its gloomy casements. A great
Norman structure, somber, austere, it was, however brightened with many
modern features that threatened gradually to sap much of its ancient
majesty.

"Fill up the moat," Francis had ordered. "'Tis barbaric! What lover
would sigh beneath walls thirty feet thick! And the portcullis! Away
with it! Summon my Italian painters to adorn the walls. We may yet make
habitable these legacies from the savage, brutal past."

So the mighty walls, once set in a comparative wilderness, a tangle of
thicket and underbrush, now arose from garden, lawn and park, where even
the deer were no longer shy, and the water, propelled by artificial
power, shot upward in jets.

Seated at a window which overlooked this sylvan aspect, modified if not
fashioned by man, a young woman with seeming conscientiousness, told her
beads. The apartment, though richly furnished, was in keeping with the
devout character of its fair mistress. A brush or aspersorium, used for
sprinkling holy water, was leaning against the wall. Upon a table lay an
open psalter, with its long hanging cover and a ball at the extremity of
the forel. Behind two tall candlesticks stood an altar-table which,
being unfolded, revealed three compartments, each with a picture, painted
by Andrea del Sarto, the once honored guest of Francis.

The Princess Louise, cousin of Francis' former queen, Claude, had been
reared with rigid strictness, although provided with various preceptors
who had made her more or less proficient in the profane letters, as they
were then called, Latin, Greek, theology and philosophy. The fame of her
beauty had gone abroad; her hand had been often sought, but the obdurate
king had steadfastly refused to sanction her betrothal until Charles, the
emperor, himself proposed a union between the fair ward of the French
monarch and one of his nobles, the young Duke of Friedwald. To this
Francis had assented, for he calculated upon thus drawing to his
interests one of his rival's most chivalrous knights, while far-seeing
Charles believed he could not only retain the duke, but add to his own
court the lovely and learned ward of the king.

And in this comedy of aggrandizement the puppets were willing--as puppets
must needs be. Indeed, the duke was seriously enamored of the princess,
whose portrait he had seen in miniature, and had himself importuned the
emperor to intercede with Francis, knowing that the only way to the
lady's h