ith prose.

With the great mass of the work left by Christine de Pisan we shall not
even attempt to deal; but the presentation of one of her favorite
enthusiasms will prove, we hope, of some interest. Though forced to earn
her own bread and so to compete with men, Christine never forgot that
she was a woman; neither in conduct nor in her writings did she ever so
behave or so write as to forfeit that dearest of her privileges as a
woman, the respect of men. Not only did she respect herself, but she was
determined that men should respect her, and moreover that they should
not with impunity malign woman. We have shown in a previous chapter how
outrageous was the literary attitude toward the fair sex, whom the
satirists, big and little, were never tired of belaboring as the authors
of all the evil in the world. Marriage and love are, of course, fertile
subjects of satiric humor, as when the groom is told, in the _sermon
joyeux_ on the _Maux de mariage_ (Misfortunes of Marriage), that, from
the very wedding day: "all his money will take wings and fly away, but
his wife will stay," and stay, and stay, until he is dead and buried,
and then, as the church bell tolls his knell his dear wife will be
thinking of how she can manage to marry his servant. "Verily," says
another, speaking of the pilgrimage of marriage, "'tis a road to which
there is no end till the weaker of the two be dead." It was this
attitude against which Christine entered a vigorous protest, and she got
into a little war of words with two of her contemporaries.

In several of the minor poems noted above there are allusions to the
wrong of boastfulness, mendacity, and evil speaking about women; but in
the _Epitre au Dieu d'Amour_ (properly the Epistle _of_, not _to_, the
God of Love), she brings upon the scene Love himself, who complains of
and ridicules tale-telling and blabbing gallants, always ready to
recount imaginary conquests of any woman whose name is mentioned. What
honor is there, she asks, in deceiving a woman? This was in May, 1399,
and it was not many years before she began to assault the chief citadel
of the scorners of womanhood, the great _Roman de la Rose_. Her _Dit de
la Rose_ is dated on a day of all others most propitious to lovers,
Saint Valentine's day, in the year 1402. Her poem contains the graceful
conception of an order of chivalry whose symbol shall be the rose (so
long fraught with evil associations through the influence of ungenerous