VII
CHARLES OF ORLEANS
For one who was no great politician, nor (as men go) especially wise,capable, or virtuous, Charles of Orleans is more than usually enviableto all who love that better sort of fame which consists in being knownnot widely, but intimately. "To be content that time to come should knowthere was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, or tosubsist under naked denominations, without deserts or noble acts," is,says Sir Thomas Browne, a frigid ambition. It is to some more specificmemory that youth looks forward in its vigils. Old kings are sometimesdisinterred in all the emphasis of life, the hands untainted by decay,the beard that had so often wagged in camp or senate still spread uponthe royal bosom; and in busts and pictures, some similitude of the greatand beautiful of former days is handed down. In this way, publiccuriosity may be gratified, but hardly any private aspiration afterfame. It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but notimpossible that it may respect or sympathise; and so a man would ratherleave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face,_figura animi magis quam corporis_. Of those who have thus survivedthemselves most completely, left a sort of personal seduction behindthem in the world, and retained, after death, the art of making friends,Montaigne and Samuel Johnson certainly stand first. But we haveportraits of all sorts of men, from august Caesar to the king's dwarf;and all sorts of portraits, from a Titian treasured in the Louvre to aprofile over the grocer's chimney shelf. And so in a less degree, butno less truly, than the spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightfulEssays, that of Charles of Orleans survives in a few old songs and oldaccount-books; and it is still in the choice of the reader to make thisduke's acquaintance, and, if their humours suit, become his friend.
I
His birth--if we are to argue from a man's parents--was above his merit.It is not merely that he was the grandson of one king, the father ofanother, and the uncle of a third; but something more specious was to belooked for from the son of his father, Louis de Valois, Duke of Orleans,brother to the mad king Charles VI., lover of Queen Isabel, and theleading patron of art and one of the leading politicians in France. Andthe poet might have inherited yet higher virtues from his mother,Valentina of Milan, a very pathetic figure of the age, the faithful wifeof an unfaithful husband, and the friend of a most unhappy king. Thefather, beautiful, eloquent, and accomplished, exercised a strangefascination over his contemporaries; and among those who dip nowadaysinto the annals of the time there are not many--and these few are littleto be envied--who can resist the fascination of the mother. All mankindowe her a debt of gratitude because she brought some comfort into thelife of the poor madman who wore the crown of France.
Born (May 1391) of such a noble stock, Charles was to know from thefirst all favours of nature and art. His father's gardens were theadmiration of his contemporaries; his castles were situated in the mostagreeable parts of France, and sumptuously adorned. We have preserved,in an inventory of 1403, the description of tapestried rooms whereCharles may have played in childhood.[14] "A green room, with theceiling full of angels, and the _dossier_ of shepherds and shepherdessesseeming (_faisant contenance_) to eat nuts and cherries. A room of gold,silk and worsted, with a device of little children in a river, and thesky full of birds. A room of green tapestry, showing a knight and ladyat chess in a pavilion. Another green-room, with shepherdesses in atrellised garden worked in gold and silk. A carpet representingcherry-trees, where there is a fountain, and a lady gathering cherriesin a basin." These were some of the pictures over which his fancy mightbusy itself of an afternoon, or at morning as he lay awake in bed. Withour deeper and more logical sense of life, we can have no idea how largea space in the attention of mediaeval men might be occupied by suchfigured hangings on the wall. There was something timid and purblind inthe view they had of the world. Morally, they saw nothing outside oftraditional axioms; and little of the physical aspect of things enteredvividly into their mind, beyond what was to be seen on church windowsand the walls and floors of palaces. The reader will remember howVillon's mother conceived of heaven and hell and took all her scantystock of theology from the stained glass that threw its light upon heras she prayed. And there is scarcely a detail of external effect in thechronicles and romances of the time, but might have been borrowed atsecond hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the history ofmankind which we may see paralleled to some extent in the first infantschool, where the representations of lions and elephants alternate roundthe wall with moral verses and trite presentments of the lesser virtues.So that to live in a house of many pictures was tantamount, for a time,to a liberal education in itself.
At Charles's birth an order of knighthood was inaugurated in his honour.At nine years old he was a squire; at eleven, he had the escort of achaplain and a schoolmaster; at twelve, his uncle the king made him apension of twelve thousand livres d'or.[15] He saw the most brilliantand the most learned persons of France in his father's court; and wouldnot fail to notice that these brilliant and learned persons were one andall engaged in rhyming. Indeed, if it is difficult to realise the partplayed by pictures, it is perhaps even more difficult to realise thatplayed by verses in the polite and active history of the age. At thesiege of Pontoise, English and French exchanged defiant ballades overthe walls.[16] If a scandal happened, as in the loathsome thirty-thirdstory of the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," all the wits must make rondelsand chansonettes, which they would hand from one to another with anunmanly sneer. Ladies carried their favourite's ballades in theirgirdles.[17] Margaret of Scotland, all the world knows already, kissedAlain Chartier's lips in honour of the many virtuous thoughts and goldensayings they had uttered; but it is not so well known that this princesswas herself the most industrious of poetasters, that she is supposed tohave hastened her death by her literary vigils, and sometimes wrote asmany as twelve rondels in the day.[18] It was in rhyme, even, that theyoung Charles should learn his lessons. He might get all manner ofinstruction in the truly noble art of the chase, not without a smack ofethics by the way, from the compendious didactic poem of Gace de laBigne. Nay, and it was in rhyme that he should learn rhyming: in theverses of his father's Maitre d'Hotel, Eustache Deschamps, which treatedof _l'art de dictier et de faire chancons, ballades, virelais etrondeaux_, along with many other matters worth attention, from thecourts of Heaven to the misgovernment of France.[19] At this rate, allknowledge is to be had in a goody, and the end of it is an old song. Weneed not wonder when we hear from Monstrelet that Charles was a verywell educated person. He could string Latin texts together by the hour,and make ballades and rondels better than Eustache Deschamps himself. Hehad seen a mad king who would not change his clothes, and a drunkenemperor who could not keep his hand from the wine-cup. He had spoken agreat deal with jesters and fiddlers, and with the profligate lords whohelped his father to waste the revenues of France. He had seen ladiesdance on into broad daylight, and much burning of torches and waste ofdainties and good wine.[20] And when all is said, it was no very helpfulpreparation for the battle of life. "I believe Louis XI.," writesComines, "would not have saved himself, if he had not been verydifferently brought up from such other lords as I have seen educated inthis country; for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapeswith finery and fine words."[21] I am afraid Charles took such lessonsto heart, and conceived of life as a season principally for junketingand war. His view of the whole duty of man, so empty, vain, andwearisome to us, was yet sincerely and consistently held. When he camein his ripe years to compare the glory of two kingdoms, England andFrance, it was on three points only--pleasures, valour, andriches,--that he cared to measure them; and in the very outset of thattract he speaks of the life of the great as passed, "whether in arms, asin assaults, battles, and sieges, or in jousts and tournaments, in highand stately festivities and in funeral solemnities."[22]
When he was no more than thirteen, his father had him affianced toIsabella, virgin-widow of our Richard II. and daughter of his uncleCharles VI.; and, two year
s after (June 29, 1406), the cousins weremarried at Compiegne, he fifteen, she seventeen years of age. It was inevery way a most desirable match. The bride brought five hundredthousand francs of dowry. The ceremony was of the utmost magnificence,Louis of Orleans figuring in crimson velvet, adorned with no less thanseven hundred and ninety-five pearls, gathered together expressly forthis occasion. And no doubt it must have been very gratifying for ayoung gentleman of fifteen to play the chief part in a pageant so gailyput upon the stage. Only, the bridegroom might have been a little older;and, as ill-luck would have it, the bride herself was of this way ofthinking, and would not be consoled for the loss of her title as queen,or the contemptible age of her new husband. _Pleuroit fort laditeIsabeau_; the said Isabella wept copiously.[23] It is fairly debatablewhether Charles was much to be pitied when, three years later (September1409), this odd marriage was dissolved by death. Short as it was,however, this connection left a lasting stamp upon his mind; and we findthat, in the last decade of his life, and after he had re-married forperhaps the second time, he had not yet forgotten or forgiven theviolent death of Richard II. _Ce mauvais cas_--that ugly business, hewrites, has yet to be avenged.
