was not in France only that she desired the triumph of the Gospel, but in Germany, England, Italy, and even Spain. As Charles’s projects would ruin all that she loved--the king, France, and the Gospel--she feared not to go and beard the lion even in his den. The duchess as she entered Spain felt her heart deeply agitated. The very day she had heard of the battle of Pavia, she had courageously taken this heavy cross upon her shoulders; but at times she fainted under the burden. Impatient to reach her brother, burning with desire to save him, fearing lest she should find him dying, trembling lest the persecutors should take advantage of her absence to crush the Gospel and religious liberty in France, she found no rest but at the feet of the Saviour. Many evangelical men wept and prayed with her; they sought to raise her drooping courage under the great trial which threatened to weigh her down, and bore a noble testimony to her piety. ‘There are various _stations_ in the christian life,’ said one of these reformers, Capito. ‘You have now entered upon that commonly called _the Way of the Cross_.[426] ... Despising the theology of men, you desire to know only Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’[427] Margaret crossing in her litter (September 1525) the plains of Catalonia, Arragon, and Castile, exclaimed: I cast my eyes around, I look and look in vain ... The loved one cometh not; And on my knees again I pray unceasing to my God To heal the king--to spare the rod. The loved one cometh not ... Tears on my eyelids sit: Then to this virgin page My sorrows I commit:-- Such is to wretched me Each day of misery.[428] She sometimes fancied that she could see in the distance a messenger riding hastily from Madrid and bringing her news of her brother.... But alas! her imagination had deceived her, no one appeared. She then wrote: O Lord, awake, arise! And let thine eyes in mercy fall Upon the king--upon us all. Once or twice a day she halted at some inn on the road to Madrid, but it was not to eat. ‘I have supped only once since my departure from Aigues-Mortes,’ she said.[429] As soon as she entered the wretched chamber, she began to write to her brother at the table or on her knees. ‘Nothing to do you service,’ she wrote: ‘nothing, even to casting the ashes of my bones to the wind, will be strange or painful to me; but rather consolation, repose, and honour.’[430]