And François was everything a Renaissance prince should be: tall, handsome, a patron of the arts. The scandalous but brilliant goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini had worked in Paris. New improvements were undertaken on the growing royal palace of the Louvre. And Leonardo da Vinci himself, bringing the Mona Lisa with him, had come to spend his last days in the valley of the Loire, and died in the French king’s arms.

The king was a man of vision too: Verrazano’s voyage to America was financed thanks to him; colonies in Canada were founded; explorers sent to India and beyond. He’d opened trade across the Mediterranean with Morocco. To balance the power of the Hapsburg Holy Roman emperor, he’d even formed an alliance with the Moslem Suleiman the Magnificent, of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Though he’d also married his son to Catherine de Médicis, of Florence, with a rich dowry promised by her kinsman, the pope.

But Guy’s favorite tale was what happened when King François had met that great bully, Henry VIII of England.

“Imagine it,” he gleefully told his little cousin Simon, “they met at a magnificent congress called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. And Henry of England, who was big and powerful and very pleased with himself, challenged King François to a wrestling match. The two men wrestle. The crowds are watching. They are both strong. But maybe François is stronger, or more skillful, and no doubt more intelligent … and suddenly—oopla—Henry’s in the mud. He’s flattened. King François beats him.”

“Was King Henry angry?”

“He was furious. But there was nothing he could do. He was beaten.”

“Was it King Henry who had six wives?”

“Yes. But it didn’t do him much good. He was a terrible man. Whereas King François was a great man. And of course,” Guy added proudly, “he had many beautiful mistresses.” Like most Frenchmen, and certainly Frenchwomen, Guy liked his rulers to have mistresses. It showed they were virile, and powerful. Either that, or they could be saints.

“Why do kings have mistresses, Uncle Guy?” Simon asked.

“For the honor of France.”

But what Guy was really thinking—though he did not say it to the boy—was that the reign of François I had been the time when his own father and his uncle Robert had both made large fortunes. The king might have spent too much, but the Renard brothers had done very well out of supplying his court.

Whereas Simon’s grandfather had not. Uncle Robert had even offered to bring him into his own business, but Charles had refused. In that glorious age of adventure, he’d managed to lose most of his money.

And to make matters worse, his son Pierre had no interest in getting the money back. He worked just hard enough to get by, and hardly that. He seemed to have no ambition of any kind. He didn’t want any help. He was completely placid. As the years passed, this younger branch of the Renards had been written off by the rest of the family as poor relations. But Pierre didn’t seem to mind. He was always cheerful.