ON THE HEPTAMERON,
WITH SOME NOTICE OF PRECEDENT COLLECTIONS OF TALES IN FRANCE, OF THEAUTHOR, AND OF HER OTHER WORKS.
It is probable that every one who has had much to do with the study ofliterature has conceived certain preferences for books which he knowsnot to belong absolutely to the first order, but which he thinks to havebeen unjustly depreciated by the general judgment, and which appeal tohis own tastes or sympathies with particular strength. One of such booksin my own case is _THE HEPTAMERON_ of Margaret of Navarre. I have readit again and again, sometimes at short intervals, sometimes at longer,during the lapse of some five-and-twenty years since I first met withit. But the place which it holds in my critical judgment and in myprivate affections has hardly altered at all since the first reading.I like it as a reader perhaps rather more than I esteem it as a critic;but even as a critic, and allowing fully for the personal equation, Ithink that it deserves a far higher place than is generally accorded toit.
Three mistakes, as it seems to me, pervade most of the estimates,critical or uncritical, of the _Heptameron_, the two first of old date,the third of recent origin. The first is that it is a comparativelyfeeble imitation of a great original, and that any one who knowsBoccaccio need hardly trouble himself to know Margaret of Navarre. Thesecond is that it is a loose if not obscene book, disgraceful for a ladyto have written (or at least mothered), and not very creditable forany one to read. The third is that it is interesting as the gossip ofa certain class of modern newspapers is interesting, because it tellsscandal about distinguished personages, and has for its interlocutorsother distinguished personages, who can be identified without muchdifficulty, and the identification of whom adds zest to the reading. Allthese three seem to me to be mistakes of fact and of judgment. Inthe first place, the _Heptameron_ borrows from its original literallynothing but plan. Its stories are quite independent; the similarity ofname is only a bookseller's invention, though a rather happy one; andthe personal setting, which is in Boccaccio a mere framework, has hereconsiderable substance and interest. In the second place, the accusationof looseness is wildly exaggerated. There is one very coarse but notin the least immoral story in the _Heptameron_; there are several broadjests on the obnoxious cloister and its vices, there are many taleswhich are not intended _virginibus puerisque_, and there is a pervadingflavour of that half-French, half-Italian courtship of married womenwhich was at the time usual everywhere out of England. The manners arenot our manners, and what may be called the moral tone is distinguishedby a singular cast, of which more presently. But if not entirely a bookfor boys and girls, the _Heptameron_ is certainly not one which Southeyneed have excepted from his admirable answer in the character of authorof "The Doctor," to the person who wondered whether he (Southey) couldhave daughters, and if so, whether they liked reading. "He hasdaughters: they love reading: and he is not the man I take him for ifthey are not 'allowed to open' any book in his library." The last error,if not so entirely inconsistent with intelligent reading of the book asthe first and second, is scarcely less strange to me. For, in the firstplace, the identification of the personages in the framework of the_Heptameron_ depends upon the merest and, as it seems to me, the idlestconjecture; and, in the second, the interest of the actualtittle-tattle, whether it could be fathered on A or B or not, is theleast part of the interest of the book. Indeed, the stories altogetherare, as I think, far less interesting than the framework.
Let us see, therefore, if we cannot treat the _Heptameron_ in asomewhat different fashion from that in which any previous critic, evenSainte-Beuve, has treated it. The divisions of such treatment are notvery far to seek. In the first place, let us give some account of theworks of the same class which preceded and perhaps patterned it. Inthe second, let us give an account of the supposed author, of her otherworks, and of the probable character of her connection with this one. Inthe third, without attempting dry argument, let us give some sketch ofthe vital part, which we have called the framework, and some generalcharacteristics of the stories. And, in the fourth and last, let usendeavour to disengage that peculiar tone, flavour, note, or whateverword may be preferred, which, as it seems to me at least, at oncedistinguishes the _Heptameron_ from other books of the kind, andrenders it peculiarly attractive to those whose temperament andtaste predisposes them to be attracted. For there is a great deal ofpre-established harmony in literature and literary tastes; and I have akind of idea that every man has his library marked out for him when hecomes into the world, and has then only got to get the books and readthem.
Margaret herself refers openly enough to the example of the _Decameron_,which had been translated by her own secretary, Anthony le Macon, amember of her literary coterie, and not improbably connected with thewriting or redacting of the _Heptameron_ itself. Nor were later Italiantale-tellers likely to be without influence at a time when French wasbeing "Italianated" in every possible way, to the great disgust of someFrenchmen. But the Italian ancestors or patterns need not be dealt withhere, and can be discovered with ease and pleasure by any one who wishesin the drier pages of Dunlop, or in the more flowery and starry pages ofMr. Symonds' "History of the Renaissance in Italy." The next few pageswill deal only with the French tale-tellers, whose productions beforeMargaret's days were, if not very numerous, far from uninteresting, andwhose influence on the slight difference of _genre_ which distinguishesthe tales before us from Italian tales was by no means slight.
