OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
then to the deductions of such sciences as I had time to give heed to, as well as to a study of the poets." Her master was Aristotle, and she made his ethics her gospel. "Ancelle de science," she calls herself, and remains a humble worshipper at the shrine of knowledge, for knowledge, she says, is "that which can change the mortal into the immortal." We can picture her to ourselves at work in the library of the Louvre, amidst its 900 precious MSS., and in the library of the University of Paris, to which she had access through her friend Gerson, the renowned Chancellor. In a miniature at the beginning of one of her MSS. she is seen seated, in a panelled recess, on a carved wooden bench, dressed in a simple blue gown and a high white coif. She is working at a folio on a large table covered with tapestry, with a greyhound lying at her feet. It is quite possible that this may be either a conventional setting, or one due to the imagination of the artist, but as the miniaturists of those days were, as far as they could be, realists, it is more than possible that we here see her represented at work in her favourite nook in the Louvre library, together with the favourite dog who shared her lonely hours. Gradually solace came to her through work, and having found so precious a treasure for herself, she, like our own modern sage, never tired of preaching to others the gospel of its blessedness.
Whilst Christine wrote and lived her student life—"son cuer hermit dans Termitage de
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