure which they might derive from the labour ofothers. 

In regard to myself, I will set forth more amply in the notice which Iwill give to the reader the motive that induced me to put my hand tothe work of the present author, who has no need of trumpet and heraldto exalt and magnify her(1) greatness, inasmuch as there is no humaneloquence that could portray her more forcibly than she has portrayedherself by the celestial strokes of her own brush; I mean by her otherwritings, in which she has so well expressed the sincerity of herdoctrines, the vivacity of her faith, and the uprightness of her morals, that the most learned men who reigned in her time were not ashamedto call her a prodigy and miracle of nature. And albeit that Heaven, jealous of our welfare, has snatched her from this mortal habitation, yet her virtues rendered her so admirable and so engraved her in thememory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time cannot effaceher from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her, likeAntimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad versesand delicate elegies which describe and reveal, her virtues and merits. 

 1 In the French text Boaistuau invariably refers to the author as a personage of the masculine sex, with the evident object of concealing the real authorship of the work. Feminine pronouns have, however, been substituted in the translation, as it is Queen Margaret who is referred to. --Ed. 

Therefore, my Lady, as this work is about to be exposed to the doubtfuljudgment of so many thousands of men, may it please you to take it underyour protection and into your safe keeping; for, whereas you are thenatural and legitimate heiress of all the excellencies, ornaments, andvirtues which enriched the author while she adorned by her presence thesurprise of the earth, and which now by some marvellous ray of divinitylive and display themselves in you, it is not possible that you shouldbe defrauded of the fruit of the labour which justly belongs to you, andfor which the whole universe will be indebted to you now that it comesforth into the light under the resplendent shelter of your divine andheroic virtues. 

May it therefore please you, my Lady, to graciously accept of thislittle offering, as an eternal proof of my obedience and most humbledevotion to your greatness, pending a more important sacrifice which Iprepare for the future. 

Peter Boaistuau, surnamed Launay, To the Reader. (1)

 1 This notice follows the dedicatory preface in the edition of 1558. 

Gentle Reader, I can tell thee verily and with good right assert (evenprove by witnesses worthy of belief) when this work was presented to methat I might fulfil the office of a sponge and cleanse it of a multitudeof manifest errors that were found in a copy written by hand, I was onlyrequested to take out or copy eighteen or twenty of the more notabletales, reserving myself to complete the rest at a more convenient seasonand at greater leisure. 

However, as men are fond of novelties, I was solicited with verypressing requests to pursue my point, to which I consented, rather byreason of the importunity than of my own will, and my enterprise wasconducted in such fashion, that so as not to show myself in any wisedisobedient, I added some more tales, to which again others have sincebeen adjoined. 

In regard to myself, I can assure thee that it would have been lessdifficult for me to build the whole edifice anew than to mutilate it inseveral places, change, innovate, add and suppress in others, but Iwas almost perforce compelled to give it a new form, which I have done, partly for the requirements and the adornment of the stories, partly toconform to the times and the infelicity of our century, when most humanthings are so exulcerated that there is no work, however well digested, polished, and filed, but it is badly interpreted and slandered by themalice of fastidious persons. Take, therefore, in good part our hastylabour, and be not too close a censor of another's work until thou hastexamined thine own. 

_To the most Illustrious and Virtuous Princess_, Madame Jane de Foix, Queen of Navarre, Claud Gruget, her very humble servant, presents salutation and wishes offelicity. (1)

I would not have interfered, Madam, to present you with this book ofthe Tales of the late Queen, your mother, if the first edition had notomitted or concealed her name, and almost entirely changed its form, tosuch a point that many did not recognise it; on which account, torender it worthy of its author, I, as soon as it was divulged, gatheredtogether from all sides the copies I could collect of it written byhand, verifying them by my copy, and acting in such wise that I arrangedthe book in the real order in which she had drawn it up. Then, with thepermission of the King and your consent, it was sent to the press to bepublished such as it should be. 

Concerning it, I am reminded of what Count Balthazar says of Boccaccioin the Preface to his _Courtier_(2) that what he had done by way ofpastime, namely, his _Decameron_, had brought him more honour than allhis other works in Latin or Tuscan, which he esteemed the most serious. 

 1 This preface was inserted in the edition issued in 1559 by Claud Gruget, who gave the title of "_Heptameron_" to Queen Margaret's tales. 

 2 The _Libro del Cortegiano_, by Count Baldassare Castiglione, was the nobleman's _vade-mecum_ of the period. First published at Venice in 1528, it was translated into French in 1537 by J. Colin, secretary to Francis I. --Ed. 

Thus, the Queen, that true ornament of our century, from whom you donot derogate in the love and knowledge of good letters, whileamusing herself with the acts of human life, has left such beauteousinstructions that there is no one who does not find matter of eruditionin them; and, indeed, according to all good judgment, she has surpassedBoccaccio in the beautiful Discourses which she composes upon eachof her tales. For which she deserves praise, not only over the mostexcellent ladies, but also among the most learned men; for of the threestyles of oration described by Cicero, she has chosen the simple one, similar to that of Terence in Latin, which to every one seems very easyto imitate, though it is anything but that to him who tries it. 

It is true that such a present will not be new to you, and that you willonly recognise in it the maternal inheritance. However, I feel assuredthat you will receive it favourably, at seeing it, in this secondimpression, restored to its original state, for according to what I haveheard the first displeased you. Not that he who put his hand to it wasnot a learned man, or did not take trouble; indeed it is easy tobelieve that he was not minded to disguise it thus, without some reason;nevertheless his work has proved unpleasing. 

I present it to you then, Madam, not that I pretend to any share init, but only as having unmasked it to restore it to you in its naturalstate. It is for Your Royal Greatness to favour it since it proceedsfrom your illustrious House, whereof it bears the mark upon the front, which will serve it as a safe-conduct throughout the world and render itwelcome among good company. 

As for myself, recognising the honour that you will do me in receivingfrom my hand the work thus restored to its right state, I shall everfeel obliged to render you most humble duty. 

THE HEPTAMERON. 

[Illustration: 013a. Jpg]

[Prologue: The Story-tellers in the Meadow near The Gave. ]

PROLOGUE. 

On the first day of September, when the baths in the PyreneesMountains begin to be possessed of their virtue, there were at those ofCauterets(1) many persons as well of France as of Spain, some to drinkthe water, others to bathe in it, and again others to make trial of themud; all these being remedies so marvellous that persons despaired ofby the doctors return thence wholly cured. My purpose is not to speak toyou of the situation or virtue of the said baths, but only to set forthas much as relates to the matter of which I desire to write. 

 1 There are no fewer than twenty-six sources at Cauterets, the waters being either of a sulphureous or a saline character. The mud baths alluded to by Margaret were formerly taken at the Source de César Vieux, half-way up Mount Peyraute, and so called owing to a tradition that Julius Cæsar bathed there. It is at least certain that these baths were known to the Romans. --Ed. 

 Cauterets is frequently mentioned by the old authors, and Rabelais refers to it in this passage: "Pantagruel's urine was so hot that ever since that time it has not cooled, and you have some of it in France, at divers places, at Coderetz, Limous, Dast, Ballerue, Bourbonne, and elsewhere"(Book ii. Chap, xxxiii. ). --M. 

All the sick persons continued at the baths for more than three weeks, until by the amendment in their condition they perceived that they mightreturn home again. But while they were preparing to do so, there fellsuch extraordinary rains that it seemed as though God had forgotten thepromise He made to Noah never to destroy the world with water again; forevery cottage and every lodging in Cauterets was so flooded with waterthat it was no longer possible to continue there. Those who had comefrom the side of Spain returned thither across the mountains as bestthey could, and such of them as knew whither the roads led fared best inmaking their escape. 

The French lords and ladies thought to return to Tarbes as easily asthey had come, but they found the streamlets so deep as to be scarcelyfordable. When they came to pass over the Bearnese Gave, (1) which at thetime of their former passage had been less than two feet in depth, they found it so broad and swift that they turned aside to seek forthe bridges. But these being only of wood, had been swept away by theturbulence of the water. 

 1 The Basques give the name of Gave to those watercourses which become torrents in certain seasons. The Bearnese Gave, so named because it passes through the territory of the ancient city of Beam, takes its source in the Pyrenees, and flows past Pau to Sorde, where it joins the Adour, which falls into the sea at Bayonne. It is nowadays generally known as the Gave of Pau. --L. & M. 

Then certain of the company thought to stem the force of the current bycrossing in a body, but they were quickly carried away, and the otherswho had been about to follow lost all inclination to do so. Accordinglythey separated, as much because they were not all of one mind as to findsome other way. Some crossed over the mountains, and passing throughAragon came to the county of Rousillon, and thence to Narbonne; whilstothers made straight for Barcelona, going thence by sea, some toMarseilles and others to Aigues-Mortes. 

But a widow lady of long experience, named Oisille, resolved to layaside all fear of bad roads and to betake herself to Our Lady ofSerrance. (3)

 3 The Abbey of Our Lady of Serrance, or more correctly Sarrances, in the valley of Aspe, was occupied by monks of the Prémontré Order, who were under the patronage of St. Mary. An apparition of the Virgin having been reported in the vicinity, pilgrimages were made to Sarrances on the feasts of her nativity (Sept. 8) and her assumption (Aug. 15). In 1385 Gaston de Foix, who greatly enriched the abbey, built a residence in the neighbourhood, his example being followed by the Gramonts, the Miollens, and other nobles. The pilgrimages had become very celebrated in the fifteenth century, when Louis XI. Repaired to Sarrances, accompanied by Coictier, his physician. In 1569, however, the Huguenots pillaged and burned down the abbey, together with the royal and other residences. The monks who escaped the flames were put to the sword. --M. & Ed. 

She was not, indeed, so superstitious as to think that the gloriousVirgin would leave her seat at her Son's right hand to come and dwellin a desolate country, but she was desirous to see the hallowed spotof which she had so often heard, and further she was sure that if therewere a means of escaping from a danger, the monks would certainly findit out. At last she arrived, after passing through places so strange, and so difficult in the going up and coming down, that, in spite of heryears and weight, she had perforce gone most of the way on foot But themost piteous thing was, that the greater part of her servants and horseswere left dead on the way, and she had but one man and one woman withher on arriving at Serrance, where she was charitably received by themonks. 

There were also among the French two gentlemen who had gone to the bathsrather that they might be in the company of the ladies whose loversthey were, than because of any failure in their health. These gentlemen, seeing that the company was departing and that the husbands of theirladies were taking them away, resolved to follow them at a distancewithout making their design known to any one. But one evening, while thetwo married gentlemen and their wives were in the house of one who wasmore of a robber than a peasant, the two lovers, who were lodged in afarmhouse hard by, heard about midnight a great uproar. They got up, together with their serving-men, and inquired what this tumult meant. The poor man, in great fear, told them that it was caused by certainevil-doers who were come to share the spoil which was in the house oftheir fellow-bandit. Thereupon the gentlemen immediately took theirarms, and with their serving-men set forth to succour the ladies, esteeming it a happier thing to die for them than to outlive them. 

When they reached the house, they found the first door broken through, and the two gentlemen with their servants defending themselvesvaliantly. But inasmuch as they were outnumbered by the robbers, andwere also sorely wounded, they were beginning to fall back, havingalready lost many of their servants. The two gentlemen, looking in atthe windows, perceived the ladies shrieking and sobbing so bitterlythat their hearts swelled with pity and love at the sight; and, like twoenraged bears coming down from the mountains, they fell upon the banditswith such fury that many of them were slain, while the remainder, unwilling to await their onset, fled to a hiding-place which was knownto them. 

When the gentlemen had worsted these rogues and had slain the hosthimself among the rest, they heard that the man's wife was evenworse than her husband; and they therefore sent her after him with asword-thrust. Then they entered a lower room, where they found one ofthe married gentlemen on the point of death. The other had received nohurt, save that his clothes were all pierced with thrusts and that hissword was broken in two. The poor gentleman, perceiving what help thetwo had afforded him, embraced and thanked them, and besought them notto abandon him, which was to them a very agreeable request. When theyhad buried the dead gentleman, and had comforted his wife as wellas they were able, they took the road which God set before them, notknowing whither they were going. 

If it pleases you to know the names of the three gentlemen, the marriedone was called Hircan, and his wife Parlamente, the name of the widowbeing Longarine; of the two lovers one was called Dagoucin and theother Saffredent. After having been the whole day on horseback, towardsevening they descried a belfry, whither with toil and trouble they madethe best of their way, and on their arrival were kindly received by theAbbot and the monks. The abbey is called St. Savyn. (4)

 4 The Abbey of St. Savin of Tarbes, situated between Argelèz and Pierrefitte, in what was formerly called the county of Lavedan, is stated to have been founded by Charlemagne; and here the Paladin Roland is said to have slain the giants Alabaster and Passamont to recompense the monks for their hospitality. The abbey took its name from a child (the son of a Count of Barcelona) who led a hermit's life, and is accredited with having performed several miracles in the neighbourhood. About the year 1100 the Pope, siding with the people of the valley of Aspe in a quarrel between them and the Abbot of St. Savin, issued a bull forbidding the women of Lavedan to conceive for a period of seven years. The animals, moreover, were not to bring forth young, and the trees were not to bear fruit for a like period. The edict remained in force for six years, when the Abbot of St. Savin compromised matters by engaging to pay an annual tribute to Aspe. This tribute was actually paid until the Revolution of 1789. On the other hand, the abbey was entitled to the right shoulder of every stag, boar, and izard (the Pyrenean chamois) killed in the valley, with other tributes of trout, cheese, and flowers, which last the Abbot acknowledged by kissing the prettiest maiden of Argelèz. Amongst various privileges possessed by the monks was that of having their beds made by the girls of the neighbourhood on certain high days and holidays. 

 In the tenth century Raymond of Bigorre presented the abbey with the valley of Cauterets on condition that a church should be built there and "sufficient houses kept in repair to facilitate the using of the baths. " In 1290 Edward III. Of England confirmed the monks of St. Savin in possession of Cauterets. In 1316, when the inhabitants of the latter place wished to change the situation of their village, the Abbot of St. Savin consented, but a woman opposed her veto (all women had the right of vote) and this sufficed to frustrate the scheme. The abbey derived a considerable income from Cauterets, the baths and the houses built there for the accommodation of visitors being let out on lease. The leases of 1617 and 1697 are preserved in the archives of Pau. In the time of Queen Margaret the abbey was extremely wealthy; the Abbot to whom she refers, according to M. Le Roux de Lincy, was probably Raymond de Fontaine, who ruled St. Savin from 1534 to 1540, under the authority of the commendatory abbots, Anthony de Rochefort and Nicholas Dangu, Bishop of Séez. Some of the commentators of the _Heptameron_ believe the latter to have been the original "Dagoucin" who is supposed to tell several of the tales. --Ed. 

The Abbot, who came of an ancient line, lodged them honourably, andwhen taking them to their apartments inquired of them concerning theiradventures. When he had heard the truth, he told them that others hadfared as badly as they, for in one of his rooms he had two ladies whohad escaped a like danger, or perchance a greater, inasmuch as they hadhad to do with beasts, and not with men. (5) Half a league on this sideof Peyrechitte (6) the poor ladies had met with a bear coming downfrom the mountain, before whom they had fled with such speed that theirhorses fell dead under them at the abbey gates. Further, two of theirwomen who arrived a long time afterwards had made report that the bearhad killed all the serving-men. 

 5 In two MS. Copies of the _Heptameron_ in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, numbered respectively 1520 and 1524, after the words "not with men" there follows "in men there is some mercy, but in animals none. "--L. 

 6 Peyrechitte is evidently intended for Pierrefitte, a village on the left bank of the Gave, between Argelèz and Cauterets. --Ed. 

