occasions in sumptuous garments. But in every-day life she was
very simple, despising the vulgar plan of impressing the crowd by
magnificence and splendour. In a portrait executed about this period,
her dark-coloured dress is surmounted by a wimple with a double collar
and her head covered with a cap in the Bearnese style. This portrait (1)
tends, like those of a later date, to the belief that Margaret's beauty,
so celebrated by the poets of her time, consisted mainly in the
nobility of her bearing and the sweetness and liveliness spread over her
features. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were very large, but although she
had been violently attacked with small-pox while still young, she had
been spared the traces which this cruel illness so often left in those
days, and she even preserved the freshness of her complexion until late
in life. (2)

1 It is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,
where it will be found in the _Recueil de Portraits au
crayon par Clouett Dumonstier, &c_, fol. xi.

2 Referring to this subject, she says in one of her letters:
"You can tell it to the Count and Countess of Vertus, whom
you will go and visit on my behalf; and say to the Countess
that I am sorely vexed that she has this loathsome illness.
However, I had it as severely as ever was known. And if it
be that she has caught it as I have been told, I should like
to be near her to preserve her complexion, and do for her
what Ï did for myself."--Génin's _lettres de Marguerite
d'Angoulême_, Paris, 1841, p. 374.

Like her brother, whom she greatly resembled, she was very tall. Her
gait was solemn, but the dignified air of her person was tempered by