But from the more sordid cares, the covering of her poverty under threadbare finery that did not keep out the cold, and the vulgar loungers who would ogle her and leer at her as she went about the courts, there was a refuge in the pursuits which were to earn her bread. At first Christine sang of her lost husband, and the grace and earnestness of these poems pleased the fashionable public of the day. Her style was the result of long and careful preparation, and her mind almost unconsciously reflected the things which she had read and admired in classic literature; and thus she transmitted to her readers much information, not in itself new or original, but strange to them, and therefore interesting. Some of the great personages of the court still remembered the little Italian protegée of Charles V., and asked her to write for them poems of love, in less lugubrious vein. We have seen that the troubadours thought it almost a truism: "Without love, no poesy," for love was their only theme; but here we find a woman who frankly admits that she has loved and loves no more, and who yet undertakes to write love poems for a price, and does write some exquisite ones. Poetry made to order can never seem spontaneous after we know that the poet has found inspiration not at the shrine of Phoebus but at that of Plutus; but many of the poetic masterpieces have been composed under stress of dire poverty, of which we are fortunately not always aware when reading them. And so, among the six or seven score little _ballades_ and _jeux_ which in Christine's works are marked _à vendre_--for sale--there are many that we could read with more sincere pleasure if we did not doubt the genuineness of the sentiment expressed. These little poems, many of them really graceful and charming playthings of a moment, lose so much in translation that I shall not attempt to render into English their ephemeral charm. The French of five hundred years ago is not "Frenshe of Paris" to most of us: rather is it of the school of "Stratford atte Bow," or of some other school we have never attended, and therefore I have chosen to give, with some changes in orthography, one of the simplest of Christine's _jeux à vendre_. It is a lover's song in praise of his lady beautiful and good: "Je vous vens la rose de mai? Oncques en ma vie n'aimai Autant dame ne damoiselle Que je fais vous, gente femelle, Si me retenez à ami, Car tout avez le coeur de mi (moi). .......................................... Je vous vens l'oiselet en gage? Si vous êtes faulx, c'est dommage, Car vous êtes et belle et doulx, Si n'ayez telle tache en vous, Et digne serez d'être aimée, Belle et bonne et bien renommée."