The second of the prose works in behalf of women is the Livre des Trois Vertus, or Trésor de la Cité des Dames, a book of sage counsel to women of all classes and full of information most valuable for the historian of manners. It is from this book that one receives the best impression of the fine moral character and catholicity of view of this woman living a life of hardship and struggle in the dark days of the mad king. She is no prude, but simple and charitable in her conception of the problems of life. Though herself a literary woman, she does not place too great stress upon learning for her sex: "This woman in love with scholarship intends, to be sure, that woman should acquire learning; but it must be for the purpose of developing her intelligence, of raising her heart to higher things, not of widening her field of ambitions, dethroning man and reigning in his stead."
The prodigious activity of this authoress can best be appreciated by reference to her own statement that, by the year 1405, she had "produced fifteen works of importance, without counting other special little dittiés, which together fill about seventy sheets of large size." The chief part of her work was already done; for the disturbed condition of the kingdom after the murder of Louis d'Orléans (1407) interrupted her labors. She had thoroughly naturalized herself in her adopted country, and this fervent patriot, who grieved that she was helpless to save France, must have suffered intensely during the dark years that followed. In 1410, she wrote a Lamentation upon the horrors of civil war, and two years later, after the overthrow of the communist government of Paris, the Cabochiens, she wrote a Livre de la Paix, full of harsh but just criticisms upon those butchers and bakers who would reform the whole world if first allowed to destroy it. Then came the greater sorrows of Agincourt and the English conquest. Christine fled from Paris, no longer the home of those princes who had favored her, and found refuge in a convent, probably the convent at Poissy to which her daughter had already retired. It was the breaking up of her little family, her two sons going back to Italy to seek a more favorable field for their peaceful talents, and the mother remaining in seclusion for eleven years.
It was probably not long before her death, of which we do not know the precise date, that the good lady heard in her cloister the glad news of the coming of the Maid of Orléans and of the consecration of the king at Rheims. All her love for her dear land of France welled up in her heart, and in gladness and wonder she sang the Dittié de Jeanne d'Arc, the praise of this "girl of sixteen years... before whom enemies fly, not one dare stand.... Oh! what honor to our sex! our sex, that God loves, it would seem." We cannot better conclude this account of a pure and noble woman--of one who loved her husband, her children and her country, and who, above all, preserved respect for herself and for her womanhood in an evil age--than in the words of her triumphant song of joy which proclaims that France is saved, and that it is a woman who saves France:
"Chose est bien digne de mémoire
Que Dieu par une vierge tendre
Sur France si grand' grâce estendre.
Tu Johanne, de bonne heure née,
Benoist (Béni) soit (le) Ciel qui te créa,
Par miracle fut (elle) envoyée
Au roi pour sa provision;