The noble moment is that when, by some sudden change of season, intellects and minds are spread, all of a sudden, in a richer and more equal manner over a whole generation of vigorous souls who then return eagerly to that which is natural, and give themselves up to it without restraint. That noble moment came in the middle of the seventeenth century, and nothing can be imagined comparable to the conversations of the youth of the Condés, the La Rochefoucaulds, the Retzes, the Saint-Evremonds, the Sévignés, the Turennes. What perfect hours were those when Mme. de La Fayette talked with Madame Henriette, lying after dinner on the cushions! Thus we come, across the greatest of centuries, to Mme. de Caylus, the smiling niece of Mme. de Maintenon, to that airy perfection where the mind without reflecting about it, denies itself nothing and observes all.
In the second half of the seventeenth century no one but Mme. Cornuel was allowed to use coarse language and be forgiven because of the spicy wit with which she seasoned it. At all times virtuous women must have heard and listened to more than they repeated; but the decisive moment (which needs to be noted) is that when they ceased to say unseemly things and fix them in writing without perceiving that they themselves were lacking in a virtue. This moment is what Queen Marguerite, as a romance-writer and maker of _Nouvelles_, had not the art to divine.
As a poet she has nothing more than facility. She imitates and reproduces the various forms of poesy in use at that date. It is told how she often employed two secretaries, one to write down the French verses she composed impromptu, the other to transcribe her letters.
Marguerite died at the Castle of Odos in Bigorre, December 21, 1549, in her fifty-eighth year; in yielding her last breath she cried out three times: "Jesus!" She was the mother of Jeanne d'Albret.
Such as I have shown her as a whole, endeavouring not to force her features and to avoid all exaggeration, she deserves that name of _gentil esprit_ [charming spirit] which has been so universally awarded to her; she was the worthy sister of François I., the worthy patron of the Renaissance, the worthy grandmother of Henri IV., as much for her mercy as for her joyousness, and one likes to address her, in the halo that surrounds her, these verses which her memory calls forth and which blend themselves so well with our thought of her:--