the discredit of the monks (something, though less, is said against the secular clergy), and especially of the Cordeliers or Franciscans, an Order who, for their coarse immorality and their brutal antipathy to learning, were the special black (or rather grey) beasts of the literary reformers of the time.  In a considerable number there are references to actual personages of the time—­references which stand on a very different footing of identification from the puerile guessings at the personality of the interlocutors so often referred to.  Sometimes these references are avowed:  “Un des muletiers de la Reine de Navarre,” “Le Roi Francois montre sa generosite,” “Un President de Grenoble,” “Une femme d’Alencon,” and so forth.  At other times the reference is somewhat more covert, but hardly to be doubted, as in the remarkable story of a “great Prince” (obviously Francis himself) who used on his journeyings to and from an assignation of a very illegitimate character, to turn into a church and piously pursue his devotions.  There are a few curious stories in which amatory matters play only a subordinate part or none at all, though it must be confessed that this last is a rare thing.  Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes pretty free, and then generally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such as that already noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal with remarkable trials and crimes, or merely miscellaneous matters, the best of the last class being the capital “Bonne invention pour chasser le lutin.”

In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, it naturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversity of tone.  But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once, the combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and a mystical devotion, is seldom absent for long together.  The general note, indeed, of the Heptameron is given by more than one passage in Brantome—­at greatest length by one which Sainte-Beuve has rightly quoted, at the same time and also rightly rebuking the sceptical Abbe’s determination to see in it little more than a piece of precieuse mannerliness (though, indeed, the Precieuses were not yet).  Yet even Sainte-Beuve has scarcely pointed out quite strongly enough how entirely this is the keynote of all Margaret’s work, and especially of the Heptameron.  The story therefore may be worth telling again, though it may be found in the “Cinquieme Discours” of the Vies des Dames Galantes.

Brantome’s brother, not yet a captain in the army, but a student travelling in Italy, had in sojourning at Ferrara, when Renee of France was Duchess, fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle de la Roche.  For love of him she had returned to France, and, visiting his own country of Gascony, had attached herself to the Court of Margaret, where she had died.  And it happened that Bourdeilles, six months afterwards,