e et belle!
Par deca, ne dela la mer,
Ne scay Dame ne Damoiselle
Qui soit en tous biens parfais telle;
C'est un songe que d'y penser.
Dieu, qu'il la fait bon regarder!_

THE FAREWELL.
(_The 310th Roundel._)

Here is the last thing--we may presume--that Charles of Orleans ever
wrote: "Salute me all the company, I pray."

In that "company", not only the Court at Amboise, but the men of the
early wars, his companions, were round him, and the dead friends of his
gentle memory.

He was broken with age; he was already feeling the weight of isolation
from the Royal Family; he was beginning to suffer the insults of the
king. But, beneath all this, his gaiety still ran like a river under
ice, and in the ageing of a poet, humour and physical decline combined
make a good, human thing.

There is an excellent irony in the refrain: "Salute me, all the
company," whose double interpretation must not be missed, though it may
seem far-fetched.

Till the last line it means, without any question, "Salute the company
in my name," but I think there runs through it also, the hint of "Salute
me for my years, all you present who are young," and that this certainly
is the note in the last line of all. It must be remembered of the
French, that they never expand or explain their ironical things, for in
art it is their nature to detest excess.

This last thing of his, then, I say, is the most characteristic of him
and of his Valois blood, and of the national spirit in general to which
he belonged: for he, and it, and they, loved and love contrast, and the
extra-meaning of words.

_THE FAREWELL._

_Saluez moy toute la compaignie
Ou a present estes a chiere lie,
Et leur dictes que voulentiers seroye
Avecques eulx, mais estre n'y porroye,
Pour Vieillesse qui m'a en sa baillie.
Au temps passe, Jeunesse si jolie
Me gouvernoit; las! or n'y suis je mye,
Et pour cela pour Dieu, que excuse soye;
Saluez moy toute la compaignie
Ou a present estes a chiere lie,
Et leur dictes que voulentiers seroye.
Amoureux fus, or ne le suis je mye,
Et en Paris menoye bonne vie;
Adieu Bon temps ravoir ne vous saroye,
Bien sangle fus d'une estroite courroye.
Que, par Aige, convient que la deslie.
Saluez moy toute la compaignie._

V