The latter, unwilling to waste more time in vain contest with him, did treat him to some strong words and actual menaces, cutting him short with the warning that if he would persist in deafening her any more with the matter, she would make him repent his interference, even threatening she would have him whipped in her kitchen. I have further heard tell,—I know not with how much truth,—that, the man having attacked her for the third time, she went beyond threats, and had him chastised for his insolence. But this I do not believe, seeing she did too well love folk of holy life, such as these men be. Such was the constancy and noble firmness of this virtuous Queen,—a constancy she did keep unbroken to the end of her days, ever honouring the sacred ashes of her husband.[98*] Faithfully did she water these with her mournful tears, whose fountain at the last drying up, she did succumb to her sorrow and die very young. She could not have been more than five and thirty at her decease,—truly a quite inestimable loss, for she might long have been a mirror of virtue to all honourable ladies throughout Christendom. And verily, showing as she did the love she bare the King, her husband, by her constancy, virtuous continence and unceasing plaints, she did manifest the same even more finely toward the Queen of Navarre, her sister-in-law. For knowing her to be in great extremity of distress, and reduced to live in a remote Castle of Auvergne,[99*] all but deserted of all her friends and followers and by the most part of those she had erstwhile obliged, she did send to greet her and offer her every assistance. In fact she did presently give her one-half of all her jointure which she did enjoy in France, sharing with her as if she had been her own proper sister. They say indeed this high-born Queen would have had no little hardship to endure but for this great liberality of her good and gentle kinswoman. Accordingly she did pay her great respect, loving and honouring her so well she had all the difficulty in the world to bear her death with proper patience. Indeed, for twenty days running she did keep her bed, weeping and crying and making continual moan; and ever after did naught but regret and deplore her loss, devoting to her memory the noblest words, such that there could be no need to borrow better to praise her withal and keep her remembrance immortally green. I have been told further that Queen Elisabeth too did compose and indite a work of such beauty it cometh near God’s own word, as also one containing the history of all that did hap in France while she was in that country. I know not if this be true, but I have been assured the book was seen in the hands of the Queen of Navarre, as though it had been sent her as a last present before the other’s death. ’Twas most highly thought on of her, and pronounced a most admirable production. At the word of so noble and divine an oracle, what can we do but believe ’twas verily so?