Thevet also records of herthis touching confession, that when the time came for her to embark, inthe Breton ship, for home, there came over her a strong impulse to refusethe embarkation, but rather to die in that solitary place, as her husband,her child, and her servant had already died. This profound touch of humannature does more than anything else to confirm the tale as substantiallytrue. Certain it is that the lonely island which appeared so long on theold maps as the Isle of Demons (l'Isola de Demoni) appears differently inlater ones as the Lady's Island (l'Isle de la Demoiselle).The Princess Marguerite of Navarre, who died in 1549, seems also to haveknown her namesake at her retreat in Perigord, gives some variations fromThevet's story, and describes her as having been put on shore with herhusband, because of frauds which he had practised on Roberval; nor doesshe speak of the nurse or of the child. But she gives a similardescription of Marguerite's stay on the island, after his death, and says,that although she lived what might seem a bestial life as to her body, itwas a life wholly angelic as regarded her soul (_ainsi vivant, quant aucorps, de vie bestiale, et quant a l'esprit, de vie angelicque_). Shehad, the princess also says, a mind cheerful and content, in a bodyemaciated and half dead.
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