rowd.

The young stranger looked round upon all those amused, light-minded,
sceptical faces, and without a moment's hesitation went forward and
knelt down before him. "Gentil Dauphin," she said, "God give you good
life." "But it is not I that am the King; there is the King," said
Charles. "Gentil Prince, it is you and no other," she said; then rising
from her knee: "Gentil Dauphin, I am Jeanne the Maid. I am sent to you
by the King of Heaven to tell you that you shall be consecrated and
crowned at Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who
is King of France." The little masquerade had failed, the jest was over.
There would be little more laughing among the courtiers, when they saw
the face of Charles grow grave. He took the new-comer aside, perhaps to
that deep recess of the window where in the darkening night the glimmer
of the clear, flowing river, the great vault of sky would still be
visible dimly, outside the circle of the blazing interior with all its
smoky lights.

Charles VII. of France was, like many of his predecessors, a _pauvre
Sire_ enough. He had thought more of his amusements than of the troubles
of his country; but a wild and senseless gaiety will sometimes spring
from despair as well as from lightness of heart; and after all, the
dread responsibility, the sense that in all his helplessness and
inability to do anything he was still the man who ought to do all, would
seem to have moved him from time to time. A secret doubt in his heart,
divulged to no man, had added bitterness to the conviction of his own
weakness. Was he indeed the heir of France? Had he any right to that
sustaining confidence which would have borne up his heart in the midst
of every discouragement? His very mother had given him up and set him
aside. He was described as the so-called Dauphin in treaties signed by
Charles and Isabeau his parents. If anyone knew, she knew; and was it
possible that more powerful even than the English, more cruel than the
Burgundians, this stain of illegitimacy was upon him, making all effort
vain? There is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man's
heart, and little worthy as was this King, the story we are here told
has a thrill of truth in it. It is reported by a certain Sala, who
declares that he had it from the lips of Charles's favourite and close
follower, the Seigneur de Boisi, a courtier who, after the curious
custom of the time, shared even the bed of his master. This was