classic
authors of Rome, and could turn off as neat Latin verses as any boy in
the schools, and could also write French verse. It was most fortunate
for her that her father, "not thinking girls any more unfit for learning
than boys," allowed her to "glean some straws of learning." Before she
was fifteen Christine was married to a notary, Etienne Castel, a Picard
gentleman of good birth and excellent character, whom she loved
tenderly.

The prosperity of her family was first threatened in 1380, when her good
patron King Charles died. Then her father, who had lavishly expended a
large part of the handsome stipend he received as astrologer, found
himself suddenly reduced almost to poverty, and he did not long survive
his royal patron. The earnings of her husband not being sufficient to
maintain the family, Christine cast about for a means to put to use the
education she had received, and had already begun, by some small works,
her career as an authoress, when the sudden death of her husband,
carried off by the plague in 1389, left her alone and without resources,
and under the necessity of providing some sort of support for her mother
and her three children.

She never ceased to mourn for her husband, and the pages of her works
are filled with poems which, like the little _ballade_ that heads this
chapter, hold tender allusion to her loss. Though to modern ears the
perpetual repetition of this strain of mourning grows monotonous, some
of the sweetest of her poems are those inspired by this sentiment,
expressed with a directness and a simplicity that must appeal to any
lover of truth and poetry. "He loved me," she sings, "and 'twas right
that he should, for I had come to him as a girl-bride; we two had made
such wise provision in all our love that our two hearts were moved in
all things, whether of joy or of sorrow, by a common wish, more united
in love than the hearts of brother and sister."

She too might have wished to die, she says, in order to follow the loved
one, but that there were the children and the mother whom she alone
could care for. The energy of her character at last saved the fortunes
of her family. Her first task, the saving of some last remnants of the
property of her father and her husband, was rendered more difficult by
the almost interminable delays of the courts and the dishonesty of
advocates and opponents who had more influence with the "blind goddess"
than the daughter of the old astrologer. Sh