and sympathy with the victim. It
was little wonder if he came to bulk somewhat largely in the imagination
of the best of those at home. Charles le Boutteillier, when (as the
story goes) he slew Clarence at Beauge, was only seeking an exchange for
Charles of Orleans.[40] It was one of Joan of Arc's declared intentions
to deliver the captive duke. If there was no other way, she meant to
cross the seas and bring him home by force. And she professed before her
judges a sure knowledge that Charles of Orleans was beloved of God.[41]

Alas! it was not at all as a deliverer that Charles returned to France.
He was nearly fifty years old. Many changes had been accomplished since,
at twenty-three, he was taken on the field of Agincourt. But of all
these he was profoundly ignorant, or had only heard of them in the
discoloured reports of Philip of Burgundy. He had the ideas of a former
generation, and sought to correct them by the scandal of a factious
party. With such qualifications he came back eager for the domination,
the pleasures, and the display that befitted his princely birth. A long
disuse of all political activity combined with the flatteries of his new
friends to fill him with an overweening conceit of his own capacity and
influence. If aught had gone wrong in his absence, it seemed quite
natural men should look to him for its redress. Was not King Arthur come
again?

The Duke of Burgundy received him with politic honours. He took his
guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of
his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same
atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he
went in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married to Mary of
Cleves, at St. Omer. The marriage was celebrated with the usual pomp of
the Burgundian court; there were joustings, and illuminations, and
animals that spouted wine; and many nobles dined together, _comme en
brigade_, and were served abundantly with many rich and curious
dishes.[42] It must have reminded Charles not a little of his first
marriage at Compiegne; only then he was two years the junior of his
bride, and this time he was five-and-thirty years her senior. It will be
a fine question which marriage promises more: for a boy of fifteen to
lead off with a lass of seventeen, or a man of fifty to make a match of
it with a child of fifteen. But there was something bitter in both. The
lamentations of Isabella wi