Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/178

Rh argument of similarity of style goes for almost nothing. We know less of Desperrier's style than of Margaret's, and the style of the Heptameron is a woman's style. We have absolutely no direct evidence that Desperriers had any share in the book. He was a valet de chambre to the Queen of Navarre; but so were most of the men of letters of his age. The untrustworthy testimony of the Abbé Goujet, who relates that Bonaventure Desperriers helped the Queen in her novels and her poems, is all that Nodier can find to support him. He is too shrewd to believe that Desperriers, an avowed atheist, and of a fanatic scepticism, had a hand in the mystical rhodomontade of Les Marguerites de la Marguerite. But he is, in truth, scarcely better justified in attributing the Heptameron to an unbeliever. The bursts of Lutheran eloquence, the tendency to round off all discussion with a text, the tone of somewhat unctuous, mystical piety—all these are eminently characteristic of Margaret. They could scarcely be considered likely attributes of "le joyeux Bonaventure."

Dismissing, then, this theory of Nodier's, let us consider the merits of the Heptameron itself. To-day it is scarcely a work that one would choose to read from end to end for pleasure. This is not only on account of its grossness; for it is infinitely less indecent than many works of the Sixteenth Century which are certainly well read at present. Putting aside such writers as Brantôme, Rabelais, or Bandello, it is less coarse than much of Shakespeare. But, on reading this book, one becomes poignantly aware that it falls short, not only of our standard of decency, but of our idea of pathos, of humour, of interest. There is none of the genius which sees the human being and not the apparel; none of the passion, the poetry, the wide and