at Paris of the decision you have expressed to them as to my liberation, and I am sorry that what you demand of me is not in my power.  But feeling that you could not take a better way of telling me that you mean to keep me prisoner forever than by demanding of me what is impossible on my part, I have made up my mind to put up with imprisonment, being sure that God, who knows that I have not deserved a long one, being a prisoner of fair war, will give me strength to bear it patiently.  And I can only regret that your courteous words, which you were pleased to address to me in my illness, should have come to nothing.” [Documents inedits sur l’Histoire de France.  Captivite du roi Francois I., p. 384.]

The resolution announced in this letter led before long to the official act which was certain to be the consequence of it.  In November, 1525, by formal letters patent, Francis I., abdicating the kingship which he could not exercise, ordered that his eldest son, the dauphin Francis, then eight years old, should be declared, crowned, anointed, and consecrated Most Christian King of France, and that his grandmother, Louise of Savoy, Duchess of Angouleme, or, in default of her, his aunt Marguerite, Duchess of Alencon, should be regent of the kingdom:  “If it should please God that we should recover our personal liberty, and be able to proceed to the government and conduct of our kingdom, in that case our most dear and most beloved son shall quit and give up to us the name and place of king, all things re-becoming just as they were before our capture and captivity.”  The letters patent ordered the regent “to get together a number of good and notable personages from the three estates in all the districts, countries, and good towns of France, to whom, either in a body or separately, one after another, she should communicate the said will of the king, as above, in order to have their opinion, counsel, and consent.”  Thus, during the real king’s very captivity, and so, long as it lasted, France was again about to have a king whom the States General of France would be called upon to support with their counsels and adhesion.

[Illustration:  Louise of Savoy and Marguerite de Valois——­102]

This resolution was taken and these letters patent prepared just at the expiry of the safe-conduct granted to the Princess Marguerite, and, consequently, just when she would have to return to France.  Charles V. was somewhat troubled at the very different position in which he was about to find himself, when he would have to treat no longer at Madrid with a captive king, but at Paris with a young king out of his power and with his own people about him.  Marguerite fully perceived his embarrassment.  From Toledo, where she was, she wrote to her brother, “After having been four days without seeing the emperor, when I went to take leave I found him so gracious that I think he is very much afraid of my going; those gentry yonder are in a great fix, and, if you will be pleased to