vexed them sore to have to rear and bring up and recognise as heirs children they had never begotten.
Indeed but for this, there is nothing they would have made less ado about. Thus have I known not a few husbands, who when they did find the lovers, who had made their wives children, to be easy and good-natured, and ready to give freely and keep them, took no more account of the thing at all, or even advised their wives to beg of them and crave some allowance to keep the little one they had had of them.
So have I heard tell of a great lady, which was the mother of Villeconnin, natural son of Francis I. The same did beseech the King to give or assign her some little property, before he died, for the child he had begot,—and this he did. He made over for this end two hundred thousand crowns in bank, which did profit him well and ran on ever growing, what with interest and re-investment, in such wise that it became a great sum and he did spend money with such magnificence and seemed in such good case and ample funds at Court that all were astonished thereat. And all thought he enjoyed the favours of some mysterious lady. None believed her his mother, but, seeing he never went about without her, it was universally supposed the great expenditure he made did come from his connexion with her. Yet it was not so at all, for she was really his mother; though few people were ware of it. Nor was anything known for sure of his lineage or birth, except that he eventually died at Constantinople, and that his inheritance as King's bastard was given to the Maréchal de Retz, who was keen and cunning enough to have discovered this little secret which he was able to turn to his profit, and did verify the bastardy
[125]
