She never ceased to mourn for her husband, and the pages of her works are filled with poems which, like the little ballade that heads this chapter, hold tender allusion to her loss. Though to modern ears the perpetual repetition of this strain of mourning grows monotonous, some of the sweetest of her poems are those inspired by this sentiment, expressed with a directness and a simplicity that must appeal to any lover of truth and poetry. "He loved me," she sings, "and 'twas right that he should, for I had come to him as a girl-bride; we two had made such wise provision in all our love that our two hearts were moved in all things, whether of joy or of sorrow, by a common wish, more united in love than the hearts of brother and sister."
She too might have wished to die, she says, in order to follow the loved one, but that there were the children and the mother whom she alone could care for. The energy of her character at last saved the fortunes of her family. Her first task, the saving of some last remnants of the property of her father and her husband, was rendered more difficult by the almost interminable delays of the courts and the dishonesty of advocates and opponents who had more influence with the "blind goddess" than the daughter of the old astrologer. She herself gives an interesting picture of her difficulties, all bravely met for the sake of her children, and in time overcome. Not the least of her worries was the determination to conceal from her friends the desperate state of her fortunes; she was too proud to appear poor: "There is no sorrow equal to this, and no one who has not experienced it can know what it means.... Under a furred mantle and a cloak of scarlet, well saved, but not often renewed, there was many a shiver, and in a bed properly appointed with all things of comfort, many a sleepless night. But our meal was always a simple one, as befits a widow."
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).
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