DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0134
98
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
Reformers. She claimed the wounded and distressed as her
own, protecting them at her private peril with a steadfast
chivalry. “ Your royal Margaret”—says one of the pedagogue
poets, who had no expectations from her to bias his words
—“has always been the road and the path of those who
have lost their way: the door at which they may knock.
She does not wait for them to approach, but calls them
to her by the kindness of her countenance, and runs to
meet them like the father of the Prodigal Son.”
Margaret’s sweetness was tempered by her humour—a quality
rare among the women of foui' hundred years ago. Humour,
which is supposed to foster a critical spirit, can afford to
laugh where the many would condemn, and is quite as
conducive to leniency as to satire. No reallv indulgent spirit
judges, indeed, without it. It is expressed in Margaret’s
countenance. Beautiful she was not, in spite of all that
courtiers wrote about her; but her face was original and
characteristic. There seems to be no picture of her as a
girl; nothing authentic of earlier date than Clouet’s portrait,1
taken when she was about forty. This is the less to be
regretted, because the woman painted there must always
have been much the same—of a type that is probably better-
looking in middle-age than in youth. She is essentially a
Valois; she has the long nose of her royal brother, his small
eyes and heavy half-shut lids, with their mysterious look;
but the brow is straighter and wider, the jaw square and
strong, and the mouth—an index of character—firm, calm,
benign, yet gently satirical: the lower lip rather full and
sensitive, restrained as it were by the upper, which is cri-
1 In the Gallery at Chantilly.
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
Reformers. She claimed the wounded and distressed as her
own, protecting them at her private peril with a steadfast
chivalry. “ Your royal Margaret”—says one of the pedagogue
poets, who had no expectations from her to bias his words
—“has always been the road and the path of those who
have lost their way: the door at which they may knock.
She does not wait for them to approach, but calls them
to her by the kindness of her countenance, and runs to
meet them like the father of the Prodigal Son.”
Margaret’s sweetness was tempered by her humour—a quality
rare among the women of foui' hundred years ago. Humour,
which is supposed to foster a critical spirit, can afford to
laugh where the many would condemn, and is quite as
conducive to leniency as to satire. No reallv indulgent spirit
judges, indeed, without it. It is expressed in Margaret’s
countenance. Beautiful she was not, in spite of all that
courtiers wrote about her; but her face was original and
characteristic. There seems to be no picture of her as a
girl; nothing authentic of earlier date than Clouet’s portrait,1
taken when she was about forty. This is the less to be
regretted, because the woman painted there must always
have been much the same—of a type that is probably better-
looking in middle-age than in youth. She is essentially a
Valois; she has the long nose of her royal brother, his small
eyes and heavy half-shut lids, with their mysterious look;
but the brow is straighter and wider, the jaw square and
strong, and the mouth—an index of character—firm, calm,
benign, yet gently satirical: the lower lip rather full and
sensitive, restrained as it were by the upper, which is cri-
1 In the Gallery at Chantilly.