Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/60

Rh for to provide the expenses of the war. So thereafter did they twain reign long and not unpeaceably in the fine kingdoms they had gotten.

Long years after, one of their grand-daughters, issue of them and theirs, Ysabeau de Lorraine to wit, without help of her husband René, did carry out a like emprise. For while her husband was prisoner in the hands of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, she being a Princess of a wise prudence and high heart and courage, the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples having meantime fallen to them in due succession, did assemble an army of thirty thousand men. This she did lead forth in person, and so conquer all the Kingdom and take possession of Naples.

 

COULD name an host of ladies which have in suchlike ways done great and good service to their husbands, and how being high of heart and ambition they have pushed on and encouraged their mates to court fortune, and to win goods and grandeur and much wealth. And truly 'tis the most noble and most honourable fashion of getting of such things, thus at the sword's point.

I have known many men in this our land of France and at our Courts, which really more by the urging of their wives than by any will of their own, have undertaken and accomplished gallant exploits.

Many women on the other hand have I known, which thinking only of their own good pleasures, have stood in their husbands' way and kept the same ever by their side, hindering them of doing noble deeds, unwilling to have