Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/561

Rh hardships of a man to encounter, she partook of the same character, and was as much tainted with ferocity, as endowed with the courage of the age in which she lived; though the pictures which remain of her shew a countenance at once mild and dignified.

She died 1481, as is supposed of grief for the misfortunes of a husband and son she had so faithfully served, having in person fought twelve battles. Modern Europe. Sec,

contracted, in 1428, at the age of eight, to the Dauphin, afterwards Lewis IX, and the marriage was celebrated eight years after, at Tours. She was a princess of merit, and particularly attached to learning and the learned.—It is said that Alain Chartier, one of the best poets and orators of his time, was the ugliest man in France; and that Margaret, passing with some of her ladies through a hall where he lay asleep, approached and kissed him, which surprised the ladies, who reproached her with having bestowed that honour upon a man who, in their opinion, so little deserved it. "I have not kissed him," said she, "but the lips which have spoken so many beautiful things."

Margaret had not been beloved by her husband; but, sensible of her worth, he shed many tears on losing her in 1444. Her death is said to have been occasioned by her grief at calumnious reports which attacked her virtue. F. C.

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