The portrait was painted exactly to order--perhaps, and quite correctly, with a little artistic embellishment. The beauty of Nature is always enhanced by the decorative features of art. Henry was charmed with the sweet face he gazed and gazed upon, quite putting into the shade the other reigning beauties of his heart. He was himself as comely as might be, just four-and-twenty, highly educated, his mind unusually refined. In thought and deed he was pure and devout, and very shy of strange women. Upon the latter head he was emphatic, for when at Court or elsewhere he beheld women with open bosoms _à l’Isabeau de Bavière_ he was shocked, and turned away his face, muttering: “Oh fie! oh fie! ye be much to blame!” His earnest wish was marriage, not concubinage. The King’s choice very soon became noised abroad, and the Court became agitated and divided. The Duke of Gloucester, the King’s next of kin and heir-presumptive to the throne, championed the Armagnac match, whilst Cardinal Beaufort and the Earl of Suffolk decided for Margaret of Anjou. There was, however, an obstacle in the way, quite consistently with the proverbial rugged course of all true love; the Count of Nevers refused to release his fiancée. He was prepared, he averred, to cancel the contentious clause in the marriage contract, made at Tarascon, and not to insist upon anything derogatory to the dignity of King René and his elder daughter, the Countess Ferri de Vaudémont. The prospect to René of such an auspicious union, however, which would place his daughter upon one of the greatest of European thrones, was too dazzling to be ignored, and the outcome of the imbroglio was the assembling in January, 1444, of a mixed Commission, representing England, France, Anjou, and Burgundy, at Tours, whereat two protocols were framed: a treaty for a two years’ peace, and a marriage agreement between the King of England and the Princess of Anjou. This was signed on May 28 of the same year. The marriage contract thus drawn out was very favourable to the House of Sicily-Anjou: Henry asked for no dowry, but required only the rights transmitted to King René by Queen Yolande with respect to the kingdom of Minorca. Henry further agreed to the retrocession of Le Mans and other points in Anjou held by the English.