To return now to our little queen, who, disliking to remain in France for several reasons, especially because she was not recognized and endowed as she should have been, resolved to go and finish the remainder of her noble days with the emperor and empress, her father and mother. When there, the Catholic king being widowed of Queen Anne of Austria, own sister to Queen Isabelle, he desired to espouse the latter, and sent to beg the empress, his own sister, to lay his proposals before her. But she would not listen to them, not the first, nor the second, nor the third time her mother the empress spoke of them; excusing herself on the honourable ashes of the king, her husband, which she would not insult by a second marriage, and also on the ground of too great consanguinity and close parentage between them, which might greatly anger God; on which the empress and her brother the king urged her to lay the matter before a very learned and eloquent Jesuit, who exhorted and preached to her as much as he could, not forgetting to quote all the passages of Holy and other Scripture, which might serve his purpose. But the queen confounded him quickly by other quotations as fine and more truthful, for, since her widowhood, she had given herself to the study of God’s word; besides which, she told him her determined resolution, which was her most sacred defence, namely, not to forget her husband in a second marriage. On which the Jesuit was forced to leave her without gaining anything. But, being urged to return by a letter from the King of Spain, who would not accept the resolute answer of the princess, he treated her with rigorous words and even threats, so that she, not willing to lose her time contesting against him, cut him short by saying that if he meddled with her again she would make him repent it, and even went so far as to threaten to have him whipped in her kitchen. I have also heard, but I do not know if it be true, that this Jesuit having returned for the third time, she turned away and had him chastised for his presumption. I do not believe this; for she loved persons of holy lives, as those men are. Such was the great constancy and noble firmness of this virtuous queen, which she kept to the end of her days, towards the venerated bones of the king her husband, which she honoured incessantly with regrets and tears; and not being able to furnish more (for a fountain must in the end dry up) she succumbed, and died so young that she was only thirty-five years old at the time of her death. Loss most inestimable! for she might long have served as a mirror of virtue to the honest ladies of all Christendom.