the annals of the time there are not many--and these few are little
to be envied--who can resist the fascination of the mother. All mankind
owe her a debt of gratitude because she brought some comfort into the
life of the poor madman who wore the crown of France.

Born (May 1391) of such a noble stock, Charles was to know from the
first all favours of nature and art. His father's gardens were the
admiration of his contemporaries; his castles were situated in the most
agreeable parts of France, and sumptuously adorned. We have preserved,
in an inventory of 1403, the description of tapestried rooms where
Charles may have played in childhood.[14] "A green room, with the
ceiling full of angels, and the _dossier_ of shepherds and shepherdesses
seeming (_faisant contenance_) to eat nuts and cherries. A room of gold,
silk and worsted, with a device of little children in a river, and the
sky full of birds. A room of green tapestry, showing a knight and lady
at chess in a pavilion. Another green-room, with shepherdesses in a
trellised garden worked in gold and silk. A carpet representing
cherry-trees, where there is a fountain, and a lady gathering cherries
in a basin." These were some of the pictures over which his fancy might
busy itself of an afternoon, or at morning as he lay awake in bed. With
our deeper and more logical sense of life, we can have no idea how large
a space in the attention of mediaeval men might be occupied by such
figured hangings on the wall. There was something timid and purblind in
the view they had of the world. Morally, they saw nothing outside of
traditional axioms; and little of the physical aspect of things entered
vividly into their mind, beyond what was to be seen on church windows
and the walls and floors of palaces. The reader will remember how
Villon's mother conceived of heaven and hell and took all her scanty
stock of theology from the stained glass that threw its light upon her
as she prayed. And there is scarcely a detail of external effect in the
chronicles and romances of the time, but might have been borrowed at
second hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the history of
mankind which we may see paralleled to some extent in the first infant
school, where the representations of lions and elephants alternate round
the wall with moral verses and trite presentments of the lesser virtues.
So that to live in a house of many pictures was tantamount, for a time,
to a liberal educatio