Indeed, if it is difficult to realise the part
played by pictures, it is perhaps even more difficult to realise that
played by verses in the polite and active history of the age. At the
siege of Pontoise, English and French exchanged defiant ballades over
the walls. [16] If a scandal happened, as in the loathsome thirty-third
story of the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," all the wits must make rondels
and chansonettes, which they would hand from one to another with an
unmanly sneer. Ladies carried their favourite's ballades in their
girdles. [17] Margaret of Scotland, all the world knows already, kissed
Alain Chartier's lips in honour of the many virtuous thoughts and golden
sayings they had uttered; but it is not so well known that this princess
was herself the most industrious of poetasters, that she is supposed to
have hastened her death by her literary vigils, and sometimes wrote as
many as twelve rondels in the day. [18] It was in rhyme, even, that the
young Charles should learn his lessons. He might get all manner of
instruction in the truly noble art of the chase, not without a smack of
ethics by the way, from the compendious didactic poem of Gace de la
Bigne. Nay, and it was in rhyme that he should learn rhyming: in the
verses of his father's Maître d'Hôtel, Eustache Deschamps, which treated
of _l'art de dictier et de faire chançons, ballades, virelais et
rondeaux_, along with many other matters worth attention, from the
courts of Heaven to the misgovernment of France. [19] At this rate, all
knowledge is to be had in a goody, and the end of it is an old song. We
need not wonder when we hear from Monstrelet that Charles was a very
well educated person. He could string Latin texts together by the hour,
and make ballades and rondels better than Eustache Deschamps himself. He
had seen a mad king who would not change his clothes, and a drunken
emperor who could not keep his hand from the wine-cup. He had spoken a
great deal with jesters and fiddlers, and with the profligate lords who
helped his father to waste the revenues of France. He had seen ladies
dance on into broad daylight, and much burning of torches and waste of
dainties and good wine. [20] And when all is said, it was no very helpful
preparation for the battle of life. "I believe Louis XI.," writes
Comines, "would not have saved himself, if he had not been very
differently brought up from such other lords as I have seen educated in
this country; for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapes
with finery and fine words. "[21] I am afraid Charles took such lessons
to heart, and conceived of life as a season principally for junketing
and war. His view of the whole duty of man, so empty, vain, and
wearisome to us, was yet sincerely and consistently held. When he came
in his ripe years to compare the glory of two kingdoms, England and
France, it was on three points only--pleasures, valour, and
riches,--that he cared to measure them; and in the very outset of that
tract he speaks of the life of the great as passed, "whether in arms, as
in assaults, battles, and sieges, or in jousts and tournaments, in high
and stately festivities and in funeral solemnities. "[22]

When he was no more than thirteen, his father had him affianced to
Isabella, virgin-widow of our Richard II. and daughter of his uncle
Charles VI. ; and, two years after (June 29, 1406), the cousins were
married at Compiégne, he fifteen, she seventeen years of age. It was in
every way a most desirable match. The bride brought five hundred
thousand francs of dowry. The ceremony was of the utmost magnificence,
Louis of Orleans figuring in crimson velvet, adorned with no less than
seven hundred and ninety-five pearls, gathered together expressly for
this occasion. And no doubt it must have been very gratifying for a
young gentleman of fifteen to play the chief part in a pageant so gaily
put upon the stage. Only, the bridegroom might have been a little older;
and, as ill-luck would have it, the bride herself was of this way of
thinking, and would not be consoled for the loss of her title as queen,
or the contemptible age of her new husband. _Pleuroit fort ladite
Isabeau_; the said Isabella wept copiously. [23] It is fairly debatable
whether Charles was much to be pitied when, three years later (September
1409), this odd marriage was dissolved by death. Short as it was,
however, this connection left a lasting stamp upon his mind; and we find
that, in the last decade of his life, and after he had re-married for
perhaps the second time, he had not yet forgotten or forgiven the
violent death of Richard II. _Ce mauvais cas_--that ugly business, he
writes, has yet to be avenged. The marriage festivity was on the threshold of evil days. The great
rivalry between Louis of Orleans and John the Fearless, Duke of
Burgundy, had been forsworn with the most reverend solemnities. But the
feud was only in abeyance, and John of Burgundy still conspired in
secret. On November 23, 1407--in that black winter when the frost lasted
six-and-sixty days on end--a summons from the King reached Louis of
Orleans at the Hôtel Barbette, where he had been supping with Queen
Isabel. It was seven or eight in the evening, and the inhabitants of the
quarter were abed. He set forth in haste, accompanied by two squires
riding on one horse, a page and a few varlets running with torches. As
he rode, he hummed to himself and trifled with his glove. And so riding,
he was beset by the bravoes of his enemy and slain. My lord of Burgundy
set an ill precedent in this deed, as he found some years after on the
bridge of Montereau; and even in the meantime he did not profit quietly
by his rival's death. The horror of the other princes seems to have
perturbed himself; he avowed his guilt in the council, tried to brazen
it out, finally lost heart and fled at full gallop, cutting bridges
behind him, towards Bapaume and Lille. And so there we have the head of
one faction, who had just made himself the most formidable man in
France, engaged in a remarkably hurried journey, with black care on the
pillion. And meantime, on the other side, the widowed duchess came to
Paris, in appropriate mourning, to demand justice for her husband's
death. Charles VI., who was then in a lucid interval, did probably all
that he could, when he raised up the kneeling suppliant with kisses and
smooth words. Things were at a dead-lock. The criminal might be in the
sorriest fright, but he was still the greatest of vassals. Justice was
easy to ask and not difficult to promise; how it was to be executed was
another question. No one in France was strong enough to punish John of
Burgundy; and perhaps no one, except the widow, very sincere in wishing
to punish him. She, indeed, was eaten up of zeal; but the intensity of her eagerness
wore her out; and she died about a year after the murder, of grief and
indignation, unrequited love and unsatisfied resentment.