Though a highly talented woman Margaret was weak and suggestible.

She adored her dissolute brother and was always, on account of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alencon, [Sidenote: 1509] and then with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre, [Sidenote: 1527] put in the position of a suppliant for his support.
She carried on an assiduous correspondence with Briconnet as her spiritual director, being attracted first by him and then by Luther, chiefly, as it seems, through the wish to sample the novelty of their doctrines.

She wrote _The Mirror of the Sinful Soul_ in the best style of penitent piety.

[Sidenote: 1531] Its central idea is the love of God and of the "debonnaire" Jesus.

She knew Latin and Italian, studied Greek and Hebrew, and read the Bible regularly, exhorting her friends to do the same.