In France, as everywhere else, prose fiction, like prose of all kinds,was considerably later in production than verse, and short tales of thekind before us were especially postponed by the number, excellence, andpopularity of the verse _fabliaux_. Of these, large numbers have comedown to us, and they exactly correspond in verse to the tales of the_Decameron_ and the _Heptameron_ in prose, except that the satiricalmotive is even more strongly marked, and that touches of romanticsentiment are rarer. This element of romance, however, appearsabundantly in the long prose versions of the Arthurian and otherlegends, and we have a certain number of short prose stories of thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of which the most famous is thatof _Aucassin et Nicolette_. These latter, however, are rather shortromances than distinct prose tales of our kind. Of that kind the firstfamous book in French, and the only famous book, besides the one beforeus, is the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_. The authorship of this bookis very uncertain. It purports to be a collection of stories told bydifferent persons of the society of Louis XI., when he was but Dauphin,and was in exile in Flanders under the protection of the Duke ofBurgundy. But it has of late years been very generally assigned(though on rather slender grounds of probability, and none of positiveevidence), to Anthony de la Salle, the best French prose writer ofthe fifteenth century, except Comines, and one on whom, with an oddunanimity, conjectural criticism has bestowed, besides his acknowledgedromance of late chivalrous society, _Petit Jehan de Saintre_ (a workwhich itself has some affinities with the class of story before us), notonly the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, but the famous satirical treatiseof the _Quinze Joyes du Mariage_, and the still more famous farce of_Pathelin_. Some of the _Nouvelles_, moreover, have been putativelyfathered on Louis XI. himself, in which case the royal house of Francewould boast of two distinguished taletellers instead of one. Howeverthis may be, they all display the somewhat hard and grim but keen andpractical humour which seems to have distinguished that prince, whichwas a characteristic of French thought and temper at the time, and whichperhaps arose with the misfortunes and hardships of the Hundred Years'War. The stories are decidedly amusing, with a considerably greater,though also a much ruder, _vis comica_ than that of the _Heptameron_;and they are told in a style unadorned indeed, and somewhat dry, lackingthe simplicity of the older French, and not yet attaining to thegraces of the newer, but forcible, distinct, and sculpturesque, if notpicturesque. A great license of subject and language, and an enjoymentof practical jokes of the roughest, not to say the most cruel character,prevail throughout, and there is hardly a touch of anything likeromance; the
tales alternating between jests as broad as those of theReeve's and Miller's tales in Chaucer (themselves exactly correspondingto verse _fabliaux_, of which the _Cent Nouvelles_ are exact prosecounterparts, and perhaps prose versions), and examples of what has beencalled "the humour of the stick," which sometimes trenches hard uponthe humour of the gallows and the torture-chamber. These characteristicshave made the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ no great favourites of late,but their unpopularity is somewhat undeserved. For all their coarseness,there is much genuine comedy in them, and if the prettiness of romanticand literary dressing-up is absent from them, so likewise is theinsincerity thereof. They make one of the most considerable prosebooks of what may be called middle French literature, and they had muchinfluence on the books that followed, especially on this of Margaret's.Indeed, one of the few examples to be found between the two, the _GrandParagon de Nouvelles Nouvelles_ of Nicolas de Troyes (1535), obviouslytakes them for model. But Nicolas was a dull dog, and neither profitedby his model nor gave any one else opportunity to profit by himself.
Rabelais, the first book of whose _Pantagruel_ anticipated the _Paragon_by three years, while the _Gargantua_ coincided with it, was a greatauthority at the Court of Margaret's brother Francis, dedicated oneof the books (the third) of _Pantagruel_ to her, before her death, inhigh-flown language, as _esprit abstrait, ravy et ecstatic_, and mustcertainly have been familiar reading of hers, and of all the ladies andgentlemen, literary and fashionable, of her Court. But there is littleresemblance to be found in his style and hers. The short stories whichMaster Francis scatters about his longer work are, indeed, models ofnarration, but his whole tone of thought and manner of treatment arealtogether alien from those of the "ravished spirit" whom he praises. Hisdeliberate coarseness is not more different from her deliberate delicacythan his intensely practical spirit from her high-flown romanticism(which makes one think of, and may have suggested, the Court of LaQuinte), and her mixture of devout and amatory quodlibetation from hiscynical criticism and all-dissolving irony. But there was a contemporaryof Rabelais who forms a kind of link between him and Margaret, whosework in part is very like the _Heptameron_, and who has been thought tohave had more than a hand in it. This was Bonaventure Desperiers, a manwhose history is as obscure as his works are interesting. Born in orabout the year 1500, he committed suicide in 1544, either during a fitof insanity, or, as has been thought more likely, in order to escapethe danger of the persecution which, in the last years of the reign ofFrancis, threatened the unorthodox, and which Margaret, who hadmore than once warded it off from them, was then powerless to avert.Desperiers, to speak truth, was in far more danger of the stake thanmost of his friends. The infidelity of Rabelais is a matter of inferenceonly, and some critics (among whom the present writer ranks himself) seein his daring ridicule of existing abuses nothing inconsistent with aperfectly sound, if liberally conditioned, orthodoxy. Desperiers, likeRabelais, was a Lucianist, but his modernising of Lucian (the remarkablebook called _Cymbalum Mundi_), though pretending to deal with ancientmythology, has an almost unmistakable reference to revealed religion.It is not, however, by this work or by this side of his character at allthat Desperiers is brought into connection with the work of Margaret,who, if learned and liberal, and sometimes tending to the new ideas inreligion, was always devout and always orthodox in fundamentals. Besidesthe _Cymbalum Mundi_, he has left a curious book, not published, likethe _Heptameron_ itself, till long after his own death, and entitled_Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis_. The tales of which it consistsare for the most part very short, some being rather sketches or outlinesof tales than actually worked-out stories, so that, although thereare no less than a hundred and twenty-nine of them, the whole book isprobably not half the bulk of the _Heptameron_ itself. But they areextremely well written, and the specially interesting thing about themis, that in them there appears, and appears for the first time (unlesswe take the _Heptameron_ itself as earlier, which is contrary to allprobability), the singular and, at any rate to some persons, veryattractive mixture of sentiment and satire, of learning and a love ofrefined society, of joint devotion to heavenly and earthly love, ofvoluptuous enjoyment of the present, blended and shadowed with asense of the night that cometh, which delights us in the prose of the_Heptameron_, and in the verse not only of all the Pleiade poets inFrance, but of Spenser, Donne, and some of their followers in England.The scale of the stories, which are sometimes mere anecdotes, is sosmall, the room for miscellaneous discourse in them is so scanty, andthe absence of any connecting links, such as those of Margaret's ownplan, checks the expression of personal feeling so much, that it isonly occasionally that this cast of thought can be perceived. But itis there, and its presence is an important element in determining thequestion of the exact authorship of the _Heptameron_ itself.
