At that time Margaret was thinking of other things than earthly kingdoms. At this solemn moment she turned her eyes towards eternity, and poured out her heart on the bosom of a friend. ‘A thousand chances may separate us from this world,’ she said to Madame de la Rochefoucauld. ‘Whether we be near or far, in peace or in war, on horseback or in our bed ... God takes and leaves whom he pleases.’[547] The queen soon found that her lot was not all sunshine, and that Henry d’Albret’s humour was not always the same. Her husband’s weakness urged her to seek more earnestly ‘the heavenly lover,’ as she said to Madame de la Rochefoucauld; and the splendid wedding, which was long talked of, made her desire the better marriage. It was then she wrote: Would that the day were come, O Lord, So much desired by me, When by the cords of heavenly love I shall be drawn to thee! United in eternal life, The husband thou, and I the wife. That wedding-day, O Lord, My heart so longs to see, That neither wealth, nor fame, nor rank Can pleasure give to me. To me the world no more Can yield delight. Unless thou, Lord, be with me there ... Lo! all is dark as night.[548] Prayer did not constitute the sole happiness of the new queen: activity, charity, an eagerness to help others, did not bring her less pleasure. By her marriage she acquired more liberty to protect the Reform. ‘All eyes are fixed on you,’ Capito wrote to her.[549] She thought that Roussel her confessor, and Michael of Aranda her bishop, were about to advance notably the kingdom of God, and rejoiced at seeing these men of learning and morality pronounce daily more strongly in favour of the truth.[550] The world was at one of the great turning-points of its history; and the friends of letters and of the Gospel said to themselves that France, which had always been in the van of society during the middle ages, would not now fall to the rear. Pure faith, they thought, would penetrate every class, would renew the fountains of moral life, and teach the people at once obedience and liberty. Placed between the middle and the modern age, Francis I. would make the new times replace the old in everything. All, in fact, was changing. Gothic architecture gave way to the creations of the Renaissance; the study of the classic authors took the place of the scholasticism of the universities; and in the halls of the palace, mingled with nobles and priests, was seen a crowd of new persons--philologers, archæologists, poets, painters, and doctors of the Roman law. When the light was thus making its way everywhere, would the Church alone remain closed against it? The Renaissance had opened the gates to a new era; and the Reformation would give the new generation the strength necessary to enter them.