asily flowing manner represents, as hardly any
age has ever been represented, the characteristics of the great society
of his time. It is needless to say that the morals of that time were
utterly corrupt, but Brantome accepts them with a placid complacency
which is almost innocent. No writer, perhaps, has ever put things more
disgraceful on paper; but no writer has ever written of such things in
such a perfectly natural manner. Brantome was in his way a
hero-worshipper, though his heroes and heroines were sometimes oddly
coupled. Bayard and Marguerite de Valois represent his ideals, and a
good knight or a beautiful lady _de par le monde_ can do no wrong. This
unquestioning acceptance of, and belief in, the moral standards of his
own society, give a genuineness and a freshness to his work which are
very rare in literature. Few writers, again, have had the knack of
hitting off character, superficially it is true, yet with sufficient
distinction, which Brantome has. There is something individual about all
the innumerable characters who move across his stage, and something
thoroughly human about all, even the anonymous men and women, who appear
for a moment as the actors in some too frequently discreditable scene.
With all this there is a considerable vein of moralising in Brantome
which serves to throw up the relief of his actual narratives. He has
sometimes been compared to Pepys, but, except in point of garrulity and
of readiness to set down on paper anything that came into their heads,
there is little likeness between the two. Brantome was emphatically an
_ecrivain_ (unscholarly and Italianised as his phrase sometimes appears,
if judged by the standards of a severer age), and some of the best
passages from his works are among the most striking examples of French
prose.

[Sidenote: Montluc.]

Next to Brantome, and in some respects above him, though of a somewhat
less remarkable idiosyncrasy, come Montluc, La Noue, and D'Aubigne, with
Marguerite de Valois not far behind. Blaise de Lasseran-Massencome,
Seigneur de Montluc[220], was a typical _cadet de Gascogne_, though he
was not, strictly speaking, a cadet, being the eldest son of a
fortuneless house. He became page to Antoine of Lorraine, and made his
first campaign under the orders of Bayard, fighting through the whole of
the Italian war, and being knighted on the field at Cerisoles. In the
next reign he was promoted to high command, and held Sienna against the
Imperi