It can hardly be said that, except translations from the Italian (ofwhich the close intercourse between France and Italy in the days of thelater Valois produced many), Margaret had many other examples beforeher. For such a book as the _Propos Rustiques_ of Noel du Fail,though published before her death, is not likely to have exercised anyinfluence over her; and most other books of the kind are later thanher own. One such (for, despite its _bizarre_ title and its distinctintention of attacking the Roman Church, Henry Estienne's _Apologiepour Herodote_ is really a collection of stories) deserves mention, notbecause of its influence upon the Queen of Navarre, but because of theQueen of Navarre's influence upon it. Estienne is constantly quoting the_Heptameron_, and though to a certain extent the inveteracy withwhich the friars are attacked here must have given the book a specialattraction for him, two things may be gathered from his quotations andattributions. The first is that the book was a very popular one; thesecond, that there was no doubt among well-informed persons, of whom andin whose company Estienne most certainly was, that the _Heptameron_ wasin more than name the work of its supposed author.
From what went before it Margaret could, and could not, borrow certainwell-defined things. Models both Italian and French gave her the schemeof including a large number of short and curtly, but not skimpingly,told stories in one general framework, and of subdividing them intogroups dealing more or less with the same subject or class of subject.She had also in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on thatperennial and somewhat facile source of laughter--the putting togetherof incidents and phrases which even by those who laugh at them areregarded as indecorous. But of this expedient she availed herself ratherless than any of her forerunners. She had further the example of agenerally satirical intent; but here, too, she was not content merely tofollow, and her satire is, for the most part, limited to the corruptionsand abuses of the monastic orders. It can hardly be said that any of theother stock subjects, lawyers, doctors, citizens, even husbands (for sheis less satirical on marriage than encomiastic of love), are dealt withmuch by her. She found also in some, but chiefly in older books of theChartier and still earlier traditions, and rather in Italian than inFrench, a certain strain of romance proper and of adventure; but ofthis also she availed herself but rarely. What she did not find inany example (unless, and then but partially, in the example of her ownservant, Bonaventure Des-periers) was first the interweaving of a greatdeal not merely of formal religious exercise, but of positive religiousdevotion in her work; and secondly, the infusing into it of the peculiarRenaissance contrast, so often to be noticed, of love and death, passionand piety, voluptuous enjoyment and sombre anticipation.
But it is now time to say a little more about the personality and workof this lady, whose name all this time we have been using freely, andwho was indeed a very notable person quite independently of her literarywork. Nor was she in literature by any means an unnotable one, quiteindependently of the collection of unfinished stories, which, afterreceiving at its first posthumous publication the not particularlyappropriate title of _Les Amants Fortunes_, was more fortunatelyre-named, albeit by something of a bull (for there is the beginningof an eighth day as well as the full complement of the s
even), the_Heptameron_.
Few ladies have been known in history by more and more confusing titlesthan the author of the _Heptameron_, the confusion arising partly fromthe fact that she had a niece and a great-niece of the same charmingChristian name as herself. The second Margaret de Valois (the mostappropriate name of all three, as it was theirs by family right) was thedaughter of Francis I., the patroness of Ronsard, and, somewhat latein life, the wife of the Duke of Savoy--a marriage which, as the bridecarried with her a dowry of territory, was not popular, and brought somecoarse jests on her. Not much is said of her personal appearance afterher infancy; but she inherited her aunt's literary tastes, if not herliterary powers, and gave Ronsard powerful support in his early days.The third was the daughter of Henry II., the "Grosse Margot" of herbrother, Henry III., the "Reine Margot" of Dumas' novel, the idol ofBrantome, the first wife of Henry IV., the beloved of Guise, La Mole,and a long succession of gallants, the rival of her sister-in-lawMary Stuart, not in misfortunes, but as the most beautiful, gracious,learned, accomplished, and amiable of the ladies of her time. ThisMargaret would have been an almost perfect heroine of romance (for shehad every good quality except chastity), if she had not unluckily livedrather too long.
Her great-aunt, our present subject, was not the equal of hergreat-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by aportentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a verycurious expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face isone which can be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in thenot very attractive portraiture of the time, and her actual attractionsare attested by her contemporaries with something more than thehomage-to-order which literary men have never failed to pay to ladieswho are patronesses of letters. Besides Margaret of Valois, she isknown as Margaret of Angouleme, from her place of birth and her father'stitle; Margaret of Alencon, from the fief of her first husband; Margaretof Navarre, of which country, like her grand-niece, she was queen, byher second marriage with Henry d'Albret; and even Margaret of Orleans,as belonging to the Orleans branch of the royal house. She was not,like her nieces, Margaret of France, as her father never reigned, andBrantome properly denies her the title, but others sometimes give it.When it is necessary to call her anything besides the simple "Margaret,"Angouleme is at once the most appropriate and the most distinctivedesignation. She was born on the 11th or 12th of April 1492, her fatherbeing Charles, Count of Angouleme, and her mother Louise of Savoy. Shewas their eldest child, and two years older than her brother, the futureKing Francis. According to, and even in excess of, the custom of theage, she received a very learned education, acquiring not merely thethree tongues, French, Italian, and Spanish, which were all in commonuse at the French Court during her time, but Latin, and even a littleGreek and a little Hebrew. She lived in the provinces both before andafter her marriage, in 1509, to her relation, Charles, Duke of Alencon,who was older than herself by three years, and though a fair soldierand an inoffensive person, was apparently of little talents and notparticularly amiable. The accession of her brother to the throneopened a much more brilliant career to her. She and her mother jointlyexercised great influence over Francis; and the Duchess of Alencon, towhom her brother shortly afterwards gave Berry, was for many years oneof the most influential persons in the kingdom, using her influencealmost invariably for good. Her husband died soon after Pavia, andin the same year (September 1525) she undertook a journey to Spain onbehalf of her captive brother. This journey, with some expressions inher letters and in Brantome, has been wrested by some critics in orderto prove that her affection for Francis was warmer than it ought to havebeen--an imputation wanton in both senses of the word.
