olyp the Kraken, had cast
her tentacles over Brittany, Normandy, l'Ile de France, part of Picardy,
the entire North, the Interior as far as Orleans, and crawling forward
left in her wake towns squeezed dry and country exhausted.

"In vain Charles clamoured for subsidies, invented excuses for
exactions, and pressed the imposts. The paralyzed cities and fields
abandoned to the wolves could afford no succour. Remember his very claim
to the throne was disputed. He became like a blind man going the rounds
with a tin cup begging sous. His court at Chinon was a snarl of intrigue
complicated by an occasional murder. Weary of being hunted, more or less
out of harm's way behind the Loire, Charles and his partisans finally
consoled themselves by flaunting in the face of inevitable disaster the
devil-may-care debaucheries of the condemned making the most of the few
moments left them. Forays and loans furnished them with opulent cheer
and permitted them to carouse on a grand scale. The eternal _qui-vive_
and the misfortunes of war were forgotten in the arms of courtesans.

"What more could have been expected of a used-up sleepy-headed king, the
issue of an infamous mother and a mad father?"

"Oh, whatever you say about Charles VII pales beside the testimony of
the portrait of him in the Louvre painted by Foucquet. That bestial
face, with the eyes of a small-town ursurer and the sly psalm-singing
mouth that butter wouldn't melt in, has often arrested me. Foucquet
depicts a debauched priest who has a bad cold and has been drinking sour
wine. Yet you can see that this monarch is of the very same type as the
more refined, less salacious, more prudently cruel, more obstinate and
cunning Louis XI, his son and successor. Well, Charles VII was the man
who had Jean Sans Peur assassinated, and who abandoned Jeanne d'Arc.
What more need be said?"

"What indeed? Well, Gilles de Rais, who had raised an army at his own
expense, was certainly welcomed by this court with open arms. There is
no doubt that he footed the bills for tournaments and banquets, that he
was vigilantly 'tapped' by the courtiers, and that he lent the king
staggering sums. But in spite of his popularity he never seems to have
evaded responsibility and wallowed in debauchery, like the king. We find
Gilles shortly afterward defending Anjou and Maine against the English.
The chronicles say that he was 'a good and hardy captain,' but his
'goodness' and 'hardiness' did not preve