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was not seventeen when he permitted | ported that it was often daylight before himself to be placed at the head of the she would lay aside her book or her pen. conspiracy organized by the great no- She wrote as much perhaps as she read, bles to dethrone his father. This first but we have no opportunity of criticisessay in practical politics was not suc- ing any of her work. Of all her numercessful. The discreditable scheme col-ous verses, not a rondel or ballade lapsed, and the rebels were forced to survives. She probably modelled hersurrender at discretion. But it indi- self upon Alain Chartier, the court poet cated sufficiently clearly the bent of the and secretary, whose name has a place prince's mind, and the existence of that on the very brief list of the authors of amazing energy which was afterwards the fifteenth century. Chartier's prose the salvation of France. is now pronounced pedantic and tedious, and his poetry not much more readable than his prose; but in his day he had a great reputation, and though we no longer account him a noble poet, a second Seneca, or the father of French eloquence, he still deserves to be honorably remembered for his earnest patriotism and for his literary independence. Margaret studied his writings and listened to his talk with the natural enthusiasm of a young disciple. “One day," says Etienne Pasquier, "a memorable thing happened to him. The dauphine passing with a great following of lords and ladies through a hall where Alain had fallen asleep, went and kissed him on the mouth." Some of the suite naïvely expressed their surprise that the princess should have conferred this honor upon such an ugly man," For to tell the truth, nature had encased a very fine mind in a very ill-favored body.” But the dauphine answered a little dryly that, "They need not marvel at this mystery, for she had not kissed the man but the lips which had uttered so many golden words."

While Louis was engaged in these early intrigues the dauphine's grace and goodness were winning her golden opinions from all sorts of people. The king conceived a very sincere and lasting regard for his son's young wife; the devout and gentle queen loved her dearly. Among the other great ladies of Charles VII.'s court - the shrewd old Yolande of Sicily, plotting and counterplotting, the pale Queen Marie, bearing her trials with uncomplaining patience, Agnes Sorrel in her jewelled robes, drinking her fill" of the pastimes and joyaunce of this world" - Margaret moves apart, absorbed in her own pursuits, in the court but scarcely of it. We only get an occasional glimpse of the young princess whose learning was the admiration of her contemporaries, and who for her frank, sweet nature was loved, says one who knew her, of God and men.

Wise, witty, and beautiful as Margaret was, she never found the key to her husband's heart. Louis loved no one but his mother. It was perhaps to console herself for his neglect, or for his aversion, that she turned to that world of thought and fancy in which so many lonely souls have found a refuge.

It was not remarkable that James Stuart's daughter should have literary tastes. But the feverish ardor with which she gave herself up to them was very remarkable in a woman of that century. No famished scholar in Paris lying awake at night on his wretched pallet and forgetting his hunger in the immortal words he read, was a keener and more untiring student than the dauphine. Her nights were constantly spent in solitary study; her ladies re

This incident has been connected, I think quite causelessly, with the melancholy close of Margaret's life. An act of homage so publicly paid to a man forty years older than herself was scarcely capable of misinterpretation.

The court meanwhile was constantly moving. The king was to be found at Blois, at Bourges, at Tours, at Orleans, anywhere but Paris. There was no love lost between Charles and the Mistress City. Since the affair of the Praguerie, as the revolt of the nobles was called, the dauphin had appeared to be on good terms with his father. They went everywhere together, and

Louis distinguished himself frequently seed like this was apt to take quick

during the Guienne campaign. In 1443 he assisted to raise the siege of Dieppe, and then went to Meaux, “And with him," according to the irate Parisians, "were some thousands of thieves who plundered all the Isle de France and gave the dauphin a crown for every horse, and half-a-crown for every cow they took;" while the prince spent all his time in hunting and was seldom seen

at mass.

