He may have been sitting all day long in prison
with folded hands; but when he goes to bed the retrospect will seem
animated and eventful. Besides confirming himself as an habitual maker of verses, Charles
acquired some new opinions during his captivity. He was perpetually
reminded of the change that had befallen him. He found the climate of
England cold and "prejudicial to the human frame"; he had a great
contempt for English fruit and English beer; even the coal fires were
unpleasing in his eyes. [29] He was rooted up from among his friends and
customs and the places that had known him. And so in this strange land
he began to learn the love of his own. Sad people all the world over are
like to be moved when the wind is in some particular quarter. So Burns
preferred when it was in the west, and blew to him from his mistress; so
the girl in the ballade, looking south to Yarrow, thought it might carry
a kiss betwixt her and her gallant; and so we find Charles singing of
the "pleasant wind that comes from France. "[30] One day, at
"Dover-on-the-Sea," he looked across the straits, and saw the sandhills
about Calais. And it happened to him, he tells us in a ballade, to
remember his happiness over there in the past; and he was both sad and
merry at the recollection, and could not have his fill of gazing on the
shores of France. [31] Although guilty of unpatriotic acts, he had never
been exactly unpatriotic in feeling. But his sojourn in England gave,
for the time at least, some consistency to what had been a very weak and
ineffectual prejudice. He must have been under the influence of more
than usually solemn considerations, when he proceeded to turn Henry's
puritanical homily after Agincourt into a ballade, and reproach France,
and himself by implication, with pride, gluttony, idleness, unbridled
covetousness, and sensuality. [32] For the moment, he must really have
been thinking more of France than of Charles of Orleans. And another lesson he learned. He who was only to be released in case of
peace begins to think upon the disadvantages of war. "Pray for peace,"
is his refrain: a strange enough subject for the ally of Bernard
d'Armagnac. [33] But this lesson was plain and practical; it had one side
in particular that was specially attractive for Charles; and he did not
hesitate to explain it in so many words. "Everybody," he writes--I
translate roughly--"everybody should be much inclined to peace, for
everybody has a deal to gain by it. "[34]

Charles made laudable endeavours to acquire English, and even learned to
write a rondel in that tongue of quite average mediocrity. [35] He was
for some time billeted on the unhappy Suffolk, who received fourteen
shillings and fourpence a day for his expenses; and from the fact that
Suffolk afterwards visited Charles in France while he was negotiating
the marriage of Henry VI., as well as the terms of that nobleman's
impeachment, we may believe there was some not unkindly intercourse
between the prisoner and his jailer: a fact of considerable interest
when we remember that Suffolk's wife was the grand-daughter of the poet
Geoffrey Chaucer. [36] Apart from this, and a mere catalogue of dates and
places, only one thing seems evident in the story of Charles's
captivity. It seems evident that, as these five-and-twenty years drew
on, he became less and less resigned. Circumstances were against the
growth of such a feeling. One after another of his fellow-prisoners was
ransomed and went home. More than once he was himself permitted to visit
France; where he worked on abortive treaties and showed himself more
eager for his own deliverance than for the profit of his native land. Resignation may follow after a reasonable time upon despair; but if a
man is persecuted by a series of brief and irritating hopes, his mind no
more attains to a settled frame of resolution than his eye would grow
familiar with a night of thunder and lightning. Years after, when he was
speaking at the trial of that Duke of Alençon who began life so
hopefully as the boyish favourite of Joan of Arc, he sought to prove
that captivity was a harder punishment than death. "For I have had
experience myself," he said; "and in my prison of England, for the
weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I have many a
time wished I had been slain at the battle where they took me. "[37] This
is a flourish, if you will, but it is something more. His spirit would
sometimes rise up in a fine anger against the petty desires and
contrarieties of life. He would compare his own condition with the quiet
and dignified estate of the dead; and aspire to lie among his comrades
on the field of Agincourt, as the Psalmist prayed to have the wings of a
dove and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. But such high thoughts
came to Charles only in a flash. John the Fearless had been murdered in his turn on the bridge of
Montereau so far back as 1419. His son, Philip the Good--partly to
extinguish the feud, partly that he might do a popular action, and
partly, in view of his ambitious schemes, to detach another great vassal
from the throne of France--had taken up the cause of Charles of Orleans,
and negotiated diligently for his release. In 1433 a Burgundian embassy
was admitted to an interview with the captive duke, in the presence of
Suffolk. Charles shook hands most affectionately with the ambassadors. They asked after his health. "I am well enough in body," he replied,
"but far from well in mind. I am dying of grief at having to pass the
best days of my life in prison, with none to sympathise." The talk
falling on the chances of peace, Charles referred to Suffolk if he were
not sincere and constant in his endeavours to bring it about. "If peace
depended on me," he said, "I should procure it gladly, were it to cost
me my life seven days after." We may take this as showing what a large
price he set, not so much on peace, as on seven days of freedom. Seven
days!--he would make them seven years in the employment. Finally, he
assured the ambassadors of his good-will to Philip of Burgundy;
squeezed one of them by the hand and nipped him twice in the arm to
signify things unspeakable before Suffolk; and two days after sent them
Suffolk's barber, one Jean Carnet, a native of Lille, to testify more
freely of his sentiments. "As I speak French," said this emissary, "the
Duke of Orleans is more familiar with me than any other of the
household; and I can bear witness he never said anything against Duke
Philip. "[38] It will be remembered that this person, with whom he was so
anxious to stand well, was no other than his hereditary enemy, the son
of his father's murderer. But the honest fellow bore no malice,
indeed--not he. He began exchanging ballades with Philip, whom he
apostrophises as his companion, his cousin, and his brother. He assures
him that, soul and body, he is altogether Burgundian; and protests that
he has given his heart in pledge to him.