She was brought up with strictness by a most excellent and most venerable dame, in whom all the virtues, at rivalry one with another, existed together. [Madame de Chatillon, whose deceased husband had been governor to King Charles viii.] As she was discovered to have rare intellectual gifts and a very keen relish for learning, she was provided with every kind of preceptors, who made her proficient in profane letters, as they were then called.  Marguerite learned Latin, Greek, philosophy, and especially theology.  “At fifteen years of age,” says a contemporary, “the spirit of God began to manifest itself in her eyes, in her face, in her walk, in her speech, and. generally in all her actions.”  “She had a heart,” says Brantome, “mighty devoted to God, and she loved mightily to compose spiritual songs. . . .  She also devoted herself to letters in her young days, and continued them as long as she lived, loving and conversing with, in the time of her greatness, the most learned folks of her brother’s kingdom, who honored her so that they called her their Maecenas.”  Learning, however, was far from absorbing the whole of this young soul.  “She,” says a contemporary, “had an agreeable voice of touching tone, which roused the tender inclinations that there are in the heart.”  Tenderness, a passionate tenderness, very early assumed the chief place in Marguerite’s soul, and the first object of it was her brother Francis.  When mother, son, and sister were spoken of, they were called a Trinity, and to this Marguerite herself bore witness when she said, with charming modesty,—­

               “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 it was for whom this close communion of three persons had the most dolorous consequences:  we shall fall in with her more than once in the course of this history; but, whether or no, she was assuredly the best of this princely trio, and Francis I. was the most spoiled by it.  There is nothing more demoralizing than to be an idol.

The first acts of his government were sensible and of good omen.  He confirmed or renewed the treaties or truces which Louis xii., at the close of his reign, had concluded with the Venetians, the Swiss, the pope, the King of England, the Archduke Charles, and the Emperor Maximilian, in order to restore peace to his kingdom.  At home Francis I. maintained at his council the principal and most tried servants of his predecessor, amongst others the finance-minister, Florimond Robertet; and he raised to four the number of the marshals of France, in order to confer that dignity on Bayard’s valiant friend, James of Chabannes, Lord of La Palice, who even under Louis xii. had been entitled by the Spaniards “the great marshal of France.”  At the same time he exalted to the highest offices in the state two