clerks), and the chief of the vows exacted of the good knights shall be,
never to be licentious, in word or in deed, with regard to women. The
gauntlet thus thrown down before the admirers of the satirist one might
almost say misogynist Jean de Meung, was not long in finding those
willing to take it up. Two secretaries of Charles VI., Jean de Montreuil
and Gonthier Col, assumed the defence of the _Roman de la Rose_, and
various letters, sometimes couched in terms of good-humored raillery,
sometimes sly and cutting, were exchanged between them and Christine.
Which side, considered merely as debaters, really had the better of the
literary duel we need not care; for the common-sense and the moral point
of view was certainly not that which justified general condemnation of
woman as an inferior and wicked creature, and also justified the
degradation of the noblest emotions to mere sensuality. Christine,
however, thought that she had made out such a good case for maligned
femininity that she collected her letters and the answers, and dedicated
the whole correspondence to Isabeau de Baviere. It would be a pleasant
relief to the gaudy colors in the picture of that unworthy queen if we
could feel that she appreciated the delicate compliment thus paid her,
or in any way encouraged the worthy defender of her sex.

This collection of prose and verse was not the only plea Christine made
for women. She composed two other works, in prose, whose dominant notion
is the rehabilitation of honest womanhood. The first of these, called
_La Cite des Dames_, is one of those compilations descending in the main
from Boccaccio's Latin work, _De Claris Mulieribus_, "Concerning Famous
Women," of which Chaucer's _Legend of Good Women_ and Tennyson's _Dream
of Fair Women_ are the greatest examples: the present work itself,
indeed, is a record of this nature. But that which Chaucer and Tennyson
treat poetically, imaginatively, with all the art of minds supremely
artistic, Christine treats in a rather matter-of-fact way; that is, she
is concerned to tell such anecdotes of famous women as will support her
thesis of the essential nobility of the feminine character. In this way
she has accumulated a considerable amount of evidence showing the
patience, the devotion, the fidelity, the heroism of which women are
capable under all circumstances of life. The heroines of antiquity are
not alone in eliciting Christine's praises; for she devotes some
attention t