Fabius, the Roman praetor, died from the same cause that occasioned the death of Anacreon. A single goat hair in the milk he was drinking, lodged in his trachea and choked him. Chalchas, the soothsayer, outlived the time predicted for his death, which struck him as so comical that he burst into a fit of most immoderate laughter from which he died. Thus also died the famous Marquette, who was convulsed with a fatal merriment on seeing a monkey trying to pull on a pair of boots. Philomenes was seized with an equally disastrous merriment when he came suddenly upon an ass that was devouring with greediness the choice figs that had been prepared for his own desert. Laughter killed the great Zeuxis, of whom Pliny relates the story of a trial of skill with the painter Parrhasius. The former painted a bunch of grapes that were so natural a bird endeavored to eat the fruit. Charles VIII., while gallantly conducting his queen into the tennis court, struck his head against the lintel and died soon after from the accident. Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, was struck by a cricket ball, which caused his death. A pig occasioned the death of Louis VI., the creature ran under the monarch's horse causing it to stumble. But of all strange deaths that of Itadach is the strangest. He expired from thirst while toiling in the harvest field, because, in obedience to the rule of St. Patrick, he would not drink "a drop of anything." MARGARET (of Scotland, wife of Louis XI. of France), 1420-1445. "_Fi de la vie! qu'on ne m'en parle plus._" Margaret was devoted to literature, and, while she lived, patronized men of learning and genius. Her admiration for the poet Alain Chartier is said to have induced her to kiss his lips as he sat asleep one day in a chair. Her attendants being astonished at this act of condescension, the princess replied that "she did not kiss the man, but the lips which had given utterance to so many exquisite thoughts." She died at the age of twenty-five, before her husband had ascended the throne. _Mrs. Hale's "Sketches of Distinguished Women."_ MARGARET (of Valois, Queen of Navarre and sister of Francis I., of France), 1492-1549. "_Farewell, and remember me._" Some say, upon what authority I do not know, that the queen's last words were: "I never departed from the true church." She inclined to the Protestant faith, but Roman Catholic writers assert that before her death she acknowledged her religious errors, and De Remond even goes so far as to imply that she denied on her death-bed having ever swerved from the standard of Roman authority.--_Memoir of Margaret, attached to the English translation of her Heptameron._