The marriage festivity was on the threshold of evil days. The greatrivalry between Louis of Orleans and John the Fearless, Duke ofBurgundy, had been forsworn with the most reverend solemnities. But thefeud was only in abeyance, and John of Burgundy still conspired insecret. On November 23, 1407--in that black winter when the frost lastedsix-and-sixty days on end--a summons from the King reached Louis ofOrleans at the Hotel Barbette, where he had been supping with QueenIsabel. It was seven or eight in the evening, and the inhabitants of thequarter were abed. He set forth in haste, accompanied by two squiresriding on one horse, a page and a few varlets running with torches. Ashe rode, he hummed to himself and trifled with his glove. And so riding,he was beset by the bravoes of his enemy and slain. My lord of Burgundyset an ill precedent in this deed, as he found some years after on thebridge of Montereau; and even in the meantime he did not profit quietlyby his rival's death. The horror of the other princes seems to haveperturbed himself; he avowed his guilt in the council, tried to brazenit out, finally lost heart and fled at full gallop, cutting bridgesbehind him, towards Bapaume and Lille. And so there we have the head ofone faction, who had just made himself the most formidable man inFrance, engaged in a remarkably hurried journey, with black care on thepillion. And meantime, on the other side, the widowed duchess came toParis, in appropriate mourning, to demand justice for her husband'sdeath. Charles VI., who was then in a lucid interval, did probably allthat he could, when he raised up the kneeling suppliant with kisses andsmooth words. Things were at a dead-lock. The criminal might be in thesorriest fright, but he was still the greatest of vassals. Justice waseasy to ask and not difficult to promise; how it was to be executed wasanother question. No one in France was strong enough to punish John ofBurgundy; and perhaps no one, except the widow, very sincere in wishingto punish him.
She, indeed, was eaten up of zeal; but the intensity of her eagernesswore her out; and she died about a year after the murder, of grief andindignation, unrequited love and unsatisfied resentment. It was duringthe last months of her life that this fiery and generous woman, seeingthe soft hearts of her own children, looked with envy on a certainnatural son of her husband's, destined to become famous in the sequel asthe Bastard of Orleans, or the brave Dunois. "_You were stolen fromme_," she said; "it is you who are fit to avenge your father." These arenot the words of ordinary mourning, or of an ordinary woman. It is asaying over which Balzac would have rubbed his episcopal hands. That thechild who was to avenge her husband had not been born out of her bodywas a thing intolerable to Valentina of Milan; and the expression ofthis singular and tragic jealousy is preserved to us by a rare chance,in such straightforward and vivid words as we are accustomed to hearonly on the stress of actual life, or in the theatre. In history--wherewe see things as in a glass darkly, and the fashion of former times isbrought before us, deplorably adulterated and defaced, fitted to veryvague and pompous words, and strained through many men's minds ofeverything personal or precise--this speech of the widowed duchessstartles a reader, somewhat as the footprint startled Robinson Crusoe. Ahuman voice breaks in upon the silence of the study, and the student isaware of a fellow-creature in his world of documents. With such a cluein hand, one may imagine how this wounded lioness would spur andexasperate the resentment of her children, and what would be the lastwords of counsel and command she left behind her.
With these instancies of his dying mother--almost a voice from thetomb--still tingling in his ears, the position of young Charles ofOrleans, when he was left at the head of that great house, was curiouslysimilar to that of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The times were out of joint;here was a murdered father to avenge on a powerful murderer; and here,in both cases, a lad of inactive disposition born to set these mattersright. Valentina's commendation of Dunois involved a judgment onCharles, and that judgment was exactly correct. Whoever might be,Charles was not the man to avenge his father. Like Hamlet, this son of adear father murdered was sincerely grieved at heart. Like Hamlet, too,he could unpack his heart with words, and wrote a most eloquent letterto the King, complaining that what was denied to him would not be denied"to the lowest born and poorest man on earth." Even in his privatehours he strove to preserve a lively recollection of his injury, andkeep up the native hue of resolution. He had gems engraved withappropriate legends, hortatory or threatening: "_Dieu le scet_", Godknows it; or "_Souvenez-vous de_--" Remember![24] It is only towards theend that the two stories begin to differ; and in some points thehistorical version is the more tragic. Hamlet only stabbed a silly oldcouncillor behind the arras; Charles of Orleans trampled France for fiveyears under the hoofs of his banditti. The miscarriage of Hamlet'svengeance was confined, at widest, to the palace; the ruin wrought byCharles of Orleans was as broad as France.
