Twice Told
Tale
Period
1542 to 1575

Marguerite de La Roque: the woman on the Isle of Demons

The Queen of Navarre's marooned couple have no demons, no lover and no names. Thevet's book of 1575 has all three, and says the woman told it to him herself.

Contents
  1. The Queen of Navarre’s couple
  2. Thevet, who says he met her
  3. The island was on the maps first
  4. The voyage as Hakluyt printed it
  5. What we could not verify
  6. Sources

Published 22 Oct 2026. Sources checked 18 Oct 2026.

The oldest printed story we found of a woman marooned by Roberval has no Marguerite in it.7 In the 67th tale of the Queen of Navarre’s Heptaméron, the castaways are an unnamed traitor and his wife, left with a New Testament, an arquebus and some lions, and there are no demons.8129 The name, the lover, the maid Damienne and the spirits first appear, in the texts we read, in André Thevet’s Cosmographie universelle of 1575.10311 Thevet says the woman told him the story herself.12

The story, as the Library of Congress map blog tells it, goes like this.

In 1542 Marguerite de La Rocque sailed with her uncle, Jean-François de La Roque de Roberval, to a colony in what is now Quebec.13 On the voyage she began a romance with a sailor.13 Roberval disapproved and left Marguerite, her handmaid Damienne and the sailor stranded on the Isle of Demons with some food and firearms.13 Marguerite gave birth on the island.13 The sailor, Damienne and the child died there.13 Marguerite survived by hunting wild game, and fishermen rescued her after she had spent two years on the island.13

The Queen of Navarre’s couple

Pierre Boaistuau printed the Heptaméron first, in a selection of 67 tales in 1558, where this story is number 56.7 Claude Gruget’s edition of 1559 prints it as the 67th, in Marguerite de Navarre’s own order.87 We read both printings, and the 1558 tale tells the same story in slightly different words.2

Simontault, one of the storytellers, says he heard it from Captain Roberval and several of his company.8 Roberval is sailing by the king’s command to “l’isle de Canadas”, where he means to build towns and castles.1 A craftsman he brought betrays him.1 The craftsman’s wife, who followed him across the sea, begs for his life, and the pair are left on a small island where only wild beasts live, with leave to take what they need.1

The wife brings a New Testament and reads it without stopping.9 When the lions and other beasts come close, the pair fight them off:

« le mary auec sa harquebuze, & elle auec des pierres se deffendoient si bien »9

“the husband with his arquebus and she with stones defended themselves so well”

Our translation

The husband dies, swollen from the food and the water.9 She is his doctor and his confessor, buries him, and from her hut fires the arquebus to keep the beasts off the grave.9 “After some time” a ship of the fleet passes, sees smoke and takes her aboard, and the ladies of the town give her their daughters to teach to read and write.14 The tale gives no date, no length of stay and no name for the island.214 Saintsbury’s English translation adds that the ship took her straight to La Rochelle, which the 1559 text does not say; we did not check what text he translated.14

Simontault tells it as praise of a woman, and the man she follows is the traitor.81

One modern account remembers it differently. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on Marguerite says that in the Queen’s account a young man is put off the ship, Marguerite goes to share his fate, and the servant-girl Damienne goes with them.4 The 1559 text says none of this.2

Thevet, who says he met her

Thevet prints the story in book 23 of the Cosmographie universelle, chapter 6.10 Roberval, he writes, took gentlemen, craftsmen and some women to Canada, among them a young kinswoman called Marguerite, whom he trusted with his affairs.10 A gentleman of the company came more for love of her than for the king’s service, and the two became lovers at sea, while her old Norman servant Damienne kept watch.3 Roberval learned of it and, when his ships came near the Isle of Demons, put the young woman and the old servant ashore with four arquebuses and munitions.315

The gentleman, afraid of the same treatment, went to join her with his own arquebus and supplies, and Roberval sailed on.16 The woman became pregnant.17 The gentleman died about eight months in, the servant in the sixteenth or seventeenth month, and the child soon after.17

