Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/24

Rh filling her craving heart with infinite ambitions in her childless castle at Cognac; Margaret, unhappy, dispirited, drooping in her husband's palace at Alençon, far from the gaiety, the cultured intercourse, the love and happiness to which she had been accustomed all her life.

Margaret was now seventeen years old. She was not beautiful, but very charming. She was tall, graceful of carriage, slim and delicate in air. Her thick blonde hair was hidden away under a black coif; and this fashion gave a certain severity to her long pale face. The eyes, blue and expressive, smiled sweetly under arching brows. Her nose was the long, large nose of Francis, but more delicate and irregular in her, with a sort of ripple in it. She had a little, neatly rounded chin, and a very sweet mouth, with a wistful pathetic smile, well knowing the way "dire Nenny avec un doux sourire." Yet, despite her pensive countenance, she was—we have her word for it—"de moult joyeuse vie, quoique toutefois femme de bien."

At Alençon, alas! there was no joyous life. The Duke, gloomy, jealous, mediocre, interested merely in the details of his estate, was a respectable youth, but not the man to make a Margaret happy. She pursued her studies as the one means of escape from this irksome existence. Madame de Chatillon, her governess, had accompanied the young Duchess as first Lady of Honour. Under her direction, doubtless, Margaret began to give more and more of her attention to her favourite study of Divinity. Her mystical, indefinite mind was attracted towards religious speculation, and Madame de Chatillon was well acquainted with the New Ideas then already beginning to stir the soul