o the patterns of virtue in her own day, to princesses, and
to simple bourgeoises, and to one Anastasia, who is of peculiar interest
to us because she was a fine illuminator, and may have been the artist
who executed the beautiful illuminations in the manuscripts of
Christine's own works.

The second of the prose works in behalf of women is the _Livre des Trois
Vertus_, or _Tresor de la Cite des Dames_, a book of sage counsel to
women of all classes and full of information most valuable for the
historian of manners. It is from this book that one receives the best
impression of the fine moral character and catholicity of view of this
woman living a life of hardship and struggle in the dark days of the mad
king. She is no prude, but simple and charitable in her conception of
the problems of life. Though herself a literary woman, she does not
place too great stress upon learning for her sex: "This woman in love
with scholarship intends, to be sure, that woman should acquire
learning; but it must be for the purpose of developing her intelligence,
of raising her heart to higher things, not of widening her field of
ambitions, dethroning man and reigning in his stead."

The prodigious activity of this authoress can best be appreciated by
reference to her own statement that, by the year 1405, she had "produced
fifteen works of importance, without counting other special little
_ditties_, which together fill about seventy sheets of large size." The
chief part of her work was already done; for the disturbed condition of
the kingdom after the murder of Louis d'Orleans (1407) interrupted her
labors. She had thoroughly naturalized herself in her adopted country,
and this fervent patriot, who grieved that she was helpless to save
France, must have suffered intensely during the dark years that
followed. In 1410, she wrote a _Lamentation_ upon the horrors of civil
war, and two years later, after the overthrow of the communist
government of Paris, the Cabochiens, she wrote a _Livre de la Paix_,
full of harsh but just criticisms upon those butchers and bakers who
would reform the whole world if first allowed to destroy it. Then came
the greater sorrows of Agincourt and the English conquest. Christine
fled from Paris, no longer the home of those princes who had favored
her, and found refuge in a convent, probably the convent at Poissy to
which her daughter had already retired. It was the breaking up of her
little family, her two sons goin