n Bearn, "for never was I so disdainfully treated at
court as I now am.... Everything that had been announced to me is changed.
They wish to destroy all the hopes with which they brought me."[882]
Catharine showed no shame when detected in open falsehood. She told Jeanne
d'Albret that her son's governor had given her reason to expect that Henry
would consent to be married by proxy according to the Romish ceremonial.
But when she was hard pressed and saw that Jeanne did not believe her, she
coolly rejoined: "Well, at any rate, he told me something." "I am quite
sure of it, madam, but it was something that did not approach that!"
"Thereupon," writes Jeanne in despair, "she burst out laughing; for,
observe, she never speaks to me without trifling."[883]

[Sidenote: She is shocked at the morals of the court.]

But it was particularly the abominable immorality of the royal court that
alarmed the Queen of Navarre for the safety of her only son, should he be
called to sojourn there. The lady Margaret, she wrote--and her words
deserve the more notice on account of the infamy into which the life as
yet apparently so guileless was to lead--"is handsome, modest, and
graceful; but nurtured in the most wicked and corrupt society that ever
was. I have not seen a person who does not show the effects of it. Your
cousin, the marquise, is so changed in consequence of it, that there is no
appearance of religion, save that she does not go to mass; for, as for her
mode of life, excepting idolatry, she acts like the papists, and my sister
the princess still worse.... I would not for the world that you were here
to live. It is on this account that I want you to marry, and your wife and
you to come out of this corruption; for although I believed it to be very
great, I find it still greater. Here it is not the men that solicit the
women, but the women the men. Were you here, you would never escape but by
a remarkable exercise of God's mercy.... I abide by my first opinion, that
you must return to Bearn. My son, you can but have judged from my former
letters, that they only try to separate you from God and from me; you will
come to the same conclusion from this last, as well as form some idea
respecting the anxiety I am in on your account. I beg you to pray
earnestly to God; for you have great need of His help at all times, and
above all at this time. I pray to Him that you may obtain it, that He may
give you, my son, all your desires."[884]

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