Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (1886).djvu/13

6 The student of character may find another interest in the sweet, dense, simple spirit of Margaret,—a comparatively trifling and unreal nature by the side of the vehement and audacious personages of her time, but which, none the less, directed them, influenced them, and checked their headlong course, in the same manner as the youthful character of Raphael maintained an unceasing authority over the wilder spirits of his school.

It is in her influence that we must seek the prestige of the Queen of Navarre, and not in her faded literary laurels, or in a personality rather interesting than great. It was she who inspired the College of France; it was she who protected and guaranteed the Renaissance in France from the ignorant rage of the Sorbonne. She was, in Melanchthon's phrase, the Divinity of the great religious movement of her time, and the upholder of the mere natural rights of humanity in an age that only respected opinions.

It is thus, as an organic part of the history of her time, as an influence, as an inspiring spirit, that I have tried to depict her, and not as a sequestered individual. The task is intricate and large, and the space given me to fill