en's circle. She had
gathered around her the most brilliant beauty of her realm. In those
days woman occupied a very inferior position in society, and seldom
made her appearance in the general assemblages of men. The gallant
young count was fascinated with the amiability and charms of those
distinguished ladies, and suggested to the king the expediency of
breaking over the restraints which long usage had imposed, and
embellishing his court with the attractions of female society and
conversation. The king immediately adopted the welcome suggestion, and
decided that, throughout the whole realm, women should be freed from
the unjust restraint to which they had so long been subject. Guise had
already gained the good-will of the nobility and of the army, and he
now became a universal favorite with the ladies, and was thus the most
popular man in France. Francis I. was at this time making preparations
for the invasion of Italy, and the Count of Guise, though but eighteen
years of age, was appointed commander-in-chief of a division of the
army consisting of twenty thousand men.

In all the perils of the bloody battles which soon ensued, he
displayed that utter recklessness of danger which had been the
distinguishing trait of his ancestors. In the first battle, when
discomfiture and flight were spreading through his ranks, the proud
count refused to retire one step before his foes. He was surrounded,
overmatched, his horse killed from under him, and he fell, covered
with twenty-two wounds, in the midst of the piles of mangled bodies
which strewed the ground. He was afterward dragged from among the
dead, insensible and apparently lifeless, and conveyed to his tent,
where his vigorous constitution, and that energetic vitality which
seemed to characterize his race, triumphed over wounds whose severity
rendered their cure almost miraculous.

Francis I., in his report of the battle, extolled in the most glowing
terms the prodigies of valor which Guise had displayed. War,
desolating war, still ravaged wretched Europe, and Guise, with his
untiring energy, became so prominent in the court and the camp that he
was regarded rather as an ally of the King of France than as his
subject. His enormous fortune, his ancestral renown, the vast
political and military influences which were at his command, made him
almost equal to the monarch whom he served. Francis lavished honors
upon him, converted one of his counties into a dukedom, and, as _