some time at the French court--that of

[Illustration: BROU--THE CHURCH.]

her prospective father-in-law, Louis XI.; but she was eventually
repudiated, in order that her _fiance_ might marry Anne of Brittany--an
alliance so magnificently political that we almost condone the offence
to a sensitive princess. Margaret did not want for husbands, however,
inasmuch as before her marriage to Philibert she had been united to John
of Castile, son of Ferdinand V., King of Aragon--an episode terminated
by the death of the Spanish prince within a year. She was twenty-two
years regent of the Netherlands and died, at fifty-one, in 1530. She
might have been, had she chosen, the wife of Henry VII. of England. She
was one of the signers of the League of Cambray against the Venetian
Republic, and was a most politic, accomplished, and judicious princess.
She undertook to build the church of Brou as a mausoleum for her second
husband and herself, in fulfilment of a vow made by Margaret of Bourbon,
mother of Philibert, who died before she could redeem her pledge and who
bequeathed the duty to her son. He died shortly afterwards, and his
widow assumed the pious task. According to Murray, she entrusted the
erection of the church to "Maistre Loys von Berghem," and the sculpture
to "Maistre Conrad." The author of a superstitious but carefully
prepared little Notice which I bought at Bourg calls the architect and
sculptor (at once) Jehan de Paris, author (_sic_) of the tomb of Francis
II. of Brittany, to which we gave some attention at Nantes, and which
the writer of my pamphlet ascribes only subordinately to Michel Colomb.
The church, which is not of great size, is in the last and most
flamboyant phase of gothic and in admirable preservation; the west
front, before which a quaint old sun-dial is laid out on the ground--a
circle of numbers marked in stone, like those on a clock-face, let into
the earth--is covered with delicate ornament. The great feature, however
(the nave is perfectly bare and wonderfully new-looking, though the
warden, a stolid yet sharp old peasant in a blouse, who looked more as
if his line were chaffering over turnips than showing off works of art,
told me that it has never been touched and that its freshness is simply
the quality of the stone)--the great feature is the admirable choir, in
the midst of which the three monuments have bloomed under the chisel
like exotic plants in a conservatory. I saw the place to small
a