s of doing away with the
duke's legitimate heir.[2] Three little waxen images were found in his
house, and it was alleged that he practised various magic arts withal
in order to win the favour of the duke and of the French king, and
still worse to cause Charles to waste away with a mysterious sickness.
The accusations were sufficient to make Nevers resign all his offices
in his kinsman's court and retire, post-haste, to France. Had he been
wholly innocent he would have demanded trial at the hands of his peers
of the Golden Fleece as behooved one of the order. But he withdrew
undefended, and left his tattered reputation fluttering raggedly in
the breeze of gossip.

Charles stayed in Holland aloof from the ducal court until a fresh
incident drove him thither to give vent to his indignation. Only three
days had Philip de Commines been page to Duke Philip, then resident at
Lille, when an embassy headed by Morvilliers, Chancellor of France,
was given audience in the presence of the Burgundian court, including
the Count of Charolais. The future historian,[4] then nineteen years
old, was keenly alive to all that passed on that November fifth, 1464.
Morvilliers used very bitter terms in his assertion that Charles had
illegally stopped a little French ship of war and arrested a certain
bastard of Rubempre on the false charge that his errand in Holland,
where the incident occurred, was to seize and carry off Charles
himself. Moreover, one knight of Burgundy, Sir Olivier de La Marche
had caused this tale to be bruited everywhere,

"especially at Bruges whither strangers of all nations resort.
This had hurt Louis deeply, and he now demanded through his
chancellor that Duke Philip should send this same Sir Olivier de
La Marche prisoner to Paris, there to be punished as the case
required. Whereupon, Duke Philip answered that the said Sir
Olivier was steward of his house, born in the County of Burgundy
and in no respect subject to the Crown of France."

Philip added that if his servant had wrought ill to the king's honour
he, the duke, would see to his punishment. As to the bastard of
Rubempre, true it was that he had been apprehended in Holland,[5] but
there was adequate ground for his arrest as his behaviour had been
strange, at least so thought the Count of Charolais. Philip added that
if his son were suspicious

"he took it not of him for he was never so, but of his mother
who had been the