Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/87

72 least, Sire, do not increase my lamentable misery by demanding experience in addition to defeat, knowing my impotence without your aid, as you shall learn further by a sign I send. And I ask for the end of my misfortunes and the beginning of a good new year, only that you may let me be for you some little of that which infinitely you are to me, and will be to me, without ending, in my thoughts. And awaiting the joy of seeing you and of speaking with you, Sire, my desire of meeting presses me to humbly beseech you to let me know the answer by this messenger. And, if it be no trouble to you, I will set off at once, feigning another occasion. And there is no stress of weather nor roughness of the roads, that will not be turned for me into an exceeding pleasant repose. And I shall be most grateful to you. And yet more grateful if it please you to bury my letters in the fire and my words in silence. Else you will render worse than dead my miserable life."

Francis had the force to refuse this agonised appeal. He neither called his sister back not yielded Burgundy. He sent her on to France and she obeyed, though sick at heart and shorn of all natural trust in her own efforts, "of which you know the impotence without your aid." But since the King commanded it, she travelled on, and on the 15th December she was home in France; she was in her mother's arms.

Back in France at last, and back again without the good news she had gone so far to get. Back in a disappointed, weary, restless, and ironic country. Back to hear the people singing in the streets, no longer of Ogier and Charlemagne, but a new satirical ballad:—