Yet the first act of the young duke is worthy of honourable mention.Prodigal Louis had made enormous debts; and there is a story extant, toillustrate how lightly he himself regarded these commercial obligations.It appears that Louis, after a narrow escape he made in a thunderstorm,had a smart access of penitence, and announced he would pay his debts onthe following Sunday. More than eight hundred creditors presentedthemselves, but by that time the devil was well again, and they wereshown the door with more gaiety than politeness. A time when suchcynical dishonesty was possible for a man of culture is not, it will begranted, a fortunate epoch for creditors. When the original debtor wasso lax, we may imagine how an heir would deal with the incumbrances ofhis inheritance. On the death of Philip the Forward, father of that Johnthe Fearless whom we have seen at work, the widow went through theceremony of a public renunciation of goods; taking off her purse andgirdle, she left them on the grave, and thus, by one notable act,cancelled her husband's debts and defamed his honour. The conduct ofyoung Charles of Orleans was very different. To meet the jointliabilities of his father and mother (for Valentina also was lavish), hehad to sell or pledge a quantity of jewels; and yet he would not takeadvantage of a pretext, even legally valid, to diminish the amount.Thus, one Godefroi Lefevre, having disbursed many odd sums for the lateduke, and received or kept no vouchers, Charles ordered that he shouldbe believed upon his oath.[25] To a modern mind this seems as honourableto his father's memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as highas Haman. And as things fell out, except a recantation from theUniversity of Paris, which had justified the murder out of partyfeeling, and various other purely paper reparations, this was about theoutside of what Charles was to effect in that direction. He lived fiveyears, and grew up from sixteen to twenty-one, in the midst of the mosthorrible civil war, or series of civil wars, that ever devastatedFrance; and from first to last his wars were ill-starred, or else hisvictories useless. Two years after the murder (March 1409), John theFearless having the upper hand for the moment, a shameful and uselessreconciliation took place, by the King's command, in the Church of Our
Lady at Chartres. The advocate of the Duke of Burgundy stated that Louisof Orleans had been killed "for the good of the King's person andrealm." Charles and his brothers, with tears of shame, under protest,_pour ne pas desobeir au roi_, forgave their father's murderer and sworepeace upon the missal. It was, as I say, a shameful and uselessceremony; the very greffier, entering it in his register, wrote in themargin, "_Pax, pax, inquit Propheta, et non est pax._"[26] Charles wassoon after allied with the abominable Bernard d'Armagnac, even betrothedor married to a daughter of his, called by a name that sounds like acontradiction in terms, Bonne d'Armagnac. From that time forth,throughout all this monstrous period--a very nightmare in the history ofFrance--he is no more than a stalking-horse for the ambitious Gascon.Sometimes the smoke lifts, and you can see him for the twinkling of aneye, a very pale figure; at one moment there is a rumour he will becrowned king; at another, when the uproar has subsided, he will be heardstill crying out for justice; and the next (1412), he is showing himselfto the applauding populace on the same horse with John of Burgundy. Butthese are exceptional seasons, and for the most part he merely rides atthe Gascon's bridle over devastated France. His very party go, not bythe name of Orleans, but by the name of Armagnac. Paris is in the handsof the butchers: the peasants have taken to the woods. Alliances aremade and broken as if in a country dance; the English called in, now bythis one, now by the other. Poor people sing in church, with white facesand lamentable music: "_Domine Jesu, parce populo tuo, dirige in viampacis principes._" And the end and upshot of the whole affair forCharles of Orleans is another peace with John the Fearless. France isonce more tranquil, with the tranquillity of ruin; he may ride homeagain to Blois, and look, with what countenance he may, on those gems hehad got engraved in the early days of his resentment, "_Souvenez-vousde--_" Remember! He has killed Polonius, to be sure; but the King isnever a penny the worse.
II
From the battle of Agincourt (Oct. 1415) dates the second period ofCharles's life. The English reader will remember the name of Orleans inthe play of _Henry V._; and it is at least odd that we can trace aresemblance between the puppet and the original. The interjection, "Ihave heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress" (Act iii. scene 7), mayvery well indicate one who was already an expert in that sort of trifle;and the game of proverbs he plays with the Constable in the same scenewould be quite in character for a man who spent many years of his lifecapping verses with his courtiers. Certainly, Charles was in the greatbattle with five hundred lances (say, three thousand men), and there hewas made prisoner as he led the van. According to one story, some raggedEnglish archer shot him down; and some diligent English Pistol, huntingransoms on the field of battle, extracted him from under a heap ofbodies and retailed him to our King Henry. He was the most importantcapture of the day, and used with all consideration. On the way toCalais, Henry sent him a present of bread and wine (and bread, you willremember, was an article of luxury in the English camp), but Charleswould neither eat nor drink. Thereupon Henry came to visit him in hisquarters. "Noble cousin," said he, "how are you?" Charles replied thathe was well. "Why then do you neither eat nor drink?" And then with someasperity, as I imagine, the young duke told him that "truly he had noinclination for food." And our Henry improved the occasion withsomething of a snuffle, assuring his prisoner that God had foughtagainst the French on account of their manifold sins and transgressions.Upon this there supervened the agonies of a rough sea-passage; and manyFrench lords, Charles certainly among the number, declared they wouldrather endure such another defeat than such another sore trial onshipboard. Charles, indeed, never forgot his sufferings. Longafterwards, he declared his hatred to a seafaring life, and willinglyyielded to England the empire of the seas, "because there is danger andloss of life, and God knows what pity when it storms; and sea-sicknessis for many people hard to bear; and the rough life that must be led islittle suitable for the nobility":[27] which, of all babyish utterancesthat ever fell from any public man, may surely bear the bell. Scarcelydisembarked, he followed his victor, with such wry face as we may fancy,through the streets of holiday London. And then the doors closed uponhis last day of garish life for more than a quarter of a century. Aftera boyhood passed in the dissipations of a luxurious court or in the campof war, his ears still stunned and his cheeks still burning from hisenemies' jubilations; out of all this ringing of English bells andsinging of English anthems, from among all these shouting citizens inscarlet cloaks, and beautiful virgins attired in white, he passed intothe silence and solitude of a political prison.[28]
His captivity was not without alleviations. He was allowed to gohawking, and he found England an admirable country for the sport; he wasa favourite with English ladies, and admired their beauty; and he didnot lack for money, wine, or books; he was honourably imprisoned in thestrongholds of great nobles, in Windsor Castle and the Tower of London.But when all is said, he was a prisoner for five-and-twenty years. Forfive-and-twenty years he could not go where he would, or do what heliked, or speak with any but his jailers. We may talk very wisely ofalleviations; there is only one alleviation for which the man wouldthank you: he would thank you to open the door. With what regretScottish James I. bethought him (in the next room perhaps to Charles) ofthe time when he rose "as early as the day." What would he not havegiven to wet his boots once more with morning dew, and follow hisvagrant fancy among the meadows? The only alleviation to the misery ofconstraint lies in the disposition of the prisoner. To each one thisplace of discipline brings his own lesson. It stirs Latude or BaronTrenck into heroic action; it is a hermitage for pious and conformablespirits. Beranger tells us he found prison life, with its regular hoursand long evenings, both pleasant and profitable. The "Pilgrim'sProgress" and "Don Quixote" were begun in prison. It was after they werebecome (to use the words of one of them), "Oh, worst imprisonment--thedungeon of themselves!" that Homer and Milton worked so hard and so wellfor the profit of mankind. In the year 1415 Henry V. had twodistinguished prisoners, French Charles of Orleans and Scottish JamesI., who whiled away the hours of their captivity with rhyming. Indeed,there can be no better pastime for a lonely man than the mechanicalexercise of verse. Such intricate forms as Charles had been used to fromchildhood, the ballade with its scanty rhymes; the rondel, with therecurrence first of the whole, then of half the burthen, in thirteenverses, seem to have been invented for the prison and the sick-bed. Thecommon Scots saying, on the sight of anything operose and finical, "hemust have had little to do that made that!" might be put as epigraph onall the song-books of old France. Making such sorts of verse belongs tothe same class of pleasures as guessing acrostics or "burying proverbs."It is almost purely formal, almost purely verbal. It must be done gentlyand gingerly. It keeps the mind occupied a long time, and never sointently as to be distressing; for anything like strain is against thevery nature of the craft. Sometimes things go easily, the refrains fallinto their place as if of their own accord, and it becomes something ofthe nature of an intellectual tennis; you must make your poem as therhymes will go, just as you must strike your ball as your adversaryplayed it. So that these forms are suitable rather for those who wish tomake verses than for those who wish to express opinions. Sometimes, onthe other hand, difficulties arise: rival verses come into a man's head,and fugitive words elude his memory. Then it is that he enjoys at thesame time the deliberate pleasures of a connoisseur comparing wines, andthe ardour of the chase. He may have been sitting all day long in prisonwith folded hands; but when he goes to bed the retrospect will seemanimated and eventful.
