Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/158

Rh fact myself have seen how, for all he could do, they were never turned out of their natural road.

Several ladies that I wot well enough, did he love and serve with all due respect and very high honour,—and even a certain very great and fair Princess, of whom he had fallen so deep in love before his going into Poland, that after he became King, he did resolve to wed the same, although she was already married to a great and gallant Prince, but one that was in rebellion against him and had fled to a foreign land to gather an army and make war upon him. But at the moment of his return to France, the lady died in child-birth. Her death alone did hinder the marriage, for he was firm set thereon. He would certainly have married her by favour and dispensation of the Pope, who would not have refused him his consent, being so great a Monarch as he was, and for sundry other reasons that may be readily imagined.

Others again he did make love to only for to bring the same into disparagement. Of such I wot of one, a great lady, in whose case, for the displeasures her husband had wrought him, and not able otherwise to get at him, the King did take his revenge on his wife, whom he did after publish abroad for what she was in the presence of a number of folk. Yet was this vengeance mild and merciful after all, for in lieu of death he did give her life.

Another I wot of, which for overmuch playing the wanton, as also for a displeasure she did the King, the latter did of set purpose pay court to. Anon without any vast deal of persuasion, she did grant him an assignation in a garden, the which he failed not to keep. But he would have naught else to do with her (so some folk say, but be sure he did find something to do with her right enough)