[Sidenote: 1462.] [Sidenote: Funds exhausted.] So great were the number of persons dependent upon the queen, and so urgent were their necessities, that all the funds which the French merchant had furnished her were exhausted on her arrival in France. She found, moreover, that the three friends, the noblemen whom she had sent to France the summer before, and from whom she had received the letter we have quoted, had left that country and gone to Scotland to seek her. They had provided themselves with a vessel, in which they intended to take the queen away from Scotland and convey her to some place of safety, not knowing that she had herself embarked for France. They must have passed the queen's vessel on the way, unless, indeed, which is very probably the case, they went up the Channel and through the Straits of Dover, thus taking an altogether different route from that chosen by the queen. [Sidenote: Missed by her friends.] When they reached Scotland they hovered on the coast a long time, endeavoring to find an opportunity to communicate with her secretly; but at length they learned that she was gone. [Sidenote: She goes to France.] In the mean time, Margaret, having arrived in France, borrowed some money of the Duke of Brittany, in whose dominions it would seem she first landed. With this money Margaret supplied the most pressing wants of her party, and also made arrangements for pursuing her journey into the country, to the town in Normandy where her cousin the king was then residing. [Illustration: Louis XI., Margaret's Cousin.] [Sidenote: Louis XI.] It is said that, on arriving at the court of the king and obtaining admission to his majesty's presence, Margaret took the young prince by the hand, and, throwing herself down at her cousin's feet, she implored him, with many tears, to take pity upon her forlorn and wretched condition, and that of her unhappy husband, and to aid her in her efforts to recover his throne. But the king, with true royal heartlessness, was unmoved by her distress, and manifested no disposition to espouse her cause. [Sidenote: Negotiations.] Some negotiations, however, ensued, at the close of which the king promised to loan her a sum of money--for a consideration. The consideration was that she was to convey to him the port and town of Calais, which was still held by the English, and was considered a very important and very valuable possession, or else pay back double the money which she borrowed. [Sidenote: Mortgage of Calais.] Thus it was not an absolute sale of Calais, but only a mortgage of it, which the queen executed. But, nevertheless, as soon as this transaction was made known in England, it excited great indignation throughout the country, and seriously injured the cause of the queen. The people accused her of being ready to alienate the possessions of the crown, possessions which it had cost so much both in blood and treasure to procure. [Sidenote: Doubtful security.]