Sichel, Edith Helen: Women and men of the French Renaissance (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1901)

CHAPTER XX

(1548—1550)
THE RISE OF THE PLE1ADE
In the year of grace, 1548, a young man with golden
hair stopped his horse before an inn, on the road from
Poitiers to Paris. He paused at the vine-wreathed door and
called for refreshment. In the tavern guest-room he found
another traveller, a nobleman to judge by his appearance,
handsome, richly dressed, of about the same age as himself.
They greeted—-they spoke—they drank together. They
found they had both come from Poitiers. It may have
been some traveller’s remark about sky or road that first
drew them together; that made each aware of the note of
distinction in the other. Before the meal was over, they
had struck on the theme of Poetry; of its past and the
classics; on the golden theme of its future. On and on
they sat, talking and glowing, striking out sparks from
each other. The new arrival listened intently as his com-
panion poured forth his eloquence; showed him a vision of
what poetry might be—of what he himself meant to make
it. When they rose they had resolved not to separate.
The men of those, days had impulses worth having; they
trusted the flash of insight—leaped, not in the dark, but
in the daylight. The youth with the golden hair was poor;