bers flattered the vanity and
pleased the coquetry of the lady, the quality of no one of them was
satisfactory to the father.

He had now an appetite for kings. Counts, barons, princes even would not
suit his palate, and as no monarch or scion of royalty had as yet
applied for Sancie's hand it struck his humour that a tournament such as
Aldobrandino proposed, well advertised in every court of Europe, might
draw some king, or at least an adventurous princeling, to the lists, as
indeed was proved by the sequel.

The queenly sisters of Sancie took up the project with great enthusiasm.
Queen Eleanor, consort of Henry III. of England, was visiting her sister
of France, and together they arranged every detail of the tournament, of
which King Louis was to be the judge.

The hopes of Beatrice jumped also with this plan as one which would
remove Sancie from her own path to true love, and of all the four
daughters of Raymond, Sancie was the only one who looked upon the
scheme with any dubiety.

But her older sisters, on their arrival at their father's capital city
of Arles, reassured her, explaining that though there would be a great
show of fair dealing yet they had plotted so cleverly that Sancie would
take her own pick from this rich strawberry plot of lovers.

"It is my husband's privilege," expounded Queen Marguerite, "before ever
the fighting begins, to bar out any knight as the procession files
before him in the grand entree of the lists. You shall sit beside him
and indicate any whom you wish disallowed. Moreover, you can at any
moment whisper in Louis's ear and he will throw every advantage possible
in the way of your champion."

"Nevertheless," continued Queen Eleanor, "since it is possible that the
knight you favour may be notoriously inept in arms, you shall have
resource to another trial of skill--namely that of minstrelsy. Here
(like my predecessor of the same name, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine) I
will be judge.

"From the knights who have previously taken part in the tournament you
yourself shall winnow out a half dozen, and shall tell me secretly to
which of these I am to award the prize. Now confess, can anything be
fairer? Is there a possibility of your true love failing, if so be he
but enter the contest?"

But Sancie hung her head. "I have no true love," she said, "I am
absolutely heart-free."

"So much the better," cried the Queen of France, "and this shall be
announced at the outset. The tournament