Thevet is specific about the demons, and he does not overdo them. Evil spirits tried to pull down the hut in the shapes of frightful animals, and at night there were cries like those of more than a hundred thousand men.11 After the first two nights, the woman told him, they came near the hut or showed themselves only while she was alone and in despair, and they vanished when she prayed.11 She also assured him she once shot three bears in a day, one as white as an egg.18 A woodcut in the book shows her fighting animals with an arquebus.19

A woodcut of a small island ringed by waves: a seated woman aims a gun at wild animals coming out of the trees, a hut stands behind her, and ships lie around the coast

“L’Isle où vne Damoiselle Françoise fut exilée”, woodcut from André Thevet, La cosmographie vniuerselle (Paris: Pierre L’Huillier, 1575), leaf 1019 verso, cropped. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, E575 T418c, CC BY 4.0.19

After two years and five months, ships from Lower Brittany passing to fish saw her signal with smoke and fire.20 The crews first took it for an illusion of the demons, then took her aboard and brought her to France.20 Thevet says he heard it from her in the town of Nontron in Périgord, and calls Roberval “mon familier”.12

Near the end he has her say she wished to die on the island “comme son mary”, like her husband, after calling the man her lover.21

In his manuscript Grand Insulaire, Thevet gives Marguerite an entry of her own, “Isle de Roberual”, which says he named the island after Roberval and that it is also called the Isle of Demons.22 He refers back to the printed story of 1575 rather than retelling it, and puts her banishment down to Roberval, whom he calls, as we read the hand, her uncle.23 He explains the phantoms: they came only after she lost her lover, and solitude lent them force.24 Yet his separate entry “Isle des Demons” speaks of “another island” he named for Roberval, “quite near” it.25

Thevet also knew the story was already being embellished. He writes that some “folastres euentez”, after hearing him tell it, put lies of their own into their fables and tragic histories; he does not say whose.26

« y ont augmenté des folies & mensonges »26

“added follies and lies to it”

Our translation

The three tellings, in date order:

TextMarguerite namedLoverDemonsTime on the island
Heptaméron, 1559No2None2None2“Some time”14
Thevet, 1575Yes, a kinswoman10A gentleman, who joins her16Spirits and phantoms112 years 5 months20
Library of Congress blog, 2022Yes, a niece13A sailor13Not mentioned in the telling132 years13

The island was on the maps first

The Isle of Demons did not begin with Marguerite. Ruysch’s map carries a Latin note, in Berson’s translation, saying that sailors who came near were so tormented by demons that they could hardly escape.27 Berson dates the map to 1507 and the Library of Congress to 1508.27 Ramusio’s map of 1556 draws three winged demons on the island, and islands of that name stay on maps until the middle of the 17th century.27

Thevet knew the place. In the chapter before Marguerite’s he calls it the largest and finest of its islands, abandoned because of devils, and says pilots told him they heard human voices in the air there in storms.28 Then, in chapter 6, he puts her exile at that island.15 Berson reads the joining as a trade: Marguerite’s misfortunes gain credibility from a charted island, and the island becomes real through what is said to have happened on it.29

Mercator’s world map of 1569, Berson writes, already draws the Isle of Demons and the island of Roberval’s tragedy apart, the second at the mouth of the Saint-Paul river, where an Île de la Demoiselle is still named in memory of Marguerite.30

Where the demons really were is open. Berson thinks the large island of the maps was Belle Isle and Lark Island, or Quirpon, misjudged in size and shape.31 The Library of Congress post names Quirpon and Harrington Harbour as proposals, and writes that “we will never know the actual location”.32

The voyage as Hakluyt printed it

Roberval’s expedition was real. Three ships carrying 200 people, men, women and children, sailed from La Rochelle.33 They left on 16 April 1542 and reached Saint John’s in Newfoundland in early June, where Jacques Cartier, on his way home, met them.33

Hakluyt’s English account of the winter, first printed in 1600, says Roberval “used very good justice”.5 Michael Gaillon was hanged for theft, John of Nantes was put in irons, and men and women were whipped.5 It records nobody being put ashore on an island, and it names no woman.5

That silence proves little. The account is short, and it takes the fleet from Saint John’s to a harbour west of the Isle of Orleans in a single sentence.34 The Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on Roberval says the expedition went up the river “without incident except for the romantic adventure” of Marguerite, who was “left on an island with her lover”.35 A lover is in Thevet’s version and not in the Queen’s.32 The entry’s list of sources includes both.35

The same biographer’s entry on Marguerite says she was co-seigneuress of Pontpoint and pledged fealty and homage in 1536 for lands in Périgord and Languedoc, and that historians accept that both accounts rest on an actual happening.6 We have not seen the 1536 deed.

