were indeed rare in her time. She was attacked for her charity, and is
to-day the victim of narrow sectarian and biased devotees. Her act of
renouncing all gorgeous dress, even the robes of gold brocade so much
worn by every princess, in order to give all her money to the poor;
her protection of the needy and persecuted; her court of poets and
scholars; her visits to the sick and stricken; even her untiring love
for her brother and her acts of clemency--all have frequently been
misinterpreted.

The greatest poets and men of letters of the sixteenth century
were encouraged financially and morally or protected by Marguerite
d'Angouleme--Rabelais, Marot, Pelletier, Bonaventure-Desperiers,
Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Lefevre d'Etaples, Amyot, Calvin, Berquin.
Charles de Sainte-Marthe says: "In seeing them about this good lady,
you would say it was a hen which carefully calls and gathers her
chicks and shelters them with her wings."

Many critics believe that her literary work was imitative rather than
original; even if this be true, it in no measure detracts from her
importance, which is based upon the fact that she was the leading
spirit of the time and typified her environment. Her followers, and
they included all the intellectual spirits, looked up to her as
the one incentive for writing and pleasing. Her disposition was
characterized by restlessness, haste--too great eagerness to absorb
and digest and appropriate all that was unfolded before her. She
imitated the _Decameron_ and drew up for herself a _Heptameron_; her
poetry showed much skill and great ease, but little originality.
Her extreme facility, her wonderfully active mind, her power of
_causerie_, and her ability to discuss and write upon philosophical
and religious abstractions, won the deep admiration and respect of her
followers, who were not only content to be aided financially by her,
but looked to her for guidance and counsel in their own work, though
she never imposed her ideas and taste upon others. By her tact,
she was able practically to control and guide the entire literary,
artistic, and social development of the sixteenth century. Every form
of intellectual movement of this period is impregnated with the spirit
of Marguerite d'Angouleme.

With her affable and loving manners, her refined taste and superior
knowledge, she was able to influence her brother and, through him,
the government. Just as her mother controlled in politics, so
did Marguerite i