It was thus that on two or three occasions she tried to save the unfortunate Berquin, who persisted in dogmatizing, and was, in spite of all the princess’s efforts with the king, her brother, burned on the Grève, April 24, 1529. To read the passages of the letters in which she commends Berquin, one would think she espoused his opinions and his beliefs; but we must not ask too much rigour and precision of Marguerite in her ideas and their expression. There are moments, no doubt, in reading her verse or her prose, when we might think that she had fully accepted the Reformation; she reproduces its language, even its jargon. Then, side by side, we see her become once more, or rather continue to be, a believer after the manner of the best Catholics of her age, given to all their practices, and not fearing to couple with them her inconsistencies. Montaigne, who had great esteem for her, could not prevent himself from noting, for example, her singular reflection about a young and very great prince, whose history she relates in her _Nouvelles_, and who has all the look of being François I.; she shows him on his way to a rendezvous that is not edifying, and, to shorten his way, he obtains permission of the porter of a monastery to cross its enclosure. On his return, being no longer so hurried, the prince stops to pray in the church of the cloister; “for,” she says, “although he led the life of which I tell you, he was a prince who loved and feared God.” Montaigne takes up that remark, and asks what good she found at such a moment in that idea of divine protection and favour. “This is not the only proof to be adduced,” he adds, “that women are not fitted to treat of matters of theology.”