Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/114

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AVING thus described the brave and gallant bearing of sundry ladies on sundry noble occasions of their life, I am fain now to give some examples of the like high qualities displayed at their death. Without borrowing any instance of Antiquity, I will merely adduce that of the late deceased Queen Regent mother of our noble King Francis I. In her day this Princess, as I have heard many of mine acquaintance say, both men and women, was a very fair lady, and very gay and gallant to boot, which she did continue to be even in her declining years. And for this cause, when folk did talk to her of death, she did exceedingly mislike such discourse, not excepting preachers which did hold forth on this subject in their sermons. "As if," she would cry, "we did not all of us know well enough we must one day die. The fact is, these preachers, whenas they can find naught further to say in their sermons, and be at the end of their powers of invention, like other simple folk, do take refuge in this theme of death." The late Queen of Navarre, her daughter, did no less than her mother detest these same harpings on death and sermonizings on mortality.

Well, being now come near her fated end, and lying on her deathbed, three days before that event, she did see her chamber at night all lit up by a brilliant gleam shining in through the window. She did hereupon chide her bedchamber women, which were sitting up with her, asking them for why they did make so big and bright a fire. But they did answer, that there was but a small