Yet now I am upon French ground, I may as well take the giant's advice, and "begin at the beginning."[114] It seems at first view unaccountable that France, which has produced so many remarkable women, should scarce exhibit one poetical heroine of great or popular interest, since its language and literature assumed their present form; not one who has been rendered illustrious or dear to us by the praises of a poet lover. The celebrity of celebrated French women is, in truth, very anti-poetical. The memory of the kiss which Marguerite d'Ecosse[115] gave to Alain Chartier, has long survived the verses he wrote in her praise. Clement Marot, the court poet of Francis the First, was the lover, or rather one of the lovers, of Diana of Poictiers (mistress to the Dauphin, afterwards Henry the Second). She was confessedly the most beautiful and the most abandoned woman of her time. Marot could hardly have expected to find her a paragon of constancy; yet he laments her fickleness, as if it had touched his heart. A DIANE. Puisque de vous je n'ai autre visage, Je m'en vais rendre hermite en un desert, Pour prier Dieu, si un autre vous sert, Qu'autant que moi en votre honneur soit sage. Adieu, Amour! adieu, gentil corsage! Adieu ce teint! adieu ces friands yeux! Je n'ai pas eu de vous grand avantage,-- Un moins aimant aura peut-être mieux. In a _liaison_ of mere vanity and profligacy, the transition from love (if love it be) to hatred and malignity, is not uncommon--as Spenser says so beautifully, Such love might never long endure, However gay and goodly be the style, That doth ill cause or evil end enure: For Virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure! From being the lady's _lover_, Marot became her satirist; instead of _chansons_ in praise of her beauty, he circulated the most biting and insufferable epigrams on her person and character. We are told by one, who, I presume, speaks _avec connaissance de fait_, that a woman's revenge Is like the tiger's spring, Deadly and quick, and crushing. Diana was a libelled beauty, all powerful and unprincipled. Marot, in some moment of gaiety and overflowing confidence, had confessed to her that he had eaten meat on a "jour maigre:" he had better in those days have committed all the seven deadly sins; and when the lady revealed his unlucky confession, and denounced him as a heretic, he was immediately imprisoned. Instead, however, of being depressed by his situation, or moved to make any concessions, he published from his prison a most ludicrous lampoon on his _ci-devant_ mistress, of which the burthen was, "Prenez le, il a mangé le lard!" He afterwards made his escape, and took refuge in the court of Renée, Duchess of Ferrara; and though subsequently recalled to France, he continued to pursue Diana with the most bitter satire, became a second time a fugitive, partly on her account, and died in exile and poverty.[116]