Then the two ladies and the three gentlemen entered the room where theseunhappy travellers were, and found them weeping. They recognised themto be Nomerfide and Ennasuite, whereupon they all embraced and recountedwhat had befallen them. At the exhortations of the good Abbot they beganto take comfort in having found one another again, and in the morningthey heard mass with much devotion, praising God for the perils fromwhich they had escaped. 

While they were all at mass there came into the church (7) a man cladonly in a shirt, fleeing as though he were pursued, and crying out foraid. Forthwith Hircan and the other gentlemen went to meet him to seewhat the affair might mean, and perceived two men behind him with drawnswords. 

 (7) This church is still in existence. It is mainly in the Romanesque style and almost destitute of ornamentation. There are, however, some antique paintings of St. Savin's miracles; and the saint's tomb, which is still preserved, is considered to be some twelve hundred years old. The village is gathered about the church, and forms a wide street lined with houses of the fifteenth century, which Margaret and her friends must have gazed upon during their sojourn here. --Ed. 

These, on seeing so great a company, sought to fly, but they were hotlypursued by Hircan and his companions, and so lost their lives. WhenHircan came back, he found that the man in the shirt was one of hiscompanions named Geburon, who related to them how while he was in bedat a farmhouse near Peyrechitte three men came upstairs, and how he, although he was in his shirt and had no other weapon but his sword, hadstretched one of them on the ground mortally wounded. While the othertwo were occupied in raising their companion, he, perceiving himselfto be naked and the others armed, bethought him that he could notoutdo them except it were by flight, as being the least encumbered withclothes. And so he had escaped, and for this he praised God and thosewho had avenged him. 

When they had heard mass and had dined they sent to see if it waspossible to cross the river Gave, and on learning that it was not, theywere in great dismay. However, the Abbot urgently entreated them to staywith him until the water had abated, and they agreed to remain for thatday. 

In the evening, as they were going to bed, there arrived an aged monkwho was wont to come in September of every year to Our Lady of Serrance. They inquired of him concerning his journey, and he told them that onaccount of the floods he had come over the mountains and by the worstroads he had ever known. On the way he had seen a very pitiful sight. Hehad met a gentleman named Simontault, who, wearied by his long waitingfor the river to subside, and trusting to the goodness of his horse, hadtried to force a passage, and had placed all his servants round abouthim to break the force of the current. But when they were in the midstof the stream, those who were the worst mounted were swept away, horsesand men, down the stream, and were never seen again. The gentleman, finding himself alone, turned his horse to go back, but before he couldreach the bank his horse sank under him. Nevertheless, God willed thatthis should happen so close to the bank that the gentleman was able, bydragging himself on all fours and not without swallowing a great deal ofwater, to scramble out on to the hard stones, though he was then so weakand weary that he could not stand upright. 

By good fortune a shepherd, bringing back his sheep at even, found himseated among the stones, wet to the skin, and sad not only for himselfbut on account of his servants whom he had seen perish before his eyes. The shepherd, who understood his need even better from his appearancethan from his speech, took him by the hand and led him to his humbledwelling, where he kindled some faggots, and so dried him in the bestway that he could. The same evening God led thither this good monk, whoshowed him the road to Our Lady of Serrance assuring him that he wouldbe better lodged there than anywhere else, and would there find an agedwidow named Oisille who had been as unfortunate as himself. 

When all the company heard tell of the good Lady Oisille and the gentleknight Simontault, they were exceedingly glad, and praised the Creator, who, content with the sacrifice of serving-folk, had preserved theirmasters and mistresses. And more than all the rest did Parlamente givehearty praise to God, for Simontault had long been her devoted lover. 

Then they made diligent inquiry concerning the road to Serrance, andalthough the good old man declared it to be very difficult, they werenot to be debarred from attempting to proceed thither that very day. They set forth well furnished with all that was needful, for the Abbotprovided them with wine and abundant victuals, (8) and with willingcompanions to lead them safely over the mountains. 

 8 According to MS. No. 1520 (Bib. Nat. , Paris), the Abbot also furnished them with the best horses of Lavedan and good "cappes" of Beam. The Lavedan horses were renowned for their speed and spirit, and the Bearnese cappe was a cloak provided with a hood. --B. J. 

These they crossed more often on foot than on horseback, and after muchtoil and sweat came to Our Lady of Serrance. Here the Abbot, althoughsomewhat evilly disposed, durst not deny them lodging for fear of theLord of Beam, (9) who, as he was aware, held them in high esteem. Beinga true hypocrite, he showed them as fair a countenance as he could, andtook them to see the Lady Oisille and the gentle knight Simontault. 

 9 The Kings of Navarre had been Lords of Beam for two centuries, but Beam still retained its old customs and had its special government. The Lord of Beam here referred to was Henry d'Albret, Margaret's second husband. --B. J. 

The joyfulness of all this company who had been thus miraculouslybrought together was so great that the night seemed short to them whilepraising God in the Church for the goodness that He had shown to them. When towards morning they had taken a little rest, they all went tohear mass and receive the holy sacrament of fellowship, in which allChristians are joined together as one, imploring Him who of His mercyhad thus united them, that He would further their journey to His glory. After they had dined they sent to learn whether the waters were at allabated, and found that, on the contrary, they were rather increased, andcould not be crossed with safety for a long time to come. They thereforedetermined to make a bridge resting on two rocks which come very closetogether, and where there are still planks for those foot-passengerswho, coming from Oleron, wish to avoid crossing at the ford. The Abbotwas well pleased that they should make this outlay, to the end thatthe number of pilgrims might be increased, and he furnished them withworkmen, though he was too avaricious to give them a single farthing. 

The workmen declared that they could not finish the bridge in less thanten or twelve days, and all the company, both ladies and gentlemen, began to grow weary. But Parlamente, who was Hircan's wife, and who wasnever idle or melancholy, asked leave of her husband to speak, and saidto the aged Lady Oisille--

"I am surprised, madam, that you who have so much experience, and nowfill the place of mother to all of us women, do not devise some pastimeto relieve the weariness we shall feel during our long stay; for if wehave not some pleasant and virtuous occupation we shall be in danger offalling ill. "

"Nay, " added the young widow Longarine, "worse than that, we shallbecome ill-tempered, which is an incurable disease; for there is not oneamong us but has cause to be exceeding downcast, having regard to ourseveral losses. "

Ennasuite laughing replied--

"Every one has not lost her husband like you, and the loss of servantsneed not bring despair, since others may readily be found. Nevertheless, I too am of opinion that we should have some pleasant exercise withwhich to while away the time, for otherwise we shall be dead byto-morrow. "

All the gentlemen agreed with what these ladies said, and begged Oisilleto tell them what they should do. 

"My children, " she replied, "you ask me for something which I find verydifficult to teach you, namely, a pastime that may deliver you from yourweariness. I have sought for such a remedy all my life and have neverfound but one, which is the reading of the Holy Scriptures. In them themind may find that true and perfect joy from which repose and bodilyhealth proceed. If you would know by what means I continue so blithe andhealthy in my old age, it is because on rising I immediately take up theHoly Scriptures (10) and read therein, and so perceive and contemplatethe goodness of God, who sent His Son into the world to proclaim to usthe Sacred Word and glad tidings by which He promises the remission ofall sins and the satisfaction of all debts by the gift that He has madeus of His love, passion, and merits. 

 10 Margaret read a portion of the Scriptures every day, saying that the perusal preserved one "from all sorts of evils and diabolical temptations" (_Histoire de Foix, Béarn, et Navarre_, by P. Olhagaray, Paris, 1609, p. 502). --L. 

"The thought of this gives me such joy that I take my Psalter and in allhumility sing with my heart and utter with my lips the sweet psalms andcanticles which the Holy Spirit put into the heart of David and of otherwriters. And so acceptable is the contentment that this brings tome, that any evils which may befall me during the day I look upon asblessings, seeing that I have in my heart, through faith, Him who hasborne them all for me. In the same way before supper I retire to feed mysoul by reading, and then in the evening I call to mind all I have doneduring the past day, in order that I may ask forgiveness for my sins, thank Him for His mercies, and, feeling safe from all harm, take my restin His love, fear, and peace. This, my children, is the pastime I havelong practised, after making trial of all others and finding in nonecontentment of spirit. I believe that if you give an hour every morningto reading and then offer up devout prayers during mass, you will findin this lonely place all the beauty that any town could afford. One whoknows God sees all things fair in Him, and without Him everything seemsuncomely; wherefore, I pray you, accept my advice, if you would live ingladness. "

Then Hircan took up the discourse and said--

"Those, madam, who have read the Holy Scriptures, as I believe we allhave done, will acknowledge that what you have said is true. You must, however, consider that we are not yet so mortified that we have not needof some pastime and bodily exercise. When we are at home we have thechase and hawking, which cause us to lay aside a thousand foolishthoughts, and the ladies have their household cares, their work, andsometimes the dance, in all which they find honourable exercise. So, speaking on behalf of the men, I propose that you, who are the oldest, read to us in the morning about the life that was led by Our Lord JesusChrist and the great and wonderful works that He did for us; and thatbetween dinner and vespers we choose some pastime that shall be pleasantto the body and yet not hurtful to the soul. In this way we shall passthe day cheerfully. "

The Lady Oisille replied that she had been at pains to forget everydescription of worldly vanity, and she therefore feared that she shouldsucceed but ill in the choice of such an entertainment. The matter mustbe decided by the majority of opinions, and she begged Hircan to setforth his own first. 

"For my part, " said he, "if I thought that the pastime I should choosewould be as agreeable to the company as to myself, my opinion would soonbe given. For the present, however, I withhold it, and will abide bywhat the rest shall say. "

His wife Parlamente, thinking he referred to her, began to blush, and, half in anger and half laughing, replied--

"Perhaps, Hircan, she who you think would find it most dull mightreadily find means of compensation had she a mind for it. But let usleave aside a pastime in which only two can share, and speak of one thatshall be common to all. "

"Since my wife has understood the meaning of my words so well, " saidHircan to all the ladies, "and a private pastime is not to her liking, Ithink she will be better able than any one else to name one that allmay enjoy; and I herewith give in to her opinion, having no other of myown. "

To this all the company agreed. 

Parlamente, perceiving that it had fallen to her to decide, spoke asfollows--

"Did I find myself as capable as the ancients who invented the arts, Ishould devise some sport or pastime in fulfilment of the charge youlay upon me. But knowing as I do my knowledge and capacity, which arescarcely able to recall the worthy performances of others, I shall thinkmyself happy if I can follow closely such as have already satisfied yourrequest. Among the rest, I think there is not one of you who has notread the Hundred Tales of Boccaccio, (11) lately translated from theItalian into French. So highly were these thought of by King Francis, first of that name, Monseigneur the Dauphin, (12) Madame the Dauphiness, and Madame Margaret, that could Boccaccio have only heard them from theplace where he lay, the praise of such illustrious persons would haveraised him from the dead. 

 11 Margaret here alludes to the French translation of the _Decameron_ made by her secretary, Anthony le Maçon, and first issued in Paris in 1545. Messrs. De Lincy and Montaiglon accordingly think that the prologue of the _Heptameron_ was written subsequently to that date; but M. Dillaye states that Le Maçon's translation was circulated at Court in manuscript long before it was printed. This contention is in some measure borne out by Le Maçon's dedication to Margaret, of which the more interesting passages are given in the Appendix to this volume (A). --ED. 

 12 The Dauphin here mentioned is Francis I. 's second son, who subsequently reigned as Henry II. He became Dauphin by the death of his elder brother on August 10, 1536. The Dauphiness is Catherine de' Medici, the wife of Henry, whom he married in 1533; whilst Madame Margaret, according to M. De Montaiglon, is the Queen of Navarre herself, she being usually called by that name at her brother's Court. M. Dillaye, who is of a different opinion, maintains that the Queen would not write so eulogistically of herself, and that she evidently refers to her brother's daughter, Margaret de Berry, born in 1523, and married to the Duke of Savoy. --Ed. 

Now I heard not long since that the two ladies I have mentioned, together with several others of the Court, determined to do likeBoccaccio, with, however, one exception--they would not write anystory that was not a true one. And the said ladies, and Monseigneur theDauphin with them, undertook to tell ten stories each, and to assemblein all ten persons, from among those whom they thought the most capableof relating something. Such as had studied and were people of letterswere excepted, for Monseigneur the Dauphin would not allow of their artbeing brought in, fearing lest the flowers of rhetoric should in somewise prove injurious to the truth of the tales. But the weighty affairsin which the King had engaged, the peace between him and the King ofEngland, the bringing to bed of the Dauphiness, (13) and many othermatters of a nature to engross the whole Court, caused the enterprise tobe entirely forgotten. 

 13 The confinement mentioned here is that of Catherine de Medici, who, after remaining childless during ten years of wedlock, gave birth to a son, afterwards Francis II. , in January 1543. The peace previously spoken of would appear to be that signed at Crespy in September 1544. Both M. De Montaiglon and M. Dillaye are of opinion, however, that a word or two is deficient in the MS. , and that Margaret intended to imply the rupture of peace in 1543, when Henry VIII. Allied himself with the Emperor Charles V. Against Francis I. --Ed. 

By reason, however, of our now great leisure, it can be accomplished inten days, whilst we wait for our bridge to be finished. If it so pleasedyou, we might go every day from noon till four of the clock into yonderpleasant meadow beside the river Gave. The trees there are so leafy thatthe sun can neither penetrate the shade nor change the coolness to heat. Sitting there at our ease, we might each one tell a story of somethingwe have ourselves seen, or heard related by one worthy of belief. Atthe end of ten days we shall have completed the hundred, (14) and ifGod wills it that our work be found worthy in the eyes of the lords andladies I have mentioned, we will on our return from this journey presentthem with it, in lieu of images and paternosters, (15) and feelingassured that they will hold this to be a more pleasing gift. If, however, any one can devise some plan more agreeable than mine, I willfall in with his opinion. "

 14 This passage plainly indicates that the Queen meant to pen a Decameron. --Ed. 

 15 This is an allusion to the holy images, medals, and chaplets which people brought back with them from pilgrimages. --B. J. 

All the company replied that it was not possible to give better advice, and that they awaited the morning in impatience, in order to begin. 

Thus they spent that day joyously, reminding one another of what theyhad seen in their time. As soon as the morning was come they went tothe room of Madame Oisille, whom they found already at her prayers. Theylistened to her reading for a full hour, then piously heard mass, andafterwards went to dinner at ten o'clock. (16)

 16 At that period ten o'clock was the Court dinner-hour. Fifty years earlier people used to dine at eight in the morning. Louis XII. , however, changed the hour of his meals to suit his wife, Mary of England, who had been accustomed to dine at noon. --B. J. 

After dinner each one withdrew to his chamber, and did what he had todo. According to their plan, at noon they failed not to return to themeadow, which was so fair and pleasant that it would need a Boccaccioto describe it as it really was; suffice to say that a fairer was neverseen. 

When the company were all seated on the green grass, which was sofine and soft that they needed neither cushion nor carpet, Simontaultcommenced by saying--

"Which of us shall begin before the others?"

"Since you were the first to speak, " replied Hircan, "'tis reasonablethat you should rule us; for in sport we are all equal. "

"Would to God, " said Simontault, "I had no worse fortune in this worldthan to be able to rule all the company present. "

On hearing this Parlamente, who well knew what it meant, began tocough. Hircan, therefore, did not perceive the colour that came into hercheeks, but told Simontault to begin, which he did as presently follows. 

[Illustration: 039a. Jpg Du Mesnil learns his Mistress's Infidelity from her Maid]

[Du Mesnil learns his Mistress's Infidelity from her Maid]

[Illustration: 039. Jpg Page Image]

FIRST DAY. 

