Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/570

556 married to Mary de Medicis in 1600. Margaret, in the mean time, made herself serviceable to the king, and in recompence was permitted to return to court in 1005, after an absence of 22 years. She even assisted at the coronation of Mary de Medicis, where etiquette obliged her to walk after Henry's sister. She consoled herself by pleasure, for the loss of honours; and though Henry IV. begged her to be more prudent, and not to turn night into day and day into night, she paid little attention to his advice. She passed her last years in devotion, study, and pleasure. She gave the tenth of her revenues to the poor; but did not pay her debts. The memoirs which she has left, which finish at the time when she reappeared at court, prove the elegant facility of her pen, and the curious preserve pieces of her poetry, which equal those of the best poets of her time. She was particularly fond of the company of learned men, especially of the famous Brantome, who has numbered her amongst his Illustrious Women. "Margaret," said Catherine de Medicis, "is a living proof of the injustice of the Salic law; with her talents she might have equalled the greatest kings."

"The last of the house of Valois, she," says Mezeray, "inherited their spirit; she never gave to any one, without apologizing for the smallness of the gift. She was the refuge of men of letters, had always some of them at her table, and improved so much by their conversation, that she spoke and wrote better than any woman of her time."

She appears to have been good-natured and benevolent; and wanting in fidelity, not in complaisance, to her husband, as, at his request, she got up one morning to attend one of his mistresses who was ill. F. C. &c.

MAR-