y, rashly authorized an interview between Louis and De Commynes.
"The king's speech," says the chronicler Molinet, in the Duke of
Burgundy's service, "was so sweet and full of virtue that it entranced,
siren-like, all those who gave ear to it." "Of all princes," says
Commynes himself, "he was the one who was at most pains to gain over a
man who was able to serve him, and able to injure him; and he was not put
out at being refused once by one whom he was working to gain over, but
continued thereat, making him large promises, and actually giving money
and estate when he made acquaintances that were pleasing to him."
Commynes spoke according to his own experience. Louis, from the moment
of making his acquaintance, had guessed his value; and as early as 1468,
in the course of his disagreeable adventure at Peronne, he had found the
good offices of Commynes of great service to him. It was probably from
this very time that he applied himself assiduously to the task of gaining
him over. Commynes hesitated a long while; but Louis was even more
perseveringly persistent than Commynes was hesitating. The king backed
up his handsome offers by substantial and present gifts. In 1471,
according to what appears, he lent Commynes six thousand livres of Tours,
which the Duke of Burgundy's councillor lodged with a banker at Tours.
The next year, the king, seeing that Commynes was still slow to decide,
bade one of his councillors to go to Tours, in his name, and seize at the
banker's the six thousand livres intrusted to the latter by Commynes.
"This," says the learned editor of the last edition of Commynes'
Memoires, "was an able and decisive blow. The effect of the seizure
could not but be, and indeed was, to put Commynes in the awkward dilemma
of seeing his practices (as the saying was at that time) divulged without
reaping the fruit of them, or of securing the advantages only by setting
aside the scruples which held him back. He chose the latter course,
which had become the safer; and during the night between the 7th and 8th
of August, 1472, he left Burgundy forever. The king was at that time at
Ponts-de-Ce, and there his new servant joined him." The very day of his
departure, at six A. M., Duke Charles had a seizure made of all the goods
and all the rights belonging to the fugitive; "but what Commynes lost on
one side," says his editor, "he was about to recover a hundred fold on
the other; scarcely had he arrived at the court of