ncie was her name, or, if you will, Sanchia, third of the four fair
daughters of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, who had the singular
fortune to marry each of the four to a king.

Perilous seemed this honour to this future father-in-law of monarchs, as
he admitted to his friend, Romeo de Villeneuve, what time he ceded to
St. Louis of France the strong castle of Tarascon as the dowry of his
daughter Marguerite. But Villeneuve very shrewdly consoled him. "For,"
quoth he, "let not this great expense trouble you. If you marry your
eldest high the mere consideration of that alliance will get the others
husbands at less cost."

The event approved his sagacity and also the prediction of a soothsayer,
to whom the four sisters had applied to know the rank of their future
husbands, for, requested to draw at venture from a pack of cards,
Marguerite straightway drew the king of swords, Eleanor the king of
money, Sancie the king of goblets, and Beatrice the king of clubs.[5]

The witch expounded this to mean that Marguerite should wed the
knightliest king in all the world and in all ages (which indeed came to
pass in the person of St. Louis); that Eleanor should in her king of
coins gain the monarch of the wealthiest of all realms, namely, England;
that Beatrice should have the misfortune to mate with a hard-hitting
savage, but still a king--a forecast fulfilled in Charles of Anjou,
brother of St. Louis, who won his kingdom of the two Sicilies by as hard
and as cruel fighting as ever dinted the armour or soiled the fame of a
knight; and that, finally, Sancie, the third in order of birth, but last
to find a lover, should of her own free will choose for her husband a
king of good fellows, whose kingdom was but that of cups.

This prophecy, I say, had been more than half fulfilled. The two elder
daughters were queens; the youngest was besought and contracted, when
their father, fearing perchance that the prediction would be carried out
in the case of his third and best-loved, set himself against fate and
called a halt in its proceedings.

It was unfitting, he declared, that Beatrice should be married before
her elder sister Sancie, and Charles of Anjou must perforce hold his
amorous desires in leash until his prospective sister-in-law was
disposed of.

This at first sight seemed no such difficult matter, for while the
others had each been meted one lover, on Sancie fortune had bestowed a
full half dozen. But though their num