also among Margaret's retainers.

1 _Livre de Dépenses de Marguerite d'Angoulême_.

She herself had long practised the writing of verses. It was in 1531,
and at Alençon, that she issued her first volume of poems, the _Miroir
de l'Ame Pécheresse_, (1) which created a great stir at the time, for
when it was re-issued in Paris by Augereau in 1533 (2) the Sorbonne
denounced it as unorthodox, and Margaret would have been branded as
a heretic if Francis had not intervened and ordered the Rector of the
Sorbonne to withdraw the decree censuring his sister's work. Nor did
that content the King, for he caused Noël Béda, the syndic of the
Faculty of Theology, to be arrested and confined in a dungeon at Mont
St. Michel, where he perished miserably.

1 Brunet's _Manual_, 4th ed., vol. iii. p. 275.

2 A second edition also appeared at Alençon in the same
year.

Margaret thus gained the day, but the annoyance she had been subjected
to doubtless taught her to be prudent, for although she steadily went
on writing, sixteen years elapsed before any more of her poems were
published. In the meantime various manuscript copies, some of which are
still in existence, were made of them, notably one of the poem called
"Débat d'Amour" by Margaret, and re-christened "La Coche" by her
secretary, John de la Haye, when he subsequently published it in the
_Marguerites de la Marguerite_. This manuscript is enriched with eleven
curious miniatures, the last of which represents the Queen handing
the volume bound in white velvet (1) to the Duchess of Etampes, her