Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/145

130 said father and mother—that I know of no one who can succour me but God, seeing that my father and my mother have forsaken me; and these know well what I have said to them and that I can never love the Duke of Cleves, and that I will none of him. For I protest that should it come to pass that I be affianced or married to the Duke of Cleves, in any sort or manner that may come about, it will be, and will have been, against my heart and will; and he shall never be my husband, and never will I hold him for such, and the said marriage shall be null, and I call God and you to witness that you sign with me my protestation and recognize the force, the violence, and constraint which is used towards me in the matter of this marriage.

There is no cause without its martyrs. Little Jeanne, sorely against her will, was now to be tied to the rock. The dragon was invited to come and take her; a heavy German dragon, growling an uncomprehended and barbaric jargon. Jeanne regarded him with loathing and aversion. But no Perseus appeared. Jeanne was sent to her mother at Alençon, and the Duke of Cleves followed her there. To Jeanne, young, high-spirited, brilliant, made by her confined and dreary childhood only the more eager for splendour and for Paris, it appeared a cruel lot to wed this German Duke, twelve years older than herself, whose father was a madman, whose manners disgusted her, whose tongue she could not understand. Her mother had no sympathy with this aversion. Remembering her