receiving at its first posthumous publication the not particularly
appropriate title of _Les Amants Fortunés_, was more fortunately
re-named, albeit by something of a bull (for there is the beginning
of an eighth day as well as the full complement of the seven), the
_Heptameron_.

Few ladies have been known in history by more and more confusing titles
than the author of the _Heptameron_, the confusion arising partly from
the fact that she had a niece and a great-niece of the same charming
Christian name as herself. The second Margaret de Valois (the most
appropriate name of all three, as it was theirs by family right) was the
daughter of Francis I., the patroness of Ronsard, and, somewhat late
in life, the wife of the Duke of Savoy--a marriage which, as the bride
carried with her a dowry of territory, was not popular, and brought some
coarse jests on her. Not much is said of her personal appearance after
her infancy; but she inherited her aunt's literary tastes, if not her
literary powers, and gave Ronsard powerful support in his early days.
The third was the daughter of Henry II., the "Grosse Margot" of her
brother, Henry III., the "Reine Margot" of Dumas' novel, the idol of
Brantôme, the first wife of Henry IV., the beloved of Guise, La Mole,
and a long succession of gallants, the rival of her sister-in-law
Mary Stuart, not in misfortunes, but as the most beautiful, gracious,
learned, accomplished, and amiable of the ladies of her time. This
Margaret would have been an almost perfect heroine of romance (for she
had every good quality except chastity), if she had not unluckily lived
rather too long.

Her great-aunt, our present subject, was not the equal of her
great-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by a
portentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a very