mself to engage his father.

On April 15 the treaty between France and Venice was signed at Blois.
It was a defensive and offensive alliance directed against all, with the
sole exception of the reigning Pontiff, who should have the faculty to
enter into it if he so elected. This was the first decisive step against
the House of Sforza, and so secretly were the negotiations conducted
that Lodovico Sforza's first intimation of them resulted from the
capture in Milanese territory of a courier from the Pope with letters to
Cesare in France. From these he learnt, to his dismay, not only of the
existence of the league, but that the Pope had joined it. The immediate
consequence of this positive assurance that Alexander had gone over to
Sforza's enemies was Ascanio Sforza's hurried departure from Rome on
July 13.

In the meantime Cesare's marriage had followed almost immediately upon
the conclusion of the treaty. The nuptials were celebrated on May 12,
and on the 19th he received at the hands of the King of France the
knightly Order of St. Michael, which was then the highest honour
that France could confer. When the news of this reached the Pope he
celebrated the event in Rome with public festivities and illuminations.

Of Cesare's courtship we have no information. The fact that the marriage
was purely one of political expediency would tend to make us conceive it
as invested with that sordid lovelessness which must so often attend the
marriages of princes. But there exists a little data from which we may
draw certain permissible inferences. This damsel of seventeen was said
to be the loveliest in France, and there is more than a suggestion in
Le Feron's De Gestis Regnum Gallorum, that Cesare was by no means
indifferent to her charms. He tells us that the Duke of Valentinois
entered into the marriage very heartily, not only for the sake of its
expediency, but for "the beauty of the lady, which was equalled by her
virtues and the sweetness of her nature."

Cesare, we have it on more than one authority, was the handsomest man
of his day. The gallantry of his bearing merited the approval of so
fastidious a critic in such matters as Baldassare Castiglione, who
mentions it in his Il Cortigiano. Of his personal charm there is also no
lack of commendation from those who had his acquaintance at this time.
Added to this, his Italian splendour and flamboyance may well have
dazzled a maid who had been reared amid the grey and something s