root; but Margaret, in the eyes of those who knew her, was above suspicion. The king did not trouble himself about the matter, trusting in his indolent way that the other people concerned would do the same. But that was naturally an idle hope. Margaret was well aware that an enemy was assailing her in the dark with the deadly weapon of secret slander, and from the beginning she never doubted the success of his inThe following autumn the court re-dustrious malignity. Before they left paired to Nancy to celebrate a wedding Nancy, she spoke of it to one of her in the royal family. The English min- ladies with mournful prescience. "I isters had been a long time finding a wife know," she said, "there is one who for their young king, but France and speaks lightly of me, and him I have England were now at last at peace, and good reason to hate; for day by day he their newly formed friendship was to be is laboring to bring upon me the illcemented by the marriage of Margaret will of my lord; and much evil has of Anjou, the queen's niece, and the come upon me through him already, and prince who long ago had been the Scot- there is yet more to come." She stood tish Margaret's suitor. Suffolk came to in great fear of her husband, the cold, Nancy to act as proxy for Henry, and inscrutable prince whose brain was althe wedding was celebrated with great ways busy with subtle and dangerous rejoicings. In the midst of these bril- thoughts, and who passed already at liant festivities the shadows began to twenty-one for the most suspicious man darken heavily round the dauphine's in the world. Louis had never loved path. her; she had been married eight years and had borne him no children. It was not difficult to conjecture what the end might be ; and the proud and sensitive woman looked for it with intolerable dread.

Jamet du Tillay was a Breton squire who had done good service both in the English war and in the Praguerie. He held the post of bailli of Vermandois and was also one of the king's chamberlains. For two years Du Tillay had The winter of 1444 was a very gay nourished some secret grudge against and busy season in Chalons. The royal the dauphine, and during the visit to households were lodged in the castle of Nancy he seems to have resolved to Sarri, a league from the town which gratify it by destroying the reputation was thronged with princes and nobles. of a woman who had never yet been The constable was busy with his longtouched by the breath of calumny. cherished schemes of military reform. When the court left Nancy and went The imprisoned Count of Armagnac to winter at Chalons-sur-Marne, he pur- was clamoring through his chancellor sued her with relentless and almost for trial or release. The Duchess of incomprehensible pertinacity. Anony- Burgundy came with a splendid retinue mous letters were sent to the king, innu- to meet the king of Sicily and end the endoes were dropped ingeniously about long quarrel between the houses of the court; in a hundred ways it was Burgundy and Anjou. Envoys and hinted that it was not harmlessly of deputations from different provinces ballades and rondeaux that the prin- were continually coming and going; cess sat dreaming far into the night, and there were banquets and pageants and that it would have been well for the tourneys in the market-place, where country and its future king if the for- knights and squires "in very noble eign girl had never crossed the seas. array" endeavored to outshine each other in chivalrous accomplishments

The French court was a soil in which

and in splendor of dress and equipment. | fessor and some of her ladies were gathIn these brilliant scenes the dauphine ered round her bed when Marguerite de took her part, outwardly serene and Salignac entered hastily and said to the fearless, but sick at heart with appre- priest in a low tone, You must perhension and despair. Whenever she spoke of her enemy, it was with a sort of disdainful irony that justified the French once more in their saying "proud as a Scot.”

"What was that brave Jamet saying to you?" she asked one of her ladies. "He was telling fibs and talking nonsense as he does with every one," was the reply. "True," answered Margaret calmly, "that is his usual way."

A fortnight later Jamet hearing, he said, that the princess was displeased with him begged through one of her maids of honor for an audience, in order that he might excuse himself for anything he had done amiss. The dauphine refused to receive him. "I have more reason to hate that man than any in the world," said she; "but there is no need for him to excuse himself. What are his excuses to me?"

So the winter passed and the summer came round again; and one warm day in August the princess went on foot to perform her devotions at the shrine of Our Lady of the Thorn, and came home hot and tired and was taken suddenly ill. The physicians pronounced the sickness to be pleurisy, and declared the patient would recover if she had not some trouble on her mind which baffled their skill and rendered their remedies useless. Her strenuous studies had impaired her health, beginning no doubt the work Du Tillay's venomous tongue completed.

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suade madame to pardon Jamet." "She has done so already," he replied; "she has pardoned every one.” But the dauphine overheard the consolatory assurance. "I have not," said

she.

