Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/66

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By the time the troops reached Lyons, the unhappy man was ill with despair and remorse. It was now April, two months after the disaster. But France had not yet begun to forgive him. Even his wife, the gentle Margaret, would not see him. The man she had never really loved was odious to her since he had ruined the brother she adored. But when she learned how seriously the poor defeated general took his failure to heart, how he was actually dying of his disgrace and her resentment, then pity and duty came to her aid. She wrote to Francis:—

"As for your poor sister, she writes this letter to you sitting at the foot of M. d'Alençon's bed; he has prayed me to present you, with my own, his very humble recommendation, and to say that had he seen you ere he died he would go more happily towards Paradise. I do not know what to say to you, my Lord. All is in the hand of God. Only, I beseech you not to sorrow, either for him or for me; and be sure that whatever comes, I hope that God will give me strength to keep my trouble from Madame."

On the 11th April, the mediocre, luckless, unhappy Alençon breathed his last. Margaret, drawn close to him by these last days of shame, and pity, and sorrow, sorrowed for the death she scarcely could regret. "Those first two days," she writes, "made me forget all reason, but since then, my Lord, my mother has