ONSTANCE by name), lately married to her third husband.
She took Arthur, upon John's accession, to the French King, who pretended
to be very much his friend, and who made him a Knight, and promised him
his daughter in marriage; but, who cared so little about him in reality,
that finding it his interest to make peace with King John for a time, he
did so without the least consideration for the poor little Prince, and
heartlessly sacrificed all his interests.

Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly; and in the course
of that time his mother died. But, the French King then finding it his
interest to quarrel with King John again, again made Arthur his pretence,
and invited the orphan boy to court. 'You know your rights, Prince,'
said the French King, 'and you would like to be a King. Is it not so?'
'Truly,' said Prince Arthur, 'I should greatly like to be a King!'
'Then,' said Philip, 'you shall have two hundred gentlemen who are
Knights of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the provinces
belonging to you, of which your uncle, the usurping King of England, has
taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in
Normandy.' Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful that he signed a
treaty with the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his superior
Lord, and that the French King should keep for himself whatever he could
take from King John.

Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so perfidious,
that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a lamb between a
fox and a wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent and flushed with
hope; and, when the people of Brittany (which was his inheritance) sent
him five hundred more knights and five thousand foot soldiers, he
believed his fortune was made. The people of Brittany had been fond of
him from his birth, and had requested that he might be called Arthur, in
remembrance of that dimly-famous English Arthur, of whom I told you early
in this book, whom they believed to have been the brave friend and
companion of an old King of their own. They had tales among them about a
prophet called MERLIN (of the same old time), who had foretold that their
own King should be restored to them after hundreds of years; and they
believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur; that the time
would come when he would rule them with a crown of Brittany upon his
head; and when neither King of France nor King of E