She was sought in marriage by or offered in marriage to diversdistinguished persons during her widowhood, and this was also the timeof her principal diplomatic exercise, an office for which--odd as it nowseems for a woman--she had, like her mother, like her niece Catherine ofMedicis, like her namesake Margaret of Parma, and like other ladies ofthe age, a very considerable aptitude and reputation. When she at lastmarried, the match was not a brilliant one, though it proved, contraryto immediate probability, to be the source of the last and the mostglorious branch of the royal dynasty of France. The bridegroom boreindeed the title of King of Navarre and possessed Beam, but his kingdomhad long been in Spanish hands, and but for his wife's dowry of Alenconand appanage of Berry (to which Francis had added Armagnac and a largepension) he would have been but a lackland. Furthermore, he was elevenyears younger than herself, and it is at least insinuated that theaffection, if there was any, was chiefly on her side. At any rate,this earlier Henry of Navarre seems to have had not a few of thecharacteristics of his grandson, together with a violence and brutalitywhich, to do the _Vert Galant_ justice, formed no part of his character.The only son of the marriage died young, and a girl, Jane d'Albret,mother of the great Bourbon race of the next two centuries, was takenaway from her parents by "reasons of state" for a time. The domestic lifeof Margaret, however, concerns us but little, except in one way. Herhusband disliked administration, and she was the principal ruler intheir rather extensive estates or dominions. Moreover, she was able ather quasi-Court to extend the literary coteries which she had alreadybegun to form at Paris. The patronage to men of letters for which herbrother is famous was certainly more due to her than to himself; and toher also was due the partial toleration of religious liberty which for atime distinguished his reign. It was not till her influence was weakenedthat intolerance prevailed, and she was able even then for a time tosave Marot and other distinguished persons from persecution. It israther a moot-point how far she inclined to the Reformed doctrines,properly so called. Her letters, her serious and poetical work, andeven the _Heptameron_ itself, show a fervently pietistic spirit,and occasionally seem to testify to a distinct inclination towardsProtestantism, which is also positively attested by Brantome and others;but this Protestantism must have been, so far as it was consistent anddefinite at all, the Protestantism of Erasmus rather than of Luther, ofRabelais rather than of Calvin. She had a very strong objection tothe coarseness, the vices, the idleness, the brutish ignorance of thecloister; she had aspirations after a more spiritual form of religionthan the ordinary Catholicism of her day provided, and as a strongpolitician she may have had something of that Gallicanism which hasalways been well marked in some of the best Frenchmen, and which atone time nearly prevailed with her great-great-grandson, Louis XIV.But there is no doubt that, as her brother said to the fanaticalMontmorency, she would always have been and always was of his religion,the religion of the State. The side of the Reformation which musthave most appealed to her was neither its austere morals, nor its bareritual, nor its doctrines, properly so called, but its spiritual pietismand its connection with profane learning and letters; for of literatureMargaret was an ardent devotee and a constant practitioner.
Her best days were done by the time of her second marriage. After theKing's return from Spain persecution broke out, and Margaret's influencebecame more and more weak to stop it. As early as 1533 her own _Miroirde l'Ame Pecheresse_, then in a second edition, provoked the fanaticismof the Sorbonne, and the King had to interfere in person to protecthis sister's work and herself from gross insult. The Medici marriageincreased the persecuting tendency, and for a time there was even anattempt to suppress printing, and with it all that new literature whichwas the Queen's delight. She was herself in some danger, but Francis hadnot sunk so low as to permit any actual attack to be made on her. Yetall the last years of her life were unhappy, though she continued tokeep Court at Nerac in Pau, to accompany her brother in his progresses,and, as we know from documents, to play Lady Bountiful over a wide areaof France. Her husband appears to have been rather at variance withher; and her daughter, who married first, and in name only, the Dukeof Cleves in 1540, and later (1548) Anthony de Bourbon, was also noton cordial terms with her mother. By the date of this second marriageFrancis was dead, and though he had for many years been anything butwholly kind, Margaret's good
days were now in truth done. Her nephewHenry left her in possession of her revenues, but does not seem to havebeen very affectionately disposed towards her; and even had shebeen inclined to attempt any recovery of influence, his wife and hismistress, Catherine de Medici and Diana of Poitiers, two women asdifferent from Margaret as they were from one another, would certainlyhave prevented her from obtaining it. As a matter of fact, however, shehad long been in ill-health, and her brother's death seems to have dealther the final stroke. She survived it two years, even as she had beenborn two years before him, and died on the 21 st December 1549, at theCastle of Odos, near Tarbes, having lived in almost complete retirementfor a considerable time. Her husband is said to have regretted her deadmore than he loved her living, and her literary admirers, such of themas death and exile had spared, were not ungrateful. _Tombeaux_, orcollections of funeral verses, were not lacking, the first being inLatin, and, oddly enough, nominally by three English sisters, Anne,Margaret, and Jane Seymour, nieces of Henry VIII.'s queen and EdwardVI.'s mother, with learned persons like Dorat, Sainte-Marthe, and Baif.This was re-issued in French and in a fuller form later.
Some reference has been made to an atrocious slur cast without a shredof evidence on her moral character. There is as little foundation formore general though milder charges of laxity. It is admitted that shehad little love for her first husband, and it seems to be probable thather second had not much love for her. She was certainly addressed ingallant strains by men of letters, the most audacious being ClementMarot; but the almost universal reference of the well-known anddelightful lines beginning--
"Un doux nenny avec un doux sourire,"
to her method of dealing not merely with this lover but with others,argues a general confidence in her being a virtuous coquette, ifsomewhat coquettishly virtuous. It may be added that the whole tone ofthe _Heptameron_ points to a very similar conclusion.
