on the king's service she still communicates with him through Montmorency-ever the confidant of her joys and cares-the details of her heart and home. Embracing a period of which two great events were the war in Italy and the progress of Protestantism, her letters necessarily allude to both: but in the absence of the absorbing interest they find in her brother's capture, treat chiefly of the passing occurrences of the day:-her marvel that the Seigneur de Chateaubriant should "user de main mise, or in other terms, beat his wife, then the mistress of King Francis; the election of the Bishop of Senlis, who afterwards defended her own work before the Sorbonne; her mother's health, and her anxiety for her correspondent's:-and, saving the few epistles addressed to the Bishop of Meaux, they are easy in their style as friendly in their spirit. Sometimes playful, as when she writes from Fontainebleau: "Madame has left me here in care of part of her furniture. I mean her parrot and her fools" (there were female as well as male court fools), "which as it pleasures her, likes me well:" earnest when she pleads, as in the letters to Montmorency, praying him to protect the reformers Berquin and Roussel, and to defray the debts of the poet Marot: deeply pathetic when her sun had set with the reign of Francis, and she is lone and weary, having, as she writes, " borne more than her share of the sorrow common to all well-born creatures." They have no literary pretension; show no pride of rank, no personal vanity; their tone is humble, when she is prosperous; resigned, when her own hopes and feelings are offered victims to some unworthy fear or selfish policy. Eloquent when Francis is her subject, the most attractive of these letters concern his welfare, or are written from his side. There is a sincerity in her admiration, a timidity in her fondness, which wake sympathy for a spirit at once so strong and gentle. Interfering in political affairs only to serve him, seldom putting herself forward save to bring merit to light, or to stand between a punishment and its victim, we see her recommend to Montmorency" an indigent son of a faithful servant;" ask aid and forgiveness for some one "who hath been faulty and is amended;" propose, to fill vacant posts, men of merit, and "faithful in the king's service:" but throughout her correspondence hold aloof from court intrigue. Only once, when Francis had himself alluded to his suspicions of the Duchess of Etampes' treachery, she touches on the subject, but distantly and with deference; and the interests she advocates, saving in the one instance when the pension necessary to her existence was withdrawn after her brother's death, are never her own. Margaret of Angoulême, sister of Francis the First, duchess of Alençon and Queen of Navarre, imperfectly known has been unfairly judged by her biographers: rather on the authority of Brantome (the first who calumniated her, and whose free pen and unbridled imagination spared none), and as the mere author of the Nouvelles de la Reine de Navarre, than on that of her contemporaries, or by her life and actions. These all show her devoted and single-hearted, protecting the arts and sheltering the persecuted. While she lived, indeed, no shadow of suspicion rested on her; and M. Genin fairly remarks that fear and respect would have failed to impose silence on those whom neither withheld, when she lay under the more serious imputation of heresy. In a letter addressed to her, and inserted in this collection, Erasmus, no mean authority, praises "her prudence worthy a philosopher, her chastity, her piety, her moderation, her invincible strength of mind, her marvellous contempt for the vanities of the world." As to the "Nouvelles," on which her equivocal reputation is based, we cannot with Monsieur Nodier ascribe to them another author; having had, for witness of their composition, the Seneschale of Poictou, Brantome's grandmother," who went ever along with her in her litter, being her lady of honour, and held the inkhorn whence she wrote as she composed these tales: the greater part thus travelling through the country: as, being arrived, she had graver occupations," and who told this to her grandson: but we may remark, that, left uncompleted when she died, the style changed by her editors is not her own; and the tone may be a little excused by the time in which that of the very preachers was as free: the more so, as while she allowed herself to portray the licentious manners of court and city with their coarse and congenial colouring-having resolved, as she says herself, to imitate Boccacio, save on one point, which is "to set down nought untrue" she seldom failed to inculcate a moral. She was born at Angoulême, the 11th of April 1492; daughter of that Louisa of Savoy whose prudence as Regent preserved France, whose avarice and falsehood sacrificed Samblançay, and whose woman's passion and wounded vanity persecuted the Constable de Bourbon for rejecting her tardy love, till she rendered him a traitor. It has been asserted that attachment to Margaret was the chief reason for his refusal of the Duchess of Angoulême; and the Constable's love admits of no doubt: but by her it never was returned. For himself, he was a man of proud and inflexible spirit, who would owe advancement to his merit only, and rejected a road to fortune, opened to him by an unsought marriage, as at once odious and ignoble. Severely educated, already remarkable at fifteen for serious tastes and rare talents, Margaret had all kinds of masters, and became a proficient in polite, or, as they were then called, profane letters. Theology her favourite study; a Greek, Hebrew, and Latin scholar; she had the lively wit and womanly grace which made her superiority more admirable in the eyes of some, while it induced others to forget and pardon it. At seventeen years of age, her alliance having been sought by Charles the Fifth, and refused by Francis, from what motive is unknown, -she was retired in her duchy and town of Alençon; married to its last prince by some strange policy which gave her to a man who had neither personal nor moral recommendation: so null indeed as to have passed unnamed in history, but that at the passage of the Scheldt he was made an instrument to insult Bourbon; and by his cowardice at Pavia contributed to the loss of the battle, and the capture of the king. Between the year 1509, when she married, and 1515, when on the accession of Francis she first appeared at court, there is little known of Margaret's life: mostly spent, as it was, in study and retirement at Alençon. Her correspondence with Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, of which the volume before us contains a few short letters, commenced in 1521. He was a celebrated man: as having been excommunicated by one Pope, and rehabilitated