known by the final name), who gives many facts concerning her later life in his Anecdotes des Rois de France, is a staunch adherent of hers.  Ronsard, the Court poet, is also extravagant in his praises of her, but chiefly of her beauty.  Numerous other poets and romancers have found her life a favourite subject.  Meyerbeer’s opera, Les Huguenots, is based upon her wedding, and the ensuing Massacre.  Dumas’s well-known novel, Marguerite de Valois, gives her a somewhat dubious reputation, as half-tool, half-agent for Catherine, and as the mistress of the historical La Mole.  This doubtful phase, however, if true, was but in keeping with the fashion of the times.  It is mentioned merely as a possible line completing the portrait of this brilliant woman, who lives again for us in the pages of her Memoirs.

ON MARGUERITE DE VALOIS.

QUEEN OF NAVARRE.

Dear native land! and you, proud castles! say
(Where grandsire,[1] father,[2] and three brothers[3] lay,
Who each, in turn, the crown imperial wore),
Me will you own, your daughter whom you bore? 
Me, once your greatest boast and chiefest pride,
By Bourbon and Lorraine,[4] when sought a bride;
Now widowed wife,[5] a queen without a throne,
Midst rocks and mountains[6] wander I alone. 
Nor yet hath Fortune vented all her spite,
But sets one up,[7] who now enjoys my right,
Points to the boy,[8] who henceforth claims the throne
And crown, a son of mine should call his own. 
But ah, alas! for me ’tis now too late[9]
To strive ’gainst Fortune and contend with Fate;
Of those I slighted, can I beg relief?[10]
No; let me die the victim of my grief. 
And can I then be justly said to live? 
Dead in estate, do I then yet survive? 
Last of the name, I carry to the grave
All the remains the House of Valois have.

[Footnote 1:  Francois I.]

[Footnote 2:  Henri II.]

[Footnote 3:  Francois II., Charles IX., and Henri III.]

[Footnote 4:  Henri, King of Navarre, and Henri, Duc de Guise.]

[Footnote 5:  Alluding to her divorce from Henri IV.]

[Footnote 6:  The castle of Usson.]

[Footnote 7:  Marie de’ Medici, whom Henri married after his divorce from Marguerite.]

[Footnote 8:  Louis XIII., the son of Henri and his queen, Marie de’ Medici.]

[Footnote 9:  Alluding to the differences betwixt Marguerite and Henri, her husband.]

[Footnote 10:  This is said with allusion to the supposition that she was rather inclined to favour the suit of the Duc de Guise and reject Henri for a husband.]

THE MEMOIRS OF MARGUERITE DE VALOIS

LETTER I