The religious poems of Margaret, which are deficient neither in grace, sensibility, nor affection, belong (it must not be forgotten) to the early productions of the French muse; and what particularly leads us to quote them is that they express the christian sentiments of this princess. This is the period at which it seems to us that Margaret’s christianity was purest. At an earlier date, at the time of her connection with Briçonnet, her faith was clouded with the vapours of mysticism. At a later date, when the fierce will of Francis I. alarmed her tender and shrinking soul, a veil of catholicism appeared to cover the purity of her faith. But from 1526 to 1532 Margaret was herself. The evidences of the piety of the evangelical christians of this period are so few, that we could not permit ourselves to suppress those we find in the writings of the king’s sister. The Duchess of Alençon resorted to poetry to divert her thoughts; and it was now, I think, that she wrote her poem of the _Prisoner_. She loved to recall the time when the King of Navarre had been captured along with Francis I.; she transported herself to the days immediately following the battle of Pavia; she imagined she could hear young Henry d’Albret expressing his confidence in God, and exclaiming from the lofty tower of Pizzighitone: Vainly the winds o’er the ocean blow, Scattering the ships as they proudly go; But not a leaf of the wood can they shake, Until at the sound of thy voice they awake. The captive, after describing in a mournful strain the sorrows of his prison, laid before Christ the sorrow which sprang from a feeling of his sins: Not _one_ hell but many million I’ve deserved for my rebellion. * * * * * But my sin in thee was scourged, And my guilt in thee was purged.[489] The noble prisoner does not seek the salvation of God for himself alone; he earnestly desires that the Gospel may be brought to that Italy where he is a captive--one of the earliest aspirations for Italian reformation. Can you tell why from your home-- Home so peaceful--you were torn? ’Twas that over stream and mountain The precious treasure should be borne By thee, in thy vessel frail, To God’s elect[490] .... On a sudden the prisoner remembers his friend; he believes in his tender commiseration and thus invokes him: O Francis, my king, of my soul the best part, Thou model of friendship, so dear to my heart, A Jonathan, Orestes, and Pollux in one, As thou seest me in sorrow and anguish cast down, My Achates, my brother, oh! what sayest thou?[491]