"But he cheered himself during these two years of widowhood with a very beautiful mistress, the French Marchioness de Montreuil, and he would have married her had not the prudent beauty preferred returning to France, because she found it altogether too dangerous to become Henry's consort.

For it is not to be denied, a baleful star hovers over Henry's queens, and none of them has descended from the throne in a natural way." "Yet, father, Jane Seymour did so in a very natural way; she died in childbed." "Well, yes, in childbed.

And yet by no natural death, for she could have been saved.

But Henry did not wish to save her.

His love had already grown cool, and when the physicians asked him whether they should save the mother or the child, he replied, 'Save the child, and let the mother die.