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The marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon seemed, after 1804, a thing so problematical that the saying "married like Mademoiselle Cormon" became proverbial in Alencon as applied to ridiculous failures. Surely the sarcastic mood must be an imperative need in France, that so excellent a woman should excite the laughter of Alencon.

Fear nothing from the Republicans; they are men of honor, and I shall give the adjutant certain orders which he will faithfully execute. As for me, I shall return on foot to Alencon with my maid, and take a few of the soldiers with me. Listen to what I say, for your life depends on it.

Alas! is there no excuse for my love and my deception? My life was like a troubled sleep; I woke and thought myself a girl; I was in Alencon, where all my memories were pure and chaste. I had the mad simplicity to think that love would baptize me into innocence. For a moment I thought myself pure, for I had never loved.

These gaieties did not, however, serve to divert the thoughts of the ministers from their desire to recall the absent Princes of the Blood; and it was finally arranged that as M. de Soissons had been the original cause of their absence, owing to his indignation at the ill-success of his attempt to purchase the duchy of Alençon, it would be expedient to hold out to him a prospect of obtaining the government of Quilleboeuf.

She was loud in her denunciations of the danger and dishonor which would be the result to the provinces of this French alliance. She threatened not only to withdraw herself from their cause, but even to take arms against a commonwealth which had dared to accept Alencon for its master. She had originally agreed to furnish one hundred thousand pounds by way of loan.

On one occasion, when Spain and France drew together, Elizabeth professed to be willing to marry Anjou on his own terms; but the prince grew ever more opposed to the match, and in January 1572, Catherine suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted on religion, her youngest son, Alençon, might marry Elizabeth on any conditions she liked.

It seems my brother, supposing he should not be able to go to Flanders for some time, and resolving to send Bussi to his duchy of Alencon as I have already mentioned, had lodged him in the Louvre, that he might be near him to take instructions at every opportunity.

A truce for six months having now been established between the Duc d'Alencon and his brother, it was supposed, that an alliance between France and England, and perhaps between Alencon and Elizabeth, was on the carpet, and that a kingdom of the Netherlands was to be the wedding present of the bride to her husband.

The company followed on to the hall, behind the distant trumpets, and Anthony found himself still with his friends somewhere at the lower end away from the Queen's table, who sat with Alençon at her side on a daïs, with the great folks about her. All through supper the most astonishing noise went on.

Nearly all Alencon believed this life to be exempt from ambitions and serious interests; but no man has a life as simple as envious neighbors attribute to him.