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CHAPTER V


THE KISS OF RESPECT


Margaret of Scotland, who was betrothed to Charles the Seventh's son, the Dauphin Louis (afterwards Louis XI.), one day walked through a hall where Alain Chartier was sitting asleep in a chair. On perceiving the sleeping poet, she went up to him and kissed him on the lips. Many of her suite were astonished at this, "for nature had, so far as Chartier was concerned, suffered a beautiful and rich mind to take up its abode in an ugly body." The princess replied that they were not to marvel at what she had done, for it was not the man she had kissed, but the mouth from which so many golden words had proceeded. Margaret's kiss was therefore an expression of the respect she had for the poet, and the admiration and regard inspired by his poetical genius. A little further back in the Middle Ages we meet with another

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