a year, and the rest in proportion.

He also maintained a whole troop of players, including ten
dancing-girls and as many ballad-singers, besides morris-dancers,
jugglers, and mountebanks of every description. The theatre on which
they performed was fitted up without any regard to expense; and they
played mysteries, or danced the morris-dance, every evening, for the
amusement of himself and household, and such strangers as were sharing
his prodigal hospitality.

At the age of twenty-three, he married Catherine, the wealthy
heiress of the house of Touars, for whom he refurnished his castle at
an expense of a hundred thousand crowns. His marriage was the signal
for new extravagance, and he launched out more madly than ever he had
done before; sending for fine singers or celebrated dancers from
foreign countries to amuse him and his spouse, and instituting tilts
and tournaments in his great court-yard almost every week for all the
knights and nobles of the province of Brittany. The Duke of Brittany's
court was not half so splendid as that of the Marechal de Rays. His
utter disregard of wealth was so well known that he was made to pay
three times its value for everything he purchased. His castle was
filled with needy parasites and panderers to his pleasures, amongst
whom he lavished rewards with an unsparing hand. But the ordinary
round of sensual gratification ceased at last to afford him delight:
he was observed to be more abstemious in the pleasures of the table,
and to neglect the beauteous dancing-girls who used formerly to occupy
so much of his attention. He was sometimes gloomy and reserved; and
there was an unnatural wildness in his eye which gave indications of
incipient madness. Still, his discourse was as reasonable as ever; his
urbanity to the guests that flocked from far and near to Champtoce