"Saving your grace, madame,” returned the confessor, “you have. It was your duty to pardon all who may have wronged you, and you have done it."

"I have not," repeated Margaret emphatically. A third time the priest repeated his assertion, and a third time Margaret denied it.

Her attendants looked at each other dismayed by the dying girl's terrible sincerity. A soul so deeply stirred by human passion was in no fit state to depart. But presently Madame de St. Michel, the oldest and most trusted of her ladies, took courage and reminded her young mistress of that divine forgiveness which we all desire, and which is only granted to those who from their hearts forgive. There was a pause, and at last Margaret answered faintly, "I forgive him, and from my heart." But the anxious listeners observed that she never uttered the name of the enemy it was so hard to pardon. Presently the dauphine murmured wearily that if it were not contrary to her marriage vow, she would be sorry she ever came of her own free will to France. And with yet more piteous sentence, "Fi de la vie, ne m'en parle plus," upon her lips, she passed away. She had not completed her twenty-first year.

She was only ill a week. Four days before her death she was lying silently upon her little couch, and presently was As we read of the long pent up bitterheard to say to herself, Ah, Jamet, ness revealed in this strange scene, we you have carried out your purpose. I are reminded of another of Margaret's die through you." And with that she race, that James V. of whom it is reraised her hand and called Heaven pas-corded that, among many royal qualisionately to witness that she had never ties, "He had this strange humor, he been other than absolutely faithful to her did not know how to forgive." husband, that she had never wronged him by a single thought.

On the following Monday about the hour of vespers it was plain that she was dying. Robert Poitevin her con

Margaret was buried in the cathedral of Chalons with fitting solemnity and amid general lamentation. Many years afterwards when Louis had come to the throne, he removed her remains to

Tours and laid them in a chapel which | visit, for, as long ago as 1876, and on she herself had founded. The circum- more than one occasion since then, I had stances of her death caused great excite- wandered in hooker or curragh among ment in Chalons, and the indignation the islands and along the coast, and against Du Tillay rose so high that an crossed on foot the bogs and mountains inquiry was held into his conduct. In of the mainland. The opening of July, the following year the whole story was 1892, found us completing the thirty raked up again, it seems at the dau- miles of sea which divide the island of phin's special request, and on this occa- Aran from Galway. Kilronan, on Inishsion the queen herself gave evidence. more, the largest, as the name signifies, Nothing came of the trial. Du Tillay of the islands, was our landing-place. As was loud in his protestations of inno- we approached the pier, behind which cence. He vowed that he had never several hookers were moored loading seen anything in Madame Marguerite kelp, a characteristic picture met our unworthy of a good and honorable lady; eyes: a curragh, or canvas canoe, sunk nor had he, so far as he could remem-low in the water under a mountain of ber, ever spoken an injurious word of black, glistening seaweed fresh from the her. On the contrary, it was he who rocks, on the top of which, as on a load had been slandered, and he was ready of hay, lay on his face, with upturned to maintain his assertion with his sword feet, an islander quietly smoking, while in the king's presence. The master of his companions in the bow plied the oars. the dauphine's household and Louis de The brown hair of the raw cowhide sanLaval were eager to accept the chal- dals peculiar to these islands, where the lenge, but the king forbade the duel. sharp limestone rock forbids the bare By dint of much hard swearing Du Til-feet of the mainland, showed conspiculay appears to have convinced his judges that he had done no intentional wrong; and we hear of him five years after taking an active part in the war in Normandy.