Her literary work was very considerable, and it falls under threedivisions: letters, the book before us, and the very curious andinteresting collection of poems known by the charming if fantastic titleof _Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses_, a play on themeanings, daisy, pearl, and Margaret, which had been popular in theartificial school of French poetry since the end of the thirteenthcentury in a vast number of forms.
The letters are naturally of the very first importance for determiningthe character of Margaret's life as a woman of business, a diplomatist,and so forth. They show her to us in all these capacities, and also inthat of an enlightened and always ready patroness of letters and of menof letters. Further, they are of value, though their value is somewhataffected by a reservation to be made immediately, as to her mental andmoral characteristics. But they are not of literary interest at allequal to that of either of the other divisions. They are, if not spoilt,still not improved, by the fact that the art of easy letter-writing,in which Frenchwomen of the next century were to show themselves suchproficients, had not yet been developed, and that most of them arecouched in a heavy, laborious, semiofficial style, which smells, as faras mere style goes, of the cumbrous refinements of the _rhetoriqueurs_,in whose flourishing time Margaret herself grew up, and which concealsthe writer's sentiments under elaborate forms of ceremonial courtesy.Something at least of the groundless scandal before referred to isderived in all probability, if not in all certainty, from the lavishuse of hyperbole in addressing her brother; and generally speaking,the rebuke of the Queen to Polonius, "More matter with less art," isapplicable to the whole correspondence.
Something of the same evil influence is shown in the Marguerites. Itmust be remembered that the writer died before the Pleiade movement hadbeen fully started, and that she was older by five years than Marot,the only one of her own contemporaries and her own literary circle whoattained to a poetic style easier, freer, and more genuine than thecumbrous rhetoric, partly derived from the allegorising style of the_Roman de la Rose_ and its followers, partly influenced by corruptfollowing of the re-discovered and scarcely yet understood classics,partly alloyed with Flemish and German and Spanish stiffness, of whichChastellain, Cretin, and the rest have been the frequently quoted andthe rarely read exponents to students of French literature. The contentsof the _Marguerites_, to take the order of the beautiful edition ofM. Felix Frank, are as follows: Volume I. contains first a long andsingular religious poem entitled _Le Miroir de l'Ame Pecheresse_, inrhymed decasyllables, in which pretty literal paraphrases of a largenumber of passages of Scripture are strung together with a certainamount of pious comment and reflection. This is followed (after ashorter piece on the contest in the human soul between the laws of thespirit and of the flesh) by another poem of about the same length as the_Miroir_, and of no very different character, entitled _Oraison de L'AmeFidele a son Seigneur Dieu_, and a shorter _Oraison a Notre SeigneurJesus Christ_ completes the volume. The second volume yields fourso-called "comedies," but really mysteries on the old mediaeval model,only distinguishable from their forerunners by slightly more modernlanguage and a more scriptural tone. The subjects are the Nativity, theAdoration of the Three Kings, the Massacre of the Innocents, and theFlight into Egypt. The third volume contains a third poem in thestyle of the _Miroir_, but much superior, _Le Triomphe de l'Agneau_, aconsiderable body of spiritual songs, a miscellaneous poem or two,and some epistles, chiefly addressed to Francis. These last begin thesmaller and secular division of the _Marguerites_, which is completedin the fourth volume by _Les Quatre Dames et les Quatre Gentilhommes_,composed of long monologues after the fashion of the Froissart-Chartierschool, by a "_comedie profane_," a farce entitled _Trop, Prou [much],Peu, Moins_; a long love poem, again in the Chartier style, entitled _LaCoche_, and some minor pieces.
Opinion as to these poems has varied somewhat, but their merit has neverbeen put very high, nor, to tell the truth, could it be put high by anyone who speaks critically. In the first place, they are written for themost part on very bad models, both in general plan and in particularstyle and expression. The plan is, as has been said, taken from thelong-winded allegorical erotic poetry of the very late thirteenth, thefourteenth, and the fifteenth centuries--poetry which is now among themost difficult to read in any literature. The groundwork or canvas beingtransferred from love to religion, it gains a little in freshness anddirectness of purpose, but hardly in general readableness. Thus, forinstance, two whole pages of the _Miroir_, or some forty or fifty lines,are taken up with endless playings on the words _mort_ and _vie_ andtheir derivatives, such as _mortifiez, and mort fiez, mort vivifiee andvie mourante_. The sacred comedies or mysteries have the tediousnessand lack of action of the older pieces of the same kind without their_naivete_; and pretty much the same may be said of the profane comedy(which is a kind of morality), and of the farce. Of _La Coche_, what hasbeen said of the long sacred poems may be said, except that here wego back to the actual subject of the models, not on the whole withadvantage: while in the minor pieces the same word plays and frigidconceits are observable.
But if this somewhat severe judgment must be passed on the poemsas wholes, and from a certain point of view, it may be considerablysoftened when they are considered more in detail. In not a few passagesof the religious poems Margaret has reached (and as she had no examplesbefore her except Marot's psalms, which were themselves later than atleast some of her work, may be said to have anticipated) that grave andsolemn harmony of the French Huguenots of the sixteenth century, whichin Du Bartas, in Agrippa d'Aubigne, and in passages of the tragedianMontchrestien, strikes notes hardly touched elsewhere in Frenchliterature. The _Triomphe de l'Agneau_ displays her at her best in thisrespect, and not unfrequently comes not too far off from the apocalypticresonance of d'Aubigne himself. Again, the _Bergerie_ included in theNativity comedy or mystery, though something of a Dresden _Bergerie_ (touse a later image), is graceful and elegant enough in all conscience.But it is on the minor poems, especially the Epistles and the _ChansonsSpirituelles_, that the defenders of Margaret's claim to be a poet restmost strongly. In the former her love,
not merely for her brother, butfor her husband, appears unmistakably, and suggests graceful thoughts.In the latter the force and fire which occasionally break through thestiff wrappings of the longer poems appear with less difficulty and infuller measure.
