How often, when human affairs appear most desperate, and all hope and effort are thrown away, help comes from some unexpected quarter! So it was in Queen Margaret’s experience. There is a romantic tale with respect to her flight from Hexham’s stricken field--the story of the robber. Whether one or more outlaws waylaid and robbed the fugitives it matters not, but, stripped of everything but the clothes they wore, Queen and Prince were in dismal straits. Wonder of wonders! a messenger followed Margaret from no less a person than the Duke of Burgundy, the inveterate enemy of her house, the friend and ally of the English in France. The message was in effect an invitation to the Queen and Prince to Flanders--the splendid appanage of ducal Burgundy. Margaret’s implacable foes,--the winds and seas,--were waiting for their prey, and nearly secured their quarry as she tossed to and fro across the wild North Sea on her way to meet Philippe. Landing on the Flemish coast on July 31,--when storm and tempest should never have appeared,--with utmost difficulty, the Queen presented a sorry figure. No badge or symbol of royalty marked her worn-out figure; she was clad meanly in a coarse short worsted skirt--_robette_--without chemise or shawl, her stockings low down on her heels, her hair dishevelled and unveiled. Who could have recognized in that chastened traveller “the loveliest woman in Christendom”? True to his loyal devotion, Sieur Pierre de Brézé was with his Queen poor as herself, he had, he said, “spent 50,000 crowns for nothing”--and a faithful valet, Louis Carbonelle, and no more than seven women-dresses. At once the Duke was apprised of Margaret’s coming; but, being on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Boulogne, he sent his apologies by Philippe Pot, Seigneur de la Roche and a Knight of the Golden Fleece, bidding the Queen welcome, and saying that he would present his homage to her shortly if she would proceed direct to Bruges. That progress was a nightmare, an “Inferno,” a masquerade--what you will: the Queen of England clad in rags, her hair untied, seated in a common country bullock-cart, drawn by a pair of sorry steeds, mocked all the way along as “_Une Merrie Mol!_” “_Une Naufragée!_” “_Une Sorcière de Vent!_” The Comte de Charolois, heir to the duchy, met her Majesty at the _digue_, saluted her with all reverence, and conducted her to the Castle of St. Pol. On the morrow the Duke of Burgundy arrived, and at once went to the Queen’s lodgings to pay his homage. Right in the middle of the street, where Margaret stood to greet him, with a courtly bow he swept the ground with the drooping plume of his _berretta_, whilst the Queen curtsied in her abbreviated gown twice majestically. Never was there a finer piece of royal burlesque enacted!