Queen Marguerite returned from Usson to Paris in 1605; and here we find her in her last estate, turned slightly to ridicule by Tallemant, the echo of the new century. Eighteen years of confinement and solitude had given her singularities, and even manias; they now burst forth in open day. She still had adventures both gallant and startling: an equerry whom she loved was killed at her carriage door by a jealous servant, and the poet Maynard, a young disciple of Malherbe, one of Marguerite’s _beaux-esprits_, wrote stanzas and plaints about it. During the same period Marguerite had many sincere thoughts that were more than fits of devotion. With Maynard for secretary, she had also Vincent de Paul, young in those days, for her chaplain. She founded and endowed convents, all the while paying learned men to instruct her in philosophy, and musicians to amuse her during divine service and at hours more profane. She gave many alms and gratuities and did not pay her debts. It was not precisely good sense that presided over her life. But amidst it all she was loved. “On the 27th day of the month of March” (1615), says a contemporary, “died in Paris Queen Marguerite, sole remains of the race of Valois,--a princess full of kindness and of good intentions for the good and the peace of the State, _who did no harm to any but herself_. She was greatly regretted. She died at the age of sixty-two.” Certain persons have attempted to compare her for beauty, for misfortunes, for intellect, with Marie Stuart. Certainly, at a point of departure there was much in common between the two queens, the two sisters-in-law, but the comparison cannot be maintained historically. Marie Stuart, who had in herself the wit, grace, and manners of the Valois, who was scarcely more moral as a woman than Marguerite, and was implicated in acts that were far more monstrous, had, or seemed to have, a certain elevation of heart, which she acquired, or developed, in her long captivity crowned by her sorrowful death. Of the two destinies, the one represents definitely a great cause, and ends in a pathetic legend of victim and martyr; the reputation of the other is spent and scattered in tales and anecdotes half smutty, half devout, into which there enters a grain of satire and of gayety. From the end of one comes many a tearful tragedy; from that of the other nought can be made but a _fabliau_.