The world generally knows her as the author of the "Heptameron" and has condemned her rather severely because of its too great freedom of manners and morals. Our own generation, however, which from its youngest years reads in our daily newspapers much worse stories than Margaret ever wrote, should not be ready to condemn her. It is difficult to understand her writing of these stories unless one knows the conditions of the time. The license that had come in among the novelists led to the telling of many stories that even our age, accustomed to the greatest license in this matter, finds too frank. Margaret, whom her generation has agreed in calling a saint, hoped to undo the evil of such stories by telling them frankly and adding morals to them. The stories have been read and the morals neglected. Her idea was very much the same as the excuse made for the publication of many {306} criminal stories of all kinds in our time, that publicity makes for deterrence. The erroneous psychology of this attempt at justification for a serious breach of ethics is only too patent. Margaret's good intentions in the matter are undoubted. Good intentions, however, do not guarantee that acts will be without evil effects. Margaret was trying to correct the corruption of her time in very much the same way as many women have been aroused into activity in ours, only she made the sad mistake of using the wrong means by thinking that publicity or information would prove a safeguard against evil instead of an incentive to the very forms of vice that she was trying to correct--above all for the young. Her significance in literature is discussed in the chapter on French literature. Margaret's personal character is one of the most beautiful in history and it fully justifies the praise of her contemporaries and even Vittoria Colonna's words, which would seem fulsome. The most interesting phase of Marguerite's character is her devotion to the sick poor. Down at Alençon the large hospital owed its origin to her and her name was in benediction among the people because of all that she did. Hers was no mere distant service such as a queen might render because of the power she had to employ others, but she devoted herself to personal work for them that made them feel her saintly unselfishness. The king, her brother, gave her a grant for a foundling school in Paris. This was known as _La Maison des Enfants Rouges_, The House of the Red Children, because of the scarlet dresses which were the uniforms. Francis in his grant says that his sister had told him how these little children that had been picked up on the streets of Paris die when they are taken to the Hôtel Dieu and that they need the more special care of an institution for themselves and he is very glad to come to her assistance.