Margaret, seeing her brother restored to life, thought only of restoring him to liberty. She departed for Toledo, where Charles V. was staying; the seneschal and seneschaless of Poitou, the Bishop of Senlis, the Archbishop of Embrun, the president De Selves, and several other nobles, accompanied her. What a journey! Will she succeed in touching her brother’s gaoler, or will she fail? This question was continually before her mind. Hope, fear, indignation moved her by turns; at every step her agitation increased. The emperor went out courteously to meet her; he helped her to descend from her litter, and had his first conversation with her in the Alcazar, that old and magnificent palace of the Moorish kings. Charles V. was determined to take advantage of his victory. Notwithstanding the outward marks of politeness, exacted by the etiquette of courts, he wrapped himself up in imperturbable dignity, and was cold, nay, almost harsh. Margaret, seeing that her brother’s conqueror kept the foot upon his neck, and was determined not to remove it, could no longer contain herself. ‘She broke out into great anger:’[433] like a lioness robbed of her cubs, full of majesty and fury, she startled the cold and formal Charles, says Brantôme. Yet he restrained himself, preserved his icy mien, made no answer to the duchess, and busying himself with showing her the honours due to her rank, he conducted her, accompanied by the Archbishop of Toledo and several Spanish noblemen, to the palace of Don Diego de Mendoza, which had been prepared for her. Alone in her chamber the princess gave free vent to her tears; she wrote to Francis: ‘I found him very cold.’[434] She reminded him that the King of heaven ‘has placed on his throne _an ensign of grace_; that we have no reason to fear the majesty of heaven will reject us; and that he stretches out his hand to us, even before we seek for it.’ And being thus strengthened, she prepared for the solemn sitting at which she was to plead her brother’s cause. She quitted the palace with emotion to appear before the council extraordinary, at which the emperor and his ministers sat with all the grandeur and pride of Castile. Margaret was not intimidated, and though she could not perceive the least mark of interest on the severe and motionless faces of her judges, ‘she was triumphant in speaking and pleading.’ But she returned bowed down with sorrow: the immovable severity of the emperor and of his councillors dismayed her. ‘The thing is worsened,’ she said, ‘far more than I had imagined.’[435] The Duchess of Alençon, firmer than her brother, would not agree to the cession of Burgundy. The emperor replied with irritation: ‘It is my patrimonial estate--I still bear the name and the arms.’ The duchess, confounded by Charles’s harshness, threw herself into the arms of God. ‘When men fail, God does not forget,’ she said. She clung to the rock; ‘she leant,’ says Erasmus, ‘upon the unchangeable rock which is called Christ.’[436]