The Cardinal clinched the matter, and paid a visit to the Duke of Lorraine in furtherance of his project, which was the very natural and sensible one of marrying his nephew René with the Duke’s eldest daughter Isabelle. Whether Charles had any inklings of the Cardinal’s cogitations with relation to his own position with respect to Bar we know not; but possibly he had, for he met the proposition with a direct refusal. He read to his relative two clauses of a will he had recently executed, which forbade his daughter Isabelle to marry a Prince of French origin, and especially barred the House of Anjou. This latter prohibition was inserted with reference to the rupture between Jean “sans Peur,” the Duke of Burgundy, and Louis II., King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, which resulted from the part the former had played in the assassination of the Duke of Orléans in 1407, and the consequent repudiation of the betrothal of Catherine de Bourgogne and Louis d’Anjou. Lorraine and Burgundy were in close alliance. The Cardinal, however, was not to be diverted from the course he had taken. He placed ten considerations before the Duke and his advisers:--(1) The advisability of reuniting the two portions of Lorraine; (2) Charles’s lack of male heirs; (3) his own incompetence in the same direction; (4) his choice of his grand-nephew, René d’Anjou, as his successor at Bar-le-Duc; (5) the attractive personality, mental attainments, and high courage of the young Prince; (6) his descent from a Barrois-Lorraine Princess, Violante, his sister; (7) the risks of the application of the power of the Salic Law over his daughters; (8) the equality of age of René and Isabelle; (9) the wish of the late King and of the Queen of Sicily-Anjou for an alliance with Lorraine and a better understanding politically; (10) the welfare of the peoples of the two duchies and the love of the Lorrainers for their princely house. Charles asked time to consider these points, but meanwhile he summoned the Estates, and laid before them a proposition concerning the succession to Lorraine at his death. He named his eldest daughter as Hereditary Duchess, and proposed that her consort should bear the title, and with her exercise the prerogatives, of Duke of Lorraine. A concordat was agreed to whereby the Estates were pledged to support the Duchess Isabelle, and to carry out Charles’s wishes.