ision is
recorded, but it may well be believed that her patriotism would not
allow her, even with the certainty of ease and emolument, to quit
France at that critical time, or to serve the enemy of her adopted
country.

Although Christine's reading was very varied and extensive, there were
two subjects--the amelioration of her war-distraught country, then in
the throes of the Hundred Years' War, and the championship of the
cause of womankind--which specially appealed to her as a patriot and a
woman, and for which she strove with unceasing ardour. In all her
writings she so interweaves these two causes that it is only by
approaching them in the same way that we can understand her view of
their psychological unity. To Christine these interests were
essentially identical, for she recognised how paramount is woman's
influence in the making or marring of the world--how, in truth, in
woman's hand lies a key which can unlock a Heaven or a Hell.

There was sore need of a patriot, and in Christine one was found. It
has been well said of her, and by a Frenchman too, that "though born a
woman and an Italian, she alone at the Court of France seemed to have
manly qualities and French sentiments." France was in a sorry plight.
There was war in the land, there was war in the palace. The sick King
suffered more and more from attacks of madness, and during these
periods the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy fought for the regency.
Christine began her patriotic work by fervent appeals to Isabella, the
Queen (to whom she offered a MS. now in the British Museum),[31] to
use her influence to put an end to these dissensions which so greatly
added to the troubles of the kingdom. She also lost no opportunity of
proclaiming in her various writings the duties and responsibilities of
kings and nobles to the people, and the necessity, if there was ever
to be peace and prosperity, of winning their regard. At the command of
Philip le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, and uncle of the King, she wrote in
prose, from chronicles of the time and from information obtained from
many connected with the King's household, _Le Livre des faits et
bonnes moeurs du roi Charles V_, recounting his virtuous life and deeds
and their advantage to the realm, and introducing a remarkable
dissertation on the benefit to a country of a strong middle-class.
She, of course, reasoned from Aristotle. The subject is a commonplace
one now, but in the case of any one living at the beginning