During the latter years of her existence Margaret suffered from ill health. In 1542 Mario Cavelli wrote of her: “The Queen of Navarre looks very delicate, so delicate, I fear she has not long to live. Yet she is so sober and moderate that, after all, she may last. She is, I think, the wisest, not only of the women, but of the men of France.”
She must have been pleasant company. So many men of sound insight could not have valued her society unless she had possessed unusual sense and heartiness. Her conversation is repeatedly mentioned as brilliant, eloquent, full of thought and sympathy.
Francis I. died in March, 1547. Margaret had said that when he died she did not want to go on living, but she had more brains and more vitality than she knew of. Everything interested her, even when she was not happy. To the last she did what she could to help the Reformers—her husband made it impossible for her to do much. Under the stimulus of Henri and Diane the Sorbonne had increased in laboriousness. Upon the subject of its added licence there is one humorous story, told by Duchatel, the witty secretary of Francis I., who used to say of him that he was the only man whose knowledge he had not exhausted after two years’ intimacy.
MARGARET D’ANGOULÊME
ABOUT 1548 (AFTER CORNEILLE DE LYON)
Duchatel preached the funeral sermon upon Francis, and said, with complimentary intention, that the soul of the king had gone straight to heaven. The doctors of the Sorbonne—swollen with courage under the known bigotry of the new king and the king’s mistress—complained at once of the horrible utterance. Pious as the late king had been, his soul could not have escaped purgatory. They sent deputies to Henri II. charging Duchatel with heresy; there existed an old grudge against him. The deputies were received, and given a conciliatory dinner by the king’s maître d’hôtel, Mendoza, and advised not to proceed further with the charge. “I knew the character of the late king intimately,” said Mendoza, wittily. “He never could endure to be in one place long. If he did go to purgatory, he would only stay there sufficient time to drink a stirrup cup and move on.”
It was Margaret’s time to “move on.” She went, in the autumn of 1549, to drink some mineral waters, but they did her no good. She was consumptive, and in a condition past being cured. During her last illness she is reported to have said, concerning her protection of heretics, “All I have done, I have done from compassion.” She could have given no better reason.
Her death was preceded by less suffering than most people’s; she simply sank into unconsciousness. At the last she struggled back for a second from stupor, and, grasping a cross that lay upon the bed, muttered, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” and fell back dead.