Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/175

160 and forgotten; the dust of oblivion is piled thick upon them. I had hoped to discover here that courtly society whom Margaret mentions in her preface, those first would-be writers of the French Decameron. But, even to suit so delightful a theory, I could not identify the rude, harsh, savage, yet half-servile Hircan, with the musical, cultured, romantic Dauphin Henry, clad always in the colours of his fair incarnate moon, and passing his leisure in reading Amadis. How is it possible that in the brilliant, quick, active Parlamente one should recognize Catherine dei Medici, plump, thick-set, bourgeoise, with her conciliatory manners and servile grace? No; such a theory would cost too dear. To maintain it one must rival that restorer of the Apollo Belvidere, who, having made his pair of feet too small, scraped the ankles of the statue until they were slender enough to fit. It is best to throw aside such ready-made restorations. And then a sudden fancy shot across my mind. True, Madame Oisille is Margaret of Navarre. But yet (is it not possible?), as she sits in her gloomy room at Argentan, the room where she had often been unhappy in the good old days when she was so young—as she sways in her litter along the straight, dusty, poplar-bordered and familiar roads of Alençon, thinking how she shall make this book that is to charm her brother—may not a sudden vision of the old past-years rise up before her eyes, may not the contrast strike sharply on her? Then, half in regret and half in pitiful memory, may she not place beside this stately figure of herself grown old, the slimmer, swifter, brighter figure of Margaret d'Alençon, and marry this pious, worldly, brilliant Parlamente to Hircan, the moody and churlish Duke Charles? Then by their side we can imagine to