collected crowds. Sometimes
the presentation carried significance beyond mere entertainment. Here
a maid, garbed as a wood nymph, appeared leading a swan which wore the
collar of the Golden Fleece and a porcupine. This last beast was to
symbolise the Orleans device, _Near and Far_, as the creature was
supposed to project his spines to a distance.

One enthusiastic citizen covered his whole house with gold and the
roof with silver leaves to betoken his satisfaction. Indeed, if we
may believe the chroniclers, never in the memory of man had any city
incurred so much expense to honour its lord. The duke permitted his
heart to be touched by these proofs of devotion, and on the very
evening of his arrival he evinced that his confidence was restored by
sending the civic keys and a gracious message to the magistrates. At
the news of this condescension the cries of "_Noel_" re-echoed afresh
through the illuminated streets.

Charles was not present at this entry, which took place on Saturday,
December 11th, but Philip was so much entertained with the performance
that he sent for his son, and on the following Saturday he and the
Countess of Charolais came from Ghent to join the party. The Duke of
Orleans and many nobles rode out of the city to meet the young couple,
who were formally escorted to the palace by magistrates and citizens
in a body. On the Sunday there were repetitions of some of the plays
and every attention was offered by the Bruges burghers to their young
guests. When Orleans departed with his bride on Tuesday, December
14th, what wonder that the lady wept in sorrow at leaving these gay
Burgundian doings!

While Charles did not actually witness the humiliation of the
citizens, the seven-year-old boy would, undoubtedly, have heard and
known sufficient of the cause of the festivals to be fully aware that
the citizens who had dared defy his father were glad to buy back his
smiles at any cost to their pride and purse. He would have known, too,
that merchants from Venice, Genoa, Florence, and elsewhere joined the
Bruges burghers in the welcome to the mollified overlord. It was a
spectacle of the relations between a city and the ducal father not to
be easily forgotten by the son.

[Footnote 1: The indefatigable Gachard has published an itinerary of
Philip the Good, so far as he could make it. _(Collection des voyages
des souverains des Pays Bas_, i., 71.) Unfortunately, owing to
the destruction of papers, only a fe