character, as is the Comte de Chabannes.

The Duc de Guise of the period whose father had been killed
fighting against the protestants, did marry the Princess de
Portein, but this was for political reasons and not to satisfy
the wishes of a Princess de Montpensier.

It will be noticed,I think, that women were traded in marriage
with little or no regard to their personal emotions, and no
doubt, as has been remarked by others, marriages without love
encouraged love outside marriage. Whatever the reality, the
literary conventions of the time seem to have dictated that we
should be treated only to ardent glances, fervent declarations,
swoonings and courtly gestures, we are not led even to the
bedroom door, let alone the amorous couch. I wonder, however, if
the reader might not think that this little tale written more
than three hundred years ago contains the elements of many of the
romantic novels and soap operas which have followed it.

At one level it is a cautionary tale about the consequences of
marital infidelity; at another it is a story of a woman betrayed,
treated as a pretty bauble for the gratification of men, and cast
aside when she has served her purpose, or a butterfly trapped in
a net woven by uncaring fate. Her end is rather too contrived for
modern taste, but, even today, characters who are about to be
written out of the plot in soap operas are sometimes smitten by
mysterious and fatal disorders of the brain.

The unfortunate Comte de Chabannes is the archtypical "decent
chap" The faithful but rejected swain who sacrifices himself for