w to resolve." She could neither
bring herself to consent that her son with his bride should reside at the
royal court without any exercise of his own religion--a course which would
not only tend to make him an atheist, but cut off all hope of the
conversion of his wife--nor that Margaret of Valois should be guaranteed
the permission to have mass celebrated whenever she came into Jeanne's own
domains in Bearn, a district which the queen "had cleansed of all
idolatry." For Margaret would by her example undo much of that which had
been so assiduously labored for, and the Roman Catholics who had remained
would become "more unwilling to hear the Gospel, they having a staff to
lean to."[880]

[Sidenote: Her solicitude.]

It was this uncertainty about Margaret's course, and the consequent gain
or loss to the Protestant faith, that rendered it almost impossible for
Jeanne d'Albret to master her anxiety. "In view," she wrote to her son,
"of Margaret's judgment and the credit she enjoys with the queen her
mother and the king and her brothers, if she embrace 'the religion,' I can
say that we are the most happy people in the world, and not only our house
but all the kingdom of France will share in this happiness.... If she
remain obstinate in her religion, being devoted to it, as she is said to
be, it cannot be but that this marriage will prove the ruin, first, of our
friends and our lands, and such a support to the papists that, with the
good-will the queen mother bears us, we shall be ruined with the churches
of France." It would almost seem that a prophetic glimpse of the future
had been accorded to the Queen of Navarre. "My son, if ever you prayed
God, do so now, I beg you, as I pray without ceasing, that He may assist
me in this negotiation, and that this marriage may not be made in His
anger for our punishment, but in His mercy for His own glory and our
quiet."[881]

But there were other grounds for solicitude. Catharine de' Medici was the
same deceitful woman she had always been. She would not allow Jeanne
d'Albret to see either Charles or Margaret, save in her presence. She
misrepresented the queen's words, and, when called to an account, denied
the report with the greatest effrontery. She destroyed all the hopes
Jeanne had entertained of frank discussion.

[Sidenote: The Queen of Navarre is treated with tantalizing insincerity.]

"You have great reason to pity me," the Queen of Navarre wrote to her
faithful subject i