Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/105

90 radiating centre of benevolence and humanity. The Renaissance of Letters, frightened from Paris by the fires of the Sorbonne, took shelter in the castle there; and when that refuge grew too dangerous, the mistress of Nérac gave her guests the means to travel to safer places, despatching Marot to Ferrara, Calvin to Geneva, others whither was best for them; sending as much as four thousand francs at once to the refugees in Switzerland. For all the artificial chivalry, the elderly philandering, which disfigured the purity of Nérac, it was truly the "sojourn of honour." 'The young were safe there, the old were sheltered there. And this court of literary exiles was none the less the heart of its country; thence justice and law, active beneficence, wealth, and civilisation were circulated through Béarn and Navarre, making of a half-savage kingdom a prosperous and happy place. And so, this little court of Nérac persuades us that a movement—that a woman—intrinsically a little artificial, lax, and worldly, may none the less, by the sheer force of human tenderness, become the salvation of things nobler than itself.