But it is very clear that it would be a mistake persistently to look for in her the peaks and abysses she does not possess. It has been proved to demonstration that, given certain circumstances—if, for example, he had only been killed at the siege of Toulon—Napoleon would have died a captain of artillery; and doubtless Margaret of France, but for the accession of her brother, the wave of feminine Italianism, and possibly many other circumstances, would have died wife of the Duke of Alençon or the King of Navarre, or even less. Yet we can realise better than ever to-day how vastly important her leadership was. Her generation was that from which we are sprung, to which we owe our blood and sinews. Our society is experiencing almost the same uncertainties and the same attacks; it needs intelligent and active women as much as ever. Margaret was less bent on being an exceptional woman than on fulfilling her part as first lady of France. She played her part very well; she had her Pléiade.[161] And at her side she brought up as her successor another Margaret, her niece, the future Duchess of Berry and of Savoy, who did in fact continue the tradition—not less amiable, not less distinguished, but coming later and consequently more charming still, and above all, more calm and self-contained. Margaret of France had never read Plato until towards the end of her life, and then, when she discovered him, she believed she had found her guiding star. On the other hand, she did not permit Boccaccio to be forgotten. Her philosophy, then, was not very psychological, but it was eminently social. The theories of Bembo seemed to her to endow women with a large and beneficent measure of power; and that was enough. It must be confessed, however, that she looked at social questions themselves from a somewhat superior standpoint, and with a necessarily discriminating favour. She knew but one person, her brother, who even in the most manifest errors appeared to her the ideal of perfection, “the true Christ.” Apart from him she loved none but God, and she adopted as her emblem a marigold turned towards the sun, indicating her purpose to live and breathe only “for high, celestial and spiritual things”; other things, husbands included, seemed to her paltry and mean. And thus, as a woman of intelligence, she hoped to reign through the affections; her most assiduous flatterers only extolled her heart; even after her death a pious respect continued to watch over her works, of which a selection was published. And yet she gave only her intelligence to the world.