the ladies' court. Full often have I seen our kings go to camp, or town,
or elsewhither, remain there and divert themselves for some days, and yet
take thither no ladies. But we were so bewildered, so lost, so moped,
that for the week we spent away from them and their pretty eyes it
appeared to us a year; and always a-wishing, 'When shall we be at the
court?' Not, full often, calling that the court where the king was, but
that where the queen and ladies were." [_OEuvres de Brantome, edition of
the Societe de l'Histoire de France,_ t. iii. pp. 120-129.]

Now, when so many fair ladies are met together in a life of sumptuousness
and gayety, a king is pretty sure to find favorites, and royal favorites
rarely content themselves with pleasing the king; they desire to make
their favor serviceable their family and their friends. Francis I. had
made choice one, Frances de Foix, countess of Chateaubriant, beautiful
ambitious, dexterous, haughty, readily venturing upon rivalry with even
the powerful queen-mother. She had three brothers; Lautrec was one of
the three, and she supported him in all his pretensions and all his
trials of fortune. When he set out to go and take the command in Italy,
he found himself at the head of an army numerous indeed, but badly
equipped, badly paid, and at grips with Prosper Colonna, the most able
amongst the chiefs of the coalition formed at this juncture between
Charles V. and Pope Leo X. against the French. Lautrec did not succeed
in preventing Milan from falling into the hands of the Imperialists, and,
after an uncertain campaign of some months' duration, he lost at La
Bicocca, near Monza, on the 27th of April, 1522, a battle, which left in
the power of Francis I., in Lombardy, only the citadels of Milan,
Cremona, and Novara. At the news of these reverses, Francis I. repaired
to Lyons, to consult as to the means of applying a remedy. Lautrec also
arrived there. "The king," says Martin du Bellay, "gave him a bad
reception, as the man by whose fault he considered he had lost his duchy