Besides confirming himself as an habitual maker of verses, Charlesacquired some new opinions during his captivity. He was perpetuallyreminded of the change that had befallen him. He found the climate ofEngland cold and "prejudicial to the human frame"; he had a greatcontempt for English fruit and English beer; even the coal fires wereunpleasing in his eyes.[29] He was rooted up from among his friends andcustoms and the places that had known him. And so in this strange landhe began to learn the love of his own. Sad
people all the world over arelike to be moved when the wind is in some particular quarter. So Burnspreferred when it was in the west, and blew to him from his mistress; sothe girl in the ballade, looking south to Yarrow, thought it might carrya kiss betwixt her and her gallant; and so we find Charles singing ofthe "pleasant wind that comes from France."[30] One day, at"Dover-on-the-Sea," he looked across the straits, and saw the sandhillsabout Calais. And it happened to him, he tells us in a ballade, toremember his happiness over there in the past; and he was both sad andmerry at the recollection, and could not have his fill of gazing on theshores of France.[31] Although guilty of unpatriotic acts, he had neverbeen exactly unpatriotic in feeling. But his sojourn in England gave,for the time at least, some consistency to what had been a very weak andineffectual prejudice. He must have been under the influence of morethan usually solemn considerations, when he proceeded to turn Henry'spuritanical homily after Agincourt into a ballade, and reproach France,and himself by implication, with pride, gluttony, idleness, unbridledcovetousness, and sensuality.[32] For the moment, he must really havebeen thinking more of France than of Charles of Orleans.
And another lesson he learned. He who was only to be released in case ofpeace begins to think upon the disadvantages of war. "Pray for peace,"is his refrain: a strange enough subject for the ally of Bernardd'Armagnac.[33] But this lesson was plain and practical; it had one sidein particular that was specially attractive for Charles; and he did nothesitate to explain it in so many words. "Everybody," he writes--Itranslate roughly--"everybody should be much inclined to peace, foreverybody has a deal to gain by it."[34]
Charles made laudable endeavours to acquire English, and even learned towrite a rondel in that tongue of quite average mediocrity.[35] He wasfor some time billeted on the unhappy Suffolk, who received fourteenshillings and fourpence a day for his expenses; and from the fact thatSuffolk afterwards visited Charles in France while he was negotiatingthe marriage of Henry VI., as well as the terms of that nobleman'simpeachment, we may believe there was some not unkindly intercoursebetween the prisoner and his jailer: a fact of considerable interestwhen we remember that Suffolk's wife was the grand-daughter of the poetGeoffrey Chaucer.[36] Apart from this, and a mere catalogue of dates andplaces, only one thing seems evident in the story of Charles'scaptivity. It seems evident that, as these five-and-twenty years drewon, he became less and less resigned. Circumstances were against thegrowth of such a feeling. One after another of his fellow-prisoners wasransomed and went home. More than once he was himself permitted to visitFrance; where he worked on abortive treaties and showed himself moreeager for his own deliverance than for the profit of his native land.Resignation may follow after a reasonable time upon despair; but if aman is persecuted by a series of brief and irritating hopes, his mind nomore attains to a settled frame of resolution than his eye would growfamiliar with a night of thunder and lightning. Years after, when he wasspeaking at the trial of that Duke of Alencon who began life sohopefully as the boyish favourite of Joan of Arc, he sought to provethat captivity was a harder punishment than death. "For I have hadexperience myself," he said; "and in my prison of England, for theweariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I have many atime wished I had been slain at the battle where they took me."[37] Thisis a flourish, if you will, but it is something more. His spirit wouldsometimes rise up in a fine anger against the petty desires andcontrarieties of life. He would compare his own condition with the quietand dignified estate of the dead; and aspire to lie among his comradeson the field of Agincourt, as the Psalmist prayed to have the wings of adove and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. But such high thoughtscame to Charles only in a flash.
John the Fearless had been murdered in his turn on the bridge ofMontereau so far back as 1419. His son, Philip the Good--partly toextinguish the feud, partly that he might do a popular action, andpartly, in view of his ambitious schemes, to detach another great vassalfrom the throne of France--had taken up the cause of Charles of Orleans,and negotiated diligently for his release. In 1433 a Burgundian embassywas admitted to an interview with the captive duke, in the presence ofSuffolk. Charles shook hands most affectionately with the ambassadors.They asked after his health. "I am well enough in body," he replied,"but far from well in mind. I am dying of grief at having to pass thebest days of my life in prison, with none to sympathise." The talkfalling on the chances of peace, Charles referred to Suffolk if he werenot sincere and constant in his endeavours to bring it about. "If peacedepended on me," he said, "I should procure it gladly, were it to costme my life seven days after." We may take this as showing what a largeprice he set, not so much on peace, as on seven days of freedom. Sevendays!--he would make them seven years in the employment. Finally, heassured the ambassadors of his good-will to Philip of Burgundy;squeezed one of them by the hand and nipped him twice in the arm tosignify things unspeakable before Suffolk; and two days after sent themSuffolk's barber, one Jean Carnet, a native of Lille, to testify morefreely of his sentiments. "As I speak French," said this emissary, "theDuke of Orleans is more familiar with me than any other of thehousehold; and I can bear witness he never said anything against DukePhilip."[38] It will be remembered that this person, with whom he was soanxious to stand well, was no other than his hereditary enemy, the sonof his father's murderer. But the honest fellow bore no malice,indeed--not he. He began exchanging ballades with Philip, whom heapostrophises as his companion, his cousin, and his brother. He assureshim that, soul and body, he is altogether Burgundian; and protests thathe has given his heart in pledge to him. Regarded as the history of avendetta, it must be owned that Charles's life has points of someoriginality. And yet there is an engaging frankness about these balladeswhich disarms criticism.[39] You see Charles throwing himselfhead-foremost into the trap; you hear Burgundy, in his answers, begin toinspire him with his own prejudices, and draw melancholy pictures of themisgovernment of France. But Charles's own spirits are so high and soamiable, and he is so thoroughly convinced his cousin is a fine fellow,that one's scruples are carried away in the torrent of his happiness andgratitude. And his would be a sordid spirit who would not clap hands atthe consummation (Nov. 1440); when Charles, after having sworn on theSacrament that he would never again bear arms against England, andpledged himself body and soul to the unpatriotic faction in his owncountry, set out from London with a light heart and a damaged integrity.
In the magnificent copy of Charles's poems, given by our Henry VII. toElizabeth of York on the occasion of their marriage, a largeillumination figures at the head of one of the pages, which, inchronological perspective, is almost a history of his imprisonment. Itgives a view of London with all its spires, the river passing throughthe old bridge and busy with boats. One side of the white Tower has beentaken out, and we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved roomwhere the duke sits writing. He occupies a high-backed bench in front ofa great chimney; red and black ink are before him; and the upper end ofthe apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the red cross ofEngland on their breast. On the next side of the tower he appears again,leaning out of window and gazing on the river; doubtless there blowsjust then "a pleasant wind from out the land of France," and some shipcomes up the river: "the ship of good news." At the door we find him yetagain; this time embracing a messenger, while a groom stands by holdingtwo saddled horses. And yet farther to the left, a cavalcade defiles outof the tower; the duke is on his way at last towards "the sunshine ofFrance."
