The almost fairy Princess-Countess survived her consort many years, and lived to see the county of Bar raised to a dukedom, and to dance upon her knee a little namesake granddaughter, Violante de Bar. Nothing gave her greater pleasure than the floral games of the troubadours, and one of these _fêtes galants_ was enacted in 1363 at the Ducal Castle of Val de Cassel, where Duchess Marie had just brought into the world this very baby girl. The poets chose their laureate--one Eustache Deschamps-Morel, and Princess Iolande crowned him with bays. The _ballade_ he composed for those auspicious revels is still extant--_Du Métier Profitable_--wherein he maintains that only two careers are open to happy mortals. “Ces deux ont partout l’avantage, L’un en junglant, l’autre à corner.” The sights and sounds, then, which first greeted the pretty child were merry and tuneful. She was reared on troubadour fare, on troubadour lore. Violante had three brothers, Édouard, Jehan, and Louis, and a younger sister Bonne, married to Nicholas, Comte de Ligny, but alas! buried with her first-born before the high-altar of St. Étienne at Bar-le-Duc. When Violante was in her seventeenth year, there came a royal traveller, disguised as a troubadour of Languedoc, to the Court of Love at Bar-le-Duc. His quest was for a bride. He was of ancient lineage; his forbears came from Ria, in a southern upland valley of the Eastern Pyrenees, and had ruled the land ’twixt barren mountain and wild seacoast for no end of years--Juan I., King of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. He had just buried Mahaud d’Armagnac, the young mother of his little daughter Juanita, and there was a gaping wound in his amorous heart which yearned for healing. The royal Benedict looked for a Venus with a dash of Diana and a measure of Minerva, and chroniclers say he had drawn blank the Courts of Spain and Southern France. Moreover, they tell a pretty tale of him which must now again be told. After wanderings manifold, the royal knight-errant found himself within the pageant-ground of Bar-le-Duc and at a “Court of Love.” There he broke shield and lance at tilt, and Prince Cupid pierced his heart. Mingling in the merry throng, King Juan found himself partnered by the most beauteous damsel his eyes had ever seen. She was the Princess Violante, daughter of the Duke. Before she realized what her gay _vis-à-vis_ had said and done, he vanished. But upon her maiden finger glittered a royal signet-ring. Back to Zaragoza sped the gay troubadour, and in a trice a noble embassy was on its way to the Barrois Court to claim the hand of the fascinating Princess and to exchange the heavy ring of State for the lighter jewelled hoop of espousal.