"Certainly, man, certainly; he shall have a score of fiddlers and jugglers to play, roar, and recite to him from morning till night. He shall have a court of troubadours, who shall do nothing but drink, flute, and fiddle to him, and pronounce _arrests_ of _love_, to be confirmed or reversed by an appeal to himself, the supreme _Roi d'Amour_. And Margaret shall also be honourably sustained, in the manner you may point out." "That will be easily settled," answered the English Earl. "If our attempts on England succeed, she will need no aid from Burgundy. If she fails, she retires into a cloister, and it will not be long that she will need the honourable maintenance which, I am sure, your Grace's generosity will willingly assign her." "Unquestionably," answered Charles; "and on a scale which will become us both;--but, by my halidome, John of Vere, the abbess into whose cloister Margaret of Anjou shall retire will have an ungovernable penitent under her charge. Well do I know her; and, Sir Earl, I will not clog our discourse by expressing any doubts, that, if she pleases, she can compel her father to resign his estates to whomsoever she will. She is like my brache, Gorgon, who compels whatsoever hound is coupled with her to go the way she chooses, or she strangles him if he resists. So has Margaret acted with her simple-minded husband, and I am aware that her father, a fool of a different cast, must of necessity be equally tractable. I think _I_ could have matched her,--though my very neck aches at the thought of the struggles we should have had for mastery.--But you look grave, because I jest with the pertinacious temper of my unhappy cousin." "My lord," said Oxford, "whatever are or have been the defects of my mistress, she is in distress, and almost in desolation. She is my sovereign, and your Highness's cousin not the less." "Enough said, Sir Earl," answered the Duke. "Let us speak seriously. Whatever we may think of the abdication of King René, I fear we shall find it difficult to make Louis XI. see the matter as favourably as we do. He will hold that the county of Provence is a male fief, and that neither the resignation of René nor the consent of his daughter can prevent its reverting to the crown of France, as the King of Sicily, as they call him, hath no male issue." "That, may it please your Grace, is a question for battle to decide; and your Highness has successfully braved Louis for a less important stake. All I can say is, that, if your Grace's active assistance enables the young Earl of Richmond to succeed in his enterprise, you shall have the aid of three thousand English archers, if old John of Oxford, for want of a better leader, were to bring them over himself."