III
During the five-and-twenty years of his captivity Charles had not lostin the esteem of his fellow-countrymen. For so young a man, the head ofso great a house and so numerous a party, to be taken prisoner as herode in the vanguard of France, and stereotyped for all men in thisheroic attitude, was to taste untimeously the honours of the grave. Ofhim, as of the dead, it would be ungenerous to speak evil; what littleenergy he had displayed would be remembered with piety, when all that hehad done amiss was courteously forgotten. As English folk looked forArthur; as Danes
awaited the coming of Ogier; as Somersetshire peasantsor sergeants of the Old Guard expected the return of Monmouth orNapoleon; the countrymen of Charles of Orleans looked over the straitstowards his English prison with desire and confidence. Events had sofallen out while he was rhyming ballades, that he had become the type ofall that was most truly patriotic. The remnants of his old party hadbeen the chief defenders of the unity of France. His enemies of Burgundyhad been notoriously favourers and furtherers of English domination.People forgot that his brother still lay by the heels for an unpatriotictreaty with England, because Charles himself had been taken prisonerpatriotically fighting against it. That Henry V. had left special ordersagainst his liberation served to increase the wistful pity with which hewas regarded. And when, in defiance of all contemporary virtue, andagainst express pledges, the English carried war into their prisoner'sfief, not only France, but all thinking men in Christendom, were rousedto indignation against the oppressors, and sympathy with the victim. Itwas little wonder if he came to bulk somewhat largely in the imaginationof the best of those at home. Charles le Boutteillier, when (as thestory goes) he slew Clarence at Beauge, was only seeking an exchange forCharles of Orleans.[40] It was one of Joan of Arc's declared intentionsto deliver the captive duke. If there was no other way, she meant tocross the seas and bring him home by force. And she professed before herjudges a sure knowledge that Charles of Orleans was beloved of God.[41]
Alas! it was not at all as a deliverer that Charles returned to France.He was nearly fifty years old. Many changes had been accomplished since,at twenty-three, he was taken on the field of Agincourt. But of allthese he was profoundly ignorant, or had only heard of them in thediscoloured reports of Philip of Burgundy. He had the ideas of a formergeneration, and sought to correct them by the scandal of a factiousparty. With such qualifications he came back eager for the domination,the pleasures, and the display that befitted his princely birth. A longdisuse of all political activity combined with the flatteries of his newfriends to fill him with an overweening conceit of his own capacity andinfluence. If aught had gone wrong in his absence, it seemed quitenatural men should look to him for its redress. Was not King Arthur comeagain?
The Duke of Burgundy received him with politic honours. He took hisguest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible ofhis own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the sameatmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when hewent in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married to Mary ofCleves, at St. Omer. The marriage was celebrated with the usual pomp ofthe Burgundian court; there were joustings, and illuminations, andanimals that spouted wine; and many nobles dined together, _comme enbrigade_, and were served abundantly with many rich and curiousdishes.[42] It must have reminded Charles not a little of his firstmarriage at Compiegne; only then he was two years the junior of hisbride, and this time he was five-and-thirty years her senior. It will bea fine question which marriage promises more: for a boy of fifteen tolead off with a lass of seventeen, or a man of fifty to make a match ofit with a child of fifteen. But there was something bitter in both. Thelamentations of Isabella will not have been forgotten. As for Mary, shetook up with one Jaquet de la Lain, a sort of muscular Methody of theperiod, with a huge appetite for tournaments, and a habit of confessinghimself the last thing before he went to bed.[43] With such a hero, theyoung duchess's amours were most likely innocent; and in all other waysshe was a suitable partner for the duke, and well fitted to enter intohis pleasures.
When the festivities at Saint Omer had come to an end, Charles and hiswife set forth by Ghent and Tournay. The towns gave him offerings ofmoney as he passed through, to help in the payment of his ransom. Fromall sides, ladies and gentlemen thronged to offer him their services;some gave him their sons for pages, some archers for a bodyguard; and bythe time he reached Tournay, he had a following of 300 horse. Everywherehe was received as though he had been the king of France.[44] If he didnot come to imagine himself something of the sort, he certainly forgotthe existence of any one with a better claim to the title. He conductedhimself on the hypothesis that Charles VII. was another Charles VI. Hesigned with enthusiasm that treaty of Arras, which left France almost atthe discretion of Burgundy. On December 18 he was still no further thanBruges, where he entered into a private treaty with Philip; and it wasnot until January 14, ten weeks after he disembarked in France, andattended by a ruck of Burgundian gentlemen, that he arrived in Paris andoffered to present himself before Charles VII. The King sent word thathe might come, if he would, with a small retinue, but not with hispresent following; and the duke, who was mightily on his high horseafter all the ovations he had received, took the King's attitude amiss,and turned aside into Touraine, to receive more welcome and morepresents, and be convoyed by torchlight into faithful cities.
And so you see here was King Arthur home again, and matters nowisemended in consequence. The best we can say is, that this last stage ofCharles's public life was of no long duration. His confidence was soonknocked out of him in the contact with others. He began to find he wasan earthen vessel among many vessels of brass; he began to be shrewdlyaware that he was no King Arthur. In 1442, at Limoges, he made himselfthe spokesman of the malcontent nobility. The King showed himselfhumiliatingly indifferent to his counsels, and humiliatingly generoustowards his necessities. And there, with some blushes, he may be said tohave taken farewell of the political stage. A feeble attempt on thecounty of Asti is scarce worth the name of exception. Thenceforward letAmbition wile whom she may into the turmoil of events, our duke willwalk cannily in his well-ordered garden, or sit by the fire to touch theslender reed.[45]
IV
If it were given each of us to transplant his life wherever he pleasedin time or space, with all the ages and all the countries of the worldto choose from, there would be quite an instructive diversity of taste.A certain sedentary majority would prefer to remain where they were.Many would choose the Renaissance; many some stately and simple periodof Grecian life; and still more elect to pass a few years wanderingamong the villages of Palestine with an inspired conductor. For some ofour quaintly vicious contemporaries, we have the decline of the RomanEmpire and the reign of Henry III. of France. But there are others notquite so vicious, who yet cannot look upon the world with perfectgravity, who have never taken the categorical imperative to wife, andhave more taste for what is comfortable than for what is magnanimous andhigh; and I can imagine some of these casting their lot in the court ofBlois during the last twenty years of the life of Charles of Orleans.
