a singularly modern
note, is that they make protests of love, and false promises, which
must be either paid for dearly, or rejected with scorn. Then the hero,
if he has won the day, proclaims his victory in taverns and other
places of resort, and even in mixed company. Or if, as is more often
the case, he has lost it, he still tries, by suggestive hints, to
appear to his fellows a successful gallant. Surely the worldling of
to-day does not seem to differ very essentially from his brother of
the fifteenth century, or to have progressed any farther along the
path of loyalty!

Christine's line of argument is that the many must not be condemned
for the shortcomings of the few, and that even when God made the
angels, some were bad. To the charge that books are full of the
condemnation of women, she replies with the simple remark that books
were not written by women. Where is the shade of the worthy Christine
to-day? Does it walk the earth with a flag of triumph or a laurel
wreath whilst its sisters in the flesh are writing on every subject in
heaven and earth and sea? "De nos jours, le monde est aux femmes."

Is it marvellous, asks Christine, that a woman--"une chose simplete,
une ignorante petite femmellette," as she expresses it--should be
betrayed by man, when even the great city of Troy was, and when all
the books and romances are full of the betrayal of kings and kingdoms?
And if a woman is not constant by nature, why should Jean de Meun, in
_The Romance of the Rose_, devise so many tricks to deceive her,
seeing that it is not necessary to make a great assault upon a feeble
place? Then she deftly turns the tables on the other sex, reminding
each that he is the son of his mother, and that

Se mauvaise est il ne peut valor rien,
Car nul bon fruit de mal arbre ne vient.

And so on to the end, all is argument and banter. The repute of her
letter must have travelled quickly, for whilst Christine was still
combating with dissentients, an epitomised rendering of it appeared
(1402) in English from the pen of Hoccleve, the pupil of Chaucer,
entitled _The Lettre of Cupide, God of Love_.

[Illustration: _Bib. Royale, Munich._

LA CITE DES DAMES.

_To face page 138._]

Later, Christine, with Boccaccio's _De claris mulieribus_ before her,
writes _La Cite des Dames_, an account of the building of an imaginary
city which is to shelter within its strong ramparts the women of all
times and all countries who have dist