than at others, and then learning, philosophy, and experience have said their say.

The Renaissance was one of the epochs at which these questions pushed to the front. Like our own age, it was a period of transition; its conclusions were often very different from our own, but in some points it bore a wonderful likeness to the present day. The position of women then underwent an almost inevitable transformation, both material and moral. Up to that time women had been regarded as inferior to men; opinion was built up on the practical and utilitarian basis still cherished in the Anglo-Saxon countries: all modes of activity belonged to the men, while the women's duty was to remain at home as domestic ornaments, precious, but fragile.

Yet society was not wholly averse to granting women what we call the right to a career. The Salic law was exclusively a French invention, and the product of special circumstances; in the political world there was nothing to prevent the acceptance of aid from women, even in the midst of the gravest perils. It was a woman-and a woman to the finger-tips-Isabel of Bavaria, who all but ruined us; Joan of Arc was our salvation. It is not too much to say that, in later years, the honour and might of France were saved by Anne of Beaujeu and Louise of Savoy. The same thing holds from top to bottom of the social ladder. In certain towns women might have been seen taking part in elections in the public square;1 in many of the châteaux the lady of the place, in the absence of her husband, fulfilled the most trying and masculine of tasks, administering justice, commanding the men-at-arms. Christine de Pisan speaks of this, not as a right, but as a rigorous duty.2 Among the working classes female labour was extensively employed, at a fairly high rate of pay.

But no one saw in this, as the opinion of Christine de Pisan shows, a direct and natural outlet for women's activities. A woman was regarded as the subject of her husband, and his deputy in case of need; hers was not a personal

1 Madame Vincent has reminded us, in an interesting memoir, that ladies at one time sat as peers of France.

As administrative authority depended on territorial possessions, it was quite natural that women should exercise it on occasion. The village gilds. though composed of men, sometimes elected a woman as president.

part; she was only the shadow or the extension of another person-a sort of half-man, or, as caustic folk said, an homme d'occasion, mas occasionnatus-a man marred in the making. (It must be confessed that this idea is rather hard on the ladies, and even on us men, more particularly because Providence does not take us into consultation in these matters, and all of us, men and women alike, have the assurance of remaining to the end of our days male or female as God made us.) On that system, it was allowable for women in cases of absolute necessity to perform the tasks of men, though the men could scarcely offer to reciprocate; if there was no help for it, women might adopt a trade or profession, but that appeared undesirable. All the countries faithful to these ideas were utilitarian countries, where men had incontestably the upper hand, and where no great need was felt for lofty flights.

In the countries of Latin blood and spirit they start from a principle absolutely the reverse. Women are not at all men for the nonce"; in the picturesque words of good François de Moulins, addressed to his pupil Francis I., "Never forget that women came from Adam's side, not from his feet." They are not substitutes for men, but have their own proper sphere. Castiglione has given us the typical formula in his famous book The Courtier. 'Man," says he, "has for his portion physical strength and external activities; all doing must be his, all inspiration must come from woman." She is, in his own words, the "motive force." One recalls the smiling remark of the charming Duchess of Burgundy: "I am always delighted when it is women who govern, because then it is men who direct." But according to Castiglione, the world ought to show the very opposite: men should govern and women direct; men act, women think, or mayhap dream. The former should have the material tasks of administration and practical affairs; the latter the spiritual and idealist realm. Looked at in this way, it is obvious how much larger the woman's part suddenly becomes, and what supreme importance it holds. in the life of the world. Instead of serving her husband merely as the material replenisher of his stock and an under-manager for his affairs, the woman will carve out

her own path and enjoy personal freedom, and will be the better able to lift up her head at home and in society for knowing that she represents there something more than the flesh; she will be the soul, the seeker after noble thoughts-thoughts necessary to happiness, but which the practical spirit of men scarcely permits them to pursue. There will be no question (to the great disappointment of certain modern aesthetes, who after all profit very largely by the railways and telegraphs) of declaring a relentless war against industry, manufactures, the business of administration; this unpleasing but serviceable sphere must simply be left to men, and upon this sordid earthly existence must be erected the frail editice of general happiness-the true life-a life of enthusiasm, beauty, and thought; in other words, we must relax the bonds of the material life, take time to fetch our breath, and infuse into realism a new and brighter spirit by means of the love of the beautiful. That is women's task; in the words of Ecclesiastes, "Their hearts are snares and nets, their hands are as chains." They are the queens of happiness, and they must compel us to be happy and to enjoy the happiness necessary to us.

