et them there at the head of his little Court. He would
not permit them to kiss his hand, but welcomed them with a salute, which
had something in it of gallantry on the part of a prince to fine women,
and something also of the holy affection of a pastor to the sisters of
his flock.

Louis of Bourbon, the reigning Bishop of Liege, was in truth a generous
and kind hearted prince, whose life had not indeed been always confined,
with precise strictness, within the bounds of his clerical profession,
but who, notwithstanding, had uniformly maintained the frank and
honourable character of the House of Bourbon, from which he was
descended.

In latter times, as age advanced, the Prelate had adopted habits more
beseeming a member of the hierarchy than his early reign had exhibited,
and was loved among the neighbouring princes, as a noble ecclesiastic,
generous and magnificent in his ordinary mode of life, though preserving
no very ascetic severity of character, and governing with an easy
indifference, which, amid his wealthy and mutinous subjects, rather
encouraged than subdued rebellious purposes.

The Bishop was so fast an ally of the Duke of Burgundy that the latter
claimed almost a joint sovereignty in his bishopric, and repaid the
good natured ease with which the Prelate admitted claims which he might
easily have disputed, by taking his part on all occasions with the
determined and furious zeal which was a part of his character. He
used to say he considered Liege as his own, the Bishop as his brother
(indeed, they might be accounted such, in consequence of the Duke's
having married for his first wife, the Bishop's sister), and that he who
annoyed Louis of Bourbon, had to do with Charles of Burgundy, a threat
which, considering the character and the power of the prince who used
it, would have been powerful with any but the rich and discontented city
of Liege, where much wealth had, according to the ancient proverb, made
wit waver.

The Prelate, as we have said, assured the Ladies of Croye of such
intercession as his interest at the Court of Burgundy, used to the
uttermost, might gain for them, and which, he hoped, might be the more
effectual, as Campobasso, from some late discoveries, stood rather lower
than formerly in the Duke's personal favour. He promised them also such
protection as it was in his power to afford, but the sigh with which he
gave the warrant seemed to allow that his power was more precarious than
in w