Upon this bare suspicion, when Louis XI. came to be about that age, being sick of that disease, he concluded himself already dead. His father Charles VII., who had done so many memorable things in France, took a fancy that his courtiers had a design to poison him, and upon that account he ate nothing. Charles VI. had his jealousies too, and became crazed in his understanding upon a mere report. Certainly, princes are guilty of great error in not examining, or causing other people to examine, such tales as concern them, though, perhaps, they may be of themselves of no great importance; but this would keep them from being so frequently current, especially if they confronted the accused with the informer; by that means nothing would be reported but what was true. But there are some princes so stupid as to promise and swear to the accusers they will never discover them; and these are they who are subject to those anguishes and torments of mind of which I speak and who many times hate and injure the best ministers they have, upon the bare reports and calumnies of evil-minded and designing people, by which means they occasion great mischiefs and sorrows to their subjects. CH. XXI.—How the King received News of the Loss of the Castle of Naples; of the selling of the Towns belonging to the Florentines to several Persons; of the Treaty of Atella in Apulia, much to the Prejudice of the French; and of the Death of Ferrand, King of Naples.—1496. The death of the Dauphin (only son to Charles VIII.), occurred about the beginning of the year 1496, and was the greatest loss that happened or could possibly happen to the king, for he had never any child afterwards that lived. But this misfortune came not alone; for at the same time he received advice that the castle of Naples had been surrendered by those whom the Lord de Montpensier had left in it, under pressure of famine, and for the safety of the hostages, who had been delivered into the enemy’s hands by the Lord de Montpensier. The names of the hostages were Monsieur d’Alegre, one of the sons of the Lord de la Marche d’Ardaine, one called the Lord de la Chapelle de Loudonnois, and John Roquebertin, a Catalonian.[466] Those who had been in the castle were sent back again by sea. After this, another disgraceful accident befel him, and that was, that one Entragues, who was governor of the citadel of Pisa (which was strong, and commanded the whole town), delivered it up to the Pisans; which was contrary to the king’s oath, for he had sworn twice to the Florentines to deliver the said citadel to them, and other places, as Sarzana, Sarzanello, Pietrasanta, Librefatta, and Mortron, which the Florentines had lent the king in his necessities, at his first coming into Italy, and had given him six score thousand ducats, of which there were not above thirty thousand in arrear when he returned into France, as has been mentioned in another place.[467] In short, all these places