_On the First Day are recounted the ill-turns whichhave been done by Women to Men and byMen to Women. _

_TALE I_. 

 _The wife of a Proctor, having been pressingly solicited by the Bishop of Sees, took him for her profit, and, being as little satisfied with him as with her husband, found a means to have the son of the Lieutenant-General of Alençon for her pleasure. Some time afterwards she caused the latter to be miserably murdered by her husband, who, although he obtained pardon for the murder, was afterwards sent to the galleys with a sorcerer named Gallery; and all this was brought about by the wickedness of his wife_. (1)

 1 The incidents of this story are historical, and occurred in Alençon and Paris between 1520 and 1525. --L. 

Ladies, said Simontault, I have been so poorly rewarded for my longservice, that to avenge myself upon Love, and upon her who treats me socruelly, I shall be at pains to make a collection of all the ill turnsthat women hath done to hapless men; and moreover I will relate nothingbut the simple truth. 

In the town of Alençon, during the lifetime of Charles, the lastDuke, (2) there was a Proctor named St. Aignan, who had married agentlewoman of the neighbourhood. She was more beautiful than virtuous, and on account of her beauty and light behaviour was much sought afterby the Bishop of Sees, (3) who, in order to compass his ends, managed thehusband so well, that the latter not only failed to perceive the viciousconduct of his wife and of the Bishop, but was further led to forget theaffection he had always shown in the service of his master and mistress. 

 2 The Duke Charles here alluded to is Margaret's first husband. --Ed. 

 3 Sees or Séez, on the Orne, thirteen miles from Alençon, and celebrated for its Gothic cathedral, is one of the oldest bishoprics in Normandy. Richard Coeur-de-Lion is said to have here done penance and obtained absolution for his conduct towards his father, Henry II. At the time of this story the Bishop of Sees was James de Silly, whose father, also James de Silly, Lord of Lonray, Vaux-Pacey, &c, a favourite and chamberlain of King Louis XII. , became Master of the Artillery of France in 1501. The second James de Silly--born at Caen--was ordained Bishop of Sees on February 26th, 1511; he was also Abbot of St. Vigor and St. Pierre- sur-Dives, where he restored and beautified the abbatial church. In 1519 he consecrated a convent for women of noble birth, founded by Margaret and her first husband at Essey, twenty miles from Alençon, the ruins of which still exist. A year later Francis Rometens dedicated to him an edition of the letters of Pico della Mirandola. He died April 24th, 1539, at Fleury-sur-Aiidellé, about fifteen miles from Rouen, and was buried in his episcopal church. (See _Gallia Christiana_, vol. Xi. P. 702. ) His successor in the See of Sees was Nicholas Danguye, or Dangu (a natural son of Cardinal Duprat), with whom M. Frank tries to identify Dagoucin, one of the narrators of the _Heptameron_. --L. And Ed. 

Thus, from being a loyal servant, he became utterly adverse to them, andat last sought out sorcerers to procure the death of the Duchess. (4)Now for a long time the Bishop consorted with this unhappy woman, whosubmitted to him from avarice rather than from love, and also becauseher husband urged her to show him favour. But there was a youth in thetown of Alençon, son of the Lieutenant-General, (5) whom she lovedso much that she was half crazy regarding him; and she often availedherself of the Bishop to have some commission intrusted to her husband, so that she might see the son of the Lieutenant, who was named DuMesnil, at her ease. 

 4 This was of course Margaret herself. --Ed

 5 Gilles du Mesnil, Lieutenant-General of the presidial bailiwick and Sénéchaussée of Alençon. --B. J. 

This mode of life lasted a long time, during which she had the Bishopfor her profit and the said Du Mesnil for her pleasure. To the lattershe swore that she showed a fair countenance to the Bishop only thattheir own love might the more freely continue; that the Bishop, inspite of appearances, had obtained only words, from her; and that he, Du Mesnil, might rest assured that no man, save himself, should everreceive aught else. 

One day, when her husband was setting forth to visit the Bishop, sheasked leave of him to go into the country, saying that the air of thetown was injurious to her; and, when she had arrived at her farm, sheforthwith wrote to Du Mesnil to come and see her, without fail, atabout ten o'clock in the evening. This the young man did; but as he wasentering at the gate he met the maid who was wont to let him in, and whosaid to him, "Go elsewhere, friend, for your place is taken. "

Supposing that the husband had arrived, he asked her how matters stood. The woman, seeing that he was so handsome, youthful, and well-bred, andwas withal so loving and yet so little loved, took pity upon him andtold him of his mistress's wantonness, thinking that on hearing this hewould be cured of loving her so much. She related to him that the Bishopof Sees had but just arrived, and was now in bed with the lady, a thingwhich the latter had not expected, for he was not to have come untilthe morrow. However, he had detained her husband at his house, and hadstolen away at night to come secretly and see her. If ever man was indespair it was Du Mesnil, who nevertheless was quite unable to believethe story. He hid himself, however, in a house near by, and watcheduntil three hours after midnight, when he saw the Bishop come forthdisguised, yet not so completely but that he could recognise him morereadily than he desired. 

Du Mesnil in his despair returned to Alençon, whither, likewise, hiswicked mistress soon came, and went to speak to him, thinking to deceivehim according to her wont. But he told her that, having touched sacredthings, she was too holy to speak to a sinner like himself, albeithis repentance was so great that he hoped his sin would very soon beforgiven him. When she learnt that her deceit was found out, and thatexcuses, oaths, and promises never to act in a like way again were ofno avail, she complained of it to her Bishop. Then, having weighed thematter with him, she went to her husband and told him that she could nolonger dwell in the town of Alençon, for the Lieutenant's son, whom hehad so greatly esteemed among his friends, pursued her unceasinglyto rob her of her honour. She therefore begged of him to abide atArgentan, (6) in order that all suspicion might be removed. 

 6 Argentan, on the Orne, twenty-six miles from Alençon, had been a distinct viscounty, but at this period it belonged to the duchy of Alençon. --Ed. 

The husband, who suffered himself to be ruled by his wife, consented;but they had not been long at Argentan when this bad woman sent amessage to Du Mesnil, saying that he was the wickedest man in the world, for she knew full well that he had spoken evilly (sic. ) of her andof the Bishop of Sees; however, she would strive her best to make himrepent of it. 

The young man, who had never spoken of the matter except to herself, and who feared to fall into the bad graces of the Bishop, repaired toArgentan with two of his servants, and finding his mistress at vespersin the church of the Jacobins, (7) he went and knelt beside her, andsaid--

"I am come hither, madam, to swear to you before God that I have neverspoken of your honour to any person but yourself. You treated me so illthat I did not make you half the reproaches you deserved; but if therebe man or woman ready to say that I have ever spoken of the matter tothem, I am here to give them the lie in your presence. "

 7 The name of Jacobins was given to the monks of the Dominican Order, some of whom had a monastery in the suburbs of Argentan. --Ed. 

Seeing that there were many people in the church, and that he wasaccompanied by two stout serving-men, she forced herself to speak asgraciously as she could. She told him that she had no doubt he spoke thetruth, and that she deemed him too honourable a man to make evil reportof any one in the world; least of all of herself, who bore him so muchfriendship; but since her husband had heard the matter spoken of, shebegged him to say in his presence that he had not so spoken and did notso believe. 

To this he willingly agreed, and, wishing to attend her to her house, heoffered to take her arm; but she told him it was not desirable that heshould come with her, for her husband would think that she had put thesewords into his mouth. Then, taking one of his serving-men by the sleeve, she said--

"Leave me this man, and as soon as it is time I will send him to seekyou. Meanwhile do you go and rest in your lodging. "

He, having no suspicion of her conspiracy against him, went thither. 

She gave supper to the serving-man whom she had kept with her, and whofrequently asked her when it would be time to go and seek his master;but she always replied that his master would come soon enough. When itwas night, she sent one of her own serving-men to fetch Du Mesnil; andhe, having no suspicion of the mischief that was being prepared forhim, went boldly to St. Aignan's house. As his mistress was stillentertaining his servant there, he had but one with himself. 

Just as he was entering the house, the servant who had been sent tohim told him that the lady wished to speak with him before he saw herhusband, and that she was waiting for him in a room where she was alonewith his own serving-man; he would therefore do well to send his otherservant away by the front door. This he did. Then while he was going upa small, dark stairway, the Proctor St. Aignan, who had placed somemen in ambush in a closet, heard the noise, and demanded what it was;whereupon he was told that a man was trying to enter secretly into hishouse. 

At the moment, a certain Thomas Guérin, a murderer by trade, who hadbeen hired by the Proctor for the purpose, came forward and gave thepoor young man so many sword-thrusts that whatever defence he was ableto make could not save him from falling dead in their midst. 

Meanwhile the servant who was waiting with the lady, said to her--

"I hear my master speaking on the stairway. I will go to him. "

But the lady stopped him and said--

"Do not trouble yourself; he will come soon enough. "

A little while afterwards the servant, hearing his master say, "I amdying, may God receive my soul!" wished to go to his assistance, but thelady again withheld him, saying--

"Do not trouble yourself; my husband is only chastising him for hisfollies. We will go and see what it is. "

Then, leaning over the balustrade at the top of the stairway, she askedher husband--

"Well, is it done?"

"Come and see, " he replied. "I have now avenged you on the man who putyou to such shame. "

So saying, he drove a dagger that he was holding ten or twelve timesinto the belly of a man whom, alive, he would not have dared to assail. 

When the murder had been accomplished, and the two servants of the deadman had fled to carry the tidings to the unhappy father, St. Aignanbethought himself that the matter could not be kept secret. But hereflected that the testimony of the dead man's servants would not bebelieved, and that no one in his house had seen the deed done, exceptthe murderers, and an old woman-servant, and a girl fifteen years ofage. He secretly tried to seize the old woman, but, finding means toescape out of his hands, she sought sanctuary with the Jacobins, (8) andwas afterwards the most trustworthy witness of the murder. The youngmaid remained for a few days in St. Aignan's house, but he found meansto have her led astray by one of the murderers, and had her conveyed toa brothel in Paris so that her testimony might not be received. (9)

 8 It was still customary to take sanctuary in churches, monasteries, and convents at this date, although but little respect was shown for the refugees, whose hiding-places were often surrounded so that they might be kept without food and forced to surrender. After being considerably restricted by an edict issued in 1515, the right of sanctuary was abolished by Francis I. In 1539. --B. J. And D. 

 9 Prostitutes were debarred from giving evidence in French courts of law at this period. --D. 

To conceal the murder, he caused the corpse of the hapless dead man tobe burnt, and the bones which were not consumed by the fire he caused tobe placed in some mortar in a part of his house where he was building. Then he sent in all haste to the Court to sue for pardon, settingforth that he had several times forbidden his house to a person whom hesuspected of plotting his wife's dishonour, and who, notwithstandinghis prohibition, had come by night to see her in a suspicious fashion;whereupon, finding him in the act of entering her room, his anger hadgot the better of his reason and he had killed him. 

But before he was able to despatch his letter to the Chancellor's, theDuke and Duchess had been apprised by the unhappy father of the matter, and they sent a message to the Chancellor to prevent the granting of thepardon. Finding he could not obtain it, the wretched man fled to Englandwith his wife and several of his relations. But before setting out hetold the murderer who at his entreaty had done the deed, that he hadseen expresses from the King directing that he should be taken and putto death. Nevertheless, on account of the service that he had renderedhim, he desired to save his life, and he gave him ten crowns wherewithto leave the kingdom. The murderer did this, and was afterwards seen nomore. 

The murder was so fully proven by the servants of the dead man, by thewoman who had taken refuge with the Jacobins, and by the bones that werefound in the mortar, that legal proceedings were begun and completed inthe absence of St. Aignan and his wife. They were judged by defaultand were both condemned to death. Their property was confiscated to thePrince, and fifteen hundred crowns were to be given to the dead man'sfather to pay the costs of the trial. 

St. Aignan being in England and perceiving that in the eyes of the lawhe was dead in France, by means of his services to divers great lordsand by the favour of his wife's relations, induced the King of England(10) to request the King of France (11) to grant him a pardon andrestore him to his possessions and honours. But the King of France, having been informed of the wickedness and enormity of the crime, sentthe process to the King of England, praying him to consider whether theoffence was one deserving of pardon, and telling him that no one in thekingdom but the Duke of Alençon had the right to grant a pardon in thatduchy. However, notwithstanding all his excuses, he failed to appeasethe King of England, who continued to entreat him so very pressinglythat, at his request, the Proctor at last received a pardon and soreturned to his own home. (12) There, to complete his wickedness, heconsorted with a sorcerer named Gallery, hoping that by this man's arthe might escape payment of the fifteen hundred crowns to the dead man'sfather. 

 10 Henry VIII. 

 11 Francis I. 

 12 The letters of remission which were granted to St. Aignan on this occasion will be found in the Appendix to the First Day (B). It will be noted that Margaret in her story gives various particulars which St. Aignan did not fail to conceal in view of obtaining his pardon. --L. 

To this end he went in disguise to Paris with his wife. She, findingthat he used to shut himself up for a great while in a room with Gallerywithout acquainting her with the reason thereof, spied upon him onemorning, and perceived Gallery showing him five wooden images, three ofwhich had their hands hanging down, whilst two had them lifted up. (13)

"We must make waxen images like these, " said Gallery, speaking to theProctor. "Such as have their arms hanging down will be for those whomwe shall cause to die, and the others with their arms raised will be forthe persons from whom you would fain have love and favour. "

"This one, " said the Proctor, "shall be for the King by whom I wouldfain be loved, and this one for Monseigneur Brinon, Chancellor ofAlençon. " (14)

 13 This refers to the superstitious practice called _envoûtement_, which, according to M. Léon de Laborde, was well known in France in 1316, and subsisted until the sixteenth century. In 1330 the famous Robert d'Artois, upon retiring to Brabant, occupied himself with pricking waxen images which represented King Philip VI. , his brother-in- law, and the Queen, his sister. (_Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, vol. Xv. P. 426. ) During the League the enemies of Henri III. And the King of Navarre revived this practice. --(L. ) It would appear also from a document in the Harley MSS. (18, 452, Bib. N'at. , Paris) that Cosmo Ruggieri, the Florentine astrologer, Catherine de' Medici's confidential adviser, was accused in 1574 of having made a wax figure in view of casting a spell upon Charles IX. --M. 

 14 John Brinon, Councillor of the King, President of the Parliament of Rouen, Chancellor of Alençon and Berry, Lord of Villaines (near Dreux), Remy, and Athueuil (near Montfort-l'Amaury), belonged to an old family of judicial functionaries. He was highly esteemed by Margaret, several of whose letters are addressed to him, and he was present at the signing of her marriage contract with Henry II. Of Navarre (Génin's _Lettres de Marguerite_, p. 444). He married Pernelle Perdrier, who brought him the lordship of Médan, near Poissy, and other important fiefs, which after his death she presented to the King. His praises were sung by Le Chandelier, the poet; and M. Floquet, in his History of the Parliament of Normandy, states that Brinon rendered most important services to France as a negotiator in Italy in 1521, and in England in 1524. The _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris_ mentions that he died in Paris in 1528, aged forty-four, and was buried in the Church of St. Severin. --L. According to La Croix du Maine's _Bibliothèque Françoise_, Brinon was the author of a poem entitled _Les Amours de Sydire_. --B. J. 

