the
courtyard. When, in 1513, Louis XII. sent for the young Duke of
Angouleme and bade him go and defend Picardy against the English, Francis
had scarcely done anything beyond so employing his natural gifts as to
delight the little court of which he was the centre; an estimable trait,
but very insufficient for the government of a people.

When, two years afterwards, on the 1st of January, 1515, he ascended the
throne before he had attained his one and twentieth year, it was a
brilliant and brave but spoiled child that became king. He had been
under the governance of Artus Gouffier, Sire de Boisy, a nobleman of
Poitou, who had exerted himself to make his royal pupil a loyal knight,
well trained in the moral code and all the graces of knighthood, but
without drawing his attention to more serious studies or preparing him
for the task of government. The young Francis d'Angouleme lived and was
moulded under the influence of two women, his mother, Louise of Savoy,
and his eldest sister, Marguerite, who both of them loved and adored him
with passionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of
Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to
herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was
proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in
mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of
money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral
principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kingship, for herself
the rank, influence, and wealth of a queen-mother, and, for both,
greatness that might subserve the gratification of their passions--this
was all her dream and all her aim as a mother. Of quite another sort
were the character and sentiments of Marguerite de Valois. She was born
on the 11th of April, 1492, and was, therefore, only two years older than
her brother Francis; but her more delicate nature was sooner and more
richly cultivated and developed. She was brought up with strictness by
a most excellent and most venerable dame, in whom all the virtues, at
rivalry one with another, existed together. [Madame de Chatillon, whose
deceased husband had been governor to King Charles VIII.] As she was
discovered to have rare intellectual gifts and a very keen relish for
learning, she was provided with every kind of preceptors, who made her
proficient in profane letters, as they were then called. Marguerite