beneath. This is not
the sincere expression of the sorrow Villon knew; for we can easily
imagine the unhappy Valentina's fate from our knowledge of her
husband, one of the hell-hounds of Catherine de Medicis, who was
foremost in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. This is not the old
longing of the lover for his mistress:--

Mort, j'appelle de ta rigueur,
Qui m'as ma maistresse ravie,
Et n'est pas encore assouvie
Si tu ne me tiens en langueur.
Onc puis n'euz force ne vigneur;
Mais que te nuysoit-elle en vie
Mort?

Deux estions, et n'avions qu'ung cueur;
S'il est mort, force est que devie,
Voire, ou que je vive sans vie,
Comme les images, par cueur,
Mort!

[Footnote 64: This has been admirably described in Mrs Mark Pattison's
volumes on the "Renaissance of Art in France," though the authoress
refuses to admit that Michelet's view of Pilon's motive is correct.
But in Vol. I. compare pp. 236 and 21.]

It is the changed note of Ronsard's passionate regret that every
lovely feature must be marred by Death:--

"Pour qui gardes-tu tes yeux
Et ton sein delicieux
Ta joue et ta bouche belle
En veux-tu baiser Platon
La-bas apres que Charon
T'aura mise en sa nacelle?"

The work of Germain Pilon at the Louvre, and of the sculptor of the
dead de Breze in Rouen Cathedral, whether that were Pilon himself, or
Jean Cousin, or Goujon, has none of the gentle regret that reverences
what it has once loved in life. There is in it all the fierce desire
for personified destruction, all the hideous mockery of the rich man
levelled with the poorest in a common corruption, which inspired the
"Danse Macabre"; but the sculptor's thought is expressed with the
subtle handicraft of a supersensitive age, with a fury of achievement
and a triumph over technical difficulties that is the very essence of
the best French Renaissance. In the same spirit Ronsard continues his
relentless comparison of the dead woman with the living mistress:--

"Ton teste n'aura plus de peau
Ny ton visaige tant beau
N'aura veines ny arteres
Tu n'auras plus que des dents
Telles qu'on les voit dedans
Les testes des cimeteres."

This complicated mental attitude had evidently not been reached when
Rouland Leroux carved the great mausoleum for Cardinal d'Amboise,
which is on the south side of this chapel, or if it had be