ome, the first wife of Henry IV., the beloved of Guise, La Mole,
and a long succession of gallants, the rival of her sister-in-law
Mary Stuart, not in misfortunes, but as the most beautiful, gracious,
learned, accomplished, and amiable of the ladies of her time. This
Margaret would have been an almost perfect heroine of romance (for she
had every good quality except chastity), if she had not unluckily lived
rather too long.

Her great-aunt, our present subject, was not the equal of her
great-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by a
portentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a very
curious expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face is
one which can be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in the
not very attractive portraiture of the time, and her actual attractions
are attested by her contemporaries with something more than the
homage-to-order which literary men have never failed to pay to ladies
who are patronesses of letters. Besides Margaret of Valois, she is
known as Margaret of Angouleme, from her place of birth and her father's
title; Margaret of Alencon, from the fief of her first husband; Margaret
of Navarre, of which country, like her grand-niece, she was queen, by
her second marriage with Henry d'Albret; and even Margaret of Orleans,
as belonging to the Orleans branch of the royal house. She was not,
like her nieces, Margaret of France, as her father never reigned, and
Brantome properly denies her the title, but others sometimes give it.
When it is necessary to call her anything besides the simple "Margaret,"
Angouleme is at once the most appropriate and the most distinctive
designation. She was born on the 11th or 12th of April 1492, her father
being Charles, Count of Angouleme, and her mother Louise of Savoy. She
was their eldest child, and two years older than her brother, the future
King Francis. According to, and even in excess of, the custom of the
age, she received a very learned education, acquiring not merely the
three tongues, French, Italian, and Spanish, which were all in common
use at the French Court during her time, but Latin, and even a little
Greek and a little Hebrew. She lived in the provinces both before and
after her marriage, in 1509, to her relation, Charles, Duke of Alencon,
who was older than herself by three years, and though a fair soldier
and an inoffensive person, was apparently of little talents and not
particularly