different footing of identification from the puerile guessings at the
personality of the interlocutors so often referred to. Sometimes these
references are avowed: "Un des muletiers de la Reine de Navarre," "Le
Roi François montre sa générosité," "Un Président de Grenoble," "Une
femme d'Alençon," and so forth. At other times the reference is somewhat
more covert, but hardly to be doubted, as in the remarkable story of a
"great Prince" (obviously Francis himself) who used on his journeyings
to and from an assignation of a very illegitimate character, to turn
into a church and piously pursue his devotions. There are a few curious
stories in which amatory matters play only a subordinate part or none
at all, though it must be confessed that this last is a rare thing.
Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes pretty free, and then
generally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such as that
already noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal with
remarkable trials and crimes, or merely miscellaneous matters, the best
of the last class being the capital "Bonne invention pour chasser le
lutin."

In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, it
naturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversity
of tone. But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once,
the combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and a
mystical devotion, is seldom absent for long together. The general
note, indeed, of the _Heptameron_ is given by more than one passage
in Brantôme--at greatest length by one which Sainte-Beuve has rightly
quoted, at the same time and also rightly rebuking the sceptical Abbé's
determination to see in it little more than a piece of _précieuse_
mannerliness (though, indeed, the _Précieuses_ were not yet). Yet even
Sainte-Beuve has scarcely pointed out quite strongly enough how entirely
this is the keynote of all Margaret's work, and especially of the