of the most influential persons in the kingdom, using her influence
almost invariably for good. Her husband died soon after Pavia, and
in the same year (September 1525) she undertook a journey to Spain on
behalf of her captive brother. This journey, with some expressions in
her letters and in Brantôme, has been wrested by some critics in order
to prove that her affection for Francis was warmer than it ought to have
been--an imputation wanton in both senses of the word.

She was sought in marriage by or offered in marriage to divers
distinguished persons during her widowhood, and this was also the time
of her principal diplomatic exercise, an office for which--odd as it now
seems for a woman--she had, like her mother, like her niece Catherine of
Medicis, like her namesake Margaret of Parma, and like other ladies of
the age, a very considerable aptitude and reputation. When she at last
married, the match was not a brilliant one, though it proved, contrary
to immediate probability, to be the source of the last and the most
glorious branch of the royal dynasty of France. The bridegroom bore
indeed the title of King of Navarre and possessed Beam, but his kingdom
had long been in Spanish hands, and but for his wife's dowry of Alençon
and appanage of Berry (to which Francis had added Armagnac and a large
pension) he would have been but a lackland. Furthermore, he was eleven
years younger than herself, and it is at least insinuated that the
affection, if there was any, was chiefly on her side. At any rate,
this earlier Henry of Navarre seems to have had not a few of the
characteristics of his grandson, together with a violence and brutality
which, to do the _Vert Galant_ justice, formed no part of his character.
The only son of the marriage died young, and a girl, Jane d'Albret,
mother of the great Bourbon race of the next two centuries, was taken
away from her parents by "reasons of state" for a time. The domestic life
of Margaret, however, concerns us but little, except in one way. Her