of sympathy felt for Isabella in her distress
by all the people of Nancy. She was very young and very beautiful. Her
children, and especially Margaret, were very beautiful too, and this
greatly increased the compassion which the people were disposed to
feel for her. Isabella's mother was strongly inclined to make new
efforts to raise an army, in order to meet and fight Antoine again;
but Isabella herself, who was now more concerned for the safety of her
husband than for the recovery of her dominions, was disposed to pursue
a conciliatory course. So she sent word to her uncle that she wished
to see him, and entreated him to grant her an interview. Antoine
acceded to her request, and at the interview Isabella begged her uncle
to make peace with her, and to give her back her husband.

[Sidenote: Negotiations for peace.]

Antoine said that it was out of his power to liberate Rene, for he had
delivered him to the custody of the Duke of Burgundy, who had been his
ally in the war, and the duke had conveyed him away to his castle at
Dijon, and shut him up there, and that now he would probably not be
willing to give him up without the payment of a ransom. He said,
however, that he was willing to make a truce with Isabella for six
months, to give time to see what arrangement could be made.

[Sidenote: Hostages.]

This truce was agreed upon, and then, at length, after a long
negotiation, terms of peace were concluded. Rene was to pay a large
sum to the Duke of Burgundy for his ransom, and, in the mean time,
while he was procuring the money, he was to leave his two sons in the
duke's hands as hostages, to be held by the duke as security. In
respect to Lorraine, Antoine insisted, as another of the conditions of
peace, that Isabella's oldest daughter, Yolante, then about nine years
old, should be betrothed to his son Frederick, so as to combine, in
the next generation at least, the conflicting claims of the two
parties to the possession of the territory; and, in order to secure
the fulfillment of this condition, Yolante was to be delivered
immediately to the charge and custody of Antoine's wife, the mother of
her future husband. Thus all of Isabella's children were taken away
from her except Margaret. And even Margaret, though left for the
present with her mother, did not escape being involved in the
entanglements of the treaty. Antoine insisted that she, too, should be
betrothed to one of his partisans; and, as if to make the c