The fourteenth century was the heyday of the astrologer as it was of the witch, and the wise Charles V., "le Salomon de la France," was not alone in his superstition when he placed his reliance upon the predictions of the learned doctor, Thomas of Pisa, whom he had summoned from Italy to be court astrologer. We are told that the nobles and great ones of the earth at that time "dared do nothing new without the commands of astrology; they dared neither build castles, nor churches, nor begin war, nor even so much as put on a new robe, undertake a journey, nor go out of their houses without the consent of the stars." Whether or not this be somewhat of an exaggeration, there is no question that Thomas de Pisan occupied, at the court of Charles V., a position not only lucrative but dignified. Established in the Louvre itself, the Italian scholar sent for his wife and daughter to make their home in France. The daughter, then (1368) but five years of age, was already a precocious little lady, and was presented to the king when she arrived in France. Charles was pleased with the graces of the child, and made her his especial protegée, promising that she should have as good an education and place at his court as any _demoiselle_ of noble birth. Charles was himself a scholar and capable of appreciating the nobility of intelligence; and in this case he had not judged amiss. It is from the works of Christine herself--_La Vision de Christine_, in prose, _La Mutation de Fortune_, and _Le Chemin de Long Estude_,--in verse that we learn most of her story, which was happy and uneventful up to her fourteenth year. At this time she had already acquired, under her father's careful tuition, a remarkable familiarity with the classic authors of Rome, and could turn off as neat Latin verses as any boy in the schools, and could also write French verse. It was most fortunate for her that her father, "not thinking girls any more unfit for learning than boys," allowed her to "glean some straws of learning." Before she was fifteen Christine was married to a notary, Etienne Castel, a Picard gentleman of good birth and excellent character, whom she loved tenderly. The prosperity of her family was first threatened in 1380, when her good patron King Charles died. Then her father, who had lavishly expended a large part of the handsome stipend he received as astrologer, found himself suddenly reduced almost to poverty, and he did not long survive his royal patron. The earnings of her husband not being sufficient to maintain the family, Christine cast about for a means to put to use the education she had received, and had already begun, by some small works, her career as an authoress, when the sudden death of her husband, carried off by the plague in 1389, left her alone and without resources, and under the necessity of providing some sort of support for her mother and her three children.