"The images, " said Gallery, "must be set under the altar, to hear mass, with words that I will presently tell you to say. "

Then, speaking of those images that had their arms lowered, the Proctorsaid that one should be for Master Gilles du Mesnil, father of the deadman, for he knew that as long as the father lived he would not cease topursue him. Moreover, one of the women with their hands hanging down wasto be for the Duchess of Alençon, sister to the King; for she boreso much love to her old servant, Du Mesnil, and had in so many othermatters become acquainted with the Proctor's wickedness, that except shedied he could not live. The second woman that had her arms hanging downwas his own wife, who was the cause of all his misfortune, and who hefelt sure would never amend her evil life. 

When his wife, who could see everything through the keyhole, heard himplacing her among the dead, she resolved to send him among them first. On pretence of going to borrow some money, she went to an uncle she had, named Neaufle, who was Master of Requests to the Duke of Alençon, andinformed him of what she had seen and heard. Neaufle, like the old andworthy servant that he was, went forthwith to the Chancellor of Alençonand told him the whole story. 

As the Duke and Duchess of Alençon were not at Court that day, theChancellor related this strange business to the Regent, (15) mother ofthe King and the Duchess, and she sent in all haste for the Provost ofParis, (16) who made such speed that he at once seized the Proctorand his sorcerer, Gallery. Without constraint or torture they freelyconfessed their guilt, and their case was made out and laid before theKing. 

 15 Louise of Savoy. 

 16 John de la Barre, a favourite of Francis I. See note to Tale lxiii. (vol. V. ), in which he plays a conspicuous part. --Ed. 

Certain persons, wishing to save their lives, told him that they hadonly sought his good graces by their enchantments; but the King, holdinghis sister's life as dear as his own, commanded that the same sentenceshould be passed on them as if they had made an attempt on his ownperson. 

However, his sister, the Duchess of Alençon, entreated that theProctor's life might be spared, and the sentence of death be commuted tosome heavy punishment. This request was granted her, and St. Aignanand Gallery were sent to the galleys of St. Blancart at Marseilles, (17)where they ended their days in close captivity, and had leisure toponder on the grievousness of their crimes. The wicked wife, in theabsence of her husband, continued in her sinful ways even more thanbefore, and at last died in wretchedness. 

 17 This passage is explained by Henri Bouché, who states in his _Histoire Chronologique de Provence_ (vol. Ii. P. 554), that after Francis I. 's voyage in captivity to Spain it was judged expedient that France should have several galleys in the Mediterranean, and that "orders were accordingly given for thirteen to be built at Marseilles--four for the Baron de Saint-Blancart, as many for Andrew Doria, &c. " The Baron de Saint-Blancart here referred to was Bernard d'Ormezan, Admiral of the seas of the Levant, Conservator of the ports and tower of Aigues-Mortes, and General of the King's galleys. In 1523 he defeated the naval forces of the Emperor Charles V. , and in 1525 conducted Margaret to Spain. --L. (See Memoir of Margaret, p. Xli. )

"I pray you, ladies, consider what evil is caused by a wicked woman, and how many evils sprang from the sins of the one I have spoken of. You will find that ever since Eve caused Adam to sin, all women have setthemselves to bring about the torment, slaughter and damnation of men. For myself, I have had such experience of their cruelty that I expect todie and be damned simply by reason of the despair into which one of themhas cast me. And yet so great a fool am I, that I cannot but confessthat hell coming from her hand is more pleasing than Paradise would befrom the hand of another. "

Parlamente, pretending she did not understand that it was touchingherself he spoke in this fashion, said to him--

"Since hell is as pleasant as you say, you ought not to fear the devilwho has placed you in it. "

"If my devil were to become as black as he has been cruel to me, "answered Simontault angrily, "he would cause the present company as muchfright as I find pleasure in looking upon them; but the fires oflove make me forget those of this hell. However, to speak no furtherconcerning this matter, I give my vote to Madame Oisille to tell thesecond story. I feel sure she would support my opinion if she werewilling to say what she knows about women. "

Forthwith all the company turned towards Oisille, and begged of her toproceed, to which she consented, and, laughing, began as follows--

"It seems to me, ladies, that he who has given me his vote has spoken soill of our sex in his true story of a wicked woman, that I must call tomind all the years of my long life to find one whose virtue will sufficeto gainsay his evil opinion. However, as I have bethought me of oneworthy to be remembered, I will now relate her history to you. "

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[Illustration: 057a. Jpg The Muleteer's Servant attacking his Mistress]

[The Muleteer's Servant attacking his Mistress]

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_TALE II. _

 _The wife of a muleteer of Amboise chose rather to die cruelly at the hands of her servant than to fall in with his wicked purpose_. (1)

In the town of Amboise there was a muleteer in the service of the Queenof Navarre, sister to King Francis, first of that name. She beingat Blois, where she had been brought to bed of a son, the aforesaidmuleteer went thither to receive his quarterly payment, whilst his wiferemained at Amboise in a lodging beyond the bridges. (2)

 1 The incidents of this story probably took place at Amboise, subsequent, however, to the month of August 1530, when Margaret was confined of her son John. --L. 

 2 Amboise is on the left bank of the Loire, and there have never been any buildings on the opposite bank. However, the bridge over the river intersects the island of St. Jean, which is covered with houses, and here the muleteer's wife evidently resided. --M. 

Now it happened that one of her husband's servants had long loved herexceedingly, and one day he could not refrain from speaking of itto her. She, however, being a truly virtuous woman, rebuked him soseverely, threatening to have him beaten and dismissed by her husband, that from that time forth he did not venture to speak to her in any suchway again or to let his love be seen, but kept the fire hidden withinhis breast until the day when his master had gone from home and hismistress was at vespers at St. Florentin, (3) the castle church, a longway from the muleteer's house. 

 3 The Church of St. Florentin here mentioned must not be confounded with that of the same name near one of the gates of Amboise. Erected in the tenth century by Foulques Nera of Anjou, it was a collegiate church, and was attended by the townsfolk, although it stood within the precincts of the château. For this reason Queen Margaret calls it the castle church. --Ed. 

Whilst he was alone the fancy took him that he might obtain by forcewhat neither prayer nor service had availed to procure him, andaccordingly he broke through a wooden partition which was betweenthe chamber where his mistress slept and his own. The curtains of hismaster's bed on the one side and of the servant's bed on the otherso covered the walls as to hide the opening he had made; and thus hiswickedness was not perceived until his mistress was in bed, togetherwith a little girl eleven or twelve years old. 

When the poor woman was in her first sleep, the servant, in his shirtand with his naked sword in his hand, came through the opening he hadmade in the wall into her bed; but as soon as she felt him beside her, she leaped out, addressing to him all such reproaches as a virtuouswoman might utter. His love, however, was but bestial, and he wouldhave better understood the language of his mules than her honourablereasonings; indeed, he showed himself even more bestial than the beastswith whom he had long consorted. Finding she ran so quickly round atable that he could not catch her, and that she was strong enough tobreak away from him twice, he despaired of ravishing her alive, anddealt her a terrible sword-thrust in the loins, thinking that, if fearand force had not brought her to yield, pain would assuredly do so. 

The contrary, however, happened, for just as a good soldier, on seeinghis own blood, is the more fired to take vengeance on his enemies andwin renown, so her chaste heart gathered new strength as she ran fleeingfrom the hands of the miscreant, saying to him the while all she couldthink of to bring him to see his guilt. But so filled was he with ragethat he paid no heed to her words. He dealt her several more thrusts, toavoid which she continued running as long as her legs could carry her. 

When, after great loss of blood, she felt that death was near, shelifted her eyes to heaven, clasped her hands and gave thanks to God, calling Him her strength, her patience, and her virtue, and prayingHim to accept her blood which had been shed for the keeping of Hiscommandment and in reverence of His Son, through whom she firmlybelieved all her sins to be washed away and blotted out from theremembrance of His wrath. 

As she was uttering the words, "Lord, receive the soul that has beenredeemed by Thy goodness, " she fell upon her face to the ground. 

Then the miscreant dealt her several thrusts, and when she had lost bothpower of speech and strength of body, and was no longer able to make anydefence, he ravished her. (4)

 4 Brantôme, in his account of Mary Queen of Scots, quotes this story. After mentioning that the headsman remained alone with the Queen's decapitated corpse, he adds: "He then took off her shoes and handled her as he pleased. It is suspected that he treated her in the same way as that miserable muleteer, in the Hundred Stories of the Queen of Navarre, treated the poor woman he killed. Stranger temptations than this come to men. After he (the executioner) had done as he chose, the (Queen's) body was carried into a room adjoining that of her servants. " Lalanne's _OEuvres de Brantôme_, vol. Vii. P. 438. --M. 

Having thus satisfied his wicked lust, he fled in haste, and in spite ofall pursuit was never seen again. 

The little girl, who was in bed with the muleteer's wife, had hiddenherself under the bed in her fear; but on seeing that the man was gone, she came to her mistress. Finding her to be without speech or movement, she called to the neighbours from the window for aid; and as they lovedand esteemed her mistress as much as any woman that belonged to thetown, they came forthwith, bringing surgeons with them. The latterfound that she had received twenty-five mortal wounds in her body, andalthough they did what they could to help her, it was all in vain. 

Nevertheless she lingered for an hour longer without speaking, yetmaking signs with eye and hand to show that she had not lost herunderstanding. Being asked by a priest in what faith she died, sheanswered, by signs as plain as any speech, that she placed her hope ofsalvation in Jesus Christ alone; and so with glad countenance and eyesupraised to heaven her chaste body yielded up its soul to its Creator. 

Just as the corpse, having been laid out and shrouded, (5) was placedat the door to await the burial company, the poor husband arrived andbeheld his wife's body in front of his house before he had even receivedtidings of her death. He inquired the cause of this, and found that hehad double occasion to grieve; and his grief was indeed so great that itnearly killed him. 

 5 Common people were then buried in shrouds, not in coffins. --Ed. 

This martyr of chastity was buried in the Church of St. Florentin, and, as was their duty, all the upright women of Amboise failed not to showher every possible honour, deeming themselves fortunate in belonging toa town where so virtuous a woman had been found. And seeing the honourthat was shown to the deceased, such women as were wanton and unchasteresolved to amend their lives. 

"This, ladies, is a true story, which should incline us more strongly topreserve the fair virtue of chastity. We who are of gentle blood shoulddie of shame on feeling in our hearts that worldly lust to avoid whichthe poor wife of a muleteer shrank not from so cruel a death. Someesteem themselves virtuous women who have never like this one resistedunto the shedding of blood. It is fitting that we should humbleourselves, for God does not vouchsafe His grace to men because of theirbirth or riches, but according as it pleases His own good-will. He paysno regard to persons, but chooses according to His purpose; and he whomHe chooses He honours with all virtues. And often He chooses the lowlyto confound those whom the world exalts and honours; for, as He Himselfhath told us, 'Let us not rejoice in our merits, but rather because ournames are written in the Book of Life, from which nor death, nor hell, nor sin can blot them out. '" (6)

 6 These are not the exact words of Scripture, but a combination of several passages from the Book of Revelation. --Ed. 

There was not a lady in the company but had tears of compassion in hereyes for the pitiful and glorious death of the muleteer's wife. Eachthought within herself that, should fortune serve her in the same way, she would strive to imitate this poor woman in her martyrdom. Oisille, however, perceiving that time was being lost in praising the dead woman, said to Saffredent--

"Unless you can tell us something that will make the company laugh, Ithink none of them will forgive me for the fault I have committed inmaking them weep; wherefore I give you my vote for your telling of thethird story. "

Saffredent, who would gladly have recounted something agreeable to thecompany, and above all to one amongst the ladies, said that it wasnot for him to speak, seeing that there were others older and betterinstructed than himself, who should of right come first. Nevertheless, since the lot had fallen upon himself, he would rather have done with itat once, for the more numerous the good speakers before him, the worsewould his own tale appear. 

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[Illustration: 065a. Jpg The Stags Head]

[The King Joking upon the Stag's Head being A fitting Decoration]

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_TALE III. _

 _The Queen of Naples, being wronged by King Alfonso, her husband, revenged herself with a gentleman whose wife was the King's mistress; and this intercourse lasted all their lives without the King at any time having suspicion of it_. (1)

I have often desired, ladies, to be a sharer in the good fortune of theman whose story I am about to relate to you. You must know that in thetime of King Alfonso, (2) whose lust was the sceptre of his kingdom, (3)there lived in the town of Naples a gentleman, so honourable, comely, and pleasant that his perfections induced an old gentleman to give himhis daughter in marriage. 

 1 This story is historical. The events occurred at Naples cir. 1450. --L. 

 2 The King spoken of in this story must be Alfonso V. , King of Aragon, who was born in 1385, and succeeded his father, Ferdinand the Just, in 1416. He had already made various expeditions to Sardinia and Corsica, when, in 1421, Jane II. Of Naples begged of him to assist her in her contest against Louis of Anjou. Alfonso set sail for Italy as requested, but speedily quarrelled with Jane, on account of the manner in which he treated her lover, the Grand Seneschal Caraccioli. Jane, at her death in 1438, bequeathed her crown to René, brother of Louis of Anjou, whose claims Alfonso immediately opposed. Whilst blockading Gaëta he was defeated and captured, but ultimately set at liberty, whereupon he resumed the war. In 1442 he at last secured possession of Naples, and compelled René to withdraw from Italy. From that time Alfonso never returned to Spain, but settling himself in his Italian dominions, assumed the title of King of the Two Sicilies. He obtained the surname of the Magnanimous, from his generous conduct towards some conspirators, a list of whose names he tore to pieces unread, saying, "I will show these noblemen that I have more concern for their lives than they have themselves. " The surname of the Learned was afterwards given to him from the circumstance that, like his rival René of Anjou, he personally cultivated letters, and also protected many of the leading learned men of Italy. Alfonso was fond of strolling about the streets of Naples unattended, and one day, when he was cautioned respecting this habit, he replied, "A father who walks abroad in the midst of his children has no cause for fear. " Whilst possessed of many remarkable qualities, Alfonso, as Muratori and other writers have shown, was of an extremely licentious disposition. That he had no belief in conjugal fidelity is evidenced by his saying that "to ensure domestic happiness the husband should be deaf and the wife blind. " He himself had several mistresses, and lived at variance with his wife, respecting whom some particulars are given in a note on page 69. He died in 1458, at the age of seventy-four, bequeathing his Italian possessions to Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, his natural son by a Spanish beauty named Margaret de Hijar. It may be added that Brantôme makes a passing allusion to this tale of the _Heptameron_ in his _Vies des Dames Galantes_ (Disc, i. ), styling it "a very fine one. "--L. And Ed. 

 3 Meaning that he employed his sovereign authority for the accomplishment of his amorous desires. --M. 

She vied with her husband in grace and comeliness, and there was greatlove between them, until a certain day in Carnival time, when the Kingwent masked from house to house. All strove to give him the bestwelcome they could, but when he came to this gentleman's house hewas entertained better than anywhere else, what with sweetmeats, and singers, and music, and, further, the fairest woman that, to histhinking, he had ever seen. At the end of the feast she sang a song withher husband in so graceful a fashion that she seemed more beautiful thanever. 

The King, perceiving so many perfections united in one person, was notover pleased at the gentle harmony between the husband and wife, anddeliberated how he might destroy it. The chief difficulty he met withwas in the great affection which he observed existed between them, andon this account he hid his passion in his heart as deeply as he could. To relieve it in some measure, he gave many entertainments to the lordsand ladies of Naples, and at these the gentleman and his wife were notforgotten. Now, inasmuch as men willingly believe what they desire, itseemed to the King that the glances of this lady gave him fair promiseof future happiness, if only she were not restrained by her husband'spresence. Accordingly, that he might learn whether his surmise wastrue, the King intrusted a commission to the husband, and sent him on ajourney to Rome for a fortnight or three weeks. 

