Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/243

228 where the false and the true are equally shadows: the world of Diana and of Montmorency.

It was best that Margaret should die. She had no place in the new order of things; she could neither change them nor sympathise with them. Her sun had set, and the moonlight dazzled her. She, poor sunflower, could not live without the sun. "Mourut par trop aymer d'amour grande et naïfve."

Margaret was buried in the cathedral at Lescar, the last resting-place of the House of Navarre. It was observed that Montmorency sent no representative to the crowded funeral. But the poor of all the states of Béarn congregated round the solemn procession, and through all the world the men of learning and the poets poured out in rhyme and epitaph their sorrow for her loss. They, indeed, would feel her death as the sudden rattling-down of a buckler that had ever been held between them and their enemies. With more truth than befits an epitaph, Olhagaray declared, "all the learned, weary of living, succumbed at that blow." The Queen who had saved Roussel and Lefêbvre, Calvin, Farel, and Clément Marot, the protectress of Erasmus and Melancthon, the learned muse who inspired the King to found the College of France, la Marguerite des Marguerites, merited so fine a commendation.

Henry of Navarre mourned his wife's death, notwithstanding all their jealousies and quarrels. Without her, his petulant and vacillating character was as a ship without ballast. Day by day he became more feeble and variable, changing his mind from moment to moment, till finally the reins of government were handed over to Jeanne and her husband, who ruled the country well.