A splendid concourse were gathered in the spacious palace of the old temple at Paris, A.D. 1254. The royal families of England and France were convened on terms of cordiality and kindness, such as they had never enjoyed since the day when Normandy was wrested from the descendants of Charlemagne. The banquet was given in honor of Edward, the heir-apparent of England, and his sweet young bride, Eleanora of Castile. In the place of honor sat the good St. Louis King of France, on his right, Henry III. of England, and on his left, the King of Navarre, the royal descendant of Thibaut of Champagne, and Blanche the sister of Berengaria. At this magnificent entertainment, Beatrice the Countess of Provence enjoyed a reunion with her beautiful daughters, their noble husbands and blooming offspring. The eldest, Margaret, was the wife of Louis IX., Eleanor, of Henry III., Beatrice, of Charles d'Anjou, and Sancha, of Richard of Cornwall, King of the Romans. But the queen of this Feast of kings, the fair young Infanta, around whom were gathered the nobility of a Continent, though but a child of scarce ten years, concentrated in herself more romantic associations and excited higher hopes than any of the crowned heads present. Her brother Alphonso X., the astronomer, was the most learned prince in Europe, and neither priest or peer could boast that devotion to the arts, or that success in scientific discoveries that characterized the King of Castile, surnamed _Il Sabio_, the wise. Her mother Joanna, had been the affianced bride of her royal father-in-law Henry III., had been rejected for the more poetic daughter of the Count of Provence; and her grandmother, Alice of France, had been refused by the gallant King Richard, in favor of Berengaria of Navarre. Her brother Alphonso, and her husband's uncle, Richard of Cornwall, were candidates for the crown of the German Empire, in opposition to the rights of Conrad, son of Frederic and Violante, and her husband, a graceful youth of fifteen, who had received the honors of knighthood at his wedding tournament, was heir to the goodly realm of England and the beautiful provinces of Southern France.