Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/266

Rh displeasure to so noble a Princess, which did show her so well disposed to France, and so wise and virtuous to boot. Unhappy too beyond her deserts in her marriages, whereof the first was with King Charles VIII., by whom she was while still quite a girl sent back to her father's house; the second with the King of Aragon's son, John by name, of whom she had a posthumous son that died soon after its birth. The third was with the handsome Duke Philibert of Savoy, of whom she had no offspring, and for that cause did bear the device, Fortune infortune, fors une. She doth lie with her husband in the beautiful and most splendid Cloister of Brou, near the town of Bourg en Bresse, a Church I have myself visited.

This same Queen of Hungary then did greatly help the Emperor, seeing how isolated he was. 'Twas true he had Ferdinand, King of the Romans, his brother; yet was it all he could do to make head against that great conqueror, the Sultan Soliman. The Emperor had moreover on his hands the affairs of Italy, which was at that time all a-fire; while Germany was little better by reason of the Grand Turk, and he was harassed to boot with Hungary, Spain at the time of its rebellion under M. de Chievres, the Indies, the Low Countries, Barbary, and France, which last was the most sore burden of all, in a word with the business of nigh half the world, in a manner of speaking. He did make his sister Governess General of all the Netherlands, where by the space of two or three and twenty years she did him such excellent service I really cannot tell what he would have done without her. So he did entrust her with entire charge of the government of those districts, and even when himself was in Flanders, did leave all the management of his provinces in that