elt a moment's embarrassment. Even his
audacity and lack of scruple did not go to the extent of doing without
the king altogether, or even of dispensing with having him for a tool;
and he had seen too much of the Parisian populace not to know how
precarious and fickle was its favor. He determined to negotiate with the
king's party, and for that purpose he sent his brother-in-law the Count
of Hainault, to Tours, with a brilliant train of unarmed attendants,
bidden to make themselves agreeable, and not to fight.

A recent event had probably much to do with his decision. His most
indomitable foe, she to whom the king and his councillors had lately
granted a portion of the vengeance she was seeking to take on him,
Valentine of Milan, Duchess of Orleans, died on the 4th of December,
1408, at Blois, far from satisfied with the moral reparation she had
obtained in her enemy's absence, and clearly foreseeing that against the
Duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and present in person, she would
obtain nothing of what she had asked. For spirits of the best mettle,
and especially for a woman's heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to
bear; and Valentine Visconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her
best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this
trial. At the close of her life she had taken for device, "Nought have I
more; more hold I nought" (Bien ne m 'est plus; plus ne m 'est rien);
and so fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words
inscribed upon the black tapestry of her chamber. In her last hours she
had by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another
still whom she remembered. She sent for a child, six years of age, John,
a natural son of her husband by Marietta d'Enghien, wife of Sire de
Cany-Dunois. "This one," said she, "was filched from me; yet there is
not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father's death."
Twenty-five years later John was the famous Bastard of Orleans, Count
Dunois, Charles VII.'s lieutenant-general, and Joan of Arc's comrade in
the work of saving the French kingship and France.

[Illustration: Death of Valentine de Milan----45]

The Duke of Burgundy's negotiations at Tours were not fruitless. The
result was, that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was concluded and an
interview effected at Chartres between the duke on one side and on the
other the king, the queen, the _dauphin_, all the royal family, the
counci