by his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, under the name of Louis XII. Louis XII.
was crowned on the 1st of July 1498.

If there was one trait of character which, more than any other,
distinguished Bayard the Good Knight, it was his absolute loyalty towards
the lord he served, and his undying gratitude for any kindness which he had
received. He never forgot those six happy months he had spent at the Court
of Savoy when he first went there to take up the profession of arms as a
young lad of thirteen. It was not by his own choice that he left the
service of his earliest master, who in a fit of generosity had presented
his favourite page to the King, in the hope that by so doing he would best
further the career of Bayard.

But Charles I., Duke of Savoy, did not live to see this, for he had died in
1490, and the Duchess, his widow, had left Chambéry and retired to her
dower house in the pleasant town of Carignano, in Piedmont, about seventeen
miles to the south of Turin. This lady, Blanche Paleologus, had been a most
kind friend to young Bayard, and when she heard that he was stationed in
the neighbourhood, she invited him to visit her, and received him with the
utmost courtesy, treating him as if he were a member of her family. She was
greatly beloved and honoured in Carignano, where she was lady suzerain, and
where there may still be seen, in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a
splendid monument to her memory.

We may imagine the satisfaction with which the good Duchess found that her
page of bygone days had blossomed out into a valiant and famous knight, and
they must both have had much to hear and tell of all that had happened
since they parted. Here Bayard also met with another friend, the young lady
who had been one of the maids-of-honour of the Duchess at Chambéry and who
had won the boyish affection of the Good Knight. If the young folks had