Catharine wrote often in reply to the depressing news from her daughter, arousing her hopes for a son who should, in his time, put all things right; but Isabel at twenty-three had lost her gay elasticity, and the advance of her pregnancy meant the advance of her exhausting malady. Philip, as usual, was tenderly solicitous for her ease and happiness; full of hope, too, that a son at last was to be born to him, for upon this everything depended. The lying stories which long afterwards the traitor Antonio Perez wove with hellish skill in the safe refuge of Essex House, accusing Philip of jealousy of his wife with Don Carlos, and subsequently with one Pozzo, are hardly worth more credit now than the sentimental romance of the Abbé de St. Real about her love for Carlos. Perez, whose only wish was to blacken Philip indelibly to please his enemies, and his own paymasters in England and France, hints that Philip himself connived at his beloved wife’s murder by poison: but even if the confidential letters of her French friends now before us did not disprove this, the fact that nothing could be so unfortunate for Philip’s policy as Isabel’s death would give it the lie. Isabel had been suffering for months from heart failure and bodily irregularities; and on the 3rd October 1568, the violent remedies administered to her by her doctors caused a miscarriage. The poor Queen knew that she was doomed, for when before daybreak Philip, heartbroken, came and sat by her bed, she calmly took a last farewell of him, praying him to be good to their two little girls, to be friendly with Catharine and King Charles IX., and kind to the attendant ladies who had served her so well: ‘with other words worthy of admiration, and fit to break the heart of a good husband, such as the King was. He answered her in the same way; for he could not believe that she was so near her end, and promised all she asked him; after which he retired to his room in great anguish, as I am told.’[196] The dying woman had confessed and received extreme unction during the night; and early in the morning the French ambassadors were summoned to her chamber. ‘She knew us at once, and said, Ah! ambassador, you see me well on the road out of this unhappy world into a better one ... pray my mother and brother to bear my loss patiently, and to be satisfied with what pleases me more than any prosperity I have enjoyed in this world, to go to my Creator, where I may serve him better than I can here. I shall pray Him that all my brothers and sisters may live long and happily, as well as my mother and brother Charles: and I beg you to beseech them to look to their realm, and prevent heresy taking root. Let them all take my death patiently, for I am very happy.’ ‘O!’ replied the principal ambassador, ‘your Majesty will live a long time yet, to see France good and happy.’ ‘No, no, ambassador,’ she whispered, shaking her head with a faint smile. ‘I do hope it will be so, but I do not wish to see it.