Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/169

154 who is not only the occasion, but the hero of the Heptameron.

Oisille in particular has so great an admiration for this prince, that she finds noble in him the very acts she would have blamed with biting wit in Saffredant. With not a word does she condemn the wildest of his adventures. That he should betray his host, and unwittingly persuade a pious friar to forward an illicit love affair, all this is but a proof of his savoir faire. She immensely admires the piety that prompts him to say his prayers in church, on his return from an intrigue with the wife of his friend. She, the patroness of ideal goodness, cannot find any praise for an honest young girl who refuses the illegal love of the King. It is the impudence and not the virtue of such a refusal that amazes her. In her book, as in her life, Margaret's idolatry for her brother paralyses her judgment and her conscience.

But, though she cannot judge him, Margaret would fain persuade him. She is too timid, too submissive to reproach him for the tremendous guilt of the Vaudois massacres. She knows that women are smothered, brave men foully murdered, for holding opinions no more heretical than her own. And, though here and there she intercedes for some special victim, she dares not judge, she dares not condemn, she dares not rush in and stay the ruining arm of the King. But, with the timid fawning of a hound upon its angry master, she tries to reconcile him to her belief again. Timorously she plucks at his sleeve, she reminds him that this faith he punishes is her own. Even as he strikes and slays, she tells him her simple tale, and trusts that he will catch the moral. It is all the interference that she dares.