Queen Joan, her mother-in-law, describes her as being very pretty, but one could not see her face for the paint; she was rather too stout, and was tightly laced. Afterwards, when she had abandoned all sense of decency, she became enormously fat, and could hardly get through an ordinary door. Her intelligence and great fondness for reading probably did not make Henri love her any better, because he could never finish a serious book. She said about her brother Henri III that if all the treachery in the world should perish Henri III had enough to restock it; so it is clear that brother and sister did not really love one another; and probably Marguerite could not resist the temptation to make a scathing epigram. But Joan need not have been so perturbed over her son falling into the hands of the satanic Marguerite, for, if all tales were true, she was no great saint herself. Once, when Henri III was in a particularly bad temper, he went to Marguerite in church and called her all manner of abominable names, so that she turned and ran weeping out of the church. Later he went up to Henri Quatre and half-apologised for his rudeness, explaining it because of some unfortunate incidents that had been rumoured about Queen Joan’s own virtue. Henri laughed, and afterwards said, “What a nice fellow he must be! He thinks by saying that I am a bastard to make up for calling my wife a prostitute!” That was really much the sort of thing that our own beloved Charles II might have said; and it shows Henri Quatre as a maker of epigrams with just sufficient truth in them to hurt. And all done with a kindly smile, too.