lighted.  In a dark corner was the king, seated in an arm-chair.  They moved towards him; and then, in a weak and trembling voice, but still, as it seemed, in a bantering tone, Louis asked pardon of the Abbot of St. Peter of Ghent and of the other ambassadors for not being able to rise and greet them.  After having heard what they had to say, and having held a short conversation with them, he sent for the Gospels for to make oath.  He excused himself for being obliged to take the holy volume in his left hand, for his right was paralyzed and his arm supported in a sling.  Then, holding the volume of the Gospels, he raised it up painfully, and placing upon it the elbow of his right arm, he made oath.  Thus 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,