; but Bureau de la
Riviere had warm friends, and amongst others, the young and beautiful
Duchess of Berry, to whose marriage he had greatly contributed, and John
Juvenal des Ursins, provost of the tradesmen of Paris, one of the men
towards whom the king and the populace felt the highest esteem and
confidence. The king, favorably inclined towards the accused by his own
bias and the influence of the Duke of Orleans, presented a demand to
parliament to have the papers of the procedure brought to him. Parliament
hesitated and postponed a reply; the procedure followed its course; and
at the end of some months further the king ordered it to be stopped, and
Sires de la Riviere and Neviant to be set at liberty and to have their
real property restored to them, at the same time that they lost their
personal property and were commanded to remain forever at fifteen
leagues' distance, at least, from the court. This was moral equity, if
not legal justice. The accused had been able and faithful servants of
their king and country. Their imprisonment had lasted more than a year.
The Dukes of Burgundy and Berry remained in possession of power.

They exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without any great
dispute between themselves--the Duke of Burgundy's influence being
predominant--or with the king, who, save certain lucid intervals, took
merely a nominal part in the government. During this period no event of
importance disturbed France internally. In 1393 the King of England,
Richard II., son of the Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of
Charles VI., Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and
in both countries there was a desire for peace. An embassy came in state
to demand the hand of the princess. The ambassadors were presented, and
the Earl of Northampton, marshal of England, putting one knee to the
ground before her, said, "Madame, please God you shall be our sovereign
lady and Queen of England." The young girl, well tutored, answered, "If
it please God and my lord and father that I should be Queen of England, I
would be willingly, for I have certainly been told that I should then be
a great lady." The contract was signed on the 9th of March, 1396, with a
promise that, when the princess had accomplished her twelfth year, she
should be free to assent to or refuse the union; and ten days after the
marriage, the king's uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a
truce, which promis