The duke and duchess, their staff of officers and ladies, and thehigh-born and learned persons who were attracted to Blois on a visit,formed a society for killing time and perfecting each other in variouselegant accomplishments, such as we might imagine for an idealwatering-place in the Delectable Mountains. The company hunted and wenton pleasure-parties; they played chess, tables, and many other games.What we now call the history of the period passed, I imagine, over theheads of these good people much as it passes over our own. News reachedthem, indeed, of great and joyful import. William Peel received eightlivres and five sous from the duchess when he brought the first tidingsthat Rouen was recaptured from the English.[46] A little later and theduke sang, in a truly patriotic vein, the deliverance of Guyenne andNormandy.[47] They were liberal of rhymes and largesse, and welcomed theprosperity of their country much as they welcomed the coming of spring,and with no more thought of collaborating towards the event. Religionwas not forgotten in the court of Blois. Pilgrimages were agreeable andpicturesque excursions. In those days a well-served chapel was somethinglike a good vinery in our own,--an opportunity for display and thesource of mild enjoyments. There was probably something of his rooteddelight in pageantry, as well as a good deal of gentle piety, in thefeelings with which Charles gave dinner every Friday to thirteen poorpeople, served them himself, and washed their feet with his ownhands.[48] Solemn affairs would interest Charles and his courtiers fromtheir trivial side. The du
ke perhaps cared less for the deliverance ofGuyenne and Normandy than for his own verses on the occasion; just asDr. Russell's correspondence in _The Times_ was among the most materialparts of the Crimean War for that talented correspondent. And I think itscarcely cynical to suppose that religion as well as patriotism wasprincipally cultivated as a means of filling up the day.
It was not only messengers fiery red with haste and charged with thedestiny of nations who were made welcome at the gates of Blois. If anyman of accomplishment came that way, he was sure of an audience, andsomething for his pocket. The courtiers would have received Ben Jonsonlike Drummond of Hawthornden, and a good pugilist like Captain Barclay.They were catholic, as none but the entirely idle can be catholic. Itmight be Pierre, called Dieu d'amours, the juggler; or it might bethree high English minstrels; or the two men, players of ghitterns, fromthe kingdom of Scotland, who sang the destruction of the Turks; or againJehan Rognelet, player of instruments of music, who played and dancedwith his wife and two children; they would each be called into thecastle to give a taste of his proficiency before my lord the duke.[49]Sometimes the performance was of a more personal interest, and producedmuch the same sensations as are felt on an English green on the arrivalof a professional cricketer, or round an English billiard-table during amatch between Roberts and Cook. This was when Jehan Negre, the Lombard,came to Blois and played chess against all these chess-players, and wonmuch money from my lord and his intimates; or when Baudet Harenc ofChalons made ballades before all these ballade-makers.[50]
It will not surprise the reader to learn they were all makers ofballades and rondels. To write verses for May-day seems to have been asmuch a matter of course as to ride out with the cavalcade that went togather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a standing challenge, andthe courtiers pelted each other with humorous and sentimental verses asin a literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our friendMaistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into thefunniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases ofnouns or the moods of verbs; and Maistre Estienne would make reply insimilar fashion, seeking to prune the story of its more humiliatingepisodes. If Fredet was too long away from Court, a rondel went toupbraid him; and it was in a rondel that Fredet would excuse himself.Sometimes two or three, or as many as a dozen, would set to work on thesame refrain, the same idea, or in the same macaronic jargon. Some ofthe poetasters were heavy enough; others were not wanting in address;and the duchess herself was among those who most excelled. On oneoccasion eleven competitors made a ballade on the idea,
"I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge" (Je meurs de soif empres de la fontaine).
These eleven ballades still exist; and one of them arrests the attentionrather from the name of the author than from any special merit initself. It purports to be the work of Francois Villon; and so far as aforeigner can judge (which is indeed a small way), it may very well behis. Nay, and if any one thing is more probable than another, in thegreat _tabula rasa_, or unknown land, which we are fain to call thebiography of Villon, it seems probable enough that he may have gone upona visit to Charles of Orleans. Where Master Baudet Harenc, of Chalons,found a sympathetic, or perhaps a derisive audience (for who can tellnowadays the degree of Baudet's excellence in his art?), favour wouldnot be wanting for the greatest ballade-maker of all time. Great aswould seem the incongruity, it may have pleased Charles to own a sort ofkinship with ragged singers, and whimsically regard himself as one ofthe confraternity of poets. And he would have other grounds of intimacywith Villon. A room looking upon Windsor gardens is a different matterfrom Villon's dungeon at Meun; yet each in his own degree had been triedin prison. Each in his own way also loved the good things of this lifeand the service of the Muses. But the same gulf that separated Burnsfrom his Edinburgh patrons would separate the singer of Bohemia from therhyming duke. And it is hard to imagine that Villon's training amongstthieves, loose women, and vagabond students had fitted him to move in asociety of any dignity and courtliness. Ballades are very admirablethings; and a poet is doubtless a most interesting visitor. But amongthe courtiers of Charles there would be considerable regard for theproprieties of etiquette; and even a duke will sometimes have an eye tohis teaspoons. Moreover, as a poet, I can conceive he may havedisappointed expectation. It need surprise nobody if Villon's ballade onthe theme,
"I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge,"
was but a poor performance. He would make better verses on the lee-sideof a flagon at the sign of the Pomme du Pin, than in a cushioned settlein the halls of Blois.
Charles liked change of place. He was often not so much travelling asmaking a progress; now to join the King for some great tournament; nowto visit King Rene, at Tarascon, where he had a study of his own and sawall manner of interesting things--Oriental curios, King Rene paintingbirds, and, what particularly pleased him, Triboulet, the dwarf jester,whose skull-cap was no bigger than an orange.[51] Sometimes the journeyswere set about on horseback in a large party, with the _fourriers_ sentforward to prepare a lodging at the next stage. We find almostGargantuan details of the provision made by these officers against theduke's arrival, of eggs and butter and bread, cheese and peas andchickens, pike and bream and barbel, and wine both white and red.[52]Sometimes he went by water in a barge, playing chess or tables with afriend in the pavilion, or watching other vessels as they went beforethe wind.[53] Children ran along the bank, as they do to this day on theCrinan Canal; and when Charles threw in money they would dive and bringit up.[54] As he looked on their exploits, I wonder whether that room ofgold and silk and worsted came back into his memory, with the device oflittle children in the river, and the sky full of birds?
