pawn his crown and drain his kingdom, for to overthrow the tyranny of the Ottomans, and open to himself in this way the kingdom of Heaven.” The King of England gave a somewhat ironical reply to this chivalrous address, merely asking whether the King of France would consent not to dispose of the heiress of Brittany’s hand, save on the condition of not marrying her himself. The ambassadors shuffled out of the question by saying that their master was so far from any such idea, that it had not been foreseen in their instructions. Whether it had or had not been foreseen and meditated upon, so soon as the reunion of Brittany with France by the marriage of the young duchess, Anne, with King Charles VIII. appeared on the horizon as a possible, and, peradventure, probable fact, it became the common desire, aim, and labor of all the French politicians who up to that time had been opposed, persecuted, and proscribed. Since the battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier, Duke Louis of Orleans had been a prisoner in the Tower of Bourges, and so strictly guarded that he was confined at night in an iron cage like Cardinal Balue’s for fear he should escape. In vain had his wife, Joan of France, an unhappy and virtuous princess, ugly and deformed, who had never been able to gain her husband’s affections, implored her all-powerful sister, Anne of Bourbon, to set him at liberty: “As I am incessantly thinking,” she wrote to her, “about my husband’s release, I have conceived the idea of setting down in writing the fashion in which peace might be had, and my said husband be released. I am writing it out for the king, and you will see it all. I pray you, sister, to look to it that I may get a few words in answer; it has been a very sad thing for me that I never see you now.” There is no trace of any answer from Anne to her sister. Charles VIII. had a heart more easily touched. When Joan, in mourning, came and threw herself at his feet, saying, “Brother, my husband is dragging on his life in prison; and I am in such trouble that I know not what I ought to say in his defence. If he has had aught wherewith to reproach himself, I am the only one whom he has outraged. Pardon him, brother; you will never have so happy a chance of being generous.” “You shall have him, sister,” said Charles, kissing her; “grant Heaven that you may not repent one day of that which you are doing for him to-day!” Some days after this interview, in May, 1491, Charles, without saying anything about it to the duchess, Anne of Bourbon, set off one evening from Plessis du Pare on pretence of going a-hunting, and on reaching Berry sent for the Duke of Orleans from the Tower of Bourges. Louis, in raptures at breathing the air of freedom, at the farthest glimpse he caught of the king, leaped down from his horse and knelt, weeping, on the ground. “Charles,” says the chronicler, “sprang upon his neck, and knew not what cheer (reception) to give him, to make it