It appears his health had
suffered in the pit at Méun; he was thirty years of age and quite bald;
with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with the
sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of
portraits, that is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps
even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. A
sinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his eye, and the
loose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensual
temperament. Certainly the sorriest figure on the rolls of fame. FOOTNOTES:

  [6] "Étude Biographique sur François Villon." Paris: H. Menu. [7] "Bourgeois de Paris," ed. Panthéon, pp. 688, 689. [8] "Bourgeois," pp. 627, 636, and 725. [9] "Chronique Scandaleuse," ed. Panthéon, p. 237. [10] Monstrelet: "Panthéon Littéraire," p. 26. [11] "Chron. Scand." _ut supra_. [12] Here and there, principally in the order of events, this article
    differs from M. Longnon's own reading of his material. The ground on
    which he defers the execution of Montigny and De Cayeux beyond the
    date of their trials seems insufficient. There is a law of parsimony
    for the construction of historical documents; simplicity is the
    first duty of narration; and hanged they were. [13] "Chron. Scand.," p. 338. VII

CHARLES OF ORLEANS


For one who was no great politician, nor (as men go) especially wise,
capable, or virtuous, Charles of Orleans is more than usually enviable
to all who love that better sort of fame which consists in being known
not widely, but intimately. "To be content that time to come should know
there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, or to
subsist under naked denominations, without deserts or noble acts," is,
says Sir Thomas Browne, a frigid ambition. It is to some more specific
memory that youth looks forward in its vigils. Old kings are sometimes
disinterred in all the emphasis of life, the hands untainted by decay,
the beard that had so often wagged in camp or senate still spread upon
the royal bosom; and in busts and pictures, some similitude of the great
and beautiful of former days is handed down. In this way, public
curiosity may be gratified, but hardly any private aspiration after
fame. It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not
impossible that it may respect or sympathise; and so a man would rather
leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face,
_figura animi magis quam corporis_. Of those who have thus survived
themselves most completely, left a sort of personal seduction behind
them in the world, and retained, after death, the art of making friends,
Montaigne and Samuel Johnson certainly stand first. But we have
portraits of all sorts of men, from august Cæsar to the king's dwarf;
and all sorts of portraits, from a Titian treasured in the Louvre to a
profile over the grocer's chimney shelf. And so in a less degree, but
no less truly, than the spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightful
Essays, that of Charles of Orleans survives in a few old songs and old
account-books; and it is still in the choice of the reader to make this
duke's acquaintance, and, if their humours suit, become his friend. I

His birth--if we are to argue from a man's parents--was above his merit. It is not merely that he was the grandson of one king, the father of
another, and the uncle of a third; but something more specious was to be
looked for from the son of his father, Louis de Valois, Duke of Orleans,
brother to the mad king Charles VI., lover of Queen Isabel, and the
leading patron of art and one of the leading politicians in France. And
the poet might have inherited yet higher virtues from his mother,
Valentina of Milan, a very pathetic figure of the age, the faithful wife
of an unfaithful husband, and the friend of a most unhappy king. The
father, beautiful, eloquent, and accomplished, exercised a strange
fascination over his contemporaries; and among those who dip nowadays
into the annals of the time there are not many--and these few are little
to be envied--who can resist the fascination of the mother. All mankind
owe her a debt of gratitude because she brought some comfort into the
life of the poor madman who wore the crown of France. Born (May 1391) of such a noble stock, Charles was to know from the
first all favours of nature and art. His father's gardens were the
admiration of his contemporaries; his castles were situated in the most
agreeable parts of France, and sumptuously adorned. We have preserved,
in an inventory of 1403, the description of tapestried rooms where
Charles may have played in childhood. [14] "A green room, with the
ceiling full of angels, and the _dossier_ of shepherds and shepherdesses
seeming (_faisant contenance_) to eat nuts and cherries. A room of gold,
silk and worsted, with a device of little children in a river, and the
sky full of birds. A room of green tapestry, showing a knight and lady
at chess in a pavilion. Another green-room, with shepherdesses in a
trellised garden worked in gold and silk. A carpet representing
cherry-trees, where there is a fountain, and a lady gathering cherries
in a basin." These were some of the pictures over which his fancy might
busy itself of an afternoon, or at morning as he lay awake in bed. With
our deeper and more logical sense of life, we can have no idea how large
a space in the attention of mediæval men might be occupied by such
figured hangings on the wall. There was something timid and purblind in
the view they had of the world. Morally, they saw nothing outside of
traditional axioms; and little of the physical aspect of things entered
vividly into their mind, beyond what was to be seen on church windows
and the walls and floors of palaces. The reader will remember how
Villon's mother conceived of heaven and hell and took all her scanty
stock of theology from the stained glass that threw its light upon her
as she prayed. And there is scarcely a detail of external effect in the
chronicles and romances of the time, but might have been borrowed at
second hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the history of
mankind which we may see paralleled to some extent in the first infant
school, where the representations of lions and elephants alternate round
the wall with moral verses and trite presentments of the lesser virtues. So that to live in a house of many pictures was tantamount, for a time,
to a liberal education in itself. At Charles's birth an order of knighthood was inaugurated in his honour. At nine years old he was a squire; at eleven, he had the escort of a
chaplain and a schoolmaster; at twelve, his uncle the king made him a
pension of twelve thousand livres d'or. [15] He saw the most brilliant
and the most learned persons of France in his father's court; and would
not fail to notice that these brilliant and learned persons were one and
all engaged in rhyming.