Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/42

Rh wrote when war and disaster suddenly confronted her with the problems of existence. She knew him, it would seem, only by repute; but in sore distress of soul she sought his aid, as suffering women of old sought the help of a greater Reformer. Margaret's soul had been born in the trouble and sorrow with which she learned that her brother's kingdom was menaced; her brother's life in danger; his safety and honour trusted. (O haunting, unspeakable terror!) to the shallow mediocrity of her own husband. For Charles of Alençon was to lead the vanguard of the war. The brilliant, accomplished, joyous young princess was suddenly made into something more than this. "I must now meddle with many things which may well make me afraid," so she writes to Briçonnet, craving from the unknown the sympathy, the aid, she could not find in the familiar.

How should they guide her now, these Bourbons and Bonnivets, wholly given to the world; these poets and scholars, Marots and Budés, intent on Prosody and Grammar? No; her long studies in theology, her conversations with Madame de Chatillon, had taught her to look for other consolations. And she was sorely in need of help and friendship. This war, which heaped upon her so many fearful doubts and troubles, took from her at the same moment all her support—the brother she adored, the husband she had grown to regard with friendly acquiescence—and, taking her kinsmen and acquaintance, took also the sweet companion of her early womanhood, the tender and spiritual Philiberta of Savoy, her mother's young half-sister. So, looking on the future with miserable eyes, aghast, sick at heart, Margaret wrote to the far-famed Man of Meaux, and begged him to send