As soon as the gentleman was gone, his wife, who had never before beenseparated from him, was in great distress; but the King comforted her asoften as he was able, with gentle persuasions and presents, so thatat last she was not only consoled, but well pleased with her husband'sabsence. Before the three weeks were over at the end of which he was tobe home again, she had come to be so deeply in love with the King thather husband's return was no less displeasing to her than his departurehad been. Not wishing to be deprived of the King's society, she agreedwith him that whenever her husband went to his country-house she wouldgive him notice of it. He might then visit her in safety, and with suchsecrecy that her honour, which she regarded more than her conscience, would not suffer. (4)

 4 The edition of 1558 is here followed, the MSS. Being rather obscure. --M. 

Having this hope, the lady continued of very cheerful mind, and when herhusband arrived she welcomed him so heartily that, even had he beentold that the King had sought her in his absence, he would have had nosuspicion. In course of time, however, the flame, that is so difficultof concealment, began to show itself, and the husband, having a stronginkling of the truth, kept good watch, by which means he was well-nighconvinced. Nevertheless, as he feared that the man who wronged himwould treat him still worse if he appeared to notice it, he resolved todissemble, holding it better to live in trouble than to risk his lifefor a woman who had ceased to love him. 

In his vexation of spirit, however, he resolved, if he could, to retortupon the King, and knowing that women, especially such as are of loftyand honourable minds, are more moved by resentment than by love, he madebold one day while speaking with the Queen (5) to tell her that it movedhis pity to see her so little loved by the King. 

 5 This was Mary (daughter of Henry III. Of Castile), who was married to King Alfonso at Valencia on June 29, 1415. Juan de Mariana, the Spanish historian, records that the ceremony was celebrated with signal pomp by the schismatical Pope Benedict XIII. The bride brought her husband a dowry of 200, 000 ducats, and also various territorial possessions. The marriage, however, was not a happy one, on account of Alfonso's licentious disposition, and the Queen is said to have strangled one of his mistresses, Margaret de Hijar, in a fit of jealousy. Alfonso, to escape from his wife's interference, turned his attention to foreign expeditions. According to the authors of _L'Art de Vérifier les Dates_, Queen Mary never once set foot in Italy, and this statement is borne out by Mariana, who shows that whilst Alfonso was reigning in Naples his wife governed the kingdom of Aragon, making war and signing truces and treaties of peace with Castile. In the _Heptameron_, therefore, Margaret departs from historical accuracy when she represents the Queen as residing at Naples with her husband. Moreover, judging by the date of Mary's marriage, she could no longer have been young when Alfonso secured the Neapolitan throne. It is to be presumed that the Queen of Navarre designedly changed the date of her story, and that the incidents referred to really occurred in Spain prior to Alfonso's departure for Italy. There is no mention of Mary in her husband's will, a remarkable document which is still extant. A letter written to her by Pope Calixtus II. Shows that late in life the King was desirous of repudiating her to marry an Italian mistress named Lucretia Alania. The latter repaired to Rome to negotiate the affair, but the Pope refused to treat with her, and wrote to Mary saying that she must be prudent, but that he would not dissolve the marriage, lest God should punish him for participating in so great a crime. Mary died a few months after her husband in 1458, and was buried in a convent at Valencia. --L. And Ed. 

The Queen, who had heard of the affection that existed between the Kingand the gentleman's wife, replied--

"I cannot have both honour and pleasure together. I well know that Ihave the honour whilst another has the pleasure; and in the same way shewho has the pleasure has not the honour that is mine. "

Thereupon the gentleman, who understood full well at whom these wordswere aimed, replied--

"Madam, honour is inborn with you, for your lineage is such that notitle, whether of queen or empress, could be an increase of nobility;yet your beauty, grace, and virtue are well deserving of pleasure, andshe who robs you of what is yours does a greater wrong to herself thanto you, seeing that for a glory which is turned to her shame, she losesas much pleasure as you or any lady in the realm could enjoy. I cantruly tell you, madam, that were the King to lay aside his crown, hewould not possess any advantage over me in satisfying a lady; nay, Iam sure that to content one so worthy as yourself he would indeed bepleased to change his temperament for mine. "

The Queen laughed and replied--

"The King may be of a less vigorous temperament than you, yet the lovehe bears me contents me well, and I prefer it to any other. "

"Madam, " said the gentleman, "if that were so, I should have no pity foryou. I feel sure that you would be well pleased if the like of your ownvirtuous love were found in the King's heart; but God has withheld thisfrom you in order that, not finding what you desire in your husband, youmay not make him your god on earth. "

"I confess to you, " said the Queen, "that the love I bear him is sogreat that the like could not be found in any other heart but mine. "

"Pardon me, madam, " said the gentleman; "you have not fathomed the loveof every heart. I will be so bold as to tell you that you are loved byone whose love is so great and measureless that your own is as nothingbeside it. The more he perceives that the King's love fails you, themore does his own wax and increase, in such wise that, were it yourpleasure, you might be recompensed for all you have lost. "

The Queen began to perceive, both from these words and from thegentleman's countenance, that what he said came from the depth of hisheart. She remembered also that for a long time he had so zealouslysought to do her service that he had fallen into sadness. She hadhitherto deemed this to be on account of his wife, but now she wasfirmly of belief that it was for love of herself. Moreover, the veryquality of love, which compels itself to be recognised when it isunfeigned, made her feel certain of what had been hidden from every one. As she looked at the gentleman, who was far more worthy of being lovedthan her husband, she reflected that he was forsaken by his wife, asshe herself was by the King; and then, beset by vexation and jealousyagainst her husband, as well as moved by the love of the gentleman, shebegan with sighs and tearful eyes to say--

"Ah me! shall revenge prevail with me where love has been of no avail?"

The gentleman, who understood what these words meant, replied--

"Vengeance, madam, is sweet when in place of slaying an enemy it giveslife to a true lover. (6) Methinks it is time that truth should cause youto abandon the foolish love you bear to one who loves you not, and thata just and reasonable love should banish fear, which cannot dwell in anoble and virtuous heart. Come, madam, let us set aside the greatnessof your station and consider that, of all men and women in the world, weare the most deceived, betrayed, and bemocked by those whom we have mosttruly loved. Let us avenge ourselves, madam, not so much to requite themin the way they deserve as to satisfy that love which, for my own part, I cannot continue to endure and live. And I think that, unless yourheart be harder than flint or diamond, you cannot but feel some sparkfrom the fires which only increase the more I seek to conceal them. Ifpity for me, who am dying of love for you, does not move you to loveme, at least pity for yourself should do so. You are so perfect that youdeserve to win the heart of every honourable man in the world, yet youare contemned and forsaken by him for whose sake you have scorned allothers. "

 6 The above sentence being omitted in the MS. Followed in this edition, it has been supplied from MS. No. 1520 in the Bibliothèque Nationale. --L. 

On hearing these words the Queen was so greatly moved that, for fearof showing in her countenance the trouble of her mind, she took thegentleman's arm and went forth into a garden that was close to herapartment. There she walked to and fro for a long time without beingable to say a word to him. The gentleman saw that she was half won, andwhen they were at the end of the path, where none could see them, hemade a very full declaration of the love which he had so long hiddenfrom her. They found that they were of one mind in the matter, andenacted (7) the vengeance which they were no longer able to forego. Moreover, they there agreed that whenever the husband went into thecountry, and the King left the castle to visit the wife in the town, thegentleman should always return and come to the castle to see the Queen. Thus, the deceivers being themselves deceived, all four would share inthe pleasures that two of them had thought to keep to themselves. 

 7 This expression has allusion to the mysteries or religious plays so frequently performed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Mystery of Vengeance, which depicted the misfortunes which fell upon those who had taken part in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, such as Pontius Pilate, &c, and ended by the capture and destruction of Jerusalem, properly came after the Mysteries of the Passion and the Resurrection. --L. 

When the agreement had been made, the Queen returned to her apartmentand the gentleman to his house, both being so well pleased that they hadforgotten all their former troubles. The jealousy they had previouslyfelt at the King's visits to the lady was now changed to desire, so thatthe gentleman went oftener than usual to his house in the country, whichwas only half a league distant. As soon as the King was advised of hisdeparture, he never failed to go and see the lady; and the gentleman, when night was come, betook himself to the castle to the Queen, wherehe did duty as the King's lieutenant, and so secretly that none everdiscovered it. 

This manner of life lasted for a long time; but as the King was a personof public condition, he could not conceal his love sufficiently well toprevent it from coming at length to the knowledge of every one; andall honourable people felt great pity for the gentleman, though diversmalicious youths were wont to deride him by making horns at him behindhis back. But he knew of their derision, and it gave him great pleasure, so that he came to think as highly of his horns as of the King's crown. 

One day, however, the King and the gentleman's wife, noticing a stag'shead that was set up in the gentleman's house, could not refrain in hispresence from laughing and saying that the head was suited to the house. Soon afterwards the gentleman, who was no less spirited than the King, caused the following words to be written over the stag's head:--

 "Io porto le corna, ciascun lo vede, Ma tal le porta che no lo crede. " (8)

 8 "All men may see the horns I've got, But one wears horns and knows it not. "

When the King came again to the house, he observed these lines newlywritten, and inquired their meaning of the gentleman, who said--

"If the King's secret be hidden from the subject, it is not fitting thatthe subject's secret should be revealed to the King. Be content withknowing that those who wear horns do not always have their caps raisedfrom their heads. Some horns are so soft that they never uncap one, andespecially are they light to him who thinks he has them not. "

The King perceived by these words that the gentleman knew something ofhis own behaviour, but he never had any suspicion of the love betweenhim and the Queen; for the more pleased the latter was with the life ledby her husband, the more did she feign to be distressed by it. And so oneither side they lived in this love, until at last old age took them inhand. 

"Here, ladies, is a story by which you may be guided, for, as Iwillingly confess, it shows you that when your husbands give you bucks'horns you can give them stags' horns in return. "

"I am quite sure, Saffredent, " began Ennasuite laughing, "that if youstill love as ardently as you were formerly wont to do, you wouldsubmit to horns as big as oak-trees if only you might repay them asyou pleased. However, now that your hair is growing grey, it is time toleave your desires in peace. "

"Fair lady, " said Saffredent, "though I be robbed of hope by the woman Ilove, and of ardour by old age, yet it lies not in my power to weakenmy inclination. Since you have rebuked me for so honourable a desire, I give you my vote for the telling of the fourth tale, that we may seewhether you can bring forward some example to refute me. "

During this converse one of the ladies fell to laughing heartily, knowing that she who took Saffredent's words to herself was not so lovedby him that he would have suffered horns, shame, or wrong for her sake. When Saffredent perceived that the lady who laughed understood him, hewas well satisfied and became silent, so that Ennasuite might begin;which she did as follows--

"In order, ladies, that Saffredent and the rest of the company may knowthat all ladies are not like the Queen he has spoken of, and that allfoolhardy and venturesome men do not compass their ends, I will tellyou a story in which I will acquaint you with the opinion of a lady whodeemed the vexation of failure in love to be harder of endurance thandeath itself. However, I shall give no names, because the events are sofresh in people's minds that I should fear to offend some who are nearof kin. "

[Illustration: 078. Jpg Tailpiece]

[Illustration: 079a. Jpg Hurrying to her Mistress's Assistance]

[The Princess's Lady of Honour hurrying to her Mistress's Assistance]

[Illustration: 079. Jpg Page Image]

_TALE IV_. 

 _A young gentleman sought to discover whether the offer of an honour-able love would be displeasing to his master's sister, a lady of the most illustrious lineage in Flanders, who had been twice widowed, and was a woman of muck spirit. Meeting with a reply contrary to his desires, he attempted to possess her by force; but she resisted him successfully, and by the advice of her lady of honour, without seeming to take notice of his designs and efforts, gradually ceased to regard him with the favour with which she had been wont to treat him. Thus, by his foolhardy presumption, he lost the honourable and habitual companionship which, more than others, he had had with her_. (1)

 1 This story is historical, and the incidents must have occurred between 1520 and 1525. --L. 

There lived in the land of Flanders a lady of such high lineage, thatnone more illustrious could be found. She was a widow, both her firstand second husbands being dead, and she had no children living. Duringher widowhood she lived in retirement with her brother, by whom she wasgreatly loved, and who was a very great lord and married to the daughterof a King. This young Prince was a man much given to pleasure, fond ofhunting, pastimes, and women, as his youth inclined him. He had awife, however, who was of a very froward disposition, (2) and found nopleasure in her husband's pursuits; wherefore this Lord always tookhis sister along with his wife, for she was a most joyous and pleasantcompanion, and withal a discreet and honourable woman. 

In this Lord's household there was a gentleman who, for stature, comeliness, and grace, surpassed all his fellows. This gentleman, (3)perceiving that his master's sister was of merry mood and always readyfor a laugh, was minded to try whether the offer of an honourable lovewould be displeasing to her. 

 2 The young prince here mentioned is Francis I. , who at this period was between twenty-five and thirty years old. The froward wife is Claude of France (daughter of Louis XII. And Anne of Brittany), whom Francis married in 1514, and who died of consumption at Blois ten years later, while the King was on his way to conquer Milan. (See the Memoir of Margaret, pp. Xxvi. And xxxv. )--Ed. 

 3 According to Brantôme, the Lady of Flanders, the young Prince's sister, was Queen Margaret herself, and the gentleman who paid court to her was William Gouffier, Lord of Bonnivet, of Crevecoeur, Thois, and Querdes, and also a favourite of Francis I. , with whom he was brought up, and by whom he was employed in all the great enterprises of the time. Bonnivet became Admiral of France in 1517, and two years later he was created governor of Dauphiné, and guardian of the Dauphin's person. He negotiated the peace and alliance with Henry VIII. , and arranged all the preliminaries of the interview known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520). In 1521, says Anselme in his _Histoire Généalogique_, Bonnivet became governor of Guienne, commanded the army sent to Navarre, and captured Fontarabia. In 1524 he was despatched to Italy as lieutenant-general, and besieged Milan, but was repeatedly repulsed, and finally fell back on the Ticino. He was killed at Pavia (February 24, 1525), and was largely responsible for that disastrous defeat, having urged Francis I. To give battle, contrary to the advice of the more experienced captains. Bonnivet, as mentioned by Queen Margaret in this story, had the reputation of being one of the handsomest men of his time. -- L. 

He made this offer, but the answer that he received from her wascontrary to his desires. However, although her reply was such asbeseemed a Princess and a woman of true virtue, she readily pardoned hishardihood for the sake of his comeliness and breeding, and let him knowthat she bore him no ill-will for what he had said. But she charged himnever to speak to her after that fashion again; and this he promised, that he might not lose the pleasure and honour of her conversation. Nevertheless, as time went on, his love so increased that he forgot thepromise he had made. He did not, however, risk further trial of words, for he had learned by experience, and much against his will, whatvirtuous replies she was able to make. But he reflected that if he couldtake her somewhere at a disadvantage, she, being a widow, young, lusty, and of a lively humour, would perchance take pity on him and on herself. 

To compass his ends, he told his master that excellent hunting was tobe had in the neighbourhood of his house, and that if it pleased himto repair thither and hunt three or four stags in the month of May, hecould have no finer sport. The Lord granted the gentleman's request, asmuch for the affection he bore him as for the pleasure of the chase, andrepaired to his house, which was as handsome and as fairly ordered asthat of the richest gentleman in the land. 

The Lord and his Lady were lodged on one side of the house, and she whomthe gentleman loved more than himself on the other. Her apartment wasso well arranged, tapestried above and matted below, (4) that it wasimpossible to perceive a trap-door which was by the side of her bed, andwhich opened into a room beneath, that was occupied by the gentleman'smother. (5)

 4 In most palaces and castles at this period the walls were covered with tapestry and the floors with matting. This remark is necessary to enable one to understand Bonnivet's stratagem. --D. 

