M. le Comte de la Ferrière, in his introduction to the Account-Book of the Queen of Navarre, have, with others, satisfactorily proved that a certain compromising letter, which tradition gave to the year 1521, must be dated as 1525, the year of Margaret's hurried flight from Spain; in which circumstances, as will be seen, the construction to be placed upon it involves no shade of censure.
No doubt some confusion with the gay and brilliant Reine Margot, queen of many lovers, has been the origin of the unfounded scandals which haunt the memory of the earlier Margaret. For the younger princess was also Margaret of Valois and of France, also the wife of a Henry, King of Navarre. Moreover, Brantôme wrote of our heroine, "En fait de galanterie, elle en sçavoit plus que de son pain quotidien." But we must remember that, in Brantôme's eyes, the sense of intrigue and of amours was by no means the only sense of galanterie, which signified, indeed—as properly it still should do—rather gentility, courteous and magnanimous behaviour, chivalry, and pleasing address. No phrase could be more suited to Margaret, the generous Egeria of two royal courts, the story-teller par excellence of her age, whose palace at Nérac assumed the double aspect of an asylum for persecuted scholars and a refined and spiritual Court of Love.
