Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/52

Rh No censure escaped her lips; she did not even interrupt her correspondence with the Bishop, and maintained it always on the same tone of reverence and appeal. Perhaps it was not all charity. At least, I think, a factor in that long-suffering charity of hers was a certain chivalrous denseness, a certain obstinacy in clinging to an ideal, which made her patiently accept the faulty Briçonnet as her spiritual superior, even as she accepted Francis as her perfect hero, despite the many foibles, the long debasement, the patent degradation, which would have disenchanted any other worshipper. The pedestal on which this idealising woman set her idols was so high that she did not see their feet of clay. And, bowed down before her shrines, she offered a life-long unparalleled devotion to those whose real qualities she never even saw.