On the 2d of June following, the infant princess, Marguerite of Austria, was brought by a solemn embassy to Paris first, and then, on the 23d of June, to Amboise, where her betrothal to the _dauphin_, Charles, was celebrated. Louis XI. did not feel fit for removal to Amboise; and he would not even receive at Plessis-les-Tours the new Flemish embassy. Assuredly neither the king nor any of the actors in this regal scene foresaw that this marriage, which they with reason looked upon as a triumph of French policy, would never be consummated; that, at the request of the court of France, the pope would annul the betrothal; and that, nine years after its celebration, in 1492, the Austrian princess, after having been brought up at Amboise under the guardianship of the Duchess of Bourbon, Anne, eldest daughter of Louis XI., would be sent back to her father, Emperor Maximilian, by her affianced, Charles VIII., then King of France, who preferred to become the husband of a French princess with a French province for dowry, Anne, Duchess of Brittany.
[Illustration: Views of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours----258]
It was in March, 1481, that Louis XI. had his first attack of that apoplexy, which, after several repeated strokes, reduced him to such a state of weakness that in June, 1483, he felt himself and declared himself not in a fit state to be present at his son’s betrothal. Two months afterwards, on the 25th of August, St. Louis’s day, he had a fresh stroke, and lost all consciousness and speech. He soon recovered them; but remained so weak that he could not raise his hand to his mouth, and, under the conviction that he was a dead man, he sent for his son-in-law, Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and “Go,” said he, “to Amboise, to the king, my son; I have intrusted him as well as the government of the kingdom to your charge and my daughter’s care. You know all I have enjoined upon him; watch and see that it be observed. Let him show favor and confidence towards those who have done me good service and whom I have named to him. You know, too, of whom he should beware, and who must not be suffered to come near him.” He sent for the chancellor from Paris, and bade him go and take the seals to the king. “Go to the king,” he said to the captains of his guards, to his archers, to his huntsmen, to all his household. “His speech never failed him after it had come back to him,” says Commynes, “nor his senses; he was constantly saying something of great sense and never in all his illness, which lasted from Monday to Saturday evening, did he complain, as do all sorts of folk when they feel ill. . . . “Notwithstanding all those commands he recovered heart,” adds Commynes, “and had good hope of escaping.” In conversation at odd times with some of his servants, and even with Commynes himself, he had begged them, whenever they saw that he was very ill, not to mention that cruel word death; he had even made a covenant with them, that they should say no more to him than, “Don’t talk much,” which would be sufficient warning. But his doctor, James Coettier, and his barber, Oliver the Devil, whom he had ennobled and enriched under the name of Oliver le Daim, did not treat him with so much indulgence. “They notified his death to him in brief and harsh terms,” says Commynes; “‘Sir, we must do our duty; have no longer hope in your holy man of Calabria or in other matters, for assuredly all is over with you; think of your soul; there is no help for it.’ ‘I have hope in God that He will aid me,’ answered Louis, coldly; ‘peradventure I am not so ill as you think.’