to rule
was vested." Anne de Bretagne was self-willed and obstinate, seeking the
gratification of mere caprice; Anne de Beaujeu was inflexible and
tenacious of purpose, but that purpose had in view the consolidation of
an empire, not the gratification of some whim or of some petty spite.
One is tempted to compare the daughter of Louis XI. with that other
great woman whose firm hand guided France through a perilous crisis in
the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Blanche de Castille, too,
had to rule and consolidate a kingdom menaced by feudal anarchy during
the minority of the sovereign. But she had constitutional right to
support her regency; Anne de Beaujeu had no such right, and the
difficulties with which she had to contend, though sooner ended, were
more serious in themselves, perhaps, than those domestic intrigues and
rebellions which Blanche could face without having to guard her
frontiers from powerful and hostile neighbors. By her political
achievements Madame la Grande merits comparison with the mother of Saint
Louis. And yet it is in the very success of her tortuous, unscrupulous,
dishonest policy that we find witness against the character of Anne.
Political trickery, political duplicity, however beneficent in its
results, leaves us with a strong aversion to the trickster; even as we
have an unconquerable distrust of and contempt for the spy, howbeit he
has risked life and honor for love of country, even so we grudge our
praise to those who, like Louis XI and his daughter, seek and attain
great ends by despicable means, sacrificing truth, honor, sentiment, to
win for the nation the provinces of a Marie de Bourgogne, who does not
know how to govern them, or the bride of a Maximilian, who does not know
how to keep hold of her.

Great has been the change in France since Constance came from fair
Provence to scandalize the monkish Robert's court; since Eleanor
d'Aquitaine and her romantic troubadour friends taught France how to
love gracefully and sing of love sweetly; since Mahaut d'Artois was a
_paire de France_, with feudal power in her domain not to be questioned
even by the sovereign; since Jeanne de Montfort, at the head of her
knights, charged the mailed hosts. Provence has ceased either to
scandalize or to enliven and instruct, for there is no more Provence
save in name; no more gay and immoral troubadours; peers of France, you
too are gone with "the snows of yesteryear," for when Charles VIII. was