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ously on the upturned feet. These sandals, called pampooties, are shaped to the foot from the raw hide, and kept pliable in water when not in wear; and it is worth noting that the Scandinavian fishcurer, Govertson, said he had seen the same foot-gear among the Laps in the north of Norway, and that the pampooties bore the same name. The men in the curragh, like the other islanders, wore short trousers made of stuff woven by hand-looms from the island wool and dyed light blue, a long waistcoat of the same material, and no coat, for no islandman possesses a coat, but all are at times in their shirtsleeves. The pier at Kilronan, where large hookers were taking in cargoes of slag-like kelp, leads to the most important village on the islands; but a shorter way to the western cliffs is to be obtained by pulling across the bay in a curragh to Killeany. Killeany, too, is a better place to land if you wish to obtain at once a glimpse of the past and an introduction to the present of Aran. You run under the ivymantled walls of a sixteenth-century castle, past its disused water-gate to the quay, where a newly erected apparatus for boiling tan and dipping the mackerel

nets introduces you at once to the era of clear, rising gradually above the level progress, the work directly of the Rev. W. S. Green, who, acting for the Congested Districts Board, is carrying out with great ability and success Mr. Balfour's policy of building up by State guidance and aid a permanent prosperity among the poverty-stricken people of the West.

A glimpse of the island may here be given, though a description of its wellpreserved ancient pagan fortresses and early Christian ecclesiastical remains cannot be attempted. Inishmore, like the two smaller islands, Inishmaan and Inisheer, which form the Aran group, is composed of layers of limestone rock stratified horizontally, with plain signs of glacial action in the gigantic granite boulders which are strewn over it, carried down from the distant mountains of Connemara when Aran was still a part of the mainland. The sheer limestone cliffs, which face the open Atlantic to the west, slope gradually terrace by terrace down to the sheltered eastern side. Here the prevailing west wind has no power, and here is to be found whatever cultivation and whatever village life there is. So excellent is the quality of the grass that grows between the limestone blocks and on the thin soil of the terraces that it is an accepted saying in Connaught that "the lickings of Aran are better than the pastures of Connemara," a saying which the appearance of the cows and young stock amply justifies.

of the water and making a girdle of color to the gently sloping strands of the bay. The little meadows in the stone-fenced crofts, as we began to push inland, were full of white clover, yellow bird's-foot trefoil, blue fairyflax, creamyfeathered meadowsweet, and ruby-colored and pink wild geranium. The rock walls, which rose terrace by terrace, were festooned with dark ivy and starred with pale gold of honeysuckle blossom and delicate pink of wild roses.

By narrow lanes, rock paven, rock walled, knee-deep in dark green luxuriance of bracken and ferns mixed with flowering brambles, we rose to a sort of tableland that consisted of horizontal beds of grey limestone, over which spread from every rift and crevice the burnet-leafed rose whose fragrant and creamy-hued blossoming was almost over. Mixed with these I noticed a species of creeping bramble or dewberry, which bears an edible red fruit, known in Aran as crubeens. At intervals a kind of wild geranium lit with its bright crimson petals the gloomy slabs of stone. But soon, the ferns began to claim an undivided empire. The maidenhair fern, with its delicate green and feathery foliage and polished black stems, fledged every coign of vantage and filled every crevice in the grey rocks. Then, as at last the path approached the Atlantic to the west, the vivid emerald of the sea spleenwort choked in luxuriant masses the cracks of the horizontal limestone beds, till scattered seapinks succeeded, the last vegetation on the ocean-facing, spray-beaten cliffs of Inishmore. Here I found two islanders standing on the edge of the sheer wall of rock, and dropping their lines two hundred feet down the precipitous cliff, and drawing up from the tossing surges below, glitteringscaled bream and black pollack or glasson, and a species of wrasse which they called rock-connors. These fish, they told me, they use at home or dry for occasional sale on the mainland.

Aran has been called by the people of the West 66 the island of flowers," and the absence of trees emphasizes the effect of the blossoming plants that jewel every crevice of the grey limestone slopes. Landing at Killeany and pushing across the island to the western cliffs, one obtains a vivid impression of the whole. As we pulled under the ivied castle walls, there came a light air breathing off shore, and faintly fragrant with the scent of white clover, meadowsweet, honeysuckle and wild rose. The dark ocean sapphire of the deep sea Up to this point the absence of birds changed as the water shoaled to semi- had been noticeable, and the stillness, transparent beryl, through which the save for a low sea murmur that never golden-brown bladder-wrack showed completely died away. But now the

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