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" Queen of Navarre looks very delicate," wrote Marino Cavalli in 1542, "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 in France. No one knows more than she, either of the conduct of State affairs or of the secrets of religion. But I fear she is nigh to death."

With every year she had grown a little weaker, but still she was alive. So long as her brother lived, Margaret believed she could not die, nor continue living after his decease. In this winter of 1545 she was far from him in Béarn, tortured with rheumatism, sleeplessness, and fever; weakening with the slow consumption that were away her life. But all her thoughts were for Francis. She did not complain, sitting between her two secretaries, dictating her letters to the one, and, to the other her stories or her verses. But they could tell when her pain was hard to hear, for she would start up crying, "I fear the King is worse," and anxiously look out along the snowy roads to see if any courier were on the way from Paris. So firmly convinced was her loving heart, that she and