*  Nouvelle Biographic Diaot,  art.  "Marie  de  Cleves."  Vallet,  Charles
VII. y  iii.  85,  note  i.
^CHARLES  OF  ORLEANS.  265

vellum-skins  to  bind  the  duchess's  Book  of  Hours,
and  who  was  employed  to  prepare  parchment  for  the
use  of  the  duke's  scribes.  And  she  it  was  who  bound
in  vermilion  leather  the  great  manuscript  of  Charles's
own  poems,  which  was  presented  to  him  by  his  secre-
tary, Anthony  Astesan,  with  the  text  in  one  column,
and  Astesan' s  Latin  version  in  the  other.  ^

Such  tastes,  with  the  coming  of  years,  would  doubt-
less take  the  place  of  many  others.  We  find  in
Charles's  verse  much  semi- ironical  regret  for  other
days,  and  resignation  to  growing  infirmities.  He  who
had  been  "nourished  in  the  schools  of  love,"  now
sees  nothing  either  to  please  or  displease  him.  Old
age  has  imprisoned  him  within  doors,  where  he  means
to  take  his  ease,  and  let  younger  fellows  bestir  them-
selves in  life.  He  had  written  (in  earlier  days,  we
may  presume)  a  bright  and  defiant  little  poem  in  praise
of  solitude.  If  they  would  but  leave  him  alone  with
his  own  thoughts  and  happy  recollections,  he  declared
it  was  beyond  the  power  of  melancholy  to  affect  him.
But  now,  when  his  animal  strength  has  so  much  de-
clined that  he  sings  the  discomforts  of  winter  instead
of  the  inspirations  of  spring,  and  he  has  no  longer  any
appetite  for  life,  he  confesses  he  is  wretched  when
alone,  and,  to  keep  his  mind  from  grievous  thoughts,
he  must  have  many  people  around  him,  laughing,
talking,  and  singing.^

While  Charles  was  thus  falling  into  years,  the  order
of  things,  of  which  he  was  the  outcome  and  ornament,

1  Champollion-Figeac,  383,  384-386.  '^  Works,  ii.  57,  258.
2  66  CHARLES  OF  ORLEANS.
