habitation,--is still called _La Maison de la Reine Cicile_ (Sicily). In this humble abode Yolanda d’Arragona, “the great Queen,” died quietly on December 14, 1443. Whether King René was present to close his beloved mother’s eyes we know not, but it is significant of absence that the expense,--500 livres,--of the Queen’s obsequies was borne by her youngest son, Charles, Duke of Maine; indeed, it is almost certain that René was at Marseilles when he heard of his mother’s death. In one of his “_Livres des Heures_” he inscribed: “_Le 14 Decembre de l’an 1443 trespassa au Château de Saumur Madame Yolande, fille de Roy d’Aragon et depuis mère de Roy René_.” The funeral ceremonies were celebrated by the Archbishop of Tours, her private chaplain, not at Saumur, but at Angers, in the Cathedral of St. Maurice, to which her remains were conveyed by night two days after her death. Her grave was that of her consort’s, twenty-five years before,--in front of the high-altar,--but all trace of it has disappeared, and explorations have failed to reveal her burial casket. It is eloquent of the irony of human affairs, that whereas no memorial, or even inscription, is left to record the virtues of the royal mother of Anjou, in the Church of Nôtre Dame de Nantilly at Saumur there is a memorial to Mère Théophaine la Magine, the devoted nurse of King René and Queen Marie, who died March 13, 1458. The original monument, erected by the King, presented his faithful domestic holding him and Marie in her arms. This has been destroyed, but an epitaph still remains: “Cy gist la nourrice Théophaine La Magine, qui ot grant paine A nourrie de let en enfance Marie d’Anjou, Royne de France, Et après, son frère René, Duc d’Anjou.” “Here lies good nurse Théophaine La Magine, who at great pain Foster-mother’d in infancy Marie d’Anjou, Queen of France, And then René, Duke of Anjou.” The only existent memorials to King Louis II. and Queen Yolande are to be seen in a stained-glass window in the Cathedral of St. Julien at Le Mans, the capital of Maine, one of the richest and most beautiful specimens of fifteenth-century glass in Europe. The royal couple are upon their knees, attired in conventional costumes, and bare-headed. Their youngest son, Charles of Anjou and Maine, is buried near that splendid window, an interesting and curious circumstance in the happenings of Providence. He died in 1474. All Anjou and Provence bewailed their Queen, her virtues, her benevolence, her piety, her loyalty. Yolande’s claim to the title with which she has been honoured, “a good mother and a great Queen,” needs no vindication. She was, in short, the most noble woman in all France during the first half of the fifteenth century. CHAPTER IV ISABELLE DE LORRAINE--“THE PRIDE OF LORRAINE” I.