Margaret's chief object, however, was attained. On the 5th of March she returned to Malines with the Prince of Denmark and his little sisters. "Henceforth, Monseigneur," she wrote to Charles, "you will have to be both father and mother to these poor children, and must treat them as your own."[58] The Regent herself nobly fulfilled the sacred trust committed to her by the dying Queen. From this time until her own death, four and a half years later, Isabella's children were the objects of her unceasing care, and lacked nothing that money could provide or love suggest. They lived under her own roof in the Palace of Malines, that city of wide streets and canals, with the fine market-place and imposing cathedral, which many called the finest town in Flanders. Margaret's first care was to arrange the royal children's household. Prince John was placed in the charge of a governess, Mademoiselle Rolande de Serclaes, who superintended his meals and taught him "Christian religion and good manners," while he had for his tutor Cornelius Agrippa, the distinguished scholar and defender of women's rights, who dedicated his book, "On the Pre-excellence of Women," to the Regent. In Lent the Prince and his sisters received regular instruction in the palace chapel, and one year Friar Jehan de Salis received thirty-six livres for preaching a course of Lent sermons before the Prince and Princesses of Denmark. Margaret herself kept a watchful eye on the children. A hundred entries in her household accounts show how carefully she chose their nurses and companions, their clothes and playthings. One of her first gifts to the Prince was a handsome pony, richly harnessed with black and gold trappings. Another was a dwarf page, who became his constant playfellow, and in his turn received good Ypres cloth and damask for his own wear. Italian merchants from Antwerp often came to lay their wares before the Regent. We find her choosing black velvet and white satin for Prince John's doublet, and pearl buttons and gold fringe to trim his sleeves, and ordering the goldsmith, Master Leonard of Augsburg, to supply an antique silver dagger and an image of Hercules for the Prince's cap. Or else a merchant is desired to send her two pairs of cuffs of exquisitely fine "toile de Cambray," embroidered with gold thread, for the young Princesses' wear,[59] and twenty gold balls for the fringe of their bed. Amid all the anxious cares of State which filled her time, this great lady seldom allowed a day to pass without seeing her nephew and nieces. Their innocent prattle and merry laughter cheered her lonely hours, while the Prince and his sisters found plenty to amuse them in their great-aunt's rooms. The halls were hung with costly Arras tapestries of David killing Goliath, stories of Alexander and Esther, hunting scenes and Greek fables, or adorned with paintings by the best masters. Van Eyck's "Merchant of Lucca, Arnolfini with