He was a bit of a book-fancier, and had vied with his brother Angoulemein bringing back the library of their grandfather Charles V., whenBedford put it up for sale in London.[55] The duchess had a library ofher own; and we hear of her borrowing romances from ladies in attendanceon the blue-stocking Margaret of Scotland.[56] Not only were bookscollected, but new books were written at the court of Blois. The widowof one Jean Fougere, a book-binder, seems to have done a number of oddcommissions for the bibliophilous count. She it was who received threevellum skins to bind the duchess's Book of Hours, and who was employedto prepare parchment for the use of the duke's scribes. And she it waswho bound in vermilion leather the great manuscript of Charles's ownpoems, which was presented to him by his secretary, Anthony Astesan,with the text in one column, and Astesan's Latin version in theother.[57]
Such tastes, with the coming of years, would doubtless take the place ofmany others. We find in Charles's verse much semi-ironical regret forother days, and resignation to growing infirmities. He who had been"nourished in the schools of love" now sees nothing either to please ordisplease him. Old age has imprisoned him within doors, where he meansto take his ease, and let younger fellows bestir themselves in life. Hehad written (in earlier days, we may presume) a bright and defiantlittle poem in praise of solitude. If they would but leave him alonewith his own thoughts and happy recollections, he declared it was beyondthe power of melancholy to affect him. But now, when his animal strengthhas so much declined that he sings the discomforts of winter instead ofthe inspirations of spring, and he has no longer any appetite for life,he confesses he is wretched when alone, and, to keep his mind fromgrievous thoughts, he must have many people around him, laughing,talking, and singing.[58]
While Charles was thus falling into years, the order of things, ofwhich he was the outcome and ornament, was growing old along with him.The semi-royalty of the princes of the blood was already a thing of thepast; and when Charles VII. was gathered to his fathers, a new kingreigned in France, who seemed every way the opposite of royal. Louis XI.had aims that were incomprehensible, and virtues that wereinconceivable, to his contemporaries. But his contemporaries were ableenough to appreciate his sordid exterior, and his cruel and treacherousspirit. To the whole nobility of France he was a fatal and unreasonablephenomenon. All such co
urts as that of Charles at Blois, or his friendRene's in Provence, would soon be made impossible: interference was theorder of the day; hunting was already abolished; and who should say whatwas to go next? Louis, in fact, must have appeared to Charles primarilyin the light of a kill-joy. I take it, when missionaries land in SouthSea Islands and lay strange embargo on the simplest things in life, theislanders will not be much more puzzled and irritated than Charles ofOrleans at the policy of the Eleventh Louis. There was one thing, I seemto apprehend, that had always particularly moved him; and that was, anyproposal to punish a person of his acquaintance. No matter what treasonhe may have made or meddled with, an Alencon or an Armagnac was sure tofind Charles reappear from private life and do his best to get himpardoned. He knew them quite well. He had made rondels with them. Theywere charming people in every way. There must certainly be some mistake.Had not he himself made anti-national treaties almost before he was outof his nonage? And for the matter of that, had not every one else donethe like? Such are some of the thoughts by which he might explain tohimself his aversion to such extremities; but it was on a deeper basisthat the feeling probably reposed. A man of his temper could not fail tobe impressed at the thought of disastrous revolutions in the fortunes ofthose he knew. He would feel painfully the tragic contrast, when thosewho had everything to make life valuable were deprived of life itselfAnd it was shocking to the clemency of his spirit, that sinners shouldbe hurried before their Judge without a fitting interval for penitenceand satisfaction. It was this feeling which brought him at last, a poor,purblind blue-bottle of the later autumn, into collision with "theuniversal spider," Louis XI. He took up the defence of the Duke ofBrittany at Tours. But Louis was then in no humour to hear Charles'stexts and Latin sentiments; he had his back to the wall, the future ofFrance was at stake; and if all the old men in the world had crossed hispath, they would have had the rough side of his tongue like Charles ofOrleans. I have found nowhere what he said, but it seems it wasmonstrously to the point, and so rudely conceived that the old dukenever recovered the indignity. He got home as far as Amboise, sickened,and died two days after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year ofhis age. And so a whiff of pungent prose stopped the issue of melodiousrondels to the end of time.
V
The futility of Charles's public life was of a piece throughout. Henever succeeded in any single purpose he set before him; for hisdeliverance from England, after twenty-five years of failure, and at thecost of dignity and consistency, it would be ridiculously hyperbolicalto treat as a success. During the first part of his life he was thestalking-horse of Bernard d'Armagnac; during the second, he was thepassive instrument of English diplomatists; and before he was wellentered on the third, he hastened to become the dupe and catspaw ofBurgundian treason. On each of these occasions, a strong and notdishonourable personal motive determined his behaviour. In 1407 and thefollowing years he had his father's murder uppermost in his mind.During his English captivity, that thought was displaced by a moreimmediate desire for his own liberation. In 1440 a sentiment ofgratitude to Philip of Burgundy blinded him to all else, and led him tobreak with the tradition of his party and his own former life. He wasborn a great vassal, and he conducted himself like a private gentleman.He began life in a showy and brilliant enough fashion, by the light of apetty personal chivalry. He was not without some tincture of patriotism;but it was resolvable into two parts: a preference for life among hisfellow-countrymen, and a barren point of honour. In England, he couldcomfort himself by the reflection that "he had been taken while loyallydoing his devoir," without any misgiving as to his conduct in theprevious years, when he had prepared the disaster of Agincourt bywasteful feud. This unconsciousness of the larger interests is perhapsmost happily exampled out of his own mouth. When Alencon stood accusedof betraying Normandy into the hands of the English, Charles made aspeech in his defence, from which I have already quoted more than once.Alencon, he said, had professed a great love and trust towards him; "yetdid he give no great proof thereof, when he sought to betray Normandy;whereby he would have made me lose an estate of 10,000 livres a year,and might have occasioned the destruction of the kingdom and of all usFrenchmen." These are the words of one, mark you, against whomGloucester warned the English Council because of his "great subtilityand cautelous disposition." It is not hard to excuse the impatience ofLouis XI. if such stuff was foisted on him by way of politicaldeliberation.
This incapacity to see things with any greatness, this obscure andnarrow view, was fundamentally characteristic of the man as well as ofthe epoch. It is not even so striking in his public life, where hefailed, as in his poems, where he notably succeeded. For wherever wemight expect a poet to be unintelligent, it certainly would not be inhis poetry. And Charles is unintelligent even there. Of all authorswhom a modern may still read, and read over again with pleasure, he hasperhaps the least to say. His poems seem to bear testimony rather to thefashion of rhyming, which distinguished the age, than to any specialvocation in the man himself. Some of them are drawing-room exercises,and the rest seem made by habit. Great writers are struck with somethingin nature or society, with which they become pregnant and longing; theyare possessed with an idea, and cannot be at peace until they have putit outside of them in some distinct embodiment. But with Charlesliterature was an object rather than a mean; he was one who lovedbandying words for its own sake; the rigidity of intricate metricalforms stood him in lieu of precise thought; instead of communicatingtruth, he observed the laws of a game; and when he had no one tochallenge at chess or rackets, he made verses in a wager againsthimself. From the very idleness of the man's mind, and not fromintensity of feeling, it happens that all his poems are more or lessautobiographical. But they form an autobiography singularly bald anduneventful. Little is therein recorded beside sentiments. Thoughts, inany true sense, he had none to record. And if we can gather that he hadbeen a prisoner in England, that he had lived in the Orleannese, andthat he hunted and went in parties of pleasure, I believe it is about asmuch definite experience as is to be found in all these five hundredpages of autobiographical verse. Doubtless, we find here and there acomplaint on the progress of the infirmities of age. Doubtless, he feelsthe great change of the year, and distinguishes winter from spring;winter as the time of snow and the fireside; spring as the return ofgrass and flowers, the time of St. Valentine's day and a beating heart.And he feels love after a fashion. Again and again we learn that Charlesof Orleans is in love, and hear him ring the changes through the wholegamut of dainty and tender sentiment. But there is never a spark ofpassion; and heaven alone knows whether there was any real woman in thematter, or the whole thing was an exercise in fancy. If these poems wereindeed inspired by some living mistress, one would think he had neverseen, never heard, and never touched her. There is nothing in any one ofthese so numerous love-songs to indicate who or what the lady was. Wasshe dark or fair, passionate or gentle like himself, witty or simple?Was it always one woman? or are there a dozen here immortalised in coldindistinction? The old English translator mentions grey eyes in hisversion of one of the amorous rondels; so far as I remember, he wasdriven by some emergency of the verse; but in the absence of all sharplines of character and anything specific, we feel for the moment a sortof surprise, as though the epithet were singularly happy and unusual, oras though we had made our escape from cloudland into something tangibleand sure. The measure of Charles's indifference to all that nowpreoccupies and excites a poet is best given by a positive example. If,besides the coming of spring, any one external circumstance may be saidto have struck his imagination, it was the despatch of _fourriers_,while on a journey, to prepare the night's lodging. This seems to be hisfavourite image; it reappears like the upas-tree in the early work ofColeridge: we may judge with what childish eyes he looked upon theworld, if one of the sights which most impressed him was that of a mangoing to order dinner.
