ate lords who
helped his father to waste the revenues of France. He had seen ladies
dance on into broad daylight, and much burning of torches and waste of
dainties and good wine.[20] And when all is said, it was no very helpful
preparation for the battle of life. "I believe Louis XI.," writes
Comines, "would not have saved himself, if he had not been very
differently brought up from such other lords as I have seen educated in
this country; for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapes
with finery and fine words."[21] I am afraid Charles took such lessons
to heart, and conceived of life as a season principally for junketing
and war. His view of the whole duty of man, so empty, vain, and
wearisome to us, was yet sincerely and consistently held. When he came
in his ripe years to compare the glory of two kingdoms, England and
France, it was on three points only--pleasures, valour, and
riches,--that he cared to measure them; and in the very outset of that
tract he speaks of the life of the great as passed, "whether in arms, as
in assaults, battles, and sieges, or in jousts and tournaments, in high
and stately festivities and in funeral solemnities."[22]

When he was no more than thirteen, his father had him affianced to
Isabella, virgin-widow of our Richard II. and daughter of his uncle
Charles VI.; and, two years after (June 29, 1406), the cousins were
married at Compiegne, he fifteen, she seventeen years of age. It was in
every way a most desirable match. The bride brought five hundred
thousand francs of dowry. The ceremony was of the utmost magnificence,
Louis of Orleans figuring in crimson velvet, adorned with no less than
seven hundred and ninety-five pearls, gathered together expressly for
this occasion. And no doubt it must have been very gratifying for a
young gentleman of fifteen to play the chief part in a pageant so gaily
put upon the stage. Only, the bridegroom might have been a little older;
and, as ill-luck would have it, the bride herself was of this way of
thinking, and would not be consoled for the loss of her title as queen,
or the contemptible age of her new husband. _Pleuroit fort ladite
Isabeau_; the said Isabella wept copiously.[23] It is fairly debatable
whether Charles was much to be pitied when, three years later (September
1409), this odd marriage was dissolved by death. Short as it was,
however, this connection left a lasting stamp upon his mind; and we find
that, in the last decade of h