justice for the death of her husband, and begged that she might have a day appointed her for refuting the calumnies with which it had been sought to blacken his memory. The dauphin promised a speedy reply. On the 11th of September, accordingly, a new meeting of princes, lords, prelates, parliament, the University, and burgesses was held in the great hall of the Louvre. The duchess of Orleans, the duke her son, their chancellor, and the principal officers of her household were introduced, and leave was given them to proceed with the justification of the late duke of Orleans. It had been prepared beforehand; the duchess placed the manuscript before the council, as pledging herself unreservedly to all it contained, and master Sérisy, abbot of St. Fiacre, a monk of the order of St. Benedict, read the document out publicly. It was a long and learned defence in which the imputations made by the Cordelier, John Petit, against the late duke of Orleans, were effectually and in some parts eloquently refuted. After the justification, master Cousinot, advocate of the duchess of Orleans, presented in person his demands against the duke of Burgundy. They claimed that he should be bound to come "without belt or chaperon and disavow solemnly and publicly, on his knees before the royal family and also on the very spot where the crime was committed, the murder of the duke of Orleans. After several other acts of reparation which were imposed upon him, he was to be sent into exile for twenty years beyond the seas, and on his return to remain at twenty leagues' distance, at least, from the king and the royal family. After reading these demands, which were more legitimate than practicable, the young dauphin, well instructed as to what he had to say, addressed the duchess of Orleans and her children in these terms: "We and all the princes of the blood royal here present, after having heard the justification of our uncle, the duke of Orleans, have no doubt left touching the honour of his memory and do hold him to be completely cleared of all that hath been said contrary to his reputation. As to the further demands you make they shall be suitably provided for in course of justice." At this answer the assembly broke up.

It had just been reported that the duke of Burgundy had completely beaten and reduced to submission the insurgent Liègese and

that he was preparing to return to Paris with his army. Great was the consternation amongst the council of the queen and princes. They feared above every thing to see the king and the dauphin in the duke of Burgundy's power; and it was decided to quit Paris which had always testified a favourable disposition towards Duke John. Charles VI. was the first to depart, on the 3rd of November, 1408. The queen, the dauphin, and the princes followed him two days. afterwards, and at Gien they all took boat on the Loire to go to Tours. The duke of Burgundy on his arrival at Paris, on the 28th of November, found not a soul belonging to the royal family or the court; and he felt a moment's embarrassment. Even his audacity and lack of scruple did not go to the extent of doing without the king altogether, or even of dispensing with having him for a tool; and he had seen too much of the Parisian populace not to know how precarious and fickle was its favour. He determined to negotiate with the king's party, and for that purpose he sent his brother-in-law, the count of Hainault, to Tours, with a brilliant train of unarmed attendants, bidden to make themselves agreeable and not to fight.

A recent event had probably much to do with his decision. His most indomitable foe, she to whom the king and his councillors had lately granted a portion of the vengeance she was seeking to take on him, Valentine of Milan, duchess of Orleans, died on the 4th of December, 1408, at Blois, far from satisfied with the moral reparation she had obtained in her enemy's absence, and clearly foreseeing that against the duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and present in person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked. For spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman's heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear; and Valentine Visconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial. At the close of her life she had taken for device, "Naught have I more, more hold I naught" (Rien ne m'est plus; plus ne m'est rien); and so fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words inscribed upon the black tapestry of her chamber. In her last hours she had by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another still whom she remembered. She sent for a child, six years of age, John, a natural son of her husband by Marietta d'Enghien, wife of

sire de Cany-Dunois. "This one," said she, "was filched from me; yet there is not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father's death." Twenty-five years later John was the famous bastard of Orleans, Count Dunois, Charles VII.'s lieutenant-general and Joan of Arc's comrade in the work of saving the French kingship and France.

The duke of Burgundy's negotiations at Tours were not fruitless. The result was that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was concluded and an interview effected at Chartres between the duke on one side and on the other the king, the queen, the dauphin, all the royal family, the councillors of the crown, the young duke of Orleans, his brother, and a hundred knights of their house, all met together to hear the king declare that he pardoned the duke of Burgundy. The duke prayed "my lord of Orleans and my lords his brothers to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance;" and the princes of Orleans "assented to what the king commanded them and forgave their cousin the duke of Burgundy every thing entirely." On the way back from Chartres the duke of Burgundy's fool kept playing with a church-paten (called "peace") and thrusting it under his cloak, saying, "See, this is a cloak of peace;" and "Many folks," says Juvenal des Ursins, "considered this fool pretty wise." The duke of Burgundy had good reason, however, for seeking this outward reconciliation; it put an end to a position too extended not to become pretty soon untenable; the peace was a cause of great joy at Paris; the king was not long coming back; and two hundred thousand persons, says the chronicle, went out to meet him, shouting, "Noël !" The duke of Burgundy had gone out to receive him; and the queen and the princes arrived two days afterwards. It was not known at the time, though it was perhaps the most serious result of the negotiation, that a secret understanding had been established between John the Fearless and Isabel of Bavaria. The queen, as false as she was dissolute, had seen that the duke might be of service to her on occasion if she served him in her turn, and they had added the falsehood of their undivulged arrangement to that of the general reconciliation.

But falsehood does not extinguish the facts it attempts to disguise. The hostility between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy