No better choice could have been made from a psychological point of view, for have not the Arlésiennes been noted for all time for their perfect figures,--Venus di Milo was one of them,--their graceful carriage, and surpassingly good looks? They, with their menfolk, animated and merry, have always eaten well and well drunk. The delicious pink St. Peray is a more generous wine than all the vintages of Champagne. Physical charms and _fin bouquets_ were ever incentives to love and pleasure, and Mars of Aragon yielded up his arms to Venus of Arles. _Arles--la belle Grecque aux yeux Sarrazines!_ Perhaps the becoming, close-fitting black velvet _chapelles_, or bonnets, and the diaphanous white gauze veils, did much to express _la grâce fière aux femmes_! It was indeed a gorgeous function at which the royal couple were united in the bonds of matrimony, that morrow of All Saints, 1399. The ancient basilica of St. Trophimus was one vast nave, no choir,--that the royal brothers Louis and René built a generation later,--but it was too circumscribed for the marriage ritual; consequently, under a gold and crimson awning, slung on ships’ masts beyond the deeply recessed chief portal, with its weird sculptures, the clergy took up their station to await the bridal pageant. The Cardinal-Archbishop, Nicholas de Brancas, joined the two young hands in wedlock, and Cardinal Adreano Savernelli, the Papal Legate, gave the blessing of Peter, whilst the two mother-Queens looked on approvingly. The royal bride,--in white, of course,--had an over-kirtle, or train, of gemmed silver tissue--a thing of wonderment and beauty worn by her royal mother, and her mother, Marie de France, before her, and coming from the Greco-Flemish trousseau of the famous Countess Iolande. Her abundant brown-black hair was plaited in two thick ropes, with pearls and silver lace reaching far below the jewelled golden cincture that encompassed her well-formed bust. Upon her thinly covered bosom reposed the kingly medallion of her father, King Juan, with its massive golden chain of Estate, the emblem of her sovereign rank. Upon her finger she wore the simple ruby ring of betrothal, now to be exchanged for the plain golden hoop of marriage.