I have chanced to visit the court of the La Valettes on several occasions in the past. Invariably, I was greeted and received in a manner befitting my fame and talent. Baroness Mary Louisa was a very comely lady, her beauty having fully blossomed, her hair dark, her lips sensuous. As with many women married to markedly older men, rumors about her were plentiful. Among them, one claiming that she had had a love affair with King Foltest himself, and that the monarch had fathered her younger children.