I am, dear Cousin, Your most humble slave and servant, Emmanuel.

Gentle as an angel, Mademoiselle de Valois desired just what everybody else did.  The youngest of the three princesses was named Mademoiselle d’Alencon.  With a trifle more wit and dash, she could have maintained her position at Court, where so charming a face as hers was fitted to make its mark; but her fine dark eyes did but express indifference and vacuity, seemingly unconscious of the pleasure to be got in this world when one is young, good-looking, shapely, a princess of the blood, and cousin german of the King besides.

Marguerite de Lorraine, her mother, married her to the Duc de Guise, their near relative, who, without ambition or pretension, seemed almost astonished to see that the King gave, not a dowry, but a most lovely verdure—­[Drawing-room tapestry, much in vogue at that time]—­, and an enamelled dinner-service.

The marriage was celebrated at the chateau, without any special ceremonies or preparations; so much so that two cushions, which had been forgotten, had to be hastily fetched.  I saw what was the matter, and motioning the two attendants of the royal sacristy, I whispered to them to fetch what was wanted from my own apartment.

Not knowing to what use these cushions were to be put, my ’valet de chambre’ brought the flowered velvet ones, on which my dogs were wont to lie.  I noticed this just as their Highnesses were about to kneel down, and I felt so irresistibly inclined to laugh that I was obliged to retire to my room to avoid bursting out laughing before everybody.

Fortunately the Guises did not get to know of this little detail until long after, or they might have imagined that it was a planned piece of malicious mockery.  However, it is only fair to admit that the marriage was treated in a very off-hand way, and it is that which always happens to people whose modesty and candour hinder them from posing and talking big when they get the chance.  A strange delusion, truly!

Mademoiselle d’Orleans, the eldest child of the second marriage, is considered one of the prettiest and most graceful of blondes.  Her endowments were surely all that a princess could need, if one except reserve in speaking, and a general dignity of deportment.

When it was a question of giving her to Prince de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, she was all the while sincerely attached to handsome Prince Charles de Lorraine, her maternal cousin.  But the King, who, in his heart of hearts, wanted to get hold of Lorraine for himself, could not sanction this union; nay, he did more:  he opposed it.  Accordingly the Princess, being urged to do so by her mother, consented to go to Italy, and as we say at Court, expatriate herself.

The Bishop of Nziers, named De Bonzy, the Tuscan charge d’afaires, came, on behalf of the Medici family, to make formal demand of her hand, and had undertaken to bring her to her husband with all despatch.  He had undertaken an all too difficult task.