48. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 316.]

CHAPTER VII

THE MAID AT POITIERS

For fourteen years the town of Poitiers had been the capital of that
part of France which belonged to the French. The Dauphin Charles had
transferred his Parlement there, or rather had assembled there those
few members who had escaped from the Parlement of Paris. The Parlement
of Poitiers consisted of two chambers only. It would have judged as
wisely as King Solomon had there been any questions on which to
pronounce judgment, but no litigants presented themselves--they were
afraid of being captured on the way by freebooters and captains in the
King's pay; besides, in the disturbed state of the kingdom justice had
little to do with the settlement of disputes. The councillors, who for
the most part had lands near Paris, were hard put to it for food and
clothing. They were rarely paid and there were no perquisites. In vain
they had inscribed their registers with the formula: _Non deliberetur
donec solvantur species_; no payments were forthcoming from the
suitors.[721] The Attorney General, Messire Jean Jouvenel des Ursins,
who owned rich lands and houses in Ile-de-France, Brie, and Champagne,
was filled with pity at the sight of that good and honourable lady
his wife, his eleven children, and his three sons-in-law going
barefoot and poorly clad through the streets of the town.[722] As for
the doctors and professors who had followed the King's fortunes, in
vain were they wells of knowledge and springs of clerkly learning,
since, for lack of a University to teach in, they reaped no advantage
from their eloquence and their erudition. The town of Poitiers, having
become the first city in the realm, had a Parlement but no University,
like a lady highly born but one-eyed withal, for the Parlement and the
University are the two eyes of a great city. Thus in their doleful
leisure they were consumed with a desire, if it were God's will, to
restore the King's fortunes as well as their own. Meanwhile, shivering
with cold and emaciated with hunger, they groaned and lamented. Like
Israel in the desert they sighed for the day when the Lord, inclining
his ear to their supplications, should say: "At even ye shall eat
flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread: and ye shall
know that I am the Lord your God." _Vespere comedetis carnes et mane
saturabimini panibus: scietisque quod ego sum Dominus deus vester._
(Exodus xvi, 12.) It was from among th