 5 Philippa de Montmorency, second wife of William Gouffier, Lord of Boissy, who was Bonnivet's father (Anselme's _Histoire Généalogique_, vol. Vii. P. 880). --L. 

She being an old lady, somewhat troubled by rheum, and fearful lest thecough she had should disturb the Princess, made exchange of chamberswith her son. In the evening this old lady was wont to bring sweetmeatsto the Princess for her collation, (6) at which the gentleman waspresent; and being greatly beloved by her brother and intimate with him, he was also suffered to be present when she rose in the morning and whenshe retired to bed, on which occasions he always found reasons for anincrease of his affection. 

 6 At that period the collation, as the supper was called, was served at seven in the evening, shortly before the curfew. --B. J. 

Thus it came to pass that one evening he made the Princess stay up verylate, until at last, being desirous of sleep, she bade him leave her. He then went to his own room, and there put on the handsomest andbest-scented shirt he had, and a nightcap so well adorned that nothingwas lacking in it. It seemed, to him, as he looked at himself in hismirror, that no lady in the world could deny herself to one of hiscomeliness and grace. He therefore promised himself a happy issue tohis enterprise, and so lay down on his bed, where in his desire and surehope of exchanging it for one more honourable and pleasant, he looked tomake no very long stay. 

As soon as he had dismissed all his attendants he rose to fasten thedoor after them; and for a long time he listened to hear whether therewere any sound in the room of the Princess, which was above his own. When he had made sure that all was quiet, he wished to begin hispleasant task, and little by little let down the trap-door, which wasso excellently wrought, and so well covered with cloth, that it made notthe least noise. Then he ascended into the room and came to the bedsideof his lady, who was just falling asleep. 

Forthwith, having no regard for the duty that he owed his mistress orfor the house to which she belonged, he got into bed with her, withoutentreating her permission or making any kind of ceremony. She felt himin her arms before she knew that he had entered the room; but beingstrong, she freed herself from his grasp, and fell to striking, biting, and scratching him, demanding the while to know who he was, so thatfor fear lest she should call out he sought to stop her mouth with thebedclothes. But this he found it impossible to do, for when she sawthat he was using all his strength to work her shame she did as muchto baffle him. She further called as loudly as she could to her lady ofhonour, (7) who slept in her room; and this old and virtuous woman ran toher mistress in her nightdress. 

 7 The lady in question was Blanche de Tournon, daughter of James de Tournon, by Jane de Polignac, and sister of Cardinal de Tournon, Minister of Francis I. She first married Raymond d'Agout, Baron of Sault in Provence, who died in 1503; and secondly James de Chastillon, Chamberlain to Charles VIII. And Louis XII. , killed at the siege of Ravenna in 1512. Brantôme states, moreover, that she subsequently married Cardinal John du Bellay. (See Appendix to the'present volume, C. ) In this story, Margaret describes the Princess of Flanders as having lost two husbands, with the view of disguising the identity of her heroine. Her own husband (the Duke of Alençon) was still alive; but Madame de Chastillon had twice become a widow, and the Queen, who was well aware of this, designedly ascribed to the Princess the situation of the lady of honour. This story should be compared with the poem "Quatre Dames et Quatre Gentilhommes" in the _Marguerites de la Marguerite_. --F. 

When the gentleman saw that he was discovered, he was so fearful ofbeing recognised by the lady, that he descended in all haste through histrap-door; his despair at returning in such an evil plight being no lessthan his desire and assurance of a gracious reception had previouslybeen. He found his mirror and candle on his table, (8) and looking at hisface, all bleeding from the lady's scratches and bites, whence the bloodwas trickling over his fine shirt, which had now more blood than gold(9) about it, he said--

 8 It is not surprising that the mirror should have been lying on the table. Mirrors were for a long time no larger than our modern hand-glasses. That of Mary de' Medici, offered to her by the Republic of Venice, and now in the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre, is extremely small, though it has an elaborate frame enriched with precious cameos. Even the mirrors placed by Louis XIV. In the celebrated Galerie des Glaces at Versailles were no larger than ordinary window-panes. --M. 

 9 Shirts were then adorned at the collar and in front with gold-thread embroidery, such as is shown in some of Clouet's portraits. In M. De Laborde's _Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi au XVIème Siècle_ (vol. Ii. ) mention is made of "a shirt with gold work, " "a shirt with white work, " &c. ; and also of two beautiful women's chemises in Holland linen "richly worked with gold thread and silk, at the price of six crowns apiece. "--M. 

"Beauty! now hast thou been rewarded according to thy deserts. By reasonof thy vain promises I attempted an impossible undertaking, and onethat, instead of increasing my happiness, will perchance double mymisfortune. I feel sure that if she knows I made this foolish attemptcontrary to the promise I gave her, I shall lose the honourable andaccustomed companionship which more than any other I have had with her. And my folly has well deserved this, for if I was to turn my goodlooks and grace to any account, I ought not to have hidden them in thedarkness. I should not have sought to take that chaste body by force, but should have waited in long service and humble patience till lovehad conquered her. Without love, all man's merits and might are of noavail. "

Thus he passed the night in tears, regrets, and sorrowings such as Icannot describe; and in the morning, finding his face greatly torn, hefeigned grievous sickness and to be unable to endure the light, untilthe company had left his house. 

The lady, who had come off victorious, knew that there was no man at herbrother's Court that durst attempt such an enterprise save him who hadhad the boldness to declare his love to her. She therefore concludedthat it was indeed her host, and made search through the room with herlady of honour to discover how he could have entered it. But in this shefailed, whereupon she said to her companion in great anger--

"You may be sure that it can have been none other than the lord of thishouse, and I will make such report of him to my brother in the morningthat his head shall bear witness to my chastity. "

Seeing her in such wrath, the lady of honour said to her--

"Right glad am I, madam, to find you esteem your honour so highly that, to exalt it, you would not spare the life of a man who, for the lovehe bears you, has put it to this risk. But it often happens that onelessens what one thinks to increase; wherefore, I pray you, madam, tellme the truth of the whole matter. "

When the lady had fully related the business, the lady of honour said toher--

"You assure me that he had nothing from you save only scratches andblows?"

"I do assure you that it was so, " said the lady; "and, unless he find arare surgeon, I am certain his face will bear the marks tomorrow. "

"Well, since it is thus, madam, " said the lady of honour, "it seems tome that you have more reason to thank God than to think of vengeance;for you may well believe that, since the gentleman had spirit enoughto make such an attempt, his grief at having failed will be harderof endurance than any death you could award him. If you desire to berevenged on him, let love and shame do their work; they will tormenthim more grievously than could you. And if you would speak out for yourhonour's sake, (10) beware, madam, lest you fall into a mishap like tohis own. 

 10 In Boaistuau's edition this passage runs: "Let love and shame do their work, they will know better than you how to torment him; and do this for your honour's sake. Beware, " &c. --L. 

He, instead of obtaining the greatest delight he could imagine, hasencountered the gravest vexation any gentleman could endure. So you, madam, thinking to exalt your honour, may perchance diminish it. If youmake complaint, you will bring to light what is known to none, for youmay rest assured that the gentleman on his side will never reveal aughtof the matter. And even if my lord, your brother, should do justiceto him at your asking, and the poor gentleman should die, yet would iteverywhere be noised abroad that he had had his will of you, and mostpeople would say it was unlikely a gentleman would make such an attemptunless the lady had given him great encouragement. You are young andfair; you live gaily with all; and there is no one at Court but has seenthe kind treatment you have shown to the gentleman whom you suspect. Hence every one will believe that if he did this deed it was not withoutsome fault on your side; and your honour, for which you have never hadto blush, will be freely questioned wherever the story is related. "

On hearing the excellent reasoning of her lady of honour, the Princessperceived that she spoke the truth, and that she herself would, withjust cause, be blamed on account of the close friendship which she hadalways shown towards the gentleman. Accordingly she inquired of her ladyof honour what she ought to do. 

"Madam, " replied the other, "since you are pleased to receive mycounsels, having regard for the affection whence they spring, it seemsto me you should be glad at heart to think that the most comely andgallant gentleman I have ever seen was not able, whether by love or byforce, to turn you from the path of true virtue. For this, madam, youshould humble yourself before God, and confess that it was not throughyour own merit, for many women who have led straighter lives than youhave been humiliated by men less worthy of love than he. And you shouldhenceforth be more than ever on your guard against proposals of love;for many have the second time yielded to dangers which on the firstoccasion they were able to avoid. Be mindful, madam, that love is blind, and that it makes people blind in such wise that the way appears safestjust when it is most slippery. Further, madam, it seems to me that youshould give no sign of what has befallen you, whether to him or to anyone else, and that if he seeks to say anything on the matter, you shouldfeign not to understand him. In this way you will avoid two dangers, the one of vain-glory in the victory you have won, and the other ofrecalling things so pleasant to the flesh that at mention of them thechastest can only with difficulty avoid feeling some sparks of theflame, though they strive their utmost to escape them. (11)

 11 We here follow MS. No. 1520. --L. 

Besides this, madam, in order that he may not think he has done anythingpleasing in your sight, I am of opinion you should little by littlewithdraw the friendship you have been in the habit of showing him. Inthis way he will know how much you scorn his rashness, and how great isyour goodness, since, content with the victory that God has given you, you seek no further vengeance upon him. And may God give you grace, madam, to continue in the virtue He has placed in your heart; and, knowing that all good things come from Him, may you love and serve Himbetter than before. "

The Princess determined to abide by the advice of her lady of honour, and then fell asleep with joy as great as was the sadness of her wakinglover. 

On the morrow, the lord, her brother, wishing to depart, inquired forhis host, and was told that he was too ill to bear the light or to hearany one speak. The Prince was greatly astonished at this, and wished togo and see the gentleman; however, learning that he was asleep, he wouldnot awake him, but left the house without bidding him farewell. He tookwith him his wife and sister, and the latter, hearing the excuses sentby the gentleman, who would not see the Prince or any of the companybefore their departure, felt convinced that it was indeed he who had sotormented her, and that he durst not let the marks which she had leftupon his face be seen. And although his master frequently sent for him, he did not return to Court until he was quite healed of all his wounds, save only one--namely, that which love and vexation had dealt to hisheart. 

When he did return, and found himself in presence of his victoriousfoe, he could not but blush; and such was his confusion, that he who hadformerly been the boldest of all the company, was often wholly abashedbefore her. Accordingly, being now quite certain that her suspicion wastrue, she estranged herself from him little by little, though not soadroitly that he did not perceive it; but he durst not give any signfor fear of meeting with something still worse, and so he kept his loveconcealed, patiently enduring the disgrace he had so well deserved. (12)

 12 This story is referred to by Brantôme, both in his _Vies des Homines illustres et grands Capitaines français_, and in his _Vies des Dames galantes_. See Appendix to the present volume (C. ). 

"This, ladies, is a story which should be a warning to those who wouldgrasp at what does not belong to them, and which, further, shouldstrengthen the hearts of ladies, since it shows the virtue of this youngPrincess, and the good sense of her lady of honour. If the like fortuneshould befall any among you, the remedy has now been pointed out. "

"It seems to me, " said Hircan, "that the tall gentleman of whom you havetold us was so lacking in spirit as to be unworthy of being remembered. With such an opportunity as that, he ought not to have suffered any one, old or young, to baffle him in his enterprise. It must be said, also, that his heart was not entirely filled with love, seeing that fear ofdeath and shame found place within it. "

"And what, " replied Nomerfide, "could the poor gentleman have done withtwo women against him?"

"He ought to have killed the old one, " said Hircan, "and when the youngone found herself without assistance she would have been already halfsubdued. "

"To have killed her!" said Nomerfide. "Then you would turn a lover intoa murderer? Since such is your opinion, it would indeed be a fearfulthing to fall into your hands. "

"If I had gone so far, " said Hircan, "I should have held itdishonourable not to achieve my purpose. "

Then said Geburon--

"You think it strange that a Princess, bred in all honour, should provedifficult of capture to one man. You should then be much more astonishedat a poor woman who escaped out of the hands of two. "

"Geburon, " said Ennasuite, "I give my vote to you to tell the fifthtale, for I think you know something concerning this poor woman thatwill not be displeasing to us. "

"Since you have chosen me, " said Geburon, "I will tell you a story whichI know to be true from having made inquiries concerning it on the spot. By this story you will see that womanly sense and virtue are not in thehearts and heads of Princesses alone, nor love and cunning in such asare most often deemed to possess them. "

[Illustration: 094. Jpg Tailpiece]

[Illustration: 095a. Jpg The Boatwoman of Coulon outwitting the Friars]

[The Boatwoman of Coulon outwitting the Friars]

[Illustration: 095. Jpg Page Image]

_TALE V. _

 _Two Grey Friars, when crossing the river at the haven of Coulon, sought to ravish the boatwoman who was taking them over. She, however, being virtuous and Clever, so beguiled them with words that, whilst promising to grant their request, she deceived them and handed them over to justice. They were then delivered up to their warden to receive such punishment as they deserved_. 

At the haven of Coulon, (1) near Nyort, there lived a boatwoman who, dayor night, did nothing but convey passengers across the ferry. 

 1 The village of Coulon, in Poitou (department of the Deux- Sèvres), lies within seven miles of Niort, on the Niortaise Sevre, which at this point is extremely wide. --L. 

Now it chanced that two Grey Friars from Nyort were crossing the riveralone with her, and as the passage is one of the longest in France, theybegan to make love to her, that she might not feel dull by the way. Shereturned them the answer that was due; but they, being neither fatiguedby their journeying, nor cooled by the water, nor put to shame by herrefusal, determined to take her by force, and, if she clamoured, tothrow her into the river. She, however, was as virtuous and clever asthey were gross and wicked, and said to them--

"I am not so ill-disposed as I seem to be, but I pray you grant me tworequests. You shall then see that I am more ready to give than you areto ask. "

The friars swore to her by their good St. Francis that she could asknothing that they would not grant in order to have what they desired ofher. 

"First of all, " she said, "I require you both to promise on oath thatyou will inform no man living of this matter. " This they promised rightwillingly. 

"Then, " she continued, "I would have you take your pleasure with me oneafter the other, for it would be too great a shame for me to have to dowith one in presence of the other. Consider which of you will have mefirst. "

They deemed her request a very reasonable one, and the younger friaryielded the first place to the elder. Then, as they were drawing near alittle island, she said to the younger one--

"Good father, say your prayers here until I have taken your companion toanother island. Then, if he praises me when he comes back, we will leavehim here, and go away in turn together. "

The younger friar leapt out on to the island to await the return of hiscomrade, whom the boat-woman took away with her to another island. When they had reached the bank she said to him, pretending the while tofasten her boat to a tree--

"Look, my friend, and see where we can place ourselves. "

The good father stepped on to the island to seek for a convenient spot, but no sooner did she see him on land than she struck her foot againstthe tree and went off with her boat into the open stream, leaving boththe good fathers to their deserts, and crying out to them as loudly asshe could--

"Wait now, sirs, till the angel of God comes to console you; for youshall have nought that could please you from me to-day. "

The two poor monks, perceiving that they had been deceived, knelt downat the water's edge and besought her not to put them to such shame; andthey promised that they would ask nothing of her if she would of hergoodness take them to the haven. But, still rowing away, she said tothem--

"I should be doubly foolish if, after escaping out of your hands, I wereto put myself into them again. "

When she had come to the village, she went to call her husband and theministers of justice that they might go and take these fierce wolves, from whose fangs she had by the grace of God escaped. They set outaccompanied by many people, for there was no one, big or little, butwished to share in the pleasure of this chase. 

