They revelled in such works with no touch of coyness; it was a mark of breeding to discuss them, laugh at them, and quote from them. Often some courtly abbé, the spiritual director of these ladies, and soon to be a full-blown bishop, undertook explanation or translation. Some persons have questioned whether the custom of reading narratives so strongly spiced did not in the long run obliterate the moral sense, especially among women. Brantôme maintains that this was the cause of all moral obliquities. Margaret of France did not believe it; her faith in art was so ardent that she regarded it as a proof of mental vigour to face all sorts of literature without blenching. Her friend Marot told her so with a smile, for in the contest between flesh and spirit he held with the flesh; he mentions a select list of the works reputed the most naughty, and adds: Tout cela est bonne doctrine, Et n’y a rien de deffendu![231] Margaret, brought up on Saint-Gelais and Boccaccio, was in truth inoculated. Further, like some other women of narrow mysticism, she was not afraid of contrasts;—soul and body in opposite pans of the scale, Petrarch as a corrective to Boccaccio, and vice versa. Good humour and gaiety were part of the platonist hygiene, and ladies took them where they found them. Coarse pleasantries did not amuse, as a German[232] who had spent great pains in writing a _Eulogy of Baldness_ frankly confessed. “We are ridiculous even when we write of serious things, but we are never gay. When we try to be jocular it is, in the words of the proverb, like setting an elephant to dance.” Professed humorous writers are such bores!—a crusty old philosopher like Nifo, to wit, or that excellent La Perrière, a friend of Margaret, who dedicated his lascivious verses, his _Hundred Considerations of Love_, to a clerk in the Woods and Forests! There was no help for it, ladies had to return to Boccaccio, since amusement was his monopoly! The chance discovery of a by no means remarkable unpublished fragment of Boccaccio covered Claricio of Imola with glory, and was published at the expense of a Milanese Maecenas, Andrea Calvi, under the auspices of Leo X. and Francis I. Castiglione and Margaret were not disposed to attack such a renown: their ambition was to eclipse it. Margaret had a fresh translation of Boccaccio made. She herself, as we know, was ambitious to imitate the master; and to do so was really a profitable business: by donning Boccaccio’s mantle Firenzuola became a dignitary of the church, and Bandello became bishop of Nérac; while a common saddler, Nicolas, gained the favour of the king. The test of skill was to tell true stories under transparent pseudonyms. Yet Louise of Savoy was almost as fond of the Acts of the Apostles.