knightly vow
thereafter was to swear "By the courage of our Princess."

The brilliant victory of this girl of sixteen was not, however, to
accomplish her desires. Peace never came to her. Harassed by rebellion
at home, and persecuted by her relentless and perfidious uncles, Count
John of Bavaria, rightly called "the Pitiless," and Duke Philip of
Burgundy, falsely called "the Good," she, who had once been Crown
Princess of France and Lady of Holland, died at the early age of
thirty-six, stripped of all her titles and estates. It is, however,
pleasant to think that she was happy in the love of her husband, the
baron of the forests of the Duke of Burgundy, a plain Dutch gentleman,
Francis von Borselen, the lad who, years before, had furnished the gray
gabardine that had shielded Count William's daughter from her father's
lions.

The story of Jacqueline of Holland is one of the most romantic that has
come down to us from those romantic days of the knights. Happy only
in her earliest and latest years, she is, nevertheless, a bright and
attractive figure against the dark background of feudal tyranny and
crime. The story of her womanhood should indeed be told, if we would
study her life as a whole; but for us, who can in this paper deal only
with her romantic girlhood, her young life is to be taken as a type of
the stirring and extravagant days of chivalry.

And we cannot but think with sadness upon the power for good that she
might have been in her land of fogs and floods if, instead of being made
the tool of party hate and the ambitions of men, her frank and fearless
girl nature had been trained to gentle ways and charitable deeds.

To be "the most picturesque figure in the history of Holland," as she
has been called, is distinction indeed; but higher still must surely be
that gentleness of character and nobility of soul that, in these days
of ours, may be acquired by every girl and boy who reads this romantic
story of the Countess Jacqueline, the fair young Lady of Holland.

CATARINA OF VENICE: THE GIRL OF THE GRAND CANAL.

(Afterward known as Queen of Cyprus and "Daughter of the Republic.")
A.D. 1466.

"Who is he? Why do you not know, Catarina mia? 'T is his Most Puissant
Excellency, the mighty Lord of Lusignan, the runaway Heir of Jerusalem,
the beggar Prince of Cyprus, with more titles to his name--ho ho,
ho!--than he hath jackets to his back; and with more dodging than
ducats, so 't is said, when the ti