Navarre (sister of Francis I.), and to others. Thevet tells it in his
"Cosmographie," and Marguerite of Navarre in her "Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles."

She told Thevet that after the first two months, the demons came to her
no more, until she was left wholly alone; then they renewed their visits,
but not continuously, and she felt less fear. Thevet also records of her
this touching confession, that when the time came for her to embark, in
the Breton ship, for home, there came over her a strong impulse to refuse
the embarkation, but rather to die in that solitary place, as her husband,
her child, and her servant had already died. This profound touch of human
nature does more than anything else to confirm the tale as substantially
true. Certain it is that the lonely island which appeared so long on the
old maps as the Isle of Demons (l'Isola de Demoni) appears differently in
later ones as the Lady's Island (l'Isle de la Demoiselle).

The Princess Marguerite of Navarre, who died in 1549, seems also to have
known her namesake at her retreat in Perigord, gives some variations from
Thevet's story, and describes her as having been put on shore with her
husband, because of frauds which he had practised on Roberval; nor does
she speak of the nurse or of the child. But she gives a similar
description of Marguerite's stay on the island, after his death, and says,
that although she lived what might seem a bestial life as to her body, it
was a life wholly angelic as regarded her soul (_ainsi vivant, quant au
corps, de vie bestiale, et quant a l'esprit, de vie angelicque_). She
had, the princess also says, a mind cheerful and content, in a body
emaciated and half dead. She was afterwards received with great honor in
France, according to the princess, and was encouraged to establish a
school for little children, where she taught reading and writing to the
daughters of high-born families. "And by this honest industry," says the