ung prince with her. The king it was thought best to
leave behind.

[Sidenote: 1462.]

[Sidenote: Funds exhausted.]

So great were the number of persons dependent upon the queen, and so
urgent were their necessities, that all the funds which the French
merchant had furnished her were exhausted on her arrival in France.
She found, moreover, that the three friends, the noblemen whom she had
sent to France the summer before, and from whom she had received the
letter we have quoted, had left that country and gone to Scotland to
seek her. They had provided themselves with a vessel, in which they
intended to take the queen away from Scotland and convey her to some
place of safety, not knowing that she had herself embarked for France.
They must have passed the queen's vessel on the way, unless, indeed,
which is very probably the case, they went up the Channel and through
the Straits of Dover, thus taking an altogether different route from
that chosen by the queen.

[Sidenote: Missed by her friends.]

When they reached Scotland they hovered on the coast a long time,
endeavoring to find an opportunity to communicate with her secretly;
but at length they learned that she was gone.

[Sidenote: She goes to France.]

In the mean time, Margaret, having arrived in France, borrowed some
money of the Duke of Brittany, in whose dominions it would seem she
first landed. With this money Margaret supplied the most pressing
wants of her party, and also made arrangements for pursuing her
journey into the country, to the town in Normandy where her cousin the
king was then residing.

[Illustration: Louis XI., Margaret's Cousin.]

[Sidenote: Louis XI.]

It is said that, on arriving at the court of the king and obtaining
admission to his majesty's presence, Margaret took the young prince by
the hand, and, throwing herself down at her cousin's feet, she
implored him, with many tears, to take pity upon her forlorn and
wretched condition, and that of her unhappy husband, and to aid her in
her efforts to recover his throne.

But the king, with true royal heartlessness, was unmoved by her
distress, and manifested no disposition to espouse her cause.

[Sidenote: Negotiations.]

Some negotiations, however, ensued, at the close of which the king
promised to loan her a sum of money--for a consideration. The
consideration was that she was to convey to him the port and town of
Calais, which was still held by the English, and was considered