This damsel of seventeen was said to be the loveliest in France, and there is more than a suggestion in Le Feron's De Gestis Regnum Gallorum, that Cesare was by no means indifferent to her charms.

He tells us that the Duke of Valentinois entered into the marriage very heartily, not only for the sake of its expediency, but for "the beauty of the lady, which was equalled by her virtues and the sweetness of her nature." Cesare, we have it on more than one authority, was the handsomest man of his day.

The gallantry of his bearing merited the approval of so fastidious a critic in such matters as Baldassare Castiglione, who mentions it in his Il Cortigiano.

Of his personal charm there is also no lack of commendation from those who had his acquaintance at this time.
Added to this, his Italian splendour and flamboyance may well have dazzled a maid who had been reared amid the grey and something stern tones of the Court of Jeanne de Valois.
And so it may well be that they loved, and that they were blessed in their love for the little space allotted them in each other's company.
The sequel justifies in a measure the assumption.

Just one little summer out of the span of their lives--brief though those lives were--did they spend together, and it is good to find some little evidence that, during that brief season at least, they inhabited life's rose-garden.
In September--just four short months after the wedding-bells had pealed above them--the trumpets of war blared out their call to arms.