Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/161

146 of Navarre who died in 1530. The descent of Charles V. into Provence is the occasion of another (1536). The murder of Alessandro dei Medici by his cousin Lorenzaccio (1537) is related in the twelfth novel. More than once a reference is made to the sudden death of the Dauphin François in 1536. And Henry and Catherine are invariably called M. le Dauphin and Mme. la Dauphine. The Armistice of Nice (1538), or more probably that of Crespy (1544), is alluded to in the tenth novel. In the twenty-fifth we hear the unedifying story of the love of Francis for la belle Ferronière (1539). The novels towards the end were evidently written later than the Introduction (which must have been composed in 1544), because the death of the Duke of Orleans (1545) is spoken of in one; and the marriage of the little Princess Jeanne to Monsieur de Vendôme, which occurred in 1548, is the subject of another.

Margaret died in 1549. The dates given above will prove abundantly that these novels cannot have been the work of Margaret's girlhood. It is clear to me that the Heptameron was composed from 1544 till the autumn of 1548. It is, of course, very likely that Margaret had already in her portfolio several isolated stories and adventures, for story-telling was the fashion of the time, and she is spoken of as excelling in the accomplishment. But, as a whole, the book began, most probably, in 1544. In the Introduction, which presents to us the principal personages of the work, the following passage occurs:—

"I believe there is no one among you who has not read the hundred novels of Jean Boccace, recently translated from Italian into French [1543], in which the most Christian King Francis, first of the name,