“Baron de la Ville-aux-Dames! God grant you joys like to mine! I like
my jail! By’r lady, I will not judge between the love of our lands,
but pay the wager.”
“I was sure of it,” said the captain.
“How so?” said the King.
“Sire, it was my wife.”
This was the origin of Larray de la Ville-aux-Dames in our country,
since from corruption of the names, that of Lara-y-Lopez, finished by
becoming Larray. It was a good family, delighting in serving the kings
of France, and it multiplied exceedingly. Soon after, the Queen of
Navarre came in due course to the king, who, weary of Spanish customs,
wished to disport himself after the fashion of France; but remainder
is not the subject of this narrative. I reserve to myself the right to
relate elsewhere how the legate managed to sponge the sin of the thing
off the great slate, and the delicate remark of our Queen of
Marguerites, who merits a saint’s niche in this collection; she who
first concocted such good stories. The morality of this one is easy to
understand.
In the first place, kings should never let themselves be taken in
battle any more than their archetype in the game of the Grecian chief
Palamedes. But from this, it appears the captivity of its king is a
most calamitous and horrible evil to fall on the populace. If it had
been a queen, or even a princess, what worse fate? But I believe the
thing could not happen again, except with cannibals. Can there ever be
a reason for imprisoning the flower of a realm? I think too well of
Ashtaroth, Lucifer, and others, to imagine that did they reign, they
would hide the joy of all the beneficent light, at which poor
sufferers warm themselves. And it was necessary that the worst of
devils, _id est_, a wicked old heretic woman, should find herself upon
a throne, to keep a prisoner sweet Mary of Scotland, to the shame of
all the knights of Christendom, who should have come without previous
assignation to the foot of Fotheringay, and have left thereof no
single stone.