enial to
her nature and opposed to the religion in which she was reared;
furthermore, that her husband first defiled the marital union, thus
driving her to follow the general tendencies of the time or to seek
solace in religious activity, for which she had too much energy. After
due consideration of the extenuating circumstances, her faults and
vices, such as they were, may easily be condoned. Because she was the
wife of a powerful Protestant king, she was condemned by Catholics and
by them regarded with suspicion; and, in order to save herself, she
was forced to commit unwise acts and even follies.

In fine, whatever may be said against Marguerite de Valois, whom
despair drove to acts which are not generally pardoned, she stands
foremost among the social leaders and cultured women of the sixteenth
century, a century whose prominent women were notorious for their
licentiousness and lack of conscience rather than famous for their
virtue and womanly accomplishments. Undeniably powerful and brilliant,
these unscrupulous women were never happy; usually proud, they finally
suffered the most cruel humiliations; "voluptuous, they found anguish
underlying pleasure." Their misfortunes are, possibly more interesting
than those successes of which chagrin anxiety, and heavy hearts were
the inseparable associates.

Religion, which in the sixteenth century was so badly understood, and
practised even worse--obscured and falsified by fanaticism, disfigured
and exaggerated by passion and hatred--was the secret cause of all
downfalls crimes, horrors, intrigues, and brutality. Yet, it alone
survives, and all the important figures of history return to it after
a period of negligence and forgetfulness. In their religious aspect,
the women of the sixteenth century differ as a rule, from those of
the eighteenth, who, though equally powerful, witty, refined, sensual,
frivolous, and scoffing, were far less devout; for "'tis religion
which restores the great female sinners of the sixteenth century 'tis
religion which saves a society ploughed up by so many elements of
dissolution and so many causes of moral and material ruin, rescuing
it from barbarism, vandalism, and from irretrievable decay;" but the
women of the eighteenth century clung, to the end, to the scepticism
and material philosophy which served them as their religion, their
God.

Among the conspicuous women of the sixteenth century to whom, thus
far, we have been able to attribute