Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/182

Rh I meant to make you happy, Dear, enough, When I had full assurance of your love. And now, indeed, my heart is fixed and sure; Thy firmness, faith and patience to endure, And, over all, thy love, I know and see, And they have gained me wholly, Dear, to thee. Come, now, and take the thing that is thine own, For thine am I, and thou be mine alone."

This letter, carried by one of his friends, along with all possible remonstrance, was received by the gentleman Franciscan with a very mournful countenance, and with so many sighs and tears, it seemed as though he meant to burn or drown the poor little letter; but he made no answer to it, telling the messenger that the mortification of his extreme passion had cost him so dear that now he neither cared to live nor feared to die; wherefore he begged her who had been the occasion of his grief, since she had not chosen to content the passion of his great desires, not to torment him now that he was quit of them, but to content herself with the evil done, for which he could find no other remedy than the choice of this rude life, whose continual penance put his sorrow out of mind, and, by fasts and discipline, enfeebled his body so that the remembrance of Death had become his sovereign consolation; and, above all, he prayed her never to let him hear any news of her, for even the memory of her name had become an insupportable purgatory to him. The gentleman returned with this mouthful answer, delivering it to her, who could not hear it without incredible regret. But Love, which lets not the spirit fail until it is in extremity, put it into her fancy that, if she could only see him, the sight of her and the voice of her would have more force than writing. Wherefore, accompanied by her father and the nearest