then from the frontier, she sent frequent letters to her brother. "I implore you," she cries, "to believe that whatsoever I can do in your service, were it to scatter to the winds the ashes of my bones, nothing would be to me either strange, or difficult, or painful, but consolation, repose, and honour. An at this hour, my Lord, I well know what strength of love our Lord has put in us three; for that which seemed to me impossible, thinking only of myself, is easy in the memory of you; and this makes me desire, for your good, things which the pains of death should not have made me wish for my own repose."
On her slow and painful way Margaret was met by dreadful news: the King was very ill. The hot summer weather and close confinement had brought him to death's door. The news spread like wildfire, causing a thrill of horror in France. The Dauphin was but seven years old; and a long regency seemed to threaten the exhausted nation. "News came," says the Bourgeois of Paris, "that the King was dead, captive, in a town called Madril; whence great trouble and sorrow arose among the people of Paris and throughout the land of France; and this lasted nigh a month."
Meanwhile Margaret hastened her journey towards her dying brother. In her litter, as she went, she wrote songs about him:—
Le desir du bien que j'actendz
Me donne de travail matière ;
Une heure me dure cent ans,
Et me semble que ma lictière
Ne bouge, ou retourne en arrière ;
Tant j'ay de m'avancer desir.
Ô qu'ell' est longue, la carrière
Où à la fin gist mon plaisir !
