so little of the wholesome
and pleasing, the womanly or love-inspiring, there is one striking
exception in Marguerite d'Angouleme, a representative of letters, art,
culture, and morality. With the study of this character we are taken
back to the beginning of the century and carried among men of letters
especially, for she formed the centre of the literary world. She, her
mother, Louise of Savoy, and her brother, Francis I., were called a
"trinity," to the existence of which Marguerite bore witness in the
poem:

"Such boon is mine--to feel the amity
That God hath putten in our trinity
Wherein to make a third, I, all unfitted
To be that number's shadow, am admitted."

Marguerite inherited many of her qualities from her mother, "a most
excellent and a most venerable dame," though anything but moral and
conscientious; she, upon discovering that her daughter possessed rare
intellectual gifts, provided her with teachers in every branch of the
learning of the age. "At fifteen years of age, the spirit of God
began to manifest itself in her eyes, in her face, in her walk, in her
speech, and in all her actions generally." Brantome says: "She had
a heart mightily devoted to God and she loved mightily to compose
spiritual songs. She devoted herself to letters, also, in her young
days and continued them as long as she lived, in the time of her
greatness, loving and conversing with the most learned folks of her
brother's kingdom, who honored her so greatly that they called her
their Maecenas." Tenderness, particularly for her brother, seemed to
develop in her as a passion.

Marguerite was a rare exception in a period described by M.
Saint-Amand as one in which women were Christian in certain aspects
of their character and pagan in others, taking an active part in
every event, ruling by wit and beauty, wisdom and courage; an age of
thoughtless gaiety and morbid fanaticism, and of laughter and tears,
still rough and savage, yet with an undercurrent of subtle grace and
exquisite politeness; an age in which the extremes of elegance and
cruelty were blended, in which the most glaring scepticism and intense
superstitions were everywhere evident; an age which was religious as
well as debauched and whose women were both good and evil, innocent
and intriguing. Everything was fluctuating; there was inconstancy
even in the things most affected: pleasure, pomp, display. The natural
outcome of this undefined restlessness was dissati