Madame de Bourdeille, her mother, was not long in following her. For the melancholy she did conceive at the death of this her noble daughter did carry her off in eighteen months, after a sickness lasting seven months, at one time giving cause for good hope of recovery, at another seeming desperate. But from the very first, herself did declare she would never get the better of it, in no wise fearing death, and never praying God to grant her life and health, but only patience in her sufferings and above that He would send her a peaceful death, and one neither painful nor long drawn out. And so it befell; for while we deemed her only fainted, she did give up her soul so gently as that she was never seen to move either foot or arm or limb, nor give any fearful and hideous look; but casting a glance around with eyes that were as fair as ever, she passed away, remaining as beautiful in death as she had been when alive and in the plenitude of her charms. A sore pity, verily, of her and of all fair ladies that die so in the bloom of their years! Only I do believe this, that Heaven, not content with those fair lights which from the creation of the world do adorn its vault, is fain, beside these, to have yet other new stars to still illumine us, as erst they did when alive, with their beauteous eyes. Another example, and then an end: You have seen in these last days the case of Madame de Balagny,[52*] true sister in all ways of the gallant Bussy. When Cambrai was besieged, she did all ever she could, of her brave and noble heart, to prevent its being taken; but after having in vain exhausted herself in every sort of defensive means she could contrive, and seeing now ’twas all over and the town already in the enemy’s power, and the citadel soon to go the same road, unable to endure the smart and heart’s pang of evacuating her Principality (for her husband and herself had gotten themselves to be called Prince and Princess of Cambrai and Cambrésis,—a title sundry nations did find odious and much too presumptuous, seeing their rank was but that of plain gentlefolk), did die of grief and so perished at the post of honour. Some say she did die by her own hand, an act deemed however more Pagan than Christian. Be this as it may, she deserveth but praise for her gallantry and bravery in all this, and for the rebuke she did administer her husband at the time of her death, when she thus said to him: “How can you endure, Balagny, to live on after your most dismal fall of Fortune, to be a spectacle and laughing stock to all the world, which will point the finger of scorn at you, thus falling from great glory whereto you had been elevated to the low place I see awaiting you, and if you follow not my example? Learn then of me to die nobly, and not survive your misfortunes and disgrace.” ’Tis a grand thing thus to see a woman teaching us how to live,—and how to die. Yet would he neither obey nor believe her; but at the end