On the contrary, Monsieur Poirier was highly esteemed in industrial countries—the Low Countries, for example, while as to the Italians, they, openly and unashamed, regarded big dowries as at once legitimate and desirable. They had the courage of their opinion—for instance, that physician of Pistoja who had to choose between two girls, one of whom was warranted a sensible creature, while the other was less sensible, but richer by three hundred crowns. The doctor did not hesitate an instant in choosing the richer, for in his opinion the risks were equal, and the difference pointed out between them was not worth a few crowns. No Italian was at all loth to marry a woman who brought him a dowry large enough to live on. At Florence fifty crowns a year would almost keep a household of moderate tastes, and a woman of the lower middle-class as a rule received a dowry of two or three thousand florins, which yielded an income of at least a hundred and fifty florins. The Visconti and the Sforza, by means of dowries which were by all accounts colossal, got their daughters into the principal royal houses of Europe. In short, the Italian system continued to exercise a wonderful fascination even over outsiders, and in starting on the expeditions to Italy more than one French noble fancied that a rich wife would be the reward of his prowess. It is not very surprising that these ideas at length overcame all resistance in France. Louis XI., who was a pupil of the Sforza, did much in this as in other things to snap the chains of the old traditions. We have elsewhere related how lightheartedly he made and unmade marriages, with the sole object of rewarding various adventurers at the expense of the most honourable families. Louis XII., on the contrary, set himself passionately to oppose these new manners. Although he plumed himself on his chivalry as much as anyone, he did not admit that the heat of passion could excuse the abduction of a young girl, even if she were rich—and in such cases she was almost always rich. His firmness did not prevent some picturesque exploits; but the authority of the church, with its strong weapon the canon laws, lent him aid. We have moreover had occasion to show elsewhere how much difficulty Charles VIII. had, after the event, in getting the legitimacy of his marriage with the heiress of Brittany acknowledged.[107]