During the imprisonment of the king, her brother, she greatly assisted Mme. la regente, her mother, in governing the kingdom, contenting the princes, the grandees, and winning over the nobility; because she was very accessible, and so won the hearts of many persons by the fine qualities she had in her.
In short, she was a princess worthy of a great empire; besides being very kind, gentle, gracious, charitable, a great alms-giver and disdaining none. Therefore was she, after her death, regretted and bemoaned by everybody. The most learned persons vied with each other in making her epitaph in Greek, Latin, French, Italian; so much so that there is still a book of them extant, quite complete and very beautiful.
This queen often said to this one and that one who discoursed of death, and eternal happiness after it: "All that is true, but we shall stay a long time under ground before we come to that." I have heard my mother, who was one of her ladies, and my grandmother, who was her lady of honour, say that when they told her in the extremity of her illness that she must die, she thought those words most bitter, and repeated what I have told above; adding that she was not so old but that she might live on for many years, being only fifty-two or fifty-three years old. She was born under the 10th degree of Aquarius, when Saturn was parted from Venus by quaternary decumbiture, on the 10th of April, 1492, at ten in the evening; having been conceived in the year 1491 at ten hours before mid-day and seventeen minutes, on the 11th of July. Good astrologers can make their computations upon that. She died in Béarn, at the castle of Audaus [Odos] in the month of December, 1549. Her age can be reckoned from that. She was older than the king, her brother, who was born at Cognac, September 12th, year 1494, at nine in the evening, under the 21st degree of Gemini, having been conceived in the year 1493, December 10th, at ten o'clock in the morning, became king January 11th, 1514 [1515 new style], and died in 1547.
This queen took her illness by looking at a comet which appeared at the death of Pope Paul III.; she herself thought this, but possibly it only seemed so; for suddenly her mouth was drawn a little sideways; which her physician, M. d'Escuranis, observing, he took her away, made her go to bed, and treated her; for it was a chill [_caterre_], of which she died in eight days, after having well prepared herself for death. She died a good Christian and a Catholic, against the opinion of many; but as for me, I can affirm, being a little boy at her Court with my mother and my grandmother, that we never saw any act to contradict it; indeed, having retired to a monastery of women in Angoumois, called Tusson, on the death of the king, her brother, where she made her retreat and stayed the whole summer, she built a fine house there, and was often seen to do the office of abbess, and chant masses and vespers with the nuns in the choir.