great siege, and all sorts of approaches in all sorts
of ways. Every day, once at least in the four and twenty hours, his
conversation was of war, and he took more pleasure in it than in aught
else. Above all things he loved men of valor and good renown, and he
more than any other loved and supported the people, and freely did good
to poor mendicants and others of God's poor."

Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful
again, confirm the truth of this portrait. His first thought and his
first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king. The unhappy
city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and
ruin. "The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it," says
an eye-witness, "twenty-four thousand houses empty." The Duke of
Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted
to supply the Parisians with bread and amusements (panem et circenses);
but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy. In 1425, there
was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance
of Death: Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by
the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them
dance. In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from
its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people. "Four blind men,
armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock. They had
to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they
were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another." The constable
resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital
of France. In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself
apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there
and plundered the church. He at once gave orders to march. The
Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and
would not mount. Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun
to St. Denis. "You know the country?" said the constable to Marshal
Isle-Adam. "Yes, my lord," answered the other; "and by my faith, in the
position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them,
though you had ten thousand fighting men." "Ah! but we will," replied
Richemont; "God will help us. Keep pressing forward to support the
skirmishers." And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English. The
popula