at Chantilly, and painted by the brothers Limbourg for
Jean, Duc de Berri, a brother of the King, some idea of what this old
residence of the Louvre was like. In this miniature we see represented
a square grim castle, with a large tower at each corner and narrow
slits for windows, suggestive more of a place of refuge in time of war
and tumult than the home of a peace-loving, enlightened king. When
Charles determined to beautify this sombre structure, statues were set
up without and tapestries hung within. One of the towers was fitted up
for the library, panelled with rare woods and furnished with some
thirty small chandeliers and a large central silver lamp, kept lighted
both night and day so that work could go on at all hours. In the
courtyard an outside circular staircase (one of the earliest, if not
_the_ earliest, of the kind) was added to give, as was said, a note of
gaiety. But the idea of gaiety seems somewhat ironical when we learn
that as it was difficult to get a sufficient number of large slabs
quarried quickly, headstones from the cemetery of the Holy Innocents
were taken for the purpose!

Christine, as a child, showed an extraordinary capacity for learning,
and this her father zealously fostered and developed. At the age of
fifteen she married, and married for love, the King's notary and
secretary, Etienne de Castel, a gentleman of Picardy. Her happiness
and well-being seemed assured, but Fortune, whose wheel is ever
revolving, though sometimes so slowly as to lull us into
forgetfulness, had decreed otherwise. For Christine it revolved all
too quickly. Two years after her marriage the King died (1380), and
her husband and father lost their appointments. Gradually anxiety and
sorrow crept like some baneful atmosphere into the once happy home.
First she lost her father, and then, two or three years later, her
husband died, leaving her, at the age of twenty-five, with three
children to provide for. Like many another, she turned to letters as
both a material and a mental support. Endowed with an extraordinary
gift of versification, she began by writing short poems, chiefly on
the joys and sorrows of love, expressing sometimes her own sentiments,
sometimes those of others for whom she wrote. But she tells us that
often when she made merry she would fain have wept. How many a one
adown the centuries has re-echoed the same sad note!

"Men must work and women must weep." So says the poet. But life shows
us that m