ken out, and we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved room
where the duke sits writing. He occupies a high-backed bench in front of
a great chimney; red and black ink are before him; and the upper end of
the apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the red cross of
England on their breast. On the next side of the tower he appears again,
leaning out of window and gazing on the river; doubtless there blows
just then "a pleasant wind from out the land of France," and some ship
comes up the river: "the ship of good news." At the door we find him yet
again; this time embracing a messenger, while a groom stands by holding
two saddled horses. And yet farther to the left, a cavalcade defiles out
of the tower; the duke is on his way at last towards "the sunshine of
France."

III

During the five-and-twenty years of his captivity Charles had not lost
in the esteem of his fellow-countrymen. For so young a man, the head of
so great a house and so numerous a party, to be taken prisoner as he
rode in the vanguard of France, and stereotyped for all men in this
heroic attitude, was to taste untimeously the honours of the grave. Of
him, as of the dead, it would be ungenerous to speak evil; what little
energy he had displayed would be remembered with piety, when all that he
had done amiss was courteously forgotten. As English folk looked for
Arthur; as Danes awaited the coming of Ogier; as Somersetshire peasants
or sergeants of the Old Guard expected the return of Monmouth or
Napoleon; the countrymen of Charles of Orleans looked over the straits
towards his English prison with desire and confidence. Events had so
fallen out while he was rhyming ballades, that he had become the type of
all that was most truly patriotic. The remnants of his old party had
been the chief defenders of the unity of France. His enemies of Burgundy
had been notoriously favourers and furtherers of English domination.
People forgot that his brother still lay by the heels for an unpatriotic
treaty with England, because Charles himself had been taken prisoner
patriotically fighting against it. That Henry V. had left special orders
against his liberation served to increase the wistful pity with which he
was regarded. And when, in defiance of all contemporary virtue, and
against express pledges, the English carried war into their prisoner's
fief, not only France, but all thinking men in Christendom, were roused
to indignation against the oppressors,