It is, however, undoubtedly curious, and not to be explained merely bythe difference of subject, that the styles of the letters and of thepoems, agreeing well enough between themselves, differ most remarkablyfrom that of the _Heptameron_. The two former are decidedly open tothe charges of pedantry, artificiality, heaviness. There is a greatsurplusage of words and a seeming inability to get to the point. The_Heptameron_ if not equal in narrative vigour and lightness to Boccacciobefore and La Fontaine afterwards, is not in the least exposed tothe charge of clumsiness of any kind, employs a simple, natural, andsufficiently picturesque vocabulary, avoids all verbiage and roundaboutwriting, and both in the narratives and in the connecting conversationdisplays a very considerable advance upon nearly all the writers of thetime, except Rabelais, Marot, and Desperiers, in easy command of thevernacular. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there has, at differenttimes (rather less of late years, but that is probably an accident),been a disposition if not to take away from Margaret all the credit ofthe book, at any rate to give a share of it to others. In so far as thisshare is attempted to be bestowed on ladies and gentlemen of her Courtor family there is very little evidence for it; but in so far as the penmay be thought to have been sometimes held for her by the distinguishedmen of letters just referred to (there is no reason why Master Francishimself should not have sometimes guided it), and by others only lessdistinguished, there is considerable internal reason to favour the idea.At all times and in all places--in France perhaps more than anywhereelse--kings and queens, lords and ladies, have found no difficulty (weneed not use the harsh Voltairian-Carlylian phrase, and say in gettingtheir literary work "buckwashed," but) in getting it pointed andseasoned, trimmed and ornamented by professional men of letters. Theform of the _Heptameron_ lends itself more than any other to suchassistance; and while I should imagine that the setting, with its strongcolour, both of religiosity and amorousness, is almost wholly Margaret'swork, I should also think it so likely as to be nearly certain that insome at least of the tales the hands of the authors of the _CymbalumMundi_ and the _Adolescence Clementine_, of Le Macon and Brodeau, mayhave worked at the devising, very likely re-shaped and adjusted by theQueen herself, of the actual stories as we have them now.
The book, as we have it, consists of seven complete days of ten novelseach, and of an eighth containing two novels only. The fictitious schemeof the setting is somewhat less lugubrious than that of the _Decameron_,but still not without an element of tragedy. On the first of September,"when the hot springs of the Pyrenees begin to enter upon their virtue,"a company of persons of quality assembled at Cauterets, we are told, andabode there three weeks with much profit. But when they tried to return,rain set in with such severity that they thought the Deluge had comeagain, and they found their roads, especially that to the French side,almost entirely barred by the Gave de Bearn and other rivers. So theyscattered in different directions, most of them taking the Spanishside, either along the mountains and across to Roussillon or straight toBarcelona, and thence home by sea. But a certain widow, named Oisille,made her way with much loss of men and horses to the Abbey of Notre Damede Serrance. Here she was joined by divers gentlemen and ladies, whohad had even worse experiences of travel than herself, with bears andbrigands, and other evil things, so that one of them, Longarine, hadlost her husband, murdered in an affray in one of the cut-throat innsalways dear to romance. Besides this disconsolate person and Oisille,the company consisted of a married pair, Hircan and Parlamente; twoyoung cavaliers, Dagoucin and Saffredent; two young ladies, Nomerfideand Ennasuite; Simontault, a cavalier-servant of Parlamente; andGeburon, a knight older and discreeter than the rest of the companyexcept Oisille.(1)
1 These names have been accommodated to M. Le Roux de Lincy's orthography, from MS. No. 1512; but for myself I prefer the spellings, especially "Emarsuitte," more usual in the printed editions.--G. S.
These form the party, and it is to be noted that idle and contradictoryas all the attempts made to identify them have been (for instance, themost confident interpreters hesitate between Oisille and Parlamente, anaged widow and a youthful wife, for Margaret herself), it is not to bedenied that the various parts are kept up with much decision and spirit.Of the men, indeed, Hircan is the only one who has a very decidedcharacter, and is represented as fond of his wife, Parlamente, buta decided libertine and of a somewhat rough and ruthless generalcharacter--points which have made the interpreters sure that he must beHenry d'Albret. The others, except that Geburon is, as had been said,older than his companions, and that Simontault sighs vainly afterParlamente, are merely walking gentlemen of the time, accomplishedenough, but not individual. The women are much more distinct and show awoman's hand. Oisille is, as our own seventeenth-century ancestors wouldhave said, ancient and sober, very devout, regarded with great respectby the rest of the company, and accepted as a kind of mistress both ofthe revels and of more serious matters, but still a woman of theworld, and content to make only an occasional and mild protest againsttolerably free stories and sentiments. Parlamente, considerably younger,and though virtuous, not by any means ignorant of or wholly averse tothe devotion of Simontault, indulging occasionally in a kind of mildconjugal sparring with her husband, Hircan, but apparently devoted tohim, full of religion and romance and refinement at once, is a verycharming character, resembling Madame de Sevigne as she may have beenin her unknown or hardly known youth, when husband and lovers alike wereattracted by the flame of her beauty and charm, only to complain thatit froze and did not burn. Longarine is discreetly unhappy for herdead husband, but appears decidedly consolable; Ennasuite is a haughtydamsel, disdainful of poor folk, and Nomerfide is a pure madcap,a Catherine Seyton of the generation before Catherine herself, thefeminine Dioneo of the party, and, if a little too free-spoken forprudish modern taste, a very delightful girl.
