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[Illustration:  123a.jpg The Girl refusing the Gift of the Young Prince]

[The Girl refusing the Gift of the Young Prince]

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TALE XLII.

A young Prince set his affections upon a young girl, and although she was of low and poor parentage, he could not, in spite of all his efforts, obtain from her what he had hoped to have.  Accordingly, recognising her virtue and honour, the Prince desisted from his attempt, esteemed her highly all his life, and, marrying her to a follower of his own, bestowed great benefits upon her.

In one of the best towns in Touraine there dwelt a lord of illustrious family, who had there been brought up from early youth.  Of the perfections, graces, beauty and great virtues of this young Prince (1) I will say nothing, except that in his time his equal could not be found.  Being fifteen years of age, he had more pleasure in hunting and hawking than in looking at beautiful ladies.

1 This is undoubtedly Francis I., then Count of Angouleme.  M. de Lincy thinks that the scene of the story must be Amboise, where Louise of Savoy went to live with her children in 1499, and remained for several years; Louis XII. having placed the chateau there at her disposal.  Francis, however, left Amboise to join the Court at Blois in August 1508, when less than fourteen years old (see Memoir of Queen Margaret, vol. i. p. xxiii.), and in the tale, above, he is said to have been fifteen at the time of the incidents narrated.  These, then, would have occurred in the autumn of 1509.  It will be seen that in the tale the young Prince’s sister (Margaret) is described as residing at the castle.  Now Margaret married Charles of Alencon at Blois, in October 1509, and forthwith removed to Alencon.  Possibly Francis, who was very precocious, especially in matters of gallantry, engaged in the love affair narrated by his sister at a yet earlier age than she asserts, in which case the town she refers to would undoubtedly be Amboise.—­Ed.

One day in a church he beheld a young maiden who formerly, during her childhood, had been bred in the castle where he dwelt; but after her mother’s death, her father having married again, she had withdrawn into Poitou with her brother.  This maiden, who was called Frances, had a bastard sister whom her father dearly loved, and whom he had married to the young Prince’s butler, who maintained her in as excellent a condition as that of any of her family.  It came to pass that the father died and left to Frances as her portion what he possessed near the town aforementioned, and thither she returned after his death; nevertheless, being unmarried and only sixteen years of age, she would not live alone in her house, but went to lodge with her sister, the butler’s wife.