She herself had long practised the writing of verses. It was in 1531,
and at Alençon, that she issued her first volume of poems, the _Miroir
de l’Ame Pécheresse_, (1) which created a great stir at the time, for
when it was re-issued in Paris by Augereau in 1533 (2) the Sorbonne
denounced it as unorthodox, and Margaret would have been branded as
a heretic if Francis had not intervened and ordered the Rector of the
Sorbonne to withdraw the decree censuring his sister’s work. Nor did
that content the King, for he caused Noël Béda, the syndic of the
Faculty of Theology, to be arrested and confined in a dungeon at Mont
St. Michel, where he perished miserably.