been a disposition if not to take away from Margaret all the credit of
the book, at any rate to give a share of it to others. In so far as this
share is attempted to be bestowed on ladies and gentlemen of her Court
or family there is very little evidence for it; but in so far as the pen
may be thought to have been sometimes held for her by the distinguished
men of letters just referred to (there is no reason why Master Francis
himself should not have sometimes guided it), and by others only less
distinguished, there is considerable internal reason to favour the idea.
At all times and in all places--in France perhaps more than anywhere
else--kings and queens, lords and ladies, have found no difficulty (we
need not use the harsh Voltairian-Carlylian phrase, and say in getting
their literary work "buckwashed," but) in getting it pointed and
seasoned, trimmed and ornamented by professional men of letters. The
form of the _Heptameron_ lends itself more than any other to such
assistance; and while I should imagine that the setting, with its strong
colour, both of religiosity and amorousness, is almost wholly Margaret's
work, I should also think it so likely as to be nearly certain that in
some at least of the tales the hands of the authors of the _Cymbalum
Mundi_ and the _Adolescence Clémentine_, of Le Maçon and Brodeau, may
have worked at the devising, very likely re-shaped and adjusted by the
Queen herself, of the actual stories as we have them now.

The book, as we have it, consists of seven complete days of ten novels
each, and of an eighth containing two novels only. The fictitious scheme
of the setting is somewhat less lugubrious than that of the _Decameron_,
but still not without an element of tragedy. On the first of September,
"when the hot springs of the Pyrenees begin to enter upon their virtue,"
a company of persons of quality assembled at Cauterets, we are told, and
abode there three weeks with much profit. But when they tried to return,
rain set in with such severity that they thought the Deluge had come