Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/62

Rh written to the absent King about his motherless children.

Margaret had many troubles with this family of nephews and nieces; and, in her busy home at Lyons, eagerly she watched the distant campaign, where her husband was, and her brother, and Montmorency her life-long friend; yet the gout of Madame and the measles of the children seemed the most eventful things. Madame had injured her health with nursing the Queen. "I fear her health grows weaker and weaker," writes Margaret. And, indeed, reflecting on the dangers and disasters which her passions had brought upon the kingdom, Louisa may well have grieved and grown weak. "The extremity of sorrow which she shows for the death of the Queen is quite incredible." Yet Louisa had never been a tender mother to poor ailing Claude.

But Margaret, with her sweet dense kindness, was not the woman to discover if anything worse than mourning ailed her mother. Like all idealists, she was not very quick of insight. To her, the death of Claude was an excuse sufficient for all. And, without inquiring too deeply, she strove to heal her mother's wound by a tender care which sheltered her as far as possible from trouble and apprehension.

Just then the children took the measles. Margaret would not tell her mother, so ill and weary already; nor her brother, who needed all his heart for battle. It is only to Bishop Briçonnet (no less than heretofore a guide, philosopher and friend) that she opens her troubled heart. "It has pleased our Lord to give Madame Charlotte so grievous a malady of fever and flux after her measles, that I know not if now He will take her to Himself." This is on the 15th of