Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/48

Rh believe that Margaret found her first convert in the good, stolid, gentle Queen Claude. Such success was followed up, for Margaret did not heed her correspondent's timid expostulations. The misery of the time, the ever-increasing disasters, inclined all minds to religions enthusiasm. Milan was lost as easily as gained; Navarre, conquered in a fortnight, was taken from the King as quickly. Charles was laying siege to Mézières. Henry was expected at Calais; enemies were all round, and hunger in the midst.

Among such conditions the movement spread and grew. In her intrepid faith Margaret conceived the reformation of the entire duchies of Alençon and Berry. But she found difficulties in her path. The secrecy that must needs be kept, the lack of adequate helpers, the denseness of the people, all retarded the work which she considered lale [sic] salut des âmes, the salvation of souls. She writes to Briçonnet, in September 1522, complaining that Michel d'Arande had had to leave too soon:—"Have pity on the country where he had promised to stay for some time, and which is so deprived of men of his kind that (to subsidise my duty left undone neither through absence or negligence) I had prayed him to succour the poor sheep there. The surety of the porter and some little cowardice of soul prevent me from writing more." A worse trouble soon came, in the declared enmity of the Archbishop of Bourges. Margaret possessed absolute temporal control in the duchy of Berri, given her by Francis in 1517; she administered. justice there even as in Alençon. But she was powerless against the Church. And now the Archbishop of Bourges threatened Michel d'Arande with