Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (1886).djvu/14

Rh is very narrow. But, so far as it goes, this little sketch may perhaps be of some service in indicating the movements of the earlier French Renaissance. I have tried to make it, as far as possible, correct I have, in most instances, sought my facts in the many published volumes of original documents rather than in any subsequent history; and where I have given an unusual date, it is, I hope, most often because recent research has disproved the earlier reading.

Recent research, ever so commendably critical and untiring in France, has happily disproved many last-century scandals, and one revived not many years ago. M. Lutteroth, in a Review called "Le Semeur," and M. le Comte de la Ferrière, in his introduction to the "Account-Book of the Queen of Navarre," have, with others, satisfactorily proved that a certain compromising letter, which tradition gave to the year 1521, must be dated as 1525, the year of Margaret's hurried flight from Spain; in which circumstances, as will be seen, the construction to be placed upon it involves no shade of censure.

No doubt some confusion with the gay and brilliant Reine Margot, queen of many lovers,