Now when this good company had assembled at Serrance and told each othertheir misadventures, the waters on inquiry seemed to be out more widelyand more dangerously than before, so that it was impossible to think ofgoing farther for the time. They deliberated accordingly how they shouldemploy themselves, and, after allowing, on the proposal of Oisille, anample space for sacred exercises, they resolved that every day, afterdinner and an interval, they should assemble in a meadow on the bank ofthe Gave at midday and tell stories. The device is carried out withsuch success that the monks steal behind the hedges to hear them, and anoccasional postponement of vespers takes place. Simontault begins, andthe system of tale-telling goes round on the usual plan of each speakernaming him or her who shall follow. It should be observed that nogeneral subject is, as in the _Decameron_, prescribed to the speakersof each day, though, as a matter of course, one subject often suggestsanother of not dissimilar kind. Nor is there the Decameronic arrangementof the "king." Between the stories, and also between the days, there isoften a good deal of conversation, in which the divers characters, asgiven above, are carried out with a minuteness very different from thechief Italian original.
From what has been said already, it will be readily perceived that thenovels, or rather their subjects, are not very easy to class in anyrationalised order. The great majority, if they do not answer exactly tothe old title of _Les Histoires des Amants Fortunes_, are devoted tothe eternal subject of the tricks played by wives to the disadvantageof husbands, by husbands to the disadvantage of wives, and sometimes bylovers to the disadvantage of both. "Subtilite" is a frequent word inthe titles, and it corresponds to a real thing. Another large division,trenching somewhat upon the first, is composed of stories to thediscredit of the monks (something, though less, is said against thesecular clergy), and especially of the Cordeliers or Franciscans, anOrder who, for their coarse immorality and their brutal antipathy tolearning, were the special bl
ack (or rather grey) beasts of the literaryreformers of the time. In a considerable number there are referencesto actual personages of the time--references which stand on a verydifferent footing of identification from the puerile guessings at thepersonality of the interlocutors so often referred to. Sometimes thesereferences are avowed: "Un des muletiers de la Reine de Navarre," "LeRoi Francois montre sa generosite," "Un President de Grenoble," "Unefemme d'Alencon," and so forth. At other times the reference is somewhatmore covert, but hardly to be doubted, as in the remarkable story of a"great Prince" (obviously Francis himself) who used on his journeyingsto and from an assignation of a very illegitimate character, to turninto a church and piously pursue his devotions. There are a few curiousstories in which amatory matters play only a subordinate part or noneat all, though it must be confessed that this last is a rare thing.Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes pretty free, and thengenerally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such as thatalready noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal withremarkable trials and crimes, or merely miscellaneous matters, the bestof the last class being the capital "Bonne invention pour chasser lelutin."
In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, itnaturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversityof tone. But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once,the combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and amystical devotion, is seldom absent for long together. The generalnote, indeed, of the _Heptameron_ is given by more than one passagein Brantome--at greatest length by one which Sainte-Beuve has rightlyquoted, at the same time and also rightly rebuking the sceptical Abbe'sdetermination to see in it little more than a piece of _precieuse_mannerliness (though, indeed, the _Precieuses_ were not yet). Yet evenSainte-Beuve has scarcely pointed out quite strongly enough how entirelythis is the keynote of all Margaret's work, and especially of the_Heptameron_. The story therefore may be worth telling again, thoughit may be found in the "Cinquieme Discours" of the _Vies des DamesGalantes_.
Brantome's brother, not yet a captain in the army, but a studenttravelling in Italy, had in sojourning at Ferrara, when Renee of Francewas Duchess, fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle de la Roche. Forlove of him she had returned to France, and, visiting his own countryof Gascony, had attached herself to the Court of Margaret, where shehad died. And it happened that Bourdeilles, six months afterwards, andhaving forgotten all about his dead love, came to Pau and went to payhis respects to the Queen. He met her coming back from vespers, and shegreeted him graciously, and they talked of this matter and of that. But,as they walked together hither and thither, the Queen drew him, withoutcause shown, into the church she had just left, where Mademoiselle dela Roche was buried. "Cousin," said she, "do you feel nothing stirringbeneath you and under your feet?" But he said, "Nothing, Madame.""Think, cousin," then said she once again. But he said, "Madame, I havethought well, but I feel nought; for under me there is but a stone, hardand firmly set." "Now, do I tell you," said the Queen, leaving himno longer at study, "that you are above the tomb and the body ofMademoiselle de la Roche, who is buried beneath you, and whom you lovedso much in her lifetime. And since our souls have sense after our death,it cannot be but that this faithful one, dead so lately, felt yourpresence as soon as you came near her; and if you have not perceived it,because of the thickness of the tomb, doubt not that none the less shefelt it. And forasmuch as it is a pious work to make memory of the dead,and notably of those whom we loved, I pray you give her a _pater_ and an_ave_, and likewise a _de profundis_, and pour out holy water. Soshall you make acquist of the name of a right faithful lover and a goodChristian." And she left him that he might do this.
Brantome (though he had an admiration for Margaret, whose lady ofhonour his grandmother had been, and who, according to the Bourdeillestradition, composed her novels in travelling) thought this a prettyfashion of converse. "Voila," he says, "l'opinion de cette bonneprincesse; laquelle la tenait plus par gentillesse et par forme de devisque par creance a mon avis." Sainte-Beuve, on the contrary, and withbetter reason, sees in it faith, graciousness, feminine delicacy, andpiety at once. No doubt; but there is something more than this, and thatsomething more is what we are in search of, and what we shall find, nowin one way, now in another, throughout the book: something whereof thesentiment of Donne's famous thoughts on the old lover's ghost, on theblanched bone with its circlet of golden tresses, is the best knowninstance in English. The madcap Nomerfide indeed lays it down, that"the meditation of death cools the heart not a little." But her moreexperienced companions know better. The worse side of this Renaissancepeculiarity is told in the last tale, a rather ghastly story of monkishcorruption its lighter side appears in the story, already referredto, of the "Grand Prince" and his pious devotions on the way to notparticularly pious occupation. But touches of the more poetical andromantic effects of it are all over the book. It is to be found in thestory of the gentleman who forsook the world because of his beloved'scruelty, whereat she repenting did likewise ("he had much better havethrown away his cowl and married her," quoth the practical Nomerfide);in that of the wife who, to obtain freedom of living with her paramour,actually allowed herself to be buried; in that (very characteristic ofthe time, especially for the touch of farce in it) of the unluckyperson to whom phlebotomy and love together were fatal; and in not afew others, while it emerges in casual phrases of the intermediateconversations and of the stories themselves, even when it is not to bedetected in the general character of the subjects.
