o on the simplest things in life, the
islanders will not be much more puzzled and irritated than Charles of
Orleans at the policy of the Eleventh Louis. There was one thing, I seem
to apprehend, that had always particularly moved him; and that was, any
proposal to punish a person of his acquaintance. No matter what treason
he may have made or meddled with, an Alencon or an Armagnac was sure to
find Charles reappear from private life and do his best to get him
pardoned. He knew them quite well. He had made rondels with them. They
were charming people in every way. There must certainly be some mistake.
Had not he himself made anti-national treaties almost before he was out
of his nonage? And for the matter of that, had not every one else done
the like? Such are some of the thoughts by which he might explain to
himself his aversion to such extremities; but it was on a deeper basis
that the feeling probably reposed. A man of his temper could not fail to
be impressed at the thought of disastrous revolutions in the fortunes of
those he knew. He would feel painfully the tragic contrast, when those
who had everything to make life valuable were deprived of life itself
And it was shocking to the clemency of his spirit, that sinners should
be hurried before their Judge without a fitting interval for penitence
and satisfaction. It was this feeling which brought him at last, a poor,
purblind blue-bottle of the later autumn, into collision with "the
universal spider," Louis XI. He took up the defence of the Duke of
Brittany at Tours. But Louis was then in no humour to hear Charles's
texts and Latin sentiments; he had his back to the wall, the future of
France was at stake; and if all the old men in the world had crossed his
path, they would have had the rough side of his tongue like Charles of
Orleans. I have found nowhere what he said, but it seems it was
monstrously to the point, and so rudely conceived that the old duke
never recovered the indignity. He got home as far as Amboise, sickened,
and died two days after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year of
his age. And so a whiff of pungent prose stopped the issue of melodious
rondels to the end of time.

V

The futility of Charles's public life was of a piece throughout. He
never succeeded in any single purpose he set before him; for his
deliverance from England, after twenty-five years of failure, and at the
cost of dignity and consistency, it would be ridiculously hyper