dition of her adopted country, had no thought of France in this case;
for the little _ballade_ was composed by Christine de Pisan with no
other reference than to her own life.

The age of the mad king and the bad queen would not have been, one would
think, favorable to the advancement of literature; and yet some of the
best literature of medieval France was composed while Isabeau de Baviere
was still alive. We shall allude at this time to but two writers,
Froissart, of whom we have already said something, and Christine de
Pisan, both of whom were writing between 1380 and 1400. Christine, the
first professional authoress in France of whose life we have record, is
well worthy of study both as an authoress and as a woman.

The fourteenth century was the heyday of the astrologer as it was of the
witch, and the wise Charles V., "le Salomon de la France," was not alone
in his superstition when he placed his reliance upon the predictions of
the learned doctor, Thomas of Pisa, whom he had summoned from Italy to
be court astrologer. We are told that the nobles and great ones of the
earth at that time "dared do nothing new without the commands of
astrology; they dared neither build castles, nor churches, nor begin
war, nor even so much as put on a new robe, undertake a journey, nor go
out of their houses without the consent of the stars." Whether or not
this be somewhat of an exaggeration, there is no question that Thomas de
Pisan occupied, at the court of Charles V., a position not only
lucrative but dignified. Established in the Louvre itself, the Italian
scholar sent for his wife and daughter to make their home in France. The
daughter, then (1368) but five years of age, was already a precocious
little lady, and was presented to the king when she arrived in France.
Charles was pleased with the graces of the child, and made her his
especial protegee, promising that she should have as good an education
and place at his court as any _demoiselle_ of noble birth. Charles was
himself a scholar and capable of appreciating the nobility of
intelligence; and in this case he had not judged amiss.

It is from the works of Christine herself--_La Vision de Christine_, in
prose, _La Mutation de Fortune_, and _Le Chemin de Long Estude_,--in
verse that we learn most of her story, which was happy and uneventful up
to her fourteenth year. At this time she had already acquired, under her
father's careful tuition, a remarkable familiarity with the