And thus we can pretty well decide what is the most interesting andimportant part of the whole subject. The question, What is thespecial virtue of the _Heptameron_? I have myself little hesitationin answering. There is no book, in prose and of so early a date, whichshows to me the characteristic of the time as it influenced the twogreat literary nations of Europe so distinctly as this book of Margaretof Angouleme. Take it as a book of Court gossip, and it is rather lessinteresting than most books of Court gossip, which is saying much. Takeit as the performance of a single person, and you are confronted withthe difficulty that it is quite unlike that other person's more certainworks, and that it is in all probability a joint affair. Take itsseparate stories, and, with rare exceptions, they are not of the firstorder of interest, or even of the second. But separate the individualpurport of these stories from the general colour or tone of them;take this general colour or tone in connection with the tenor of theintermediate conversations, which form so striking a characteristicof the book, and something quite different appears. It is that samepeculiarity which appears in places and persons and things so differentas Spenser, as the poetry of the Pleiade, as Montaigne, as Raleigh,as Donne, as the group of singers known as the Caroline poets. It isa peculiarity which has shown itself in different forms at differenttimes, but never in such vigour and precision as at this time. Itcombines a profound and certainly sincere--almost severe--religiositywith a very vigorous practice of some things which the religion itprofesses does not at all countenance. It has an almost morbidlypronounced simultaneous sense of the joys and the sorrows of human life,the enjoyment of the joys being perfectly frank, and the feeling ofthe sorrows not in the least sentimental. It unites a great generalrefinement of thought, manners, opinion, with an almost astonishingoccasional coarseness of opinion, manners, thought. The prevailing notein it is a profound melancholy mixed with flashes and intervals of a noless profound delight. There is in it the sense of death, to a strangeand, at first sight, almost unintelligible extent. Only when oneremembers the long night of the religious wars which was just about tofall on France, just as after Spenser, Puritan as he was, after Carewand Herrick still more, a night of a similar character was about to fallon England, does the real reason of this singular idiosyncrasy appear.The company of the _Heptameron_ are the latest representatives, at firsthand, and with no deliberate purpose of presentment, of the mediaevalconception of gentlemen and ladies who fleeted the time goldenly. Theyare not themselves any longer me
diaeval; they have been taught modernways; they have a kind of uneasy sense (even though one and another ofthemselves may now and then flout the idea) of the importance of otherclasses, even of some duty on their own part towards other classes.Their piety is a very little deliberate, their voluptuous indulgence hasa grain of conscience in it and behind it, which distinguishes it notless from the frank indulgence of a Greek or a Roman than from the stillfranker naivete of purely mediaeval art, from the childlike, almostparadisiac, innocence of the Belli-cents and Nicolettes and of thedaughter of the great Soldan Hugh in that wonderful serio-comic_chanson_ of the _Voyage a Constantinople_. The mark of modernity is onthem, and yet they are so little conscious of it, and so perfectly freefrom even the slightest touch of at least its anti-religious influence.Nobody, not even Hircan, the Grammont of the sixteenth century; noteven Nomerfide, the Miss Notable of her day and society; not even thehaughty lady Ennasuite, who wonders whether common folk can be supposedto have like passions with us, feels the abundant religious services andthe periods of meditation unconscionable or tiresome.
And so we have here three notes constantly sounding together or inimmediate sequence. There is the passion of that exquisite _rondeau_of Marot's, which some will have, perhaps not impossibly, to refer toMargaret herself--
En la baisant m'a dit: "Amy sans blasme, Ce seul baiser, qui deux bouches embasme, Les arrhes sont du bien tant espere," Ce mot elle a doulcement profere, Pensant du tout apaiser ma grand flamme. Mais le mien cour adonc plus elle enflamme, Car son alaine odorant plus que basme Souffloit le feu qu'Amour m'a prepare, En la baisant.
Bref, mon esprit, sans congnoissance d'ame, Vivoit alors sur la bouche a ma dame, Dont se mouroit le corps enamoure; Et si la levre eust gueres demoure Contre la mienne, elle m'eust succe l'ame, En la baisant.
There is the devout meditation of Oisille, and that familiarity with theScriptures which, as Hircan himself says, "I trow we all read andknow." And then there is the note given by two other curious stories ofBrantome. One tells how the Queen of Navarre watched earnestly for hoursby the bedside of a dying maid of honour, that she might see whether theparting of the soul was a visible fact or not. The second tells howwhen some talked before her of the joys of heaven, she sighed and said,"Well, I know that this is true; but we dwell so long dead undergroundbefore we arise thither." There, in a few words, is the secret of _THEHEPTAMERON_: the fear of God, the sense of death, the voluptuous longingand voluptuous regret for the good things of life and love that passaway.
George Saintsbury.(1)
London, October 1892.
1 As I have spoken so strongly of the attempts to identify the personages of the _Heptameron_, it might seem discourteous not to mention that one of the most enthusiastic and erudite English students of Margaret, Madame Darmesteter (Miss Mary Robinson), appears to be convinced of the possibility and advisableness of discovering these originals. Everything that this lady writes is most agreeable to read; but I fear I cannot say that her arguments have converted me.--G. S.