When the poor brethren saw such a large company approaching, they hidthemselves each in his island, even as Adam did when he perceived hisnakedness in the presence of God. (2) Shame set their sin clearly beforethem, and the fear of punishment made them tremble so that they werehalf dead. Nevertheless, they were taken prisoners amid the mockings andhootings of men and women. 

Some said, "These good fathers preach chastity to us and then rob ourwives of theirs. " (3)

 2 See _Genesis_ iii. 8-10. 

 3 The editions of 1558 and 1560 here contain this additional phrase: "They do not dare to touch money with bare hands, and yet they willingly finger the thighs of our wives, which are more dangerous. "--L. 

Others said, "They are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeedappear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones anduncleanness. " (4) Then another voice cried, "By their fruits shall yeknow what manner of trees they are. " (5)

You may be sure that all the passages in the Gospel condemninghypocrites were brought forward against the unhappy prisoners, who were, however, rescued and delivered by their Warden, (6) who came in all hasteto claim them, assuring the ministers of justice that he would visitthem with a greater punishment than laymen would venture to inflict, andthat they should make reparation by saying as many masses and prayers asmight be required. The judge granted the Warden's request and gave theprisoners up to him; and the Warden, who was an upright man, so dealtwith them that they never afterwards crossed a river without making thesign of the cross and recommending themselves to God. (7)

 4 St. Matthew xxiii. 27. 

 5 "For every tree is known by his own fruit. "--St. Luke vi. 45. 

 6 The Father Superior of the Grey Friars was called the Warden. --B. J. 

 7 Henry Etienne quotes this story in his _Apologie pour Hérodote_, and praises the Queen for thus denouncing the evil practices of the friars. --F. 

"I pray you, ladies, consider, since this poor boatwoman had the wit todeceive two such evil men, what should be done by those who have readof and witnessed so many fair examples, and who have had the goodness ofvirtuous ladies ever before their eyes? Indeed, the virtue of well-bredwomen is not so much to be called virtue as habit. It is in the womenwho know nothing, who hear scarcely two good sermons during the wholeyear, who have no leisure to think of aught save the gaining of theirmiserable livelihood, and who nevertheless jealously guard theirchastity, hard-pressed as they may be (8)--it is in such women as thesethat one discovers the virtue that is natural to the heart. Whereman's wit and might are smallest, there the Spirit of God performs thegreatest work. And unhappy indeed is the lady who keeps not close wardover the treasure which brings her so much honour if it be well guarded, and so much shame if it be neglected. "

 8 Boaistuau's edition of 1558 here contains the following interpolation: "As should be done by those who, having their lives provided for, have no occupation save that of studying Holy Writ, listening to sermons and preaching, and exerting themselves to act virtuously in all things. "--L. 

"It seems to me, Geburon, " said Longarine, "that there is no greatvirtue in refusing a Grey Friar, and that it would rather be impossibleto love one. "

"Longarine, " replied Geburon, "they who are not accustomed to suchlovers as yours do by no means despise the Grey Friars, for the latterare as handsome and as strong as we are, and they are readier andfresher also, for we are worn-out with our service. Moreover, they talklike angels and are as importunate as the devil, so that such women ashave never seen other robes than their coarse drugget ones, (9) are trulyvirtuous when they escape out of their hands. "

 9 Meaning who have never seen gallants in gay apparel. --Ed. 

"In faith, " said Nomerfide, in a loud voice, "you may say what youlike, but I would rather be thrown into the river than lie with a GreyFriar. ''

"So you can swim well?" said Oisille, laughing. 

Nomerfide took this question in bad part, for she thought that shewas esteemed by Oisille less highly than she desired. Accordingly sheanswered in anger--

"There are some who have refused more agreeable men than Grey Friarswithout blowing a trumpet about it. "

Oisille laughed to see her so wrathful, and said to her--

"Still less do they beat a drum about what they have done and granted. "

"I see, " said Geburon, "that Nomerfide wishes to speak. I therefore giveher my vote that she may relieve her heart in telling us some excellentstory. "

"What has just been said, " replied Nomerfide, "touches me so littlethat it affords me neither pleasure nor pain. However, since I have yourvote, I pray you listen to me whilst I show that, although one womanused cunning for a good purpose, others have been crafty for evil'ssake. Since we have sworn to tell the truth I will not hide it, for justas the boatwoman's virtue brings no honour to other women unlessthey follow her example, so the vice of another cannot disgrace her. Wherefore, listen. "

[Illustration: 102. Jpg Tailpiece]

[Illustration: 103a. Jpg The Wife's Ruse to secure the Escape of herLover]

[The Wife's Ruse to secure the Escape of her Lover]

[Illustration: 103. Jpg Page Image]

_TALE VI_. 

 _An old one-eyed valet in the service of the Duke of Alençon being advised that his wife was in love with a young man, desired to know the truth, and feigned to go away into the country for a few days. He returned, however, so suddenly that his wife, on whom he was keeping watch, perceived how matters stood, and whilst thinking to deceive her, he was himself deceived_. 

There was in the service of Charles, last Duke of Alençon, an old valetwho had lost an eye, and who was married to a wife much younger thanhimself. Now, since his master and mistress liked him as well as any manof his condition that was in their service, he was not able to visit hiswife as often as he could have wished. Owing to this she so far forgother honour and conscience as to fall in love with a young man, and theaffair being at last noised abroad, the husband heard of it. He couldnot believe it, however, on account of the many notable tokens of lovethat were shown him by his wife. 

Nevertheless, he one day determined to put the matter to the test, andto take revenge, if he were able, on the woman who had put him to suchshame. For this purpose he pretended to go away to a place a shortdistance off for the space of two or three days. 

As soon as he was gone, his wife sent for her lover, but he had not beenwith her for half-an-hour when the husband arrived and knocked loudly atthe door. The wife well knew who it was and told her lover, who was sogreatly confounded that he would fain have been in his mother's womb, and cursed both his mistress and the love that had brought him into suchperil. However, she bade him fear nothing, for she would devise a meansto get him away without harm or shame to him, and she told him to dresshimself as quickly as he could. All this time the husband was knockingat the door and calling to his wife at the top of his voice; but shefeigned not to recognise him, and cried out to the people of the house--

"Why do you not get up and silence those who are making such a clamourat the door? Is this an hour to come to the houses of honest folk? If myhusband were here he would soon make them desist. "

On hearing his wife's voice the husband called to her as loudly as hecould--

"Wife, open the door. Are you going to keep me waiting here tillmorning?"

Then, when she saw that her lover was ready to set forth, she opened thedoor. 

"Oh, husband!" she began, "how glad I am that you are come. I have justhad a wonderful dream, and was so pleased that I never before knew suchdelight, for it seemed to me that you had recovered the sight of youreye. " (1)

 1 This is taken from No. Xvi. Of the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, in which the wife exclaims: "Verily, at the very moment when you knocked, my lord, I was greatly occupied with a dream about you. "--"And what was it, sweetheart?" asks the husband. --"By my faith, my lord, " replies the wife, "it really seemed to me that you were come back, that you were speaking to me, and that you saw as clearly with one eye as with the other. "--Ed. 

Then, embracing and kissing him, she took him by the head and coveringhis good eye with one hand, she asked him--

"Do you not see better than you did before?"

At that moment, whilst he saw not a whit, she made her lover sallyforth. The husband immediately suspected the trick, and said to her--

"'Fore God, wife, I will keep watch on you no more, for in thinking todeceive you, I have myself met with the cunningest deception that everwas devised. May God mend you, for it is beyond the power of man to puta stop to the maliciousness of a woman, unless by killing her outright. However, since the fair treatment I have accorded you has availednothing for your amendment, perchance the scorn I shall henceforwardhold you in will serve as a punishment. "

So saying he went away, leaving his wife in great distress. Neverthelessby the intercession of his friends and her own excuses and tears, he waspersuaded to return to her again. (2)

 2 Although Queen Margaret ascribes the foregoing adventure to one of the officers of her husband's household, and declares that the narrative is quite true, the same subject had been dealt with by most of the old story-tellers prior to her time, and Deslongchamps points out the same incidents even in the early Hindoo fables (see the _Pantcha Tantra_, book I. , fable vi. ). A similar tale is to be found in the _Gesta Romanorum_ (cap. Cxxii. ), in the _fabliaux_ collected by Legrand d'Aussy (vol. Iv. , "De la mauvaise femme"), in P. Alphonse's _Disciplina Clericalis_ (fab. Vii. ), in the _Decameron_ (day vii. , story vi. ), and in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ (story xvi. ). Imitations are also to be found in Bandello (part i. , story xxiii. ), Malespini (story xliv. ), Sansovino (_Cento Novelle_), Sabadino (_Novelle_), Etienne (_Apologiepour Hérodote_, ch. Xv. ), De la Monnoye (vol. Ii. ), D'Ouville (_Contes_, vol. Ii. ), &c. --L. & B. J. 

"By this tale, ladies, you may see how quick and crafty a woman is inescaping from danger. And if her wit be quick to discover the means ofconcealing a bad deed, it would, in my belief, be yet more subtle inavoiding evil or in doing good; for I have always heard it said that witto do well is ever the stronger. "

"You may talk of your cunning as much as you please, " said Hircan, "butmy opinion is that had the same fortune befallen you, you could not haveconcealed the truth. "

"I had as lief you deemed me the most foolish woman on earth, " shereplied. 

"I do not say that, " answered Hircan, "but I think you more likely to beconfounded by slander than to devise some cunning means to silence it. "

"You think, " said Nomerfide, "that every one is like you, who would useone slander for the patching of another; but there is danger lest thepatch impair what it patches and the foundation be so overladen thatall be destroyed. However, if you think that the subtlety, of which allbelieve you to be fully possessed, is greater than that found in women, I yield place to you to tell the seventh story; and, if you bringyourself forward as the hero, I doubt not that we shall hear wickednessenough. "

"I am not here, " replied Hircan, "to make myself out worse than I am;there are some who do that rather more than is to my liking. "

So saying he looked at his wife, who quickly said--

"Do not fear to tell the truth on my account. I can more easily bearto hear you relate your crafty tricks than to see them played before myeyes, though none of them could lessen the love I bear you. "

"For that reason, " replied Hircan, "I make no complaint of all the falseopinions you have had of me. And so, since we understand each other, there will be more security for the future. Yet I am not so foolish asto relate a story of myself, the truth of which might be vexatiousto you. I will tell you one of a gentleman who was among my dearestfriends. "

[Illustration: 108. Jpg Tailpiece]

[Illustration: 109. Jpg The Merchant transferring his Caresses from theDaughter to the Mother]

[The Merchant transferring his Caresses from the Daughter to the Mother]

[Illustration: 110. Jpg Page Image]

_TALE VII_. 

 _By the craft and subtlety of a merchant an old woman was deceived and the honour of her daughter saved_. 

In the city of Paris there lived a merchant who was in love with a younggirl of his neighbourhood, or, to speak more truly, she was more inlove with him than he with her. For the show he made to her of loveand devotion was but to conceal a loftier and more honourable passion. However, she suffered herself to be deceived, and loved him so much thatshe had quite forgotten the way to refuse. 

After the merchant had long taken trouble to go where he could see her, he at last made her come whithersoever it pleased himself. Her motherdiscovered this, and being a very virtuous woman, she forbade herdaughter ever to speak to the merchant on pain of being sent to anunnery. But the girl, whose love for the merchant was greater than herfear of her mother, went after him more than ever. 

It happened one day, when she was in a closet all alone, the merchantcame in to her, and finding himself in a place convenient for thepurpose, fell to conversing with her as privily as was possible. Buta maid-servant, who had seen him go in, ran and told the mother, whobetook herself thither in great wrath. When the girl heard her coming, she said, weeping, to the merchant--"Alas! sweetheart, the love that Ibear you will now cost me dear. Here comes my mother, who will know forcertain what she has always feared and suspected. "

The merchant, who was not a bit confused by this accident, straightwayleft the girl and went to meet the mother. Stretching out his arms, hehugged her with all his might, and, with the same ardour with which hehad begun to entertain the daughter, threw the poor old woman on to asmall bed. She was so taken aback at being thus treated that she couldfind nothing to say but--"What do you want? Are you dreaming?"

For all that he ceased not to press her as closely as if she had beenthe fairest maiden in the world, and had she not cried out so loudlythat her serving-men and women came to her aid, she would have gone bythe same road as she feared her daughter was treading. 

However, the servants dragged the poor old woman by main force out ofthe merchant's arms, and she never knew for what reason he had thusused her. Meanwhile, her daughter took refuge in a house hard by wherea wedding was going on. Since then she and the merchant have ofttimeslaughed together at the expense of the old woman, who was never any thewiser. 

"By this story, ladies, you may see how, by the subtlety of a man, anold woman was deceived and the honour of a young one saved. Any onewho would give the names, or had seen the merchant's face and theconsternation of the old woman, would have a very tender conscienceto hold from laughing. It is sufficient for me to prove to you by thisstory that a man's wit is as prompt and as helpful at a pinch as awoman's, and thus to show you, ladies, that you need not fear to fallinto men's hands. If your own wit should fail you, you will find theirsprepared to shield your honour. "

"In truth, Hircan, " said Longarine, "I grant that the tale is a verypleasant one and the wit great, but the example is not such as maidsshould follow. I readily believe there are some whom you would fain haveapprove it, but you are not so foolish as to wish that your wife, orher whose honour you set higher than her pleasure, (1) should play sucha game. I believe there is none who would watch them more closely orshield them more readily than you. "

 1 M. Frank, adopting the generally received opinion that Hircan is King Henry of Navarre, believes this to be an allusion to one of the King's sisters--Ann, who married the Count of Estrac, or Isabel, who married M. De Rohan--but it is more likely that Henry's daughter, Jane d'Albret, is the person referred to. --Ed. 

"By my conscience, " said Hircan, "if she whom you mention had done sucha thing, and I knew nothing about it, I should think none the less ofher. For all I know, some one may have played as good a trick on me;however, knowing nothing, I am unconcerned. "

At this Parlamente could not refrain from saying--

"A wicked man cannot but be suspicious; happy are those who give nooccasion for suspicion. "

"I have never seen a great fire from which there came no smoke, " saidLongarine, "but I have often seen smoke where there was no fire. Thewicked are as suspicious when there is no mischief as when there is. "

"Truly, Longarine, " Hircan forthwith rejoined, "you have spoken so wellin support of the honour of ladies wrongfully suspected, that I give youmy vote to tell the eighth tale. I hope, however, that you will not makeus weep, as Madame Oisille did, by too much praise of virtuous women. "

At this Longarine laughed heartily, and thus began:--"You want me tomake you laugh, as is my wont, but it shall not be at women's expense. I will show you, however, how easy it is to deceive them when they areinclined to be jealous and esteem themselves clever enough to deceivetheir husbands. "

[Illustration: 113. Jpg Tailpiece]

APPENDIX. 

