It was during
the last months of her life that this fiery and generous woman, seeing
the soft hearts of her own children, looked with envy on a certain
natural son of her husband's, destined to become famous in the sequel as
the Bastard of Orleans, or the brave Dunois. "_You were stolen from
me_," she said; "it is you who are fit to avenge your father." These are
not the words of ordinary mourning, or of an ordinary woman. It is a
saying over which Balzac would have rubbed his episcopal hands. That the
child who was to avenge her husband had not been born out of her body
was a thing intolerable to Valentina of Milan; and the expression of
this singular and tragic jealousy is preserved to us by a rare chance,
in such straightforward and vivid words as we are accustomed to hear
only on the stress of actual life, or in the theatre. In history--where
we see things as in a glass darkly, and the fashion of former times is
brought before us, deplorably adulterated and defaced, fitted to very
vague and pompous words, and strained through many men's minds of
everything personal or precise--this speech of the widowed duchess
startles a reader, somewhat as the footprint startled Robinson Crusoe. A
human voice breaks in upon the silence of the study, and the student is
aware of a fellow-creature in his world of documents. With such a clue
in hand, one may imagine how this wounded lioness would spur and
exasperate the resentment of her children, and what would be the last
words of counsel and command she left behind her. With these instancies of his dying mother--almost a voice from the
tomb--still tingling in his ears, the position of young Charles of
Orleans, when he was left at the head of that great house, was curiously
similar to that of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The times were out of joint;
here was a murdered father to avenge on a powerful murderer; and here,
in both cases, a lad of inactive disposition born to set these matters
right. Valentina's commendation of Dunois involved a judgment on
Charles, and that judgment was exactly correct. Whoever might be,
Charles was not the man to avenge his father. Like Hamlet, this son of a
dear father murdered was sincerely grieved at heart. Like Hamlet, too,
he could unpack his heart with words, and wrote a most eloquent letter
to the King, complaining that what was denied to him would not be denied
"to the lowest born and poorest man on earth." Even in his private
hours he strove to preserve a lively recollection of his injury, and
keep up the native hue of resolution. He had gems engraved with
appropriate legends, hortatory or threatening: "_Dieu le scet_", God
knows it; or "_Souvenez-vous de_--" Remember! [24] It is only towards the
end that the two stories begin to differ; and in some points the
historical version is the more tragic. Hamlet only stabbed a silly old
councillor behind the arras; Charles of Orleans trampled France for five
years under the hoofs of his banditti. The miscarriage of Hamlet's
vengeance was confined, at widest, to the palace; the ruin wrought by
Charles of Orleans was as broad as France. Yet the first act of the young duke is worthy of honourable mention. Prodigal Louis had made enormous debts; and there is a story extant, to
illustrate how lightly he himself regarded these commercial obligations. It appears that Louis, after a narrow escape he made in a thunderstorm,
had a smart access of penitence, and announced he would pay his debts on
the following Sunday. More than eight hundred creditors presented
themselves, but by that time the devil was well again, and they were
shown the door with more gaiety than politeness. A time when such
cynical dishonesty was possible for a man of culture is not, it will be
granted, a fortunate epoch for creditors. When the original debtor was
so lax, we may imagine how an heir would deal with the incumbrances of
his inheritance. On the death of Philip the Forward, father of that John
the Fearless whom we have seen at work, the widow went through the
ceremony of a public renunciation of goods; taking off her purse and
girdle, she left them on the grave, and thus, by one notable act,
cancelled her husband's debts and defamed his honour. The conduct of
young Charles of Orleans was very different. To meet the joint
liabilities of his father and mother (for Valentina also was lavish), he
had to sell or pledge a quantity of jewels; and yet he would not take
advantage of a pretext, even legally valid, to diminish the amount. Thus, one Godefroi Lefèvre, having disbursed many odd sums for the late
duke, and received or kept no vouchers, Charles ordered that he should
be believed upon his oath. [25] To a modern mind this seems as honourable
to his father's memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as high
as Haman. And as things fell out, except a recantation from the
University of Paris, which had justified the murder out of party
feeling, and various other purely paper reparations, this was about the
outside of what Charles was to effect in that direction. He lived five
years, and grew up from sixteen to twenty-one, in the midst of the most
horrible civil war, or series of civil wars, that ever devastated
France; and from first to last his wars were ill-starred, or else his
victories useless. Two years after the murder (March 1409), John the
Fearless having the upper hand for the moment, a shameful and useless
reconciliation took place, by the King's command, in the Church of Our
Lady at Chartres. The advocate of the Duke of Burgundy stated that Louis
of Orleans had been killed "for the good of the King's person and
realm." Charles and his brothers, with tears of shame, under protest,
_pour ne pas desobéir au roi_, forgave their father's murderer and swore
peace upon the missal. It was, as I say, a shameful and useless
ceremony; the very greffier, entering it in his register, wrote in the
margin, "_Pax, pax, inquit Propheta, et non est pax._"[26] Charles was
soon after allied with the abominable Bernard d'Armagnac, even betrothed
or married to a daughter of his, called by a name that sounds like a
contradiction in terms, Bonne d'Armagnac. From that time forth,
throughout all this monstrous period--a very nightmare in the history of
France--he is no more than a stalking-horse for the ambitious Gascon. Sometimes the smoke lifts, and you can see him for the twinkling of an
eye, a very pale figure; at one moment there is a rumour he will be
crowned king; at another, when the uproar has subsided, he will be heard
still crying out for justice; and the next (1412), he is showing himself
to the applauding populace on the same horse with John of Burgundy. But
these are exceptional seasons, and for the most part he merely rides at
the Gascon's bridle over devastated France. His very party go, not by
the name of Orleans, but by the name of Armagnac. Paris is in the hands
of the butchers: the peasants have taken to the woods.