cquaintance with the Lady Isabelle, which had not been attempted
even by the most noble of the French nobility. It was Quentin Durward,
who, as he passed the ladies in his rank, presented to the Countess of
Croye, on the point of his lance, the letter of her aunt.

"Now, by my honour," said the Count of Crevecoeur, "that is over
insolent in an unworthy adventurer!"

"Do not call him so, Crevecoeur," said Dunois; "I have good reason to
bear testimony to his gallantry--and in behalf of that lady, too."

"You make words of nothing," said Isabelle, blushing with shame, and
partly with resentment; "it is a letter from my unfortunate aunt.--She
writes cheerfully, though her situation must be dreadful."

"Let us hear, let us hear what says the Boar's bride," said Crevecoeur.

The Countess Isabelle read the letter, in which her aunt seemed
determined to make the best of a bad bargain, and to console herself
for the haste and indecorum of her nuptials, by the happiness of being
wedded to one of the bravest men of the age, who had just acquired a
princedom by his valour. She implored her niece not to judge of her
William (as she called him) by the report of others, but to wait till
she knew him personally. He had his faults, perhaps, but they were
such as belonged to characters whom she had ever venerated. William
was rather addicted to wine, but so was the gallant Sir Godfrey, her
grandsire--he was something hasty and sanguinary in his temper, such had
been her brother Reinold of blessed memory; he was blunt in speech,
few Germans were otherwise; and a little wilful and peremptory, but she
believed all men loved to rule. More there was to the same purpose; and
the whole concluded with the hope and request that Isabelle would, by
means of the bearer, endeavour her escape from the tyrant of Burgundy,
and come to her loving kinswoman's Court of Liege, where any little
differences concerning their mutual rights of succession to the Earldom
might be adjusted by Isabelle's marrying Earl Eberson--a bridegroom
younger indeed than his bride, but that, as she (the Lady Hameline)
might perhaps say from experience, was an inequality more easy to be
endured than Isabelle could be aware of.

[The marriage of William de la Marck with the Lady Hameline is as
apocryphal as the lady herself.--S.]

Here the Countess Isabelle stopped, the Abbess observing, with a prim
aspect, that she had read quite enough concerning such worldly vanities,
a