With this end in view, the women of the Renaissance formed a league: they accomplished on behalf of the rights of the heart a sort of coup d'état, the story of which we are about to relate. Finally, no one was happy after all. But it is interesting to know why.

First, let us explain in a few words how it came about that in a country like France women were able to assume so important a part. Then, we shall proceed to show how vast was their effort, how ardent their quest for happiness, and we shall see why the formula they discovered has not come down to us.

INTRODUCTION

FRANCE is a singular country. We are slightly Greek, half Latin or Ligurian, very Gallic or very German, and in the West, the country of an intellectual gulf-stream, we are dreamers-the Celts of M. Legouvé's enthusiasm. All of us, whatever our stock, professed in the Middle Ages to adore women; the author of an old fabliau makes the Virgin ask of one of our gallant knights the subtle and searching question, "Is thy lady fairer than I?" But in practice-in other words, in our home lifewe treated women like animals, with the whip.

We must remark also that, during the whole course of the fifteenth century, France had no time for philosophising: the Hundred Years War and the awful distresses resulting from it; the iron hand and heavy taxation of Louis XI., whose rule was regenerative but very severe; then the Civil War and the Italian expedition-all these circumstances left us no breathing-space, and are in some measure the justification of an aftermath of brutality. It was only in the last years of the century that peace allowed us to reflect, and then activity, prosperity, and happiness burst out like a lightning-flash. Louis XI., who had clear and definite rights over France, had dealt with her like a strenuous husband; Louis XII., who wedded her by chance, treated her with the delicate worship of a lover who has thrown off the every-day concerns of life.

By what happy chance did the French, till then so apt, whatever they professed, to value women only on the physical side, take under the influence of kindly peace and individual well-being a step further towards the South, and come to think that women might serve as social guides? The genesis of these ideas was very remarkable.

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They came from elsewhere.

During our convalescence, Italy had become transformed. A great revolution, moral, religious, scientific, and above all aesthetic, had brought once more upon the arena the two eternal protagonists-the Roman spiritualists, and the friends of material force, that is, of imperial Germany.

Men are in general inclined to the side of force; their idea of happiness consists in imposing their will upon others, no matter how brutally, or at any rate in donning a uniform-they are born fighters or jockeys.

Women, on the contrary, can only hope to exert direct and effectual action by the spiritualising of society; and it is not by handing themselves over to the tender mercies of men, whoever they may be-husbands, lovers, doctors, hydrotherapists-or by aping the manners and talk of men, that they acquire their liberty. They are taken at their own valuation, provided they accentuate their purely feminine qualities.

This was thoroughly understood by the women of Italy, who managed so well that the crisis turned quite naturally to their advantage, without any theories whatever.1 Neither the accepted classics nor Plato gave them any assistance; they triumphed of themselves, and often at their own cost, because they accomplished their own education before undertaking that of others. Many of them, instructed, stout-hearted, nobly generous, while men were wasting their activities abroad, consistently embodied at home the superb saying of Christ, "Let not your heart be troubled "the only prescription yet discovered for the cure of neurasthenia. People poked fun at them, accused them of "wanting to wear the breeches." 2 Italian husbands were no more inclined than others to fall at their wives' feet and proclaim their divinity: they accustomed themselves to them gradually, almost unawares. It was natural that the disappointments, vexations and trials of politics or business. should throw them in this direction; what was more fortu

"The history of marriage is the history of a relation in which women have gradually triumphed over the passions, prejudices, and selfish interests of men that is the picture of true progress. : (F. Brunetière.)

2 An Italian caricature of about the year 1450 (repeated by the French in the sixteenth century) gives a satirical representation of women violently struggling to wear trunk-hose.