their friends and leaders.  The memory of the martyred Coligny was ever accompanied by a curse on Marguerite; and thus she was an outcast from all creeds and all parties.  Still, however, confident in the good faith of the Governor of Carlat, she assumed at least a semblance of tranquillity, and trusted that she should be enabled to remain for a time unmolested; but it was not long ere she ascertained that the inhabitants of the town, like those of Agen, were hostile to her interests, and that they had even resolved to deliver her up to the French King.

Under these circumstances, she had no alternative save to become once more a fugitive; and having, with considerable difficulty, succeeded in making her escape beyond the walls, she began to indulge a hope that she should yet baffle the devices of her enemy; she was soon, however, fated to be undeceived, for she had travelled only a few leagues when she was overtaken and captured by the Marquis de Canillac,[24] who conveyed her to the fortress of Usson.[25] As she passed the drawbridge, Marguerite recognised at a glance that there was no hope of evasion from this new and impregnable prison, save through the agency of her gaoler; and she accordingly lost no time in exerting all her blandishments to captivate his reason.  Although she had now attained her thirty-fifth year, neither time, anxiety, hardship, nor even the baneful indulgence of her misguided passions, had yet robbed her of her extraordinary beauty; and it is consequently scarcely surprising that ere long the gallant soldier to whose custody she was confided, surrendered at discretion, and laid at her feet, not only his heart, but also the keys of her prison-house.

“Poor man!” enthusiastically exclaims Brantome, her friend and correspondent; “what did he expect to do?  Did he think to retain as a prisoner her who, by her eyes and her lovely countenance, could hold in her chains and bonds all the rest of the world like galley-slaves?” [26]

Certain it is, that if the brave but susceptible marquis ever contemplated such a result, he was destined to prove the fallacy of his hopes; for so totally was he subjugated by the fascinations of the captive Queen, that he even abandoned to her the command of the fortress, which thenceforward acknowledged no authority save her own.

Marguerite had scarcely resided a year at Usson when the death of the Duc d’Alencon deprived her of the last friend whom she possessed on earth; and not even the security that she derived from the impregnability of the fortress in which she had found an asylum could preserve her from great and severe suffering.  The castle, with its triple ramparts, its wide moat, and its iron portcullis, might indeed defy all human enemies, but it could not exclude famine; and during her sojourn within its walls, which extended over a period of two-and-twenty years, she was compelled to pawn her jewels, and to melt down her plate, in order to provide food for the famishing garrison; while so utterly destitute did she ultimately become, that she found herself driven to appeal to the generosity of Elizabeth of Austria, the widow of her brother Charles IX, who thenceforward supplied her necessities.