The ladies of the town who had the advantage of knowing Madame Marguerite did not fail to avail themselves of this privilege, and thronged to visit her wonderful guest. They brought her their sacred medals and rosaries to bless, and asked her a hundred questions. Was she afraid of being wounded; or was she assured that she would not be wounded? "No more than others," she said; and she put away their religious ornaments with a smile, bidding Madame Marguerite touch them, or the visitors themselves, which would be just as good as if she did it. She would seem to have been always smiling, friendly, checking with a laugh the adulation of her visitors, many of whom wore medals with her own effigy (if only one had been saved for us!) as there were many banners made after the pattern of hers. But cheerful as she was, a prevailing tone of sadness now appears to run through her life. On several occasions she spoke to her confessor and chaplain, who attended her everywhere, of her death. "If it should be my fate to die soon, tell the King our master on my part to build chapels where prayer may be made to the Most High for the salvation of the souls of those who shall die in the wars for the defence of the kingdom." This was the one thing she seemed anxious for, and it returned again and again to her mind. Her thoughts indeed were heavy enough. Her larger enterprises had been cruelly put a stop to: her companions-in-arms had been dispersed: she had been separated from her lieutenant Alençon, and from all the friends between whom and herself great mutual confidence had sprung up. Even the commission which had at last been put in her hands was a trifling one and led to nothing, bringing the King no nearer to any satisfactory end: and the troops were under command of a new captain whom she scarcely knew, d'Albert, who was the son-in-law of La Tremoïlle, and probably little inclined to be a friend to Jeanne. In these circumstances there was little of an exhilarating or promising kind.