Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/160

Rh for the freedom of manners which she has schooled herself to condemn. It is only immorality that meets the censure of Oisille—never indecency. Her blame is an affair of the conscience, not of the temperament. But, even if the book did not painfully attain to virtue, did not attempt to teach lesson, were there no further intention in it than to amuse with questionable stories, none the less is it plain that Margaret wrote the book, not in her youth, but in her ripe maturity. It is no fault of youthful folly, as I hope to prove. On looking closer, it is, perhaps, no fault at all. At the best and the worst, it remains the pathetic endeavour of a devoted sister to beguile the tedium of her dying brother by the only sort of stories he will listen to; while, at the same time, she infuses, by a strange, incessant twisting of the facts, a lesson of trust in God and in virtue; while she attempts to advocate tolerance, to condemn a corrupted Church. That these morals follow very oddly on the gross adventures of the Heptameron must certainly be conceded, for it is not always easy both to point a moral and adorn a tale, and with Margaret the two intentions are equally strong and equally manifest. Still, though often perverse, grotesque, or profane, throughout these stories the Moral, the Ideal, is evident.

It is not difficult to determine the date of the Heptameron. In almost every novel of the series we find allusions to events which did not take place till Margaret was certainly middle-aged. To give a few of these: the Regency of Madame (1524–26) is referred to in one of the novels; both Bonnivet and the Duke of Alençon are always spoken of as dead (1525); the League of Cambray (1529) gives rise to one adventure; and in the second story we hear of the little Prince Jean