by another; and having adopted, like his father, the priestly robe when weary of secular enjoyment. When the reformed opinions first made way in France, the Bishop, then in his diocese of Meaux, received there its most celebrated promulgators: among them were Farel and Lefebvre d'Etaples: even Calvin. It is said that he strove to reconcile them to the Church; he certainly was accused of heresy. We forbear to quote from this correspondence. The epistolary style of the Bishop of Meaux is so loaded with metaphors which mask the sense, so unintelligible in its flights, that the most curious reader will hardly refer from the extracts given in notes by Monsieur Genin to the letters themselves: varying from fifty to a hundred pages in length, and fairly copied in a voluminous manuscript in the royal library. Margaret, whose strong good sense and simplicity of style seem to have been for a while misled by this strange model, strives vainly to equal her master. She is still far distant in obscurity of sense and ridiculousness of manner: even though she learns to call God "the only needful;" and writes to the Bishop, of whom, though younger, she calls herself the mother, and who had inculcated a mysticism strangely material, "So act, that your old mother, grown old in her first skin, may by this gentle and ravishing word of life renew her old skin, and be so repolished, rerounded, and whitened, that she may belong to the Only Needful." The Court of Francis the First. 129 When Margaret arrived at her brother's court, the power she was to share henceforth vested in the hands of the Duchess of Angoulême, while the royal favour centred like a glory on the fair head of the Countess of Chateaubriant. Queen Claude possessed neither. She was a patient and saintly creature; born to bear the indifference of her husband, and the imperious treatment of her mother-in-law. She claimed nothing; regretted nothing, at least apparently; served God, assisted the unhappy, injured no one. She had no beauty, save in the expression of goodness so visible in all her features; but a slight lameness, as well as an indifferent figure. Her mother, Anne de Bretagne, had objected to her union with Francis, fearing his neglect and her unhappiness. Married after the death of Anne, she wore mourning at her nuptials by the king's will, and in token of his sorrow. It was a presage of her after life, which had little to break its melancholy for she neither won affection nor possessed authority; and died at four-and-twenty. Her confessor said she had never committed a mortal sin; and after her decease, she was prayed to as a saint. One notable lady, long afflicted with fever, implored her intercession in this new capacity, and Bourdigné asserts that she obtained it. "She was esteemed," says Jean Bouchet, an author of the time, "the pearl and flower of the ladies of her country; a mirror of modesty, innocence, and sanctity; most courteous and charitable; loved by each, and herself loving all, and striving to do good to all; and having care only to serve God and pleasure the king." : Between this pale and gentle form, and that of the brilliant Countess de Chateaubriant, Margaret found her place ready. "There never was," say her historians, "friendship so just, so mutual, so faithful, as that between herself and Francis. They had the same love of letters and the arts; the same desire to please and power of pleasing. The nation looked on them as models as well' as masters." He had named her "Marguerite des Marguerites:" but while Margaret's attachment remained unchanged, and throughout her life sustained its frank and noble nature, that of the king was shaded by egotism; and whenever a political doubt could arise, he forgot that above all she looked upon him as a brother, Clement Marot was at this period an ornament of the French court. Presented to the duchess on the part of her brother, he obtained a place in her household. The poet was at the time three-and-twenty, the princess three years older. He had a gay spirit beneath a grave exterior; a disposition imprudent and generous; charm of manner as well as genius; and could lay VOL. XXX. NO. LIX. K down the student to take up the soldier. But he attacked ecclesiastical abuses too openly and carelessly, and often needed the royal protection. Wounded at Pavia, where as in other actions he had behaved gallantly, on his arrival in France he was charged with heresy and cast into prison. Here he remained till the king's return. Laharpe, and Marot's commentators, style him a lover and a favoured one of Margaret. Monsieur Genin agrees with the Abbé Goujet in treating these loves as imaginary. It is true that she is the subject which inspires many of his amatory poems; but in his day, this was no unwarrantable freedom, nor on Margaret's part was it a breach of decorum to reply. She did so to other epistles couched in similar strain, but wanting the claim to notice due to the talent of Marot. The proofs of her attachment are mostly deduced from that correspondence: kept up so unceasingly, but at the same time so openly, as on the part of a woman of strong feeling would rather prove it unawakened. Margaret was no poet; her verses are mere prose marred by rhyme; cold and laboured, they want the diffidence of passion and have nothing of its depth. The correspondence was, perhaps on Marot's part, more probably on that of the princess, a mere poetical fiction, an unmeaning reminiscence of the old chivalric times. The battle of Pavia was fought on the 25th of February, 1525. The poet had followed his master thither; the Duke of Alençon, Margaret's unworthy husband, held an important command, and decided the day by his misconduct. The French troops, shaken, were yet unconquered; when the duke, instead of bringing up the left wing (which was still fresh, not having been engaged) to the monarch's succour, commanded in his panic that the retreat should sound-determining the rout and the king's capture and continued his own flight to Lyons. The news reached Paris on the 7th of March, and brought with it grief and terror. The town-gates remained closed during the night, with the exception of five, which were strongly guarded. It was commanded that lanterns should be kept lighted throughout the city, and that no boat should traverse the Seine. The holy remains of St. Denis lay exposed on the altar. Arriving at Lyons, the unfortunate duke had found there the Duchess of Angoulême and Margaret. Loaded with their reproaches, and his own shame, he fell ill of fever; and having languished for some weeks, died. We hear little of the regret We hear little of the regret which Margaret could scarcely feel for one so far her inferior; and which her frank nature forbore to feign. She aided her mother to rule the kingdom and gain over the nobles. Had the Regent lacked |