Queen's delight. She was herself in some danger, but Francis had
not sunk so low as to permit any actual attack to be made on her. Yet
all the last years of her life were unhappy, though she continued to
keep Court at Nerac in Pau, to accompany her brother in his progresses,
and, as we know from documents, to play Lady Bountiful over a wide area
of France. Her husband appears to have been rather at variance with
her; and her daughter, who married first, and in name only, the Duke
of Cleves in 1540, and later (1548) Anthony de Bourbon, was also not
on cordial terms with her mother. By the date of this second marriage
Francis was dead, and though he had for many years been anything but
wholly kind, Margaret's good days were now in truth done. Her nephew
Henry left her in possession of her revenues, but does not seem to have
been very affectionately disposed towards her; and even had she
been inclined to attempt any recovery of influence, his wife and his
mistress, Catherine de Medici and Diana of Poitiers, two women as
different from Margaret as they were from one another, would certainly
have prevented her from obtaining it. As a matter of fact, however, she
had long been in ill-health, and her brother's death seems to have dealt
her the final stroke. She survived it two years, even as she had been
born two years before him, and died on the 21 st December 1549, at the
Castle of Odos, near Tarbes, having lived in almost complete retirement
for a considerable time. Her husband is said to have regretted her dead
more than he loved her living, and her literary admirers, such of them
as death and exile had spared, were not ungrateful. _Tombeaux_, or
collections of funeral verses, were not lacking, the first being in
Latin, and, oddly enough, nominally by three English sisters, Anne,
Margaret, and Jane Seymour, nieces of Henry VIII.'s queen and Edward
VI.'s mother, with learned persons like Dorat, Sainte-Marthe, and Baif.
This was re-issued in French and in a fuller form later.

Some reference has been made to an atrocious slur cast without a shred
of evidence on her moral character. There is as little foundation for
more general though milder charges of laxity. It is admitted that she
had little love for her first husband, and it seems to be probable that
her second had not much love for her. She was certainly addressed in
gallant strains by men of letters, the most audacious being Clement
Marot; but the almost universal refer