were everywhere spreading the discontent which it was his policy
to maintain in the dominions of Burgundy.

Amidst so great an abundance of materials, it was difficult to
select such as should be most intelligible and interesting to the
reader: and the author had to regret, that though he made liberal
use of the power of departing from the reality of history, he felt
by no means confident of having brought his story into a pleasing,
compact, and sufficiently intelligible form. The mainspring of
the plot is that which all who know the least of the feudal system
can easily understand, though the facts are absolutely fictitious.
The right of a feudal superior was in nothing more universally
acknowledged than in his power to interfere in the marriage of
a female vassal. This may appear to exist as a contradiction both
of the civil and canon laws, which declare that marriage shall be
free, while the feudal or municipal jurisprudence, in case of a
fief passing to a female, acknowledges an interest in the superior
of the fief to dictate the choice of her companion in marriage.
This is accounted for on the principle that the superior was, by his
bounty, the original granter of the fief, and is still interested
that the marriage of the vassal shall place no one there who
may be inimical to his liege lord. On the other hand, it might be
reasonably pleaded that this right of dictating to the vassal to
a certain extent in the choice of a husband, is only competent to
the superior from whom the fief is originally derived. There is
therefore no violent improbability in a vassal of Burgundy flying
to the protection of the King of France, to whom the Duke of Burgundy
himself was vassal; not is it a great stretch of probability to
affirm that Louis, unscrupulous as he was, should have formed the
design of betraying the fugitive into some alliance which might