appeared
in the eyes of the Flemings that king who had done them so much harm, and
who was obtaining of them so good a treaty by the fear with which he
inspired them, all dying as he was.

On the 2d of June following, the infant princess, Marguerite of Austria,
was brought by a solemn embassy to Paris first, and then, on the 23d of
June, to Amboise, where her betrothal to the _dauphin_, Charles, was
celebrated. Louis XI. did not feel fit for removal to Amboise; and he
would not even receive at Plessis-les-Tours the new Flemish embassy.
Assuredly neither the king nor any of the actors in this regal scene
foresaw that this marriage, which they with reason looked upon as a
triumph of French policy, would never be consummated; that, at the
request of the court of France, the pope would annul the betrothal; and
that, nine years after its celebration, in 1492, the Austrian princess,
after having been brought up at Amboise under the guardianship of the
Duchess of Bourbon, Anne, eldest daughter of Louis XI., would be sent
back to her father, Emperor Maximilian, by her affianced, Charles VIII.,
then King of France, who preferred to become the husband of a French
princess with a French province for dowry, Anne, Duchess of Brittany.

[Illustration: Views of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours----258]

It was in March, 1481, that Louis XI. had his first attack of that
apoplexy, which, after several repeated strokes, reduced him to such a
state of weakness that in June, 1483, he felt himself and declared
himself not in a fit state to be present at his son's betrothal. Two
months afterwards, on the 25th of August, St. Louis's day, he had a fresh
stroke, and lost all consciousness and speech. He soon recovered them;
but remained so weak that he could not raise his hand to his mouth, and,
under the conviction that he was a dead man, he sent for his son-in-law,
Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and "Go," said he, "to Amboise, to the
king, my son; I have intrusted him as well as the government of the
kingdom to your charge and my daughter's care. You know all I have
enjoined upon him; watch and see that it be observed. Let him show favor
and confidence towards those who have done me good service and whom I
have named to him. You know, too, of whom he should beware, and who must
not be suffered to come near him." He sent for the chancellor from
Paris, and bade him go and take the seals to the king. "Go to the king,"
he said to the