Amboise, he was always permitted to take with him a party of young nobles of similar tastes and habits, whose society might enliven his home, and whose pursuits might stimulate his own. Gaston de Foix was one of these, and Charles de Montpensier, afterwards. Constable of France, with many other youths of distinction, amongst whom was Anne de Montmorency, the especial friend of Marguerite in after-years. With these, her brother's intimate associates, Marguerite was thrown into frequent and somewhat familiar companionship; and an accomplished girl of her beauty and rank was not likely to remain long thus situated without her admirers. Throughout her whole life, however, this high-minded woman appears to have escaped in a wonderful manner all contamination from the licentiousness of the age in which she lived, and to have moved in the brilliant and not very scrupulous court of her brother, rather like a star to be gazed at from the distance, than a being to be approached with the familiarity of ordinary pretensions. Her own intercourse, too, was more freely shared with men of piety and learning, than with the mere gallants of the court; and as the troubled and conflicting interests of the times began to assume the religious aspect which opened the way to the great events of the Reformation, Marguerite's decided adherence to the cause which at that time only included the most earnest and deeply experienced Christians, must have secured for her a line of marked separation from the gayer and more licentious portion of the society by which she was necessarily surrounded.

In the early period of her second marriage, the

Queen had given birth to two sons, who both died; and her distress at this calamity was heightened by a proposal which found favour with every one but herself, that her daughter Claude should be affianced to the young Francis, upon whom the king, amongst other favours, conferred the title of Duke de Valois. This alliance was one which Louisa was not likely to disapprove; but such were the constant bickerings and disputes between her and the Queen, and such. the irritable and embittered feeling with which both these haughty women endured the frequent contact to which their relative positions subjected them, that many years elapsed before Anne could be prevailed upon to yield her consent to the union. It was indeed a great giving up on the part of one whose prejudices were naturally strong, and who had so little cause to look favourably upon the mother, that she might be readily excused for entertaining no very amiable feelings towards the son. The Queen, too, had projects of her own with regard to her daughter, and she was not accustomed to give up very readily any point on which her heart was set. The son of Philip and Joanna of Spain, afterwards so celebrated as the Emperor Charles V., was the selection which she had made. State reasons, however, of great weight, were so placed before her, that at last she yielded a reluctant consent, and in the year 1506 Louisa and her children were called to attend at court for the celebration of the ceremony of betrothment, which was conducted with becoming splendour, and hailed with popular applause.

But although Anne had consented to this union,

her mind was ill at ease, and she kept her daughter always at her side, as if afraid of contact with a family so repugnant to her tastes. To the Countess d'Angoulême she attributed the blame of this thwarting of her will; and as this lady had so efficiently provided her daughter with a husband, she determined, womanlike, to return the compliment by herself finding a husband for Louisa's daughter. Many gentlemen of distinction were proposed for this alliance, the Queen assuming considerable authority in the selection or refusal of each. At one time it was the Archduke Charles of Austria, upon whom this prize was to be bestowed; at another negotiations for a similar purpose were opened with Henry of England, whose father, happily for Marguerite, had other projects for his son. At last the Duke d'Alençon, recommended only by rank and circumstances, not by any merits of his own beyond bravery and other personal endowments, was the husband to whom Marguerite was consigned, brilliant in beauty and in talent, and only then in her seventeenth year. With this companion, who proved uncongenial to her in almost every respect, and who, not insensible to her charms, seems to have guarded her with a kind of jealous care, she retired to his castle in Normandy, there to endure an almost hopeless separation from the friends whose society had given zest to all her enjoyments, and from those favourite pursuits which she had no longer the privilege of sharing with any congenial mind.

The mother of Francis must have welcomed the fulfilment of her crowning hope in an event which at this time threw the whole nation into the deepest sorrow.

The death of Anne, their beloved and honoured queen, took place in January, 1514. The king was disconsolate, never to be comforted again. Perpetual mourning seemed to be the order of the court. All amusements were forbidden, and no one was to approach the royal presence, unless clothed in vestments of the profoundest woe.

There was one heart, however, in which it is scarcely to be supposed that grief would lie so heavily as to be very burdensome; nor had the Countess d'Angoulême sufficient self-command to conceal the eagerness with which she rushed upon that field of influence which the death of the Queen had left open to her occupation. Indeed, a strange anomaly prevailed throughout the whole of this woman's life. She was wise only in relation to her children. Towards them alone would her conduct bear inspection. At the court of the bereaved monarch she soon became so domineering and audacious, that the nobles were offended, and the king himself annoyed with her interference and assumption. It seems as if the long pent-up hopes and passions of Louisa changed her whole nature on her near approach to the possession of unbounded power. She could master them in adversity. She could keep them down when she herself was mastered by any strong influence above her; but especially her intense and never wavering affection for her children subdued the lofty spirit to a kind of allegiance which produced the most salutary effects upon her own character, and upon the happiness of those around her. Without such restraining influence, the latent fire of indomitable pride burst forth, and its

course was marked by the devastation of all peace, and the overthrow of all power except her own.

Such Louisa showed herself during the brief space of her influence at court, before the king was consoled. And that space was very brief indeed, considering the depth of his affliction, and the forcible and touching manner in which it was manifested; for not only had he retired into perfect seclusion, there the more copiously to give vent to his tears and lamentations, but such was the general observance of the calamity by which the nation was overwhelmed, that even on the occasion of the final solemnization of the marriage of Francis with the Princess Claude, the relatives and courtiers were arrayed in long robes of black cloth, no sign of outward festivity or rejoicing being permitted.*

Scarcely recovering from the shadow of this deep and heavy gloom, in which she alone had been unable to sympathize, the mother of Francis must have listened with sensations of a very peculiar nature to hints and surmises soon spreading too rapidly, but all bearing the same burthen, that the reigning sovereign was about to share his heart and throne with another wife, a young, beautiful, and distinguished woman, the sister of Henry VIII. of England. Every tongue was eloquent in praise of Mary's beauty and engaging manners, both which, in addition to the advantageous connection with such a brother, had been the bait held out in various negotiations with foreign powers; and now at last the princess was to be sent over, with all her rich dower of youth and beauty, and glowing heart of love (already plighted), to be sacrificed to the fancy *Life of Marguerite d'Angoulême.