United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Among others who formed her familiar circle were her devoted friend Pont de Veyle; the Chevalier d'Aydie; Formont, the "spirituel idler and amiable egotist," who was one of the three whom she confesses really to have loved; and President Henault, who brought always a fund of lively anecdote and agreeable conversation.
Thus by the chivalry of the most dissolute man of his age the Circassian slave-girl was rescued from a life which to her would have been worse than death to spend her remaining years, happy in the love of an honest man, the Chevalier d'Aydie, until death claimed her while she still possessed the beauty which had been at once her glory and her inevitable shame.
At the first interview "I was not present," states the unknown reporter, but on succeeding occasions this man heard for himself that the king was ready to show hospitality to the Count of Charolais who "has no ill intentions against his father. All he wants to do is to separate him from the people who govern him badly." The conferences were held in the lodgings of Odet d'Aydie.
Odet d'Aydie, who had ridden in hot haste to Brittany, scattering from his saddle dire accusations of fratricide against Louis this same Odet became silenced and took service with the king. When reconcilations were effected, most kind to the returning ally or servant did Louis always show himself. On November 3d, a truce was struck between Louis and Charles, which, later, was renewed for a year.
Mandrot, editor of Commynes , i., 230, considers the whole story a malicious fabrication of Odet d'Aydie, and other authorities refer the cause to disease. It is the deposition of several old people who had been just old enough to remember that awful experience of their youth. The fugitive did not enter immediately into his new possessions.
The struggle between her self-forgetful love for the knightly Chevalier d'Aydie and her sensitive conscience, her refusal to cloud his future by a portionless marriage, and her firmness in severing an unholy tie, knowing that the sacrifice would cost her life, as it did, form an episode as rare as it is tragical.
In 1465, another man of war, Odet d'Aydie, Lord of Lescun in Warn, had commanded at Montlhery the troops of the Dukes of Berry and Brittany against Louis XI.; and, in 1469, the king, who had found means of making his acquaintance, and who "was wiser," says Commynes, "in the conduct of such treaties than any other prince of his time," resolved to employ him in his difficult relations with his brother Charles, then Duke of Guienne, "promising him that he and his servants, and he especially, should profit thereby."
Adultery had acquired a regular standing, and connections dependent upon it were openly, if tacitly recognized. Mlle. d'Aydie was accounted very virtuous for dissuading her lover from marrying her, even after the birth of her child, for fear of injuring his prospects.
Word Of The Day