e herself gives an
interesting picture of her difficulties, all bravely met for the sake of
her children, and in time overcome. Not the least of her worries was the
determination to conceal from her friends the desperate state of her
fortunes; she was too proud to appear poor: "There is no sorrow equal to
this, and no one who has not experienced it can know what it means....
Under a furred mantle and a cloak of scarlet, well saved, but not often
renewed, there was many a shiver, and in a bed properly appointed with
all things of comfort, many a sleepless night. But our meal was always a
simple one, as befits a widow."

But from the more sordid cares, the covering of her poverty under
threadbare finery that did not keep out the cold, and the vulgar
loungers who would ogle her and leer at her as she went about the
courts, there was a refuge in the pursuits which were to earn her bread.
At first Christine sang of her lost husband, and the grace and
earnestness of these poems pleased the fashionable public of the day.
Her style was the result of long and careful preparation, and her mind
almost unconsciously reflected the things which she had read and admired
in classic literature; and thus she transmitted to her readers much
information, not in itself new or original, but strange to them, and
therefore interesting. Some of the great personages of the court still
remembered the little Italian protegee of Charles V., and asked her to
write for them poems of love, in less lugubrious vein. We have seen that
the troubadours thought it almost a truism: "Without love, no poesy,"
for love was their only theme; but here we find a woman who frankly
admits that she has loved and loves no more, and who yet undertakes to
write love poems for a price, and does write some exquisite ones. Poetry
made to order can never seem spontaneous after we know that the poet has
found inspiration not at the shrine of Phoebus but at that of Plutus;
but many of the poetic masterpieces have been composed under stress of
dire poverty, of which we are fortunately not always aware when reading
them. And so, among the six or seven score little _ballades_ and _jeux_
which in Christine's works are marked _a vendre_--for sale--there are
many that we could read with more sincere pleasure if we did not doubt
the genuineness of the sentiment expressed. These little poems, many of
them really graceful and charming playthings of a moment, lose so much
in translatio