,
And Charles, his lord, who nurtured him.
He sighs, and tears his eyes bedim.
Then, not unmindful of his case,
Once more he sues to God for grace
'O Thou, true Father of us all,
Who hatest lies, who erst did call
The buried Lazarus from the grave,
And Daniel from the lions save,
From all the perils I deserve
For sinful life my soul preserve!'
Then to his God outstretcheth he
The glove from his right hand; and, see!
St. Gabriel taketh it instantly.
God sends a cherub-angel bright,
And Michael, Saint of Peril hight;
And Gabriel comes; up, up they rise,
And bear the Count to Paradise."

It is useless to carry these quotations any further; they are sufficient
to give an idea of the grand character of the poem in which so many
traits of really touching affection and so many bursts of patriotic
devotion and pious resignation are mingled with the merest brute courage.
Such, in its chief works, philosophical, historical, and poetical, was
the literature which the middle ages bequeathed to the reign of
Francis I. In history only, and in spite of the new character assumed
afterwards by the French language, this literature has had the honor of
preserving its nationality and its glory. Villehardouin, Joinville,
Froissart, and Commynes have remained great writers. In philosophy and
in poesy a profound revolution was approaching; the religious reform and
the fine literary genius as well as the grand French language of the
seventeenth century were preparing to rise above the intellectual
horizon. But between the moment when such advances dawn and that when
they burst forth there is nearly always a period of uncertain and
unfruitful transition: and such was the first half of the sixteenth
century, that is to say, the actual reign of Francis I.; it is often
called the reign of the Renaissance, which certainly originated in his
reign, but it did not grow and make any display until after him; the
religious, philosophical, and poetical revolution, Calvin, Montaigne, and
Ronsard, born in the earlier half of the seventeenth century, did not do
anything that exercised any power until the later. One single poet, a
third-rate one, Clement Marot, attained lustre under Francis I. Rabelais
is the only great prose writer who belongs strictly to that period. The
scholars, the learned critics of what had been left by antiquity in
general and by Greek and Roman antiquity in particular, Bude (Budaeus),
J. C. Scaliger; Muretus, Danes (