Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/240

Rh and lying near to death, Margaret persisted in sitting by her bed. Knowing the disgust for mortality which she had inherited from her mother, her maidens begged the Queen to let them lead her away; her presence could not save the poor dying girl. But it was not affection that made the reluctant Queen vanquish her instinctive horror; that kept her sitting by the bed, silent, motionless, looking at the face of the sufferer so fixedly, so strangely, that her women marvelled among themselves. At last, when all was over, one ventured to ask the meaning of that look. Then Margaret told them she had heard from learned doctors how, at the actual moment of dissolution, the spirit leaves the body, and she had looked for the soul and listened to catch the faintest sound or rustle. And she said those learned men had told her how the swan sings itself to death for love of the soul that travaileth up its long throat towards the issue. To catch this issuing soul she had narrowly watched the lips of the dying girl; but she had seen nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing.

"And were I not firm in my faith," she said, "I should not know what to think of this dislodging and departing of the soul." Then she went back to her weeping and her praying, shuddering at the mystery of death; triving to see beyond the visible, evident grave, the distant Paradise. "But ah! we stay so long under the earth before our coming there!"

The summer dragged away, and every month left Margaret weaker. With the autumn she moved to Odos, a castle near the city of Tarbes. Here sprang wells of mineral water, said to cure diseases of the chest. Margaret drank them, but they did not dispel her languor. She grew weaker and weaker. Her