Although they are not inspired by any deeper motive than the common runof contemporaneous drawing-room verses, those of Char
les of Orleans areexecuted with inimitable lightness and delicacy of touch. They deal withfloating and colourless sentiments, and the writer is never greatlymoved, but he seems always genuine. He makes no attempt to set off thinconceptions with a multiplicity of phrases. His ballades are generallythin and scanty of import; for the ballade presented too large a canvas,and he was preoccupied by technical requirements. But in the rondel hehas put himself before all competitors by a happy knack and aprevailing distinction of manner. He is very much more of a duke in hisverses than in his absurd and inconsequential career as a statesman; andhow he shows himself a duke is precisely by the absence of allpretension, turgidity, or emphasis. He turns verses, as he would havecome into the king's presence, with a quiet accomplishment of grace.
Theodore de Banville, the youngest poet of a famous generation nownearly extinct, and himself a sure and finished artist, knocked off, inhis happiest vein, a few experiments in imitation of Charles of Orleans.I would recommend these modern rondels to all who care about the oldduke, not only because they are delightful in themselves, but becausethey serve as a contrast to throw into relief the peculiarities of theirmodel. When de Banville revives a forgotten form of verse--and he hasalready had the honour of reviving the ballade--he does it in the spiritof a workman choosing a good tool wherever he can find one, and not atall in that of the dilettante, who seeks to renew bygone forms ofthought and make historic forgeries. With the ballade this seemednatural enough; for in connection with ballades the mind recurs toVillon, and Villon was almost more of a modern than de Banville himself.But in the case of the rondel, a comparison is challenged with Charlesof Orleans, and the difference between two ages and two literatures isillustrated in a few poems of thirteen lines. Something, certainly, hasbeen retained of the old movement; the refrain falls in time like awell-played bass; and the very brevity of the thing, by hampering andrestraining the greater fecundity of the modern mind, assists theimitation. But de Banville's poems are full of form and colour; theysmack racily of modern life, and own small kindred with the verse ofother days, when it seems as if men walked by twilight, seeing little,and that with distracted eyes, and instead of blood, some thin andspectral fluid circulated in their veins. They might gird themselves forbattle, make love, eat and drink, and acquit themselves manfully in allthe external parts of life; but of the life that is within, and thoseprocesses by which we render ourselves an intelligent account of what wefeel and do, and so represent experience that we for the first time makeit ours, they had only a loose and troubled possession. They beheld ortook part in great events, but there was no answerable commotion intheir reflective being; and they passed throughout turbulent epochs in asort of ghostly quiet and abstraction. Feeling seems to have beenstrangely disproportioned to the occasion, and words were laughablytrivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such as it was. Juvenaldes Ursins chronicles calamity after calamity, with but one comment forthem all: that "it was great pity." Perhaps, after too much of ourflorid literature, we find an adventitious charm in what is sodifferent; and while the big drums are beaten every day by perspiringeditors over the loss of a cock-boat or the rejection of a clause, andnothing is heard that is not proclaimed with sound of trumpet, it is notwonderful if we retire with pleasure into old books, and listen toauthors who speak small and clear, as if in a private conversation.Truly this is so with Charles of Orleans. We are pleased to find a smallman without the buskin, and obvious sentiments stated withoutaffectation. If the sentiments are obvious, there is all the more chancewe may have experienced the like. As we turn over the leaves, we mayfind ourselves in sympathy with some one or other of these staid joysand smiling sorrows. If we do we shall be strangely pleased, for thereis a genuine pathos in these simple words, and the lines go with a lilt,and sing themselves to music of their own.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Champollion-Figeac's "Louis et Charles d'Orleans," p. 348.
[15] D'Hericault's admirable "Memoir," prefixed to his edition of Charles's works, vol. i. p. xi.
[16] Vallet de Viriville, "Charles VII. et son Epoque," ii. 428, note 2.
[17] _See_ Lecoy de la Marche, "Le Roi Rene," i. 167.
[18] Vallet, "Charles VII.," ii. 85, 86, note 2.
[19] Champollion-Figeac, pp. 193-198.
[20] Champollion-Figeac, p. 209.
[21] The student will see that there are facts cited, and expressions borrowed, in this paragraph, from a period extending over almost the whole of Charles's life, instead of being confined entirely to his boyhood. As I do not believe there was any change, so I do not believe there is any anachronism involved.
[22] "The Debate between the Heralds of France and England," translated and admirably edited by Mr. Henry Pyne. For the attribution of this tract to Charles, the reader is referred to Mr. Pyne's conclusive argument.
[23] Des Ursins.
[24] Michelet, iv. App. 179, p. 337.
[25] Champollion-Figeac, pp. 279-82.
[26] Michelet, iv. pp. 123-24.
[27] "Debate between the Heralds."
[28] Sir H. Nicholas, "Agincourt."
[29] "Debate between the Heralds."
[30] Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 43.
[31] _Ibid._ i. 143.
[32] _Ibid._ i. 190.
[33] _Ibid._ i. 144.
[34] Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 158.
[35] M. Champollion-Figeac gives many in his editions of Charles's works, most (as I should think) of very doubtful authenticity, or worse.
[36] Rymer, x. 564; D'Hericault's "Memoir," p. xli.; Gairdner's "Paston Letters," i. 27, 99.
[37] Champollion-Figeac, p. 377.
[38] Dom Plancher, iv. 178-9.
[39] Works, i. 157-63.
[40] Vallet's "Charles VII.," i. 251.
[41] "Proces de Jeanne d'Arc," i. 133-55.
[42] Monstrelet.
[43] Vallet's "Charles VII.," iii. chap. i. But see the chronicle that bears Jaquet's name; a lean and dreary book.
[44] Monstrelet.
[45] D'Hericault's "Memoir," xl. xli.; Vallet, "Charles VII.," ii. 435.
[46] Champollion-Figeac, p. 368.
[47] Works, i. 115.
[48] D'Hericault's "Memoir," xlv.
[49] Champollion-Figeac, pp. 361, 381.
[50] _Ibid._, pp. 359, 361.
[51] Lecoy de la Marche, "Roi Rene," ii. 155, 177.
[52] Champollion-Figeac, chaps, v. and vi.
[53] _Ibid._, p. 364; Works, i. 172.
[54] Champollion-Figeac, p. 364: "Jeter de l'argent aux petis enfans qui estoient au long de Bourbon, pour les faire nonner en l'eau et aller querre l'argent au fond."
[55] Champollion-Figeac, p. 387.
[56] "Nouvelle Biographie Didot," art. "Marie de Cleves"; Vallet, "Charles VII.," iii. 85, note 1.
[57] Champollion-Figeac, pp. 383-386.
[58] Works, ii. 57, 258.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 3 Page 8