ught of obtaining a dispensation
for marrying her. In the unsettled condition of the Church, when it
was divided by the last splinterings, as it were, of the great schism,
perhaps the astute Louis deemed that any prince might obtain anything
from whichever rival Pope he chose to acknowledge, though it was
reserved for Alexander Borgia to grant the first licence of this kind.
To Jean the idea was simply abhorrent, alike as regarded her instincts
and for the sake of the man himself. His sneering manner towards her
sister had filled her with disgust and indignation, and he had, in those
days, been equally contemptuous towards herself--besides which she was
aware of his share in her capture by Balchenburg, and whispers had not
respected the manner in which his silence had fostered the slanders that
had broken Margaret's heart.

'I would sooner wed a viper!' she said.

What was Louis's motive it is very hard to guess. Perhaps there was some
real admiration of Jean's beauty, and it seems to have been his desire
that his wife should be a nonentity, as was shown in his subsequent
choice of Charlotte of Savoy. Now Jean was in feature very like her
sister Isabel, Duchess of Brittany, who was a very beautiful woman, but
not far from being imbecile, and Louis had never seen Jean display any
superiority of intellect or taste like Margaret or Eleanor, but rather
impatience of their pursuits, and he therefore might expect her to be
equally simple with the other sister. However that might be, Sir
Patrick was utterly incredulous; but when his wife asked Madame Ste.
Petronelle's opinion, she shook her head, and said the Sire Dauphin was
a strange ower cannie chiel, and advised that Maitre Jaques Coeur should
be consulted.

'Who may he be?'

'Ken ye not Jaques Coeur? The great merchant of Bourges--the man to
whom, above all others, France owes it that we be not under the English
yoke. The man, I say, for it was the poor Pucelle that gave the first
move, and ill enough was her reward, poor blessed maiden as she was. A
saint must needs die a martyr's death, and they will own one of these
days that such she was! But it was Maitre Coeur that stirred the King
and gave him the wherewithal to raise his men--lending, they called it,
but it was out of the free heart of a true Frenchman who never looked to
see it back again, nor even thanks for it!'

'A merchant?' asked Sir Patrick.

'Ay, the mightiest merchant in the realm. You would marvel