the
growth of such a feeling. One after another of his fellow-prisoners was
ransomed and went home. More than once he was himself permitted to visit
France; where he worked on abortive treaties and showed himself more
eager for his own deliverance than for the profit of his native land.
Resignation may follow after a reasonable time upon despair; but if a
man is persecuted by a series of brief and irritating hopes, his mind no
more attains to a settled frame of resolution than his eye would grow
familiar with a night of thunder and lightning. Years after, when he was
speaking at the trial of that Duke of Alencon who began life so
hopefully as the boyish favourite of Joan of Arc, he sought to prove
that captivity was a harder punishment than death. "For I have had
experience myself," he said; "and in my prison of England, for the
weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I have many a
time wished I had been slain at the battle where they took me."[37] This
is a flourish, if you will, but it is something more. His spirit would
sometimes rise up in a fine anger against the petty desires and
contrarieties of life. He would compare his own condition with the quiet
and dignified estate of the dead; and aspire to lie among his comrades
on the field of Agincourt, as the Psalmist prayed to have the wings of a
dove and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. But such high thoughts
came to Charles only in a flash.

John the Fearless had been murdered in his turn on the bridge of
Montereau so far back as 1419. His son, Philip the Good--partly to
extinguish the feud, partly that he might do a popular action, and
partly, in view of his ambitious schemes, to detach another great vassal
from the throne of France--had taken up the cause of Charles of Orleans,
and negotiated diligently for his release. In 1433 a Burgundian embassy
was admitted to an interview with the captive duke, in the presence of
Suffolk. Charles shook hands most affectionately with the ambassadors.
They asked after his health. "I am well enough in body," he replied,
"but far from well in mind. I am dying of grief at having to pass the
best days of my life in prison, with none to sympathise." The talk
falling on the chances of peace, Charles referred to Suffolk if he were
not sincere and constant in his endeavours to bring it about. "If peace
depended on me," he said, "I should procure it gladly, were it to cost
me my life seven days after." We may tak