King Rene himself, with his three titles, Count of Anjou, King of Sicily and Duke of Provence, seems to have been born to misfortune as the sparks fly upward. Had he been endowed with the spirit and courage of his daughter Margaret, Rene might have been able to cope with his enemies; but being of a gentle and reflective nature, he yielded to what he deemed his fate. One possession after another was wrested from him, and he finally retired to Aix in Provence, where he devoted himself to literature and the fine arts, or, as Miss Cassandra expresses it, "He amused himself by writing verses and pottering about his garden. And a very much more respectable way of spending his time, it was, than quarreling with his neighbors, which was the chief occupation of Louis XI and most of the other kings of that period!" We afterwards saw the noble statue of Margaret of Anjou, a regal figure, wearing the crown and bearing the sceptre of which she was so soon deprived by Edward IV. When she went to England, as the bride of Henry VI, she was received with rejoicings and the London streets were decorated with the Marguerite flower in her honor. No man, it was said, surpassed Margaret in courage, and no woman in beauty, and it might well be added that none of the princesses who had left France to share the British throne had to endure such misfortunes. Her son was captured and slaughtered under her eyes; then and then only, the strong purpose and high courage, that had supported her during years of adversity, deserted her. She lost heart. After being dragged from prison to prison, Margaret was restored to her country and her family, upon which King Rene, being more of a poet than a king, wrote a madrigal to celebrate his daughter's sad homecoming. The castle, which is across the way from Rene's statue, dates back to the twelfth century, when English and French were disputing over the ownership of Anjou. Standing on a hillside above the Maine, this chateau, with its massive stone walls and heavy drawbridge, suggests brute force more completely than any of the other castles that we have seen. As we passed through the dungeons at Loches, we shuddered at the cruelty which they represent; as we looked at the bare black walls of this castle, we were even more appalled by the dread relentless strength against which enemy after enemy battered himself in vain.