being murdered and robbed by four cavaliers, he suspected his sister of being concerned in the plot, and publicly reproached her for her irregularities, saying everything that was bitter and taunting. Margaret kept a profound silence, but left Paris the next morning, saying, that there never had been two princesses as unfortunate as herself and Mary of Scotland. On the journey she was stopped by an insolent captain of the guards, who obliged her to unmask, and interrogated the ladies who were with her. Her husband received her at Nerac, and resented the cruel treatment she had experienced from her brother; but her conduct, and the new intrigues in which she was constantly engaged, widened the breach between them. When her husband was excommunicated, she left him, and went to Agen, and thence from place to place, experiencing many dangers and difficulties.
Her charms made a conquest of the Marquis de Carnillac, who had taken her prisoner; but though he insured her a place of refuge in the castle of Usson, she had the misery of seeing her friends cut to pieces in the plains below; and though the fortress was impregnable, it was assailed by famine, and she was forced to sell her jewels, and but for her sister-in-law, Eleanor of Austria, she must have perished. The Duke d'Anjou, who would have protected her, was dead; and though, on the accession of her husband to the throne of France, in 1589, she might have returned to court, on condition of consenting to a divorce, she never would do so during the life of Gabrielle d'Estrées.
After the death of the mistress, Margaret herself solicited Clement the Eighth to forward the divorce, and, in 1600, Henry was married to Marie de Medicis. Margaret, in the mean time, did some acts of kindness for the king, and was permitted to return to court, after an absence of twenty-two years. She even assisted at the coronation of Marie de Medicis, where etiquette obliged her to walk after Henry's sister. She consoled herself by pleasures for the loss of honours; and though Henry the Fourth begged her to be more prudent, and not to turn night into day and day into night, she paid but little attention to his advice.
Margaret passed her last years in devotion, study, and pleasure. She gave the tenth of her revenues to the poor, but she did not pay her debts. The memoirs she has left, which finish at the time of her re-appearance at court, prove the elegant facility of her pen; and her poetry, some of which has been preserved, equals that of the best poets of her time. She was very fond of the society of learned men.
"Margaret," said Catharine de Medicis, "is a living proof of the injustice of the Salic law; with her talents, she might have equalled the greatest kings."
"The last of the house of Valois," says Mezeray, "she inherited their spirit; she never gave to any one, without apologizing for the smallness of the gift. She was the refuge of men of letters, had always some of them at her table, and improved so much by their conversation, that she spoke and wrote better than any woman of her time." She appears to have been good-natured and benevolent; wanting in fidelity, not in complaisance to her husband; as, at his request, she rose early one morning, to attend to one of his mistresses who was ill. How could Henry reproach her for infidelities, while living himself a life of the most scandalous licentiousness! If