What we could not verify

Sources we have not seen

  • Biggar’s Collection of documents relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval (1930), which prints Roberval’s commission and the king’s orders of 1543. The Internet Archive holds it only as a restricted lending copy.
  • The 1536 deed of Marguerite de La Roque, Archives nationales, Anciens hommages et aveux, pièce 820, which would show whether she existed outside the stories. We know it only from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.6

Seen only where others quote them

  • The maps of Ruysch (1507 or 1508), Ramusio (1556) and Mercator (1569), read only through Berson and the Library of Congress post.2730

Resting on a single source

  • The Dictionary of Canadian Biography quotes Thevet as saying Roberval had six men hanged and banished some to an island in leg-irons. We did not find that passage in the pages of the Cosmographie we read.5

Questions we could not settle

  • Whether Marguerite’s island and the Isle of Demons of the maps are one: Thevet puts the exile at the Isle of Demons in 1575, treats them as one island and as two neighbours in the Grand Insulaire, and Berson says Mercator drew two.15222530
  • Whether any document outside Thevet and the Heptaméron records Marguerite’s journey, her stay or her return.

Sources

    • Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. 8 (1904), p. 286 (scan leaf n313), the paragraph "Monsieur Roberval used very good justice", page image. The whole account (pp. 283 to 289, scan leaves n310 to n316) was searched in OCR for island, exile, demon, Marguerite and lover: no hit except Belle Isle, the Isle of Ascension and the Isle of Orleans (OCR, so a search is not proof for every page) (primary)
    • La Roque de Roquebrune, "La Rocque de Roberval, Jean-François de", DCB vol. 1, paragraph beginning "Roberval undertook some exploring": it quotes Thevet on six men hanged, some banished to an island in leg-irons and others flogged; we did not find that passage in the Cosmographie pages we read↑
    • Thevet, Cosmographie (1575), vol. 2, ff. 1019v and 1020 (scan leaves n1183 and n1184), from "c'estoit pitié d'ouyr les rauages, que ces malings esprits" and "depuis les deux premieres nuictz"; page images (primary)↑
    • Thevet, Cosmographie (1575), vol. 2, f. 1019 (n1182): "Roberual mon familier" and "venuë en la ville de Nautron, pays de Perigort lors que i'y estois, me feit le discours de toutes ses fortunes"; f. 1020 (n1184): "de la bouche de laquelle i'ay sceu & entendu ceste pitoyable histoire"; page images (primary)
    • La Roque de Roquebrune, "La Roque, Marguerite de", DCB vol. 1, fourth paragraph ("Thevet states that he was told of this episode by the heroine herself, whom he met at Nontron in Périgord"); the "mon familier" phrase is only in Thevet↑
    • André Thevet, Le grand Insulaire et pilotage (1586), BnF Manuscrits, Français 15452, first volume (Gallica btv1b9065908x), scan leaves n311 and n312: "n'avoit esté harassée ... de ces hideux phantosmes ... sinon depuis qu'elle eut perdu le Gentil-homme son amoureux", "la solitude donnoit grande force à l'esblouissement de ces apparitions" (marginal note "Solitude sujette aux apparitions"), "c'estoit les ours qui la tourmentoient le plus", "tué de nuict pres Sainct Innocent a Paris ... j'ay marqué et donné nom de Roberual a ceste presente Isle"; handwriting read from the page images, some words uncertain (primary)↑
    • Thevet, Cosmographie (1575), vol. 2, f. 1020 (scan leaf n1184), "Ie sçay bien, que quelques folastres euentez, apres m'en auoir ouy faire le discours" to "desrobees deçà & delà"; page image (primary)↑
    • Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. 8 (1904), p. 284 (scan leaf n311), the sentence "At length, about the last of the aforesayde Moneth, wee departed hence, and entred into the Grand Baye"; the page carries the margin mark [III. 241.] of the 1600 edition; page image (primary)↑

Documents quoted