If an indecorous adventure befell our friend
Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into the
funniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases of
nouns or the moods of verbs; and Maistre Estienne would make reply in
similar fashion, seeking to prune the story of its more humiliating
episodes. If Frédet was too long away from Court, a rondel went to
upbraid him; and it was in a rondel that Frédet would excuse himself. Sometimes two or three, or as many as a dozen, would set to work on the
same refrain, the same idea, or in the same macaronic jargon. Some of
the poetasters were heavy enough; others were not wanting in address;
and the duchess herself was among those who most excelled. On one
occasion eleven competitors made a ballade on the idea,

  "I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge"
   (Je meurs de soif emprès de la fontaine). These eleven ballades still exist; and one of them arrests the attention
rather from the name of the author than from any special merit in
itself. It purports to be the work of François Villon; and so far as a
foreigner can judge (which is indeed a small way), it may very well be
his. Nay, and if any one thing is more probable than another, in the
great _tabula rasa_, or unknown land, which we are fain to call the
biography of Villon, it seems probable enough that he may have gone upon
a visit to Charles of Orleans. Where Master Baudet Harenc, of Chalons,
found a sympathetic, or perhaps a derisive audience (for who can tell
nowadays the degree of Baudet's excellence in his art? ), favour would
not be wanting for the greatest ballade-maker of all time. Great as
would seem the incongruity, it may have pleased Charles to own a sort of
kinship with ragged singers, and whimsically regard himself as one of
the confraternity of poets. And he would have other grounds of intimacy
with Villon. A room looking upon Windsor gardens is a different matter
from Villon's dungeon at Méun; yet each in his own degree had been tried
in prison. Each in his own way also loved the good things of this life
and the service of the Muses. But the same gulf that separated Burns
from his Edinburgh patrons would separate the singer of Bohemia from the
rhyming duke. And it is hard to imagine that Villon's training amongst
thieves, loose women, and vagabond students had fitted him to move in a
society of any dignity and courtliness. Ballades are very admirable
things; and a poet is doubtless a most interesting visitor. But among
the courtiers of Charles there would be considerable regard for the
proprieties of etiquette; and even a duke will sometimes have an eye to
his teaspoons. Moreover, as a poet, I can conceive he may have
disappointed expectation. It need surprise nobody if Villon's ballade on
the theme,

  "I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge,"

was but a poor performance. He would make better verses on the lee-side
of a flagon at the sign of the Pomme du Pin, than in a cushioned settle
in the halls of Blois. Charles liked change of place. He was often not so much travelling as
making a progress; now to join the King for some great tournament; now
to visit King René, at Tarascon, where he had a study of his own and saw
all manner of interesting things--Oriental curios, King René painting
birds, and, what particularly pleased him, Triboulet, the dwarf jester,
whose skull-cap was no bigger than an orange. [51] Sometimes the journeys
were set about on horseback in a large party, with the _fourriers_ sent
forward to prepare a lodging at the next stage. We find almost
Gargantuan details of the provision made by these officers against the
duke's arrival, of eggs and butter and bread, cheese and peas and
chickens, pike and bream and barbel, and wine both white and red. [52]
Sometimes he went by water in a barge, playing chess or tables with a
friend in the pavilion, or watching other vessels as they went before
the wind. [53] Children ran along the bank, as they do to this day on the
Crinan Canal; and when Charles threw in money they would dive and bring
it up. [54] As he looked on their exploits, I wonder whether that room of
gold and silk and worsted came back into his memory, with the device of
little children in the river, and the sky full of birds? He was a bit of a book-fancier, and had vied with his brother Angoulême
in bringing back the library of their grandfather Charles V., when
Bedford put it up for sale in London. [55] The duchess had a library of
her own; and we hear of her borrowing romances from ladies in attendance
on the blue-stocking Margaret of Scotland. [56] Not only were books
collected, but new books were written at the court of Blois. The widow
of one Jean Fougère, a book-binder, seems to have done a number of odd
commissions for the bibliophilous count. She it was who received three
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 secretary, Anthony Astesan,
with the text in one column, and Astesan's Latin version in the
other. [57]

Such tastes, with the coming of years, would doubtless 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 themselves 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 declined 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. [58]

While Charles was thus falling into years, the order of things, of
which he was the outcome and ornament, was growing old along with him. The semi-royalty of the princes of the blood was already a thing of the
past; and when Charles VII. was gathered to his fathers, a new king
reigned in France, who seemed every way the opposite of royal. Louis XI. had aims that were incomprehensible, and virtues that were
inconceivable, to his contemporaries. But his contemporaries were able
enough to appreciate his sordid exterior, and his cruel and treacherous
spirit. To the whole nobility of France he was a fatal and unreasonable
phenomenon.