When, in 1512, Maximilian came to Brussels, and Charles was sent to meet him, he begged Margaret to bring the three Princesses, without delay, to "amuse themselves in the park at Vueren," and sent the haunch of a stag which he had killed that day as a present to his "dear little daughters." At the children's urgent entreaty, the Emperor himself rode out to join them at supper, and invited them to a banquet in the palace at Brussels on Midsummer Day. When the English Ambassador, Sir Edward Poynings, came to pay the Emperor his respects, he found His Majesty in riding-boots, standing at the palace gates, with the Lady Regent, the Lord Prince and his sisters, looking on at a great bonfire in the square. The Ambassador and his colleague, Spinelli, were both invited to return to the palace for supper, and had a long conversation with the Lady Margaret, in whom they found the same perfect friend as ever, "while the Prince and his sisters danced gaily with the other young folk till between nine and ten o'clock."[6] But this merry party was soon to break up. Before the end of the year Maximilian Sforza crossed the Brenner, and entered Milan amidst the acclamations of his father's old subjects, and eighteen months later two of the young Archduchesses were wedded to foreign Kings. II. [Sidenote: MAY, 1514] MARRIAGE-MAKING] While her nieces were still children Margaret was busy with plans for their marriage. Her views for them were ambitious and frankly expressed. "All your granddaughters," she wrote to her father, "should marry Kings." The old Emperor himself was an inveterate matchmaker, and the House of Austria had been proverbially fortunate in its alliances. _Tu felix Austria nube_ had passed into a common saying. By his marriage with Mary of Burgundy, Maximilian entered on the vast inheritance of Charles the Bold, and his grandson was heir to the throne of Spain by right of his mother Juana. In 1509 proposals for two of the Archduchesses came from Portugal, and Margaret urged her father to accept these offers, remarking shrewdly that King Emanuel was a wealthy monarch, and that there were few marriageable Princes in Europe. If both Madame Leonore and Madame Marie were betrothed to the two Portuguese Princes, there would still be two of her nieces to contract other alliances. But Maximilian's thoughts were too much occupied with his war against Venice to consider these proposals seriously, and the matter was allowed to drop.[7] Meanwhile Madame Isabeau's hand was in great request. In March, 1510, Maximilian received offers of marriage for his second granddaughter from the King of Navarre's son, Henri d'Albret, but this project was nipped in the bud by the jealousy of Isabella's other grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Francis I.'s sister, Margaret, Duchess of Alençon, became Queen of Navarre in her stead. A new and strange husband for the nine-year-old Princess was now proposed by the Regent herself. This