er, as I have
said, gave her brother in writing, through the grating, the whole story
of her pitiful fortunes; and this her brother brought to her mother, who
came, overwhelmed with despair, to Paris. Here she found the Queen of
Navarre, only sister to the King, and showing her the piteous story,
said--

"Madam, trust no more in these hypocrites. I thought that I had placed
my daughter within the precincts of Paradise, or on the high road
thither, whereas I have placed her in the precincts of Hell, and in the
hands of the vilest devils imaginable. The devils, indeed, do not tempt
us unless temptation be our pleasure, but these men will take by force
when they cannot win by love."

The Queen of Navarre was in great concern, for she trusted wholly in
the Prior of St. Martin's, to whose care she had committed her
sisters-inlaw, the Abbesses of Montivilliers and Caen. (7) On the
other hand, the enormity of the crime so horrified her and made her
so desirous of avenging the innocence of this unhappy maiden, that she
communicated the matter to the King's Chancellor, who happened also to
be Legate in France. (8)

7 The abbess of Montivilliers was Catherine d'Albret,
daughter of John d'Albret, King of Navarre and sister of
Queen Margaret's husband, Henry. At first a nun at the abbey
of St. Magdalen at Orleans, she became twenty-eighth abbess
of Montivilliers near Havre. She was still living in 1536.
(_Gallia Christ_., vol. xi. col. 285). The abbess of Caen
was Magdalen d'Albret, Catherine's sister. She took the veil
at Fontevrault in 1527, subsequently became thirty-third
abbess of the Trinity at Caen, and died in November 1532.
(_Gallia Christ_., vol. xi. col. 436).--L.

8 This is the famous Antony Duprat, Francis I.'s favourite
minister. Born in 1463, he became Chancellor in 1515, and
his wife dying soon afterwards, he took orders, with the
result that he was made Archbishop of Sens and Cardinal. It
was in 1530 that he was appointed Papal Legate in France, so
that the incidents related in this tale cannot have occurred
at an earlier date. Duprat died in July 1535, of grief, it
is said, because Francis I. would not support him in his
ambitious scheme to secure possession of the papal see, as
successor to Clement VII.-B. J. and Ed.

The Prior was sent for, but could find nothing to plead except that he
was seventy years