Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/170

Rh So throughout this Heptameron of hers, which aims above all things at beguiling the melancholy of Francis, we take note of a secondary aim, a purpose little less urgent. It is to point out the corruption of the Church; the immorality of the convents and monasteries; the impudent debauchery of the secular confessors; the low ignorant baseness of the wandering Franciscan friars. She tries to show how from the scriptures alone, and not from the dogmas of a Church intent on temporal power, should the spiritual rules of the Christian life be framed. She shows the inadequate repentance of those who buy a mass to condone a crime. Thoughts before deeds, souls before bodies, faith before works, this is her constant lesson, coming strangely enough from her frank and Gallic mouth. And again and again, explicitly and by implication, she distinguishes the purer thoughts, the cleaner lives of those who have left all to follow these doctrines. And who are they? She will not answer that. Let the King think a moment. They are Lefêbvre the dispossessed; Roussel, Farel, Calvin the exiled; Berquin, Le Court, and all the host of those who have gone up to heaven in a chariot of fire. They are the poor Vaudois, who are dying by scores and by hundreds at the King's command!

This is her second aim: to scathe and expose, to soften and persuade. And after every bitter phrase, every flash of irony, we can imagine the pause, the anxious thought; will the King be the headsman of such bidders as these? But, alas! as is naturally the fate of a lesson so subtly, so indirectly conveyed, Francis laughed at the fable, and did not heed the moral. Oisille is an excellent mistress of the ceremonies; it is a pity, adds the Court, that she is taken with these