A. (Prologue, Page 31. )

The dedication with which Anthony Le Maçon prefaces his translation ofBoccaccio contains several curious passages. In it Margaret is styled"the most high and most illustrious Princess Margaret of France, onlysister of the King, Queen of Navarre, Duchess of Alençon and of Berry;"while the author describes himself as "Master Anthoine Le Maçon, Councillor of the King, Receiver General of his finances in Burgundy, and very humble secretary to this Queen. " He then proceeds to say:--

"You remember, my lady, the time when you made a stay of four or fivemonths in Paris, during which you commanded me, seeing that I hadfreshly arrived from Florence, where I had sojourned during an entireyear, to read to you certain stories of the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, after which it pleased you to command me to translate the whole bookinto our French language, assuring me that it would be found beautifuland entertaining. I then made you reply that I felt my powers weretoo weak to undertake such a work. . . . My principal and most reasonableexcuse was the knowledge that I had of myself, being a native of theland of Dauphiné, where the maternal language is too far removed fromgood French. . . . However, it did not please you to accept any of myexcuses, and you showed me that it was not fitting that the Tuscansshould be so mistaken as to believe that their Boccaccio could not berendered in our language as well as it is in theirs, ours having becomeso rich and so copious since the accession of the King, your brother, tothe crown, that nothing has ever been written in any language that couldnot be expressed in this; and thus your will still was that I shouldtranslate it (the _Decameron_) when I had the leisure to do so. Seeingthis and desiring, throughout my life, to do, if I can, even more thanis possible to obey you, I began some time afterwards to translate oneof the said stories, then two, then three, and finally to the number often or twelve, the best that I could choose, which I afterwards showedas much to people of the Tuscan nation as to people of ours, who allmade me believe that the stories were, if not perfectly, at least veryfaithfully translated. Wherefore, allowing myself to be thus pleasantlydeceived, if deceit there was, I have since set myself to begin thetranslation at one end and to finish it at the other. . . . "

This dedicatory preface is followed by an epistle, written in Italian byEmilio Ferretti, and dated from Lyons, May I, 1545; and by a notice tothe reader signed by Etienne Rosset, the bookseller, who in the King'slicense, dated from St. Germain-en-Laye, Nov. 2, 1544, is described as"Rosset called the Mower, bookseller, residing in Paris, on the bridgeof St. Michael, at the sign of the White Rose. " The first edition of LeMaçon's translation (1545) was in folio; the subsequent ones of 1548, 1551, and 1553 being in octavo. It should be remembered that Le Maçon'swas by no means the first French version of the _Decameron_. Laurent duPremier-Faict had already rendered Boccaccio's masterpiece into Frenchin the reign of Charles VI. , but unfortunately his translation, althoughof a pleasing naïveté, was not at all correct, having been made froma Latin version of the original. Manuscript copies of Laurent'stranslation were to be found in the royal and most of the princelylibraries of the fifteenth century. --Ed. 

B. (Tale I. , Page 50. )

The letters of remission which at the instance of Henry VIII. Weregranted to Michael de St. Aignan in respect of the murder of James duMesnil are preserved in the National Archives of France (RegisterJ. 234, No. 191), and after the usual preamble, recite the culprit'spetition in these terms:--

"Whereas it appears from the prayer of Michael de St. Aignan, lord ofthe said place, (1) that heretofore he for a long time lived and residedin the town of Alençon in honour and good repute; but, to the detrimentof his prosperity, life, and conduct there were divers evil-minded andenvious persons who by sinister, cunning, and hidden means persecutedhim with all the evils, wiles, and deceits that it is possible toconceive, albeit the said suppliant had never caused them displeasure, injury, or detriment; among others, one named James Dumesnil, a youngman, to whom the said suppliant had procured all the pleasure andadvantages that were in his power, and whom he had customarily admittedto his house, thinking that the said Dumesnil was his loyal friend, andcharging his wife and his servants to treat him when he came as thoughhe were his brother; by which means St. Aignan hoped to induce the saidDumesnil to espouse one of his relatives. 

 1 This was in all probability the village of St. Aignan on the Sarthe, between Moulins-la-Marche and Bazoches, and about twenty miles from Alençon. The personage here mentioned should not be confounded with Emery de Beauvilliers, whom Francis I. Created Count of St. Aignan (on the Cher), and whose descendants, many of whom were distinguished generals and diplomatists, became dukes of the same place. --Ed. 

"But Dumesnil ill-requited the aforesaid good services and courtesies, and rendering evil for good, as is the practice of iniquity, endeavouredto and did cause an estrangement between the said St. Aignan andhis wife, who had always lived together in good, great, and perfectaffection. And the better to effect his purpose he (Dumesnil) gave thesaid wife to understand, among other things, that St. Aignan bore herno affection; that he daily desired her death; that she was mistaken intrusting him; and other evil things not fitting to be repeated, whichthe wife withstood, enjoining Dumesnil not to use such language again, as should he do so she would repeat it to her husband; but Dumesnil, persevering, on divers occasions when St. Aignan had absented himself, gave the wife of the latter to understand that he (St. Aignan) was dead, devising proofs thereof and conjectures, and thinking that by this meanshe would win her favour and countenance. But she still resisted him, which seeing, the said Dumesnil gave her to understand that St. Aignanwould often absent himself, and that she would be happier if she had ahusband who remained with her. And plotting to compass the death ofthe said St. Aignan, Dumesnil gave her to understand that if she wouldconsent to the death of her husband he would marry her; and, in fact, he promised to marry her. And whereas she still refused to consent, thesaid Dumesnil found a means to gain a servant woman of the house, who, St. Aignan being absent and his wife in bed, opened the door toDumesnil, who compelled the said wife to let him lie with her. Andthenceforward Dumesnil made divers presents to the servant woman, sothat she should poison the said suppliant; and she consented to hisface; but at Easter confessed the matter to St. Aignan, entreating hisforgiveness, and also saying and declaring it to the neighbours. Andthe said Dumesnil, knowing that he would incur blame and reproach if thematter were brought forward, seized and abducted the said servant womanin all diligence, and took her away from the town, whereby a scandal wasoccasioned. 

"Moreover, it would appear that the said Dumesnil had been found severaltimes by night watching the gardens and the door in view of slaying St. Aignan, as is notorious in Alençon, by virtue of the admission of thesaid Dumesnil himself. Whereupon St. Aignan, seeing his wife thus madethe subject of scandal by Dumesnil, enjoined him to abstain from comingto his house to see his wife, and to consider the outrage and injury hehad already inflicted upon him; declaring moreover that he could endureno more. To which Dumesnil refused to listen, declaring that he wouldfrequent the house in spite of every one; albeit, in doing so, he mightcome by his death. Thereupon St. Aignan, being acquainted with theevil obstinacy of Dumesnil and desirous of avoiding greater misfortune, departed from the town of Alençon, and went to reside in the town ofArgentan, ten leagues distant, whither he took his wife, thinking thatDumesnil would abstain from coming. Withal he did not abstain, but cameseveral times to the said town of Argentan, and frequented his (St. Aignan's) wife; whereby the people of Argentan were scandalised. And thesaid St. Aignan endeavoured to prevent him from coming, and employedthe nurse of his child to remonstrate with Dumesnil, but the latterpersevered, saying and declaring that he would kill St. Aignan, andwould still go to Argentan, albeit it might cause his death. Insomuchthat the said Dumesnil, on the eighth day of this month, departed fromAlençon between two and three o'clock in the morning, a suspicious hour, having disguised himself and assumed attire unsuited to his calling, which is that of the law; wearing a Bearnese cloak, (2) a jacket of whitewoollen stuff underneath, all torn into strips, with a feathered capupon his head, and having his face covered. In this wise he arrived atthe said town of Argentan, accompanied by two young men, and lodgedin the faubourgs at the sign of Notre Dame, and remained thereclandestinely from noon till about eleven o'clock in the evening, whenhe asked the host for the key of the backdoor, so that he might go outon his private affairs, not wishing to be recognised. 

"At the said suspicious hour, with his sword at his side, (3) and dressedand accoutred in the said garments, he started from his lodging with oneof the said young men. 

 2 See _ante_, p. 24, note 8. 

 3 The French word is _basion_, which in the sixteenth century was often used to imply a sword; arquebuses and musketoons being termed _basions à feu_ by way of distinction. Moreover, it is expressly stated farther on that Dumesnil had a sword. --Ed. 

"In this wise Dumesnil reached the house of St. Aignan, which he found ameans of entering, and gained a closet up above, near the room where thesaid St. Aignan and his wife slept. St. Aignan was without thoughtof this, inasmuch as he was ignorant of the enterprise of the saidDumesnil, being in the living room with one Master Thomas Guérin, whohad come upon business. Now, as St. Aignan was disposing himself to goto bed, he told one of his servants, named Colas, to bring him his _cas_(4) and the servant having occasion to go up into a closet in whichSt. Aignan's wife was sleeping, and in which the said Dumesnil wasconcealed, the latter, fearing that he might be recognised, suddenlycame out with a drawn sword in his hand; whereupon the said Colas cried:'Help! There is a robber!' And he declared to St. Aignan that he hadseen a strange man who did not seem to be there for any good purpose;whereupon St. Aignan said to him: 'One must find out who it is. Is thereoccasion for any one to come here at this hour?' Thereupon Colas wentafter the said personage, whom he found in a little alley near thecourtyard behind the house; and the said personage, having suddenlyperceived Colas, endeavoured to strike him on the body with his weapon;but Colas withstood him and gave him a few blows, (5) for which reason hecried out 'Help! Murder!' Thereupon St. Aignan arrived, having a swordin his hand; and after him came the said Guérin. St. Aignan, who as yetdid not know Dumesnil on account of his disguise, and also because itwas wonderfully dark, found him calling out: 'Murder! Confession!'By which cry the said St. Aignan knew him, and was greatly perplexed, astonished, and angered, at seeing his enemy at such an hour in hishouse, he having been found there, with a weapon, in the closet. And thesaid St. Aignan recalling to memory the trouble and worry that Dumesnilhad caused him, dealt him two or three thrusts in hot anger, and thensaid to him: 'Hey! Wretch that thou art, what hast brought thee here?Wert thou not content with the wrong thou didst me in coming herepreviously? I never did thee an ill office. ' Whereupon the said Dumesnilsaid: 'It is true, I have too grievously offended you, and am toowicked; I entreat your pardon. ' And thereupon he fell to the ground asif dead; which seeing, the said St. Aignan, realising the misfortunethat had happened, said not a word, but recommended himself to God andwithdrew into his room, where he found his wife in bed, she having heardnothing. 

 4 The _en cas_ was a kind of light supper provided _in case_ one felt hungry at night-time. Most elaborate _en cas_, consisting of several dishes, were frequently provided for the kings of France. --Ed. 

 5 In the story Margaret asserts that it was Thomas Guérin who attacked Dumesnil. --D. 

"On the night of the said dispute, and a little later, St. Aignanwent to see what the said Dumesnil was doing, and finding him in thecourtyard dead, he helped to carry him into the stable, being toogreatly incensed to act otherwise. And upon the said Colas asking himwhat should be done with the body, St. Aignan paid no heed to thisquestion, because he was not master of himself; but merely said to Colasthat he might do as he thought fit, and that the body might be interredin consecrated ground or placed in the street. After which St. Aignanwithdrew into his room and slept with his wife, who had her maids withher. And on the morrow this same Colas declared to St. Aignan that hehad taken the said body to be buried, so as to avoid a scandal. To allof which things St. Aignan paid no heed, but on the morrow sent to fetchthe two young men in the service of the said Dumesnil, who were at hislodging, and had the horses removed from the said lodging, and gaveorders to one of the young men to take them back. 

"On account of all which occurrences he (St. Aignan) absented himself, &c, &c, but humbly entreating us, &c, &c. Wherefore we now give to theBailiffs of Chartres and Caen, or to their Lieutenants, and to each ofthem severally and to all, &c, &c. Given at Châtelherault, in the monthof July, the year of Grace, one thousand five hundred and twenty-six, and the twelfth of our reign. 

"_Signed: By the King on the report of the Council_:

"De Nogent. "_Visa: contentor_. 

"De Nogent. "

 It will be seen that the foregoing petition contains various contradictory statements. The closet, for instance, is at first described as being near the room in which St. Aignan and his wife slept, then it is asserted that the wife slept in the closet, but ultimately the husband is shown joining his wife in the bed-chamber, where she had heard nothing. The character of the narrative is proof of its falsity, and Margaret's account of the affair may readily be accepted as the more correct one. --Ed. 

C. (Tale IV. , Page 85. )

_Les Vies des Dames galantes_ contains the following passage bearingupon Margaret's 4th Tale. See Lalanne's edition of Brantôme's Works, vol. Ix. P. 678 _et sec_. :--

"I have heard a lady of great and ancient rank relate that the lateCardinal du Bellay, whilst a Bishop and Cardinal, married Madame deChastillon, and died married; and this lady said it in conversing withMonsieur de Manne, a Provençal of the house of Seulal, and Bishop ofFrejus, who had attended the said Cardinal during fifteen years atthe Court of Rome, and had been one of his private protonotaries. Theconversation turning upon the said Cardinal, this lady asked Monsieurde Manne if he (the Cardinal) had ever said and confessed to him that hehad been married. It was Monsieur de Manne who was astonished at such aquestion. He is still alive and can say if I am telling an untruth, forI was there. He replied that he had never heard the matter spoken ofeither to himself or to others. 'Then it is I who inform you of it, 'said she, 'for nothing could be more true but that he was married, anddied really married to Madame de Chastillon. '

"I assure you that I laughed heartily, contemplating the astonishedcountenance of Monsieur de Manne, who was most conscientious andreligious, and thought that he had known all the secrets of his latemaster; but he was as ignorant as a Gibuan as regards that one, whichwas indeed scandalous on account of the holy rank which he (Cardinal duBellay) had held. 

"This Madame de Chastillon was the widow of the late Monsieur deChastillon, of whom it was said that he governed the little King CharlesVIII. , with Bourdillon and Bonneval, who governed the royal blood. Hedied at Ferrara, where he had been taken to have his wounds dressed, having been wounded at the siege of Ravenna. 

"This lady became a widow when very young and beautiful, and on accountof her being sensible and virtuous she was elected as lady of honour tothe late Queen of Navarre. It was she who gave that fine advice to thatlady and great princess, which is recorded in the hundred stories of thesaid Queen--the story of herself and a gentleman who had slipped intoher bed during the night by a trap-door at the bedside, and who wishedto enjoy her, but only obtained by it some fine scratches upon hishandsome face. She (the Queen) wishing to complain to her brother, Madame de Chastillon made her that fine remonstrance which will be seenin the story, and gave her that beautiful advice which is one of thefinest, most judicious, and most fitting that could be given to avoidscandal: did it come even from a first president of (the Parliament of)Paris. Yet it well showed that the lady was quite as artful and shrewdin such secret matters as she was sensible and prudent; and for thisreason there is no need for doubt as to whether she kept her affair withthe Cardinal a secret. My grandmother, Madame la Sénéchale of Poitou, had her place after her death, by election of King Francis who chose andelected her, and sent to fetch her even in her house, and gave herwith his own hand to the Queen his sister, for he knew her to be a verywell-advised and very virtuous lady, but not so shrewd, or artful, orready-witted in such matters as her predecessor, or married either asecond time. 

"And if you wish to know to whom the story applies, it is to the Queenof Navarre herself and Admiral de Bonnivet, as I hold it from my lategrandmother; and yet it seems to me that the said Queen should not haveconcealed her name, since the other could not obtain aught from herchastity, but went off in confusion, and since she herself had meantto divulge the matter had it not been for the fine and sensibleremonstrance which was made to her by the said lady of honour, Madame deChastillon. Whoever has read the story will find that she was a lady ofhonour, and I think that the Cardinal, her said husband, who was one ofthe best speakers and most learned, eloquent, wise, and shrewd men ofhis time, must have instilled into her this science of speaking andremonstrating so well. "

Brantôme also refers to the story in question in his _Vies des Hommesillustres et grands Capitaines français_ (vol. Ii. P. 162), wherein hesays:--

"There is a tale in the stories of the Queen of Navarre, which speaks ofa lord, the favourite of a king, whom he invited with all his court toone of his houses, where he made a trap-door in his room conducting tothe bedside of a great princess, in view of lying with her, as he did, but, as the story relates, he obtained only scratches from her. "

END OF VOL. I. 

LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILISTS