A complete change of character and of policy in a woman of twenty-three is very remarkable; and we are therefore surprised to find that the Anne who returned to Paris as the queen of Louis XII. was a very different person from the meek lady who had submitted to the ignorant and light-headed Charles. Not only did she insist upon and exercise her authority in Brittany, but she made the weight of her will felt in the affairs of the whole kingdom, pursued with ungenerous vindictiveness those who thwarted or opposed her, was jealous of her husband, of Madame de Bourbon, and of Louise de Savoie, mother of the young prince who one day was to be King Francois I. For her second husband, a man infinitely more worthy of respect than Charles, she appeared to have little tenderness. He was always considerate and good humored, admiring her and loving her even when she was domineering and almost insolent in her attitude toward him and toward his favorites. Her prudence and her regard for the decencies of life, too apt to be forgotten in the dissolute life now fostered by increased luxury and culture, were the only traits of Queen Anne that could be considered admirable. Her patronage of art, and of letters to a certain extent, her liberality to her favorite Bretons, had endeared her to a small circle; but neither France, which she hated, nor the best counsellors of the king, whom she thwarted and discomfited by her absolute ascendency over the king, had any cause to regret the early death of the queen, in 1514. It was fitting that, according to her wish, her heart should be buried in Brittany, while the body rested in Saint-Denis; for that heart had been unwaveringly Breton. To Louis she was _ma Bretonne_; and Breton she was in the most marked traits of her character; a woman of more than usual intellect and ability, with appreciation for art and literature, with a high sense of domestic virtue, and yet always hard, cold, shrewd, and narrow-minded.