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[Illustration:  023a.jpg The Lord des Cheriots flying from the Prince’s Servant]

[The Lord des Cheriots flying from the Prince’s Servant]

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TALE LIII.

     By her dissimulation the Lady of Neufchastel caused the
     Prince of Belhoste to put her to such proof that it turned
     to her dishonour.

King Francis the First was once at a handsome and pleasant castle, whither he had gone with a small following, both for the purpose of hunting and in order to take some repose.  With him in his train was a certain Prince of Belhoste, (1) as worshipful, virtuous, discreet and handsome a Prince as any at Court.  The wife he had married did not belong to a family of high rank, yet he loved her as dearly and treated her as well as it were possible for a husband to do, and also trusted in her.  And when he was in love with anybody he never concealed it from her, knowing that she had no other will than his own.

1 The Bibliophile Jacob surmises that this personage may be one of the Italian grandees at that period in the service of France, in which case the allusion may be to John Caraccioli, Prince of Melphes, created a marshal of France in 1544.  Queen Margaret, however, makes no mention of her Prince being a foreigner.  “Belhoste” is of course a fictitious name invented to replace that which the Prince really bore, and admits of so many interpretations that its meaning in the present instance cannot well be determined.  From the circumstance, however, that the Prince’s wife was of inferior birth to himself, it is not impossible that the personage referred to may be either Charles de Bourbon, Prince of La Roche-sur-Yonne and Duke of Beaupreau, or John VIII., Lord of Crequi, Canaples and Pontdormi, and Prince of Poix.  The former, who married Philippa de Montespedon, widow of Rene de Montejan, and a lady of honour to Catherine de’ Medici when Dauphiness, took a prominent part in the last wars of Francis I.’s reign, and survived till 1565.  The latter, generally known at Court by the name of Canaples, was a gentleman of the chamber and an especial favourite of Francis I. Brantome says of him in his Homines Illustres that he was “a valiant lord and the strongest man of arms that in those days existed in all Christendom, for he broke a lance, no matter its strength, as easily as though it were a mere switch, and few were able to withstand him.”  In 1525 the Prince of Poix married a Demoiselle d’Acigne or Assigny, of petite noblesse, who in 1532 became a lady of honour to Queen Eleanor.  She died in 1558, surviving her husband by three years.  See Rouard’s rare Notice dun Recueil de Crayons a la Bibliotheque Mejanes d’Aix, Paris, 1863.—­Ed.

Now this Prince conceived a deep affection for a widow lady called Madame de Neufchastel, (2) who was reputed the most beautiful woman it were possible to see; and if the Prince of Bel-hoste loved her well, his wife loved her no less, and would often send and bid her to dinner, for she deemed her so discreet and honourable, that, instead of being grieved by her husband’s love for her, she rejoiced to see him address his attentions to one so full of honour and virtue.