Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/64

Rh who had not heard of it, learned it all, through a captain of Adventure, and bore it in such a manner that from dinner-time till supper (one tear not waiting for the other, without uttering sighs of impatience or vexation) she did not cease to preach and undertake towards me the office of comforter which I owed to her."

Soon Margaret had to comfort her mother for a far heavier sorrow. The easy success of Milan was not followed up before Pavia. Yet, the 3rd of February 1525, Francis despatched to his mother a letter three quarto pages long, with a plan of Pavia enclosed, showing her how certain the French army was of taking the town by assault. Ten days later the battle took place; the French army was routed with disaster, all the great soldiers of France killed or captive, the King himself a prisoner. So ran the dreadful news. Worse still for the weeping mother and daughter at Lyons, it was soon known that the cowardice and incapacity of the Duke of Alençon was the cause of the worst disaster. He, the leader of the vanguard, had failed to come to the rescue of the King, abandoned by his Swiss. Not even Bourbon, the triumphant traitor, was more execrable that day in France than he.

On the evening after the battle, Francis in his captive's tent, drew off his ring and sent it to Soliman. By a less secret messenger he sent a letter to his mother: "Of all things I have none left but honour, and life, which is safe." Yet he beseeches them not to give way to too extreme a sorrow: "For still I hope that in the end God will not forsake me." And so, like true comforters, Margaret and her mother hide their desperate grief from him; writing