Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/232

Rh. Yet it is characteristic of Margaret's generous temper that when, at this anxious moment, Henry offered to liquidate a debt of £4,885 Tournois, which had been lent to his father by Margaret and the Duke of Alençon, Margaret refused to receive the money, and insisted that it should be paid to her dead husband's sisters, the Marchioness of Montferrat and the Duchess of Vendôme. She was herself in great straits. Pressed by her urgent need, she wrote from Pau to M. d'Izernay (13th June 1547):—

"The King of Navarre will leave on Friday, after the Feast of St. John, and take his daughter back to Court with him; and I shall go to Mont de Marsan, and keep house so thriftily that everyone will stare. It is not necessary that you should take the trouble to come to me just yet, for reasons that I will tell you so soon as I am there; and also because you do me a much greater service in soliciting my affairs at Court; of which the greatest is the assurance of my xxv. thousand pounds Tournois; for, as you know, without them it would be impossible for me to maintain my state, and I have no more in reserve than will pay this year's expenses—and one may well believe it is not my custom, without sore necessity, to ask any favour. And, if I had father, mother, brother, uncle, or kinsman, I would pray them to be my advocates. But, since it has pleased the King (Henry II.) to promise to be all these things to me, it will not in any wise vex him that I demand his aid; for, without his grace and goodness I could not live at all, having in this world no other wealth than that which the King (Francis I.) and he have given me; and I have always been as content therewith as if I had had a great share of the revenues of my House.