Blacasette—who wrote with facile elegance—was more fortunate than his father. He fell harmlessly in love with a _grande dame_ or imagined that he had and most of the poems of his that survive are amatory sonnets devoted to his “sweet lady.” The position was made awkward by the fact that the sweet lady was already married and was, moreover, the wife of no less a person than Blacasette’s master, Raymond Berenger. Nothing, of course, came of this. The lady remained unmoved and was probably much bored by the receipt of these florid effusions; while the troubadour did not feel called upon to retire to a monastery, nor to take any action that was excessive. In fact the love-making was purely academic and little more than a display in verse making. The “sweet lady” was truly a _grande dame_, for she was the famous Beatrix of Savoy. She married in 1219 and had four remarkable daughters, the most illustrious bevy of girls of almost any age. One, Beatrix, succeeded her father and became the Countess of Provence; another, Eleanor, married Henry III of England; a third, with the pretty name of Sancia, married King Henry’s brother, Richard, Duke of Cornwall; while Marguerite—the fairest of them all—became the wife of Louis IX. ----- [28] Durandy, “Mon Pays, Villages, etc., de la Riviera,” 1918. [29] “Histoire littéraire de la France,” t. xix, 1838. Reynouard, “Choix des Poésies orig. des Troubadours,” 1816-21. XVI HOW EZE WAS BETRAYED IN August, 1543, the citadel of Nice was besieged by the French army of Francis I aided by the Turkish fleet under the command of the corsair Barbarossa. The siege failed as has been already recounted (page 29). The next obvious step for the French was to attack and destroy Eze, which lay behind Nice and was an obstacle to any further progress. It is necessary to realise that—at this period—both Nice and Eze were beyond the frontiers of France, were foreign towns and, at the moment, enemy towns. The Turkish fleet, supplemented by many French galleys, accordingly set sail for the Bay of Eze, carrying with it irregular troops, both French and Turkish, to the number, it is said, of 2,000. Now Barbarossa, being a finished pirate of ripe experience, would be aware that the taking of Eze from the sea was—as a military project—quite impossible. Eze stood on a cone of rock 1,400 feet above the level of the Mediterranean and could only be reached from the shore by a narrow path which was actually precipitous. To bring cannon to bear upon the town from any point, high or low, on either side of it, was impracticable. It could only be taken